Re: Phonology drift

> >Another alternativ would be directly leniting the ejectivs.
> >And since ejectiv fricativs, even unvoiced ones, *are* pretty marked,
>they
> >could then proceed to decay to voiced sounds directly. Does that sound
>any
> >better?
>
>Mmm, somewhat.  Leniting them like that is still odd, but at least it's
>natural that they would resolve to something less marked pronto.
So we agree that t' > z is not completely whacked out. Good.

I'm actually also suspecting whether I should posit a proto-series of
ejectivs in the first place... The oldest uwjge plans (back when it wasn't
even a language yet, just an alphabet) have aspirates at their place but
with the labial still lacking. I don't offhand remember what prompted me to
use glottalization insted.
/p_h/ should probably lenite to /f/ rather than /h/, but that's not bad,
quite good actually. For one, it is the one and same phoneme leniting now in
both branches. Then, /b d g/ are instead what go to /v z j/; then /p t k q/
 > /b d g G\/ , + deaspiration. Well, it works, but I loose the
originally-unrelated-ejectivs scheme. I'll need to check the other branches'
details too, however. Maybe even consider whether this sketch should even be
in this family...

Just thinking out loud here.


> >(Actually, how do glottalized > voiced shifts proceed typically, anyway?
> >Does it go along linear laryngeal laxing of glottalized > tense > modal,
>or
> >is there a glottal stop + voiced sound intermediate?)
>
>I think glottal+voiced is more typical: for instance Vietnamese realizes
>its
>initial implosives in variation between [?b) ?d)]~[?b_<) ?d_<)] where the
>implosive has gone to preglottalized voiced
These come from clusters, not unitary glottal phonemes, AFAIK.


>and in glottalic-theory IE
>Winter's law in Balto-Slavic is thought to be the same thing: the second
>stop series became realised as [?b ?d ...] and then [?] had the same effect
>on preceding vowels as inherited laryngeals.
.... but this sounds like slightly stronger evidence.


> >having t' k' originate from different series is half the fun...
>
>Sure, but that's going to require some weirdness no matter how you go about
>it, especially with stop series breaking up and single sounds changing
>phonation.
Certainly. The challenge is exactly coming up with a plausible course of
that.


>For that matter, it's strange that while J\ is becoming ejective, nothing
>comparable is happening to b.  But then I notice that in your eventual loss
>of labials you have  b > ?; maybe this b was already p' ?
Nah, b > p' is rather unlikely. If there's only one voiced stop, it's most
likely a bilabial; and if there's one ejectiv missing, it's again most
likely the bilabial.

....also, I realized that if I delay the vel/uvl > pal/vel POA shift until
after this step, I have g > k', which should be more plausible than J\ > c'.


> >Also, as interesting this is, can I however attempt to revert your
>attention
> >back to the 2nd phase in the original plan? The 2nd chain POA shift of
> >alv/pal > dnt/alv, for example...
>
>Right.  Fronting all the palatals to alveolars seems natural, especially
>since you've allowed [c] to affricatize (as palatal stops love to do).
>From
>this point of view it is weird that [J\] doesn't yield a fricative, so in
>this respect I prefer the first of your two chains of intermediates.
Yeah, I've been leaning to that direction, too.


>I'd expect all the old apicals to be dental afterwards; it's strange that
>[t] and especially [z] don't dentalize.  It seems to me likeliest that the
>whole apical series would simply already have been dental before the shift
>happened (i.e. [t(_d) s_d z_d n_d l_d]), and when the palatals became
>alveolar the dental/alveolar contrast got picked up on as the
>distinguishing
>feature.
>
>Alex
Oops, yeah, /t t'/ are supposed to dentalize too. /z/ might too, but after v
 > D it could plausibly snap back to alveolar to fill the "hole" in the
system.  /f/ would probably need to > /h/, then, to explain how /s_d/ avoids
a similar fate; the existence of new /s/ from old /S/ should also help there
however.

John Vertical

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