Re: Phonology drift

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:23:19 +0200, John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
wrote:

>> >So the change relevant to your confusion would be
>> >b d J\ > B z j\ / ?_
>> >and I might actually do the same before other voiceless plosivs, too, as
>>the
>> >smaller details are still up for tweaking.
>>
>>?_ strikes me as an odd environment to lenite stops to fricatives in -- I
>>don't know about _pre_glottalized fricatives per se, but glottalized
>>fricatives are a rarity.
>
>Fair point ... 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.

>(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, 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.

>>Given the inventory you started with I'd find a chain shift more likely:
>>nonglottalized  b d J\ > B z j\ (perhaps even for greater distinctness from
>>the preglottalized series), and then  b' d' J\'  lose their glottalization.
>>That would also help explain the later  J\ > t' : perhaps the
>>glottalization didn't quite disappear on J\.
>>
>>Alex
>
>But 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.

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' ?

> One,
>albeit contrived, possibility is 1) voiced > brethy, 2) eject. > voiced, 3)
>voiced > fric, 4) brethy > voiced? The first two steps would be shared with
>yet another branch, but the last feels a bit too back-and-forthy...
Well, (4) seems completely natural once the plain voiced stops are
completely lost and only breathy ones remain.  OTOH following up with (5)
voiced > ejective does seem a bit over the top...

>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.

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