Re: Phonology drift

On Sun, 26 Nov 2006 18:21:47 +0200, John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
wrote:

>>I have to say, some of these sound changes strike me as very
>>bizarre--in particular, the following:
>>
>>p' > b'
>>t' > z
>>k' k g N > ?j c J\ J
>>
>>I suppose if all velars become palatal, that's one thing, but
>>wouldn't /k'/ become /c'/?  Those are a bit less bizarre than the
>>first two, though.  As written, they strike me as a bit implausible. Is
>>there any similar natlang sound change? I suppose p' > b' is
>>kind of usual, but it does strike me as kind of bizarre that with
>>four ejectives, this is the only one that turns into an implosive,
>>the resulting being a language with one ejective and one implosive.
>>
>>-David
>
>To be exact, the glottalized stops probably shouldn't be considered ejectiv
>at the protolang stage; maybe rather preglottalized ?p ?t ?k ?q. Most
>branches have consistently voiced reflexes for all but the backmost one, so
>the others likely first voiced to ?b ?d ?J\. Then, lenition; and as I wrote,
>postulating an implosiv intermediate for the bilabial is only required if I
>try to explain J\ > t' as also going via an implosiv. In fact, I do like
>better the other option of just directly ejectivizing it, followed by
>lenition to s' & fortition to t'. Or maybe direct backing, since the other
>palatals also go to alveolars, but then it's having c but not c' affricatize
>that would seem odd. But surely not completely implausible. I think Abkhaz
>does something similar, where q > X while q' stays put?
>
>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.
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