Re: Phonology drift

>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.

John Vertical

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