Re: Historical realism and prenasalized stops

From: "Josh Brandt-Young" <vionau@...>
> So then, the *question* is, does this seem reasonable? That is to say, have
> any of you ever seen a language behave anything like this? Is it in
> violation of any general rules of historical change?
>
> In case it's useful, here's the full chart of ordered changes for the
> alveolar series:
>
> 1. *d > nd
This isn't impossible, but I can't think of an example.  (The closest I can
think of is realizations of Japanese /g/ as [N].)

> 2. *t > d
Happened in German through an intermediate [T]/[D] (I forget which).

> 3. *d > D / V_V
Happens in Spanish.

> 4. *t_h > t
Actually this may be the hardest one to explain...?

> 5. *nd > d / _V{stressed}
In Altaic there was a rule for Japanese that nC > C.  I forget whether the first
C had to be voiced or not, but the result C was voiced--the original voiced [b],
[d], [g], > [w], [j], and I think [h].

I dont think it'd be unreasonable to have a rule like that conditioned by
environment.

    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/

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