Re: OT: Mismatched phonologies / accents

----- Original Message -----
From: "Benct Philip Jonsson" <bpj@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 4:37 PM
Subject: Re: Mismatched phonologies / accents


...
> If the language having the inventory is some kind of pre-
> Old High German I'd expect /s/ to be apical [s_a] (like
> in modern Spanish and Greek), and /z/ not to exist[^1]
> and thus:
>
> /ts/ > /T/
> /dz/ > /D/
> /S/ > /x/
> /Z/ > /j/ or /G/
> /tS/ > /S/ > /x/ or > /tj/ > /tt/ (/t/ word initially)
> /dZ/ > /Z/ > /j/ or /G/ or /dj/ > /dd/d/
Well spotted, the inventory is PGmc. The /s/ is [s_a], so I suppose to be
ultra precise I should list WRom [s_m] > NRom [s_a].
/z/ of course had earlier rhoticised to /r/, I'd forgotton about that! In
which case then I guess I'd also need /z/ > /s/ [z]. Do you think [z] would
ultimately devoice and merge with [s_a], or would it survive long enough to
become a separarte phoneme again?

I'm not at all sure about /tS/ > /S/... and /dZ/ > /Z/... The whole point
here is I am trying to establish an 'accent', i.e how the Romanic sounds are
mispronounced by a Germanic speaker beacuse he lacks the correct phomenes in
his inventory. As he doesn't have /S/ or /Z/ either, any sound change that
uses them, even as an intermediate stage, is surely precluded as he can no
more pronounce those sounds than the original ones. Could /tS/ and /dZ/
'jump' straight to /x/ and /G/? Given the choice of sounds available, /tS/
and /x/ certainly seem to be the closest sounding, but dZ sounds equally
close to /G/ and /j/ to me (assuming I try to avoid the 'un-Germanic'
palatal /tj/ and /dj/).


> BTW I'd expect Latin /k/ before /e, i/ to become /ts/dz/
> so that /tS/ would rarely arise -- perhaps only from /kj/,
> and I do regard /j/ as the most likely outcome of both
> /Z/ and /dZ/.  Some think VL /g;/ actually first went to
> /j/ everywhere!
Yes, I have /k/ > /ts/ _/i  e  I  E/. I also have /ts/ < /tj/ and /kj/.
Some others are derived as follows:

/dZ/  <  #/j/, #/dj/, /bj/,
/ndZ/  <  /mj/
/tS/  <  /pj/

I'd also completely fogotten about /L/ My guess is that would go to /j/,
although maybe /r/ is a possibility there?


Pete