Re: THEORY: derivation question

At 21:21 25/03/99 +0100, you wrote:
>   Date:         Wed, 24 Mar 1999 21:49:10 -0600
>   From: dunn patrick w <tb0pwd1@...>
>
>   could such a thing as [p] -> [k] ever happen, or is that just
>   silly? It's probably a stupid question, but I want to know.
>
>It just so happens that a case of /p/ > /k/ was discussed on the
>IndoEuropean list around the new year. In an Austronesian language
>called Skikun, it seems that all instances of word-final /-p/ have
>been changed to /-k/ in the space of two generations. There are no
>conditioning factors such as dissimilation present, just a steady
>replacement of forms with /-p/ to forms with /-k/ in the lexicon of
>each successive age group of speakers.
>
>By the way, this is something shown by recent research into how sound
>changes actually happen: A sound change does not usually happen all at
>once, or by gradual modification of the phonetical realization through
>generations until some end point is reached.
>
>Rather, a change --- often phonetically abrupt --- starts in a small
>number of words, with a small number of speakers, and spreads through
>both the population and the lexicon. Or perhaps it doesn't --- it may
>disappear again, or become a feature of a dialect or sociolect, or
>spread only to some words where a certain condition is satisfied, or
>even remain in a few words as unexplained exceptions to sound laws.
>
>And people do adopt new pronunciations throughout their lives. Speaker
>age does play a role --- but if older people always continued to speak
>exactly as they did when they were twenty years old, the difference
>between generations would be much larger than actually observed.
>
>Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT=
 marked)
>
>
        I read once something about the "paradox" of the phonological change. It
said that:

        I think I've always spoken in the same way. I think my father always spoke
like me. He think the same thing of his own father who thinks the same
think of his own one, but we know that the pronunciation (any language in
fact, it's the same for all languages) of my grand-grandfather is different
from mine. How could that be possible? That's the paradox.

        And in fact, I realized by my own experience that there was in fact no
paradow at all, as the statement: "I've always spoken in the same way" is
wrong! I realized it some years ago, when I realized that I pronounced
"brun" (brown) and "brin" (strand) as homophones [bRE~] whereas I remember
distinctively having pronounced them differently [bRE~] and [bR9~] when I
was younger. Same thing with "patte" and "p=E2te" (formerly [pat] and [pAt],
now only [pat]). So I came to the conclusion that our speech changed during
our own life, most times without even noticing it!


                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html