Re: THEORY: on the teleology of conlanging (was: RE: terminal dialect?)

At 11:11 30/03/99 +0200, you wrote:
>> >  My question is, do we know
>> > anything specific about *when* it happens, i.e. whether one particular
>language,
>> > given the arrangement of this, instabilities of that, and similarities to
>> > the other, is *more likely* to undergo a certain change.
>>
>> Well, this is actually a rather complicated question.  In short, the answer
>> is yes, with ifs.
>Ah.  On to the if's, then...
>
>  Basically, you have to look at the empirical evidence about
>> individual cases, which happen more often, in what phonetic environments,
>> and so on.  Statistically speaking, there are quite a few phonetic changes
>that
>> seem to happen very frequently in just about every language family around
>> the world.  Rhotacism (when [s] changes to [r]), for example, seems to
occur
>> a lot.
>
>What if the language in question already has an [r] -- will the pre-existence
>of such a sound tend to hinder this change?
        Not at all. Latin did this sort of change (example: os, osis "mouth"
became os, oris) whereas the 'r' already existed (like in orator, oratoris
which has always been like that even when we had os, osis).

 How about de-voicing of [r]s?
>One particular hypothetical dialect of Aroven does that, giving a sort of
>dry fluttering sound in place of the [r] which sounds a lot like an [x];
>/r/ is probably the most "unstable" letter in the language...
        I think de-voicing of [r] is likely to happen near to a voiceless
consonnant. Between vowels, it seems very unlikely to me.


                                                        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