Re: partial letter replacement in languages?

----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 12:18 AM
Subject: Re: partial letter replacement in languages?


> On Friday, December 10, 2004, at 05:05 , Rodlox wrote:
>
> [snip]
> >
> >  what I meant was, such as ->
> >
> > /Murad/ becomes /Murat/ *
> > ..yet...
> > /Abdulhamid/ does not become /Abtulhamid/
> The Murad who was a student of mine last year never became a Murat at any
> time  :)
  my apologies, then.

 I've been reading history books published in various countries, and I had
noticed the d->t shift (such as Murad/Murat) in, at least, the Turkish
Republic.

 I did not mean to imply that it was true for all Turkic or Arabic
languages...my apologies if I accidentally gave the impression that is was
true.


> In any case I would hardly expect /bd/ (two voiced plosive) to change to
> /bt/ (but I would expect /bt/ to be assimilated to /bd/).
 ah.

 if I might ask, what is /bt/ that is could be assimilated, whereas /bd/ (a
voiced plosive) could not?  *curious*

> With final plosives it is quite common for the distinction between voiced
> & voiceless to be neutralized. Most commonly, as in German, Russian,
> Breton and IIRC Turkish, they are all devoiced. Some languages, like
Welsh,
>   prefer voicing the whole like.

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