Re: partial letter replacement in languages?
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Thursday, December 9, 2004, 9:25 |
|---|
On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 02:48:04 +0200, Rodlox <Rodlox@...> wrote:
>
> is there a term for when a language is evolving/being changed, & replaces
> one letter with another (ie, /d/ becomes /t/) in nearly all instances...yet
> there are still words in the resultant language which retain (to continue
> the example) /d/ ?
I don't know a term for it, but just wanted to note that some
instances of this come when there are two (nearly) concurrent sound
changes such that, say, /d/ becomes /t/ while, say, /D/ becomes /d/ --
so all or most original /d/'s disappeared but there are still /d/'s in
the resulting language that used to be a different sound.
(Perhaps Greek is an example, where /b/ -> /v/, but modern Greek has a
/b/ phoneme which comes from, I assume, earlier /mp/ -- it's certainly
written |mp|.)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Watch the Reply-To!
Replies