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On 7.2.2008 peter21691 wrote:
> >> | #dj -- #dZ -- #D ^3
> >> > >| dj -- 0 -- 0
> > >
> > > I'm much more inclined to #dj > j (possibly #dj > d >
> > > t) and definitely -dj- > dd.
>
> At the time the WRom palatisation is being undone, there
> is no /d/ in our target phonology, only /D/. This /D/ does
> become /d/ shortly afterwards though.
That's not how I read the evidence. Rather Common Germanic
had a single phoneme which had both fricative [D] and stop
[d] allophones. The stop allophone occurred word initially,
or at least utterance initially, after /n/ and /l/ and
in gemination, the fricative allophone everywhere else.
What happened in West Germanic somewhen between the gods
know when and the first attestation of Old English is that
the stop allophone was generalized, whereafter /T/ became
[e] in voiced environments.
The original distribution of [B]/[b] and [G]/[g] was
similar, except that here the fricative allophones did not
become stops, but merged with /P/ and /x/.
To be sure this is a Bone of Contention in Germanic
philology. F'rinstance some claim that the development
f > j / #_ {i, e} in Old English implies that pre-OE had [G]
in initial position. Contra that can be claimed that (1)
/g/ (the single phoneme with both stop and fricative
realizations) may have been alternately
[g] or [g] even word initially when phrase internal, and (2)
we know for certain that even word initial
[h] became /j/ before front vowels in Old Swedish, which
distinguished _g_ [g] and _gh_ [G] in spelling. Actually
the state of affairs in present-day Dutch suggests that
[i] was more restricted than [b] which in turn was more
restricted than [d]. There surely was a good deal of
local and individual variation across Germanic in
general and West Germanic in particular -- even the
English north and south of the Humber, and so
presumably the Angles and Saxons on the Continent,
seemingly weren't in agreement even before the
coming of the vikings. We certainly won't be up
against any grand jury if we take some liberty in
interpretation here.
However, I think I prefer #/j/. So toss a coin,
> do we want:
>
> #dj > #Dj > #D > #d (we need a very fast change here! -
> feasible?)
Sure, any change takes a minimum of three generations.
- 1st generation: old form only
- 2nd generation: free variation between old and new form
- 3d generation: new form only, or very seldom the old
- 4th generation: new form only
For some changes one generation seems to suffice. Swedish is
ATM going through two changes where succeding generations
have different norms:
(1) is an insertion of [@] in Cr and Cv clusters. I wouldn't
be caught dead doing it, but one of my stepdaughters who
is 25 does it almost always, my other stepdaughter who
is 24 does it sometimes, my stepsons who are 22 do it
seldom, while my lad who is 9 does it frequently. The
funny thing is that the girls seem to be doing this when
they want to posh up their speech -- as women do more
frequently and young men very seldom --, but for my 9
y.o. no such parameter enters the picture: he simply
speaks as his kindergarten teachers and sisters did.
(2) A general lowering of /E/ to [&], *especially* when
long. Young women are in the lead here too, but young
men are following suit. People from central Sweden of
the now middle-aged generation used to do this as a
posh-up, to counter the general /e/--/E/ merger in that
region, but now this [&:] has caught on like wildfire in
the young generation all over the country.
> #dj > #j
>
> dj > (Dj >) dj > dd for certain.
>
OK.
> [...]
> >> > >| sj -- z -- s ^4
> > >
> > > No, definitely sj > S > x > h. Old French has Vsj >
> > > Vis in all instances, which probably developed from
> > > [S] or rather [s\]. Remember there was no /S/ in OF,
> > > only /tS/ < k / _a!
>
> This is problematic. I want /S/ > /x/... BUT: There is no
> /S/ in OF, and there is no /S/ in OHG either. So we have
> no /S/ anywhere. I don't see how if we have no /S/ where
> we start or finish, we can have it in the middle!?
>
> The Gmc had [s_a], and I think this is the closest
> phoneme to /sj/. Rom /sj/ also seems to have shifted to
> /z/ ([z_a]?) in many instances, which again would be
> [s_a] in Gmc.
>
> That must mean we are stuck with sj > z > s ??
I was obviously unclear here: OF as recorded had no /S/, but
the fact that OF has /is/--/iz/ corresponding to VL SSJ and
SJ suggest that pre-OF had [S] and [Z], or rather something
like [S;] and [Z;] in these cases. Old Provençal shows the
same pattern -- to wit it even has an occasional _ih_
spelling for what must have been [C]. Anyway there is all
likelihood that any language will turn /sj/ into [S] --
especially if it is [s_aj]. It has happened quite
automatically at sundry times and places, so we hardly take
any liberty if we assume it for the VL underlying Germano-
Romance! Pre-Slavic even had is > iS > ix, and Swedish went
through sj > S > X in recent centuries. Some Indo-Aryan
dialects apparently went through S > x > k_h -- presumably
because speakers of dialects which lacked /x/ used /k_h/
to emulate the [x] sound.
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)