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Hey all, I'm guessing this is a fairly obvious question, but I feel the need to ask it for the sake of my own understanding. Also I intend to be rather compulsively adherent to certain rules in the process of designing my first conlang (obviously, a Romance conlang)... in other words, I want this language to be convincingly realistic, so I don't want to make too many more radical changes than are expected. Here goes-- I know a lot about historical linguistics and phonological changes, and I even know a lot about the evolution of Classical Latin to Vulgar, but to be honest, my expertise is more deeply rooted in the modern Romance languages, especially Spanish. I know that phonological changes are sweeping, contextual, and consequently fairly easily traceable. But even in the instances in which they supposedly "always" occur, are there ever more-than-minute exceptions to those rules? For instance, might there be an instance in a Western Romance language where, though most voiceless stops became voiced, there are a cluster of words where, for some reason, "t" was expected to become "d" but somehow didn't? Or maybe we simply can't reconcile the way certain minute words and particles evolved, like the modern equivalents to prepositions "de" and "ad?", in comparison to the "rules" by which these languages otherwise evolved? I realize this is a pretty general question, but for some reason, this one dilemma seems to be holding up my creative processes. To shed some light, I'm a mathematician (hence, compulsively analytical), and getting the jump on conlanging a little later in life than what I'm gathering is the obvious age (i.e., I'm not in high school), so perhaps I feel a bit inclined to really prove myself with this first outing. :-P Big thanks for any insights on the matter. Cheers. -Mark