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Re: [CONLANG] A possible sound change?



R A Brown skrev:
Eric Christopherson wrote:
On Aug 11, 2009, at 10:05 AM, Przemyslaw
Ziobrowski wrote: [snip]
A change of this kind [azd] > [az\d] or [uz] >
[uz\]? It seems very unlikely. Why would the
[z] palatalize after [u]?? And why would it
not before the [i]? A substrate/shibboleth
could be the solution.

I don't see why not. /s/ > /S/ before consonant
or pause, at least, happens in several
languages.

Yep - in Portuguese, for example.


What's bothering me is the possible phonetics of
the Italian change of unstressed final vowel + -S

* -AS > -e
* -ES > -i
* -OS > -i

It may seem as if plurals like _cose, vini_ come
from the Latin nominative plural, and that plurals
like _piedi_ were derived from PEDES perhaps by
Latin long /e:/ in final syllables becoming Vulgar
Latin */i/ rather than */e/. That this is not so,
but that the modern Italian plurals were derived
from the Latin accusative plural by a sequence of
changes like

* -AS > *-ai > -e
* -ES > *-ei > -i
* -OS > *-oi > -i

is proven by the forms which Latin monosyllables
in -S take in Italian

* POS(T) > poi
* NOS > noi
* VOS > voi
* CRAS > crai
* SEX > SES > sei

There are also DAS > _dai_ and STAS > _stai_, but
these are rendered problematic by the fact that
second person singular verb forms of the -ARE
conjugation get _-i_ rather that _-e_, presumably
by analogy with the other conjugations. PLUS >
_pi�_ rather than _**piui_ is explained as
dissimilation. This leaves only TRES > _tre_ as
somewhat problematic, though TREDECIM may have
influenced it. _Crai_ may be surprising when one
has learnt that 'tomorrow' is _domani_ in Italian,
but the word exists historically and dialectally.

So what happened seems clear, but *how* did it
happen? What phonetic factors caused and
permitted final _-Vs_, and only final _-Vs_ to
change to _-Vi_?

BTW Rumanian, and thus probably all of Eastern
Romance is closely parallel.

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 "C'est en vain que nos Josu�s litt�raires crient
 � la langue de s'arr�ter; les langues ni le soleil
 ne s'arr�tent plus. Le jour o� elles se *fixent*,
 c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)