#phonological change

[madelinelovesick]

Sound Change of the Day - 2024 April 20

/x/ becomes /w/ between /a/ and /o/.

(Proto-Eastern Muskogean to Creek)

[littlemizzlinguistics]

Studying linguistics is actually so wonderful because when you explain youth slang to older professors, instead of complaining about how "your generation can't speak right/ you're butchering the language" they light up and go “really? That’s so wonderful! What an innovative construction! Isn't language wonderful?"

[starry-bi-sky]

DPXDC CFAU Headcanon: Ghostspeak Edition

Ghosts in the Infinite Realms who saw Jason and Danny together called them "luzdra", a term in ghost speak that directly translates into the words "shared soul". It's literal definition is; "two ghosts with a bond so deep that it was as if they had split their souls in half and given one to the other", but in general it just means two ghosts with a profound, indescribable bond.

Luzdrus is the singular form of the word, and refers to only one ghost in the bond. While "luzdra" is plural and either refers to both of them together, or the relationship as a whole. It depends on the context of the conversation and who they're saying it to.

There is no romantic, platonic, or familial connotation behind the word. It just means "someone who shares a deep bond with someone" and can be between anyone.

It also does not mean soulmate, and if you say that you'll be corrected. Soulmates implies that their bond was destined by the universe, luzdra are two people who developed and built that bond themselves. It's a relationship forged between two (or more) people.

Some of Danny's rogues -- like Kitty and Johnny, who might've seen the two together and are possibly luzdra themselves -- still call him 'luzdrus' even after Jason's disappearance from the Zone. Danny doesn't know how to feel about it.

[dedalvs]

welcome back! Ages ago I think you posted a link to a dictionary of common sound changes any chance you still have that resource or something like it? need some guidance so I'm not doing something totally wacky like all my Ts becoming Qs

Got a couple things for you. The first is the Index Diachronica, which is a searchable website. It's a database of hundreds of natural language sound changes.

Second is William Annis's "Paterns of Allophony", an article on Fiat Lingua that represents visually common sound changes.

Hope you find those useful!

[psqqa]

i'm having a lot of fun with duolingo italian because it's like word that is basically latin but italianly, french but to the left, oh hey greek! you love to see it, absolute bottom of the false friend option list but sure i guess, WILDEST LEFT FIELD SHIT YOU'VE EVER SEEN, back to latin,

[possessivesuffix]

Do you have any literature on sound changes involving ejective consonants? Specifically ejective consonants changing into something else?

I don't know of any general surveys, but several individual cases are of course found in literature in more detail. It would be worthwhile to have some compiled data on this though! For a start I'll collect some examples in this post.

The best-described case might be Semitic, where any handbook (or even just the Wikipedia article) will inform you about *kʼ > q, tsʼ > (t)s etc. being attested in Arabic / Aramaic / Hebrew. Offhand I don't know if there is a particular locus classicus on the issue of reconstructing ejectives for Proto-Semitic, though.

---

Cushitic, which I've been recently talking about, has open questions remaining especially in what exactly to reconstruct for various correspondences involving ejective affricates, but at least the development of the ejective stops seems to be well-established. Going first mainly per Sasse (1979), The Consonant Phonemes of Proto-East Cushitic, Afroasiatic Linguistics 7/1, three developments into something else appear across East Cushitic for *tʼ:

*tʼ > /ɗ/ (alveolar implosive): Oromo, Boni, Arboroid (Arbore, Daasenech, Elmolo), Dullay, Yaaku and, at least word-internally, Highland East Cushitic.

*tʼ >> /ᶑ/ (retroflex implosive): Konsoid (Konso, Dirasha a.k.a. Gidole, Bussa). (As per Tesfaye 2020, The Comparative Phonology of Konsoid, Macrolinguistics 8/2. Some other descriptions give these too as alveolar /ɗ/.)

*tʼ >>> /ɖ/ (retroflex voiced plosive): Saho–Afar, Somali, Rendille.

Presumably these all happen along a common path *tʼ > ⁽*⁾ɗ > ⁽*⁾ᶑ > ɖ. Note though that Sasse reconstructs *ɗ and not *tʼ — but comparison with the case of *kʼ, the cognates elsewhere in Cushitic, and /tʼ/ in Dahalo and word-initially in Highland East Cushitic I think all point to *tʼ in the last common ancestor of East Cushitic. (As per other literature, I don't think East Cushitic is necessarily a valid subgroup and so this last common ancestor may also be ancestral to some of the other branches of Cushitic.)

For *kʼ there is a wide variety of secondary reflexes:

Saho–Afar: *kʼ > /k/ ~ /ʔ/ ~ zero (unclear conditions).

Konso: *kʼ > /ʛ/ (no change in Bussa & Dirasha).

Daasenech: *kʼ > /ɠ/ word-initially, else > /ʔ/.

Elmolo: *kʼ > zero word-initially, else > /ɠ/.

Bayso: *kʼ > zero.

Somali: *kʼ > /q/, which varies as [q], [ɢ] etc.; merges in Southern Somali into /x/). Before front vowels, > /dʒ/.

Rendille: *kʼ > /x/.

Boni: *kʼ > /ʔ/.

though some of them again could be grouped along common pathways like *kʼ > *q > *χ > x, *kʼ > *ʔ > zero.

*čʼ > /ʄ/ happens at minimum in Konso (corresponds to /tʃʼ/ in Bussa & Dirasha). Proposed developments of a type *čʼ >> /ɗ/ in some other languages could go thru a merger with *tʼ first of all.

No East Cushitic *pʼ seems to be reconstructible, but narrower groups show *pʼ > /ɓ/ in Konsoid (corresponds to Oromo /pʼ/) and maybe *pʼ > /ʔ/ in Sidaamo (corresponds to Gedeo /pʼ/; mainly in loans from Oromo).

There is also an unpublished PhD from University of California at LA: Linda Arvanites (1991), The Glottalic Phonemes of Proto-Eastern Cushitic. I would be interested if someone else has access to this (edit: has been procured, thank you!)

Secondary developments of *tʼ and *kʼ in the rest of Cushitic, per Ehret (1987), Proto-Cushitic Reconstruction, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 8 (he also reconstructs *pʼ *tsʼ *čʼ *tɬʼ, but I'm less trustful of their validity):

Beja: *tʼ > /s/, *kʼ > /k/.

Agaw: *tʼ > *ts (further > /ʃ/ in Bilin and Kemant), *kʼ > *q (further word-initially > /x/ in Xamtanga and Kemant, /ʁ/ in Awngi)

West Rift: *kʼ > *q (and *tʼ > *tsʼ).

(The tendency for assibilation of *tʼ is interesting; although plenty of Cushitic languages get rid of ejectives entirely, none seems to have a native sound change *tʼ > /t/.)

---

The historical phonology of the largest Afrasian branch, Chadic, is much more of a work in progress, but I would trust at least the following points as noted e.g. by Russell Schuh (2017), A Chadic Cornucopia:

*tʼ > *ɗ perhaps already in Proto-Chadic (supposedly all Chadic languages have /ɗ/);

*kʼ > /ɠ/ in Tera (Central Chadic);

/tsʼ/ in Hausa and some other languages corresponds to /ʄ/ or /ʔʲ/ in some other West Chadic languages, not entirely clear though which side is more original.

Tera /ɠ/ alas does not seem to be discussed in detail in the Leiden University PhD thesis by Richard Gravina (2014), The phonology of Proto-Central Chadic; he e.g. asserts /ɠəɬ/ 'bone' to be an irregular development from *ɗiɬ, while Schuch takes it as a cognate of e.g. Hausa /kʼàʃī/ 'bone'. (Are there two etyma here, or might the other involved Central Chadic languages have *ɠ > /ɗ/?)

If Olga Stolbova (2016), Chadic Etymological Dictionary is to be trusted (I've not done any vetting of its quality) then Hausa /tsʼ/ is indeed already from Proto-Chadic *tsʼ, and elsewhere in Chadic often yields /s/, sometimes /ts/ or /h/. Her Proto-Chadic *kʼ mostly merges with /k/ when not surviving. (She also has an alleged *tʼ with no ejective reflexes anywhere, and alleged *čʼ and *tɬʼ which mostly fall together with *tsʼ, but also show some slightly divergent reflexes like /ʃ/, /ɬ/ respectively.)

---

Moving on, a few other examples I'm aware of OTTOMH include the cases of word-medial voicing in several Koman languages and in some branches of Northeast Caucasian (Chechen and Ingush in Nakh; *pʼ in most Lezgic languages). Also in NEC, the Lezgic group shows complicated decay of geminate ejectives, broadly:

> plain voiceless geminate in Lezgian, Tabassaran & Agul (same also in Tindi within the Andic group);

> voiceless singleton (aspirated) in Kryz & Budux;

Rutul & Tsaxur show some of both of the previous depending on the consonant, as well as word-initially *tsʼː > /d/ and *tɬʼː > /g/ — probably by feeding into the more general shift *voiceless geminate > *unaspirated > voiced (which happens in almost all of Lezgic).

in Udi, both short and geminate ejectives > plain voiceless geminates (plus a few POA quirks like *qʼʷ > /pː/, even though *qʷ > /q/).

Again I don't know if this has been described in better detail anywhere in literature, this is pulled just from the overviews in the North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary plus some review of the etymological data by myself.

Ejectives in Kartvelian are mostly stable in manner of articulation, but there's a minor sound correspondence between Karto-Zan *cʼ₁ (probably = /tʃʼ/) versus Svan /h/ that newer sources like Heinz Fähnrich (2007), Kartwelisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch for some reason reconstruct as *tɬʼ or *tɬ. The Svan development would then probably go as *tɬ⁽ʼ⁾ > *ɬ > /h/, after original PKv *ɬ > /l/.

I do not know very much about the historical phonology of any American languages, including if there's anything interesting happening to ejectives there; if someone else around here does, please do tell!

[coquelicoq]

been paying more attention to my r sounds in french lately and while i do default to the voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/ most of the time, in intervocalic contexts i'm doing what i'm pretty sure is a voiced uvular approximant /ʁ̞/ maybe half the time? i wasn't sure if it was a tap/flap or an approximant, but it does sound a lot like the audio clip for the approximant, and apparently the approximant is often an allophone for the fricative, while the tap/flap is an allophone for the trill (which makes sense since a tap/flap is basically an abbreviated trill), and i don't really do uvular trills in speech.

the fricative has always been difficult for me and at this point i doubt it will get much easier than it is now. it makes sense that as i learned to speak faster i would end up producing the approximant in at least some contexts, and i suppose that it makes sense that the main context in which that happens is intervocalic, since approximants are kind of like if you took a fricative halfway to being a vowel.

the reason i've been thinking about this lately is i've been listening to a lot of stromae and his r sounds keep jumping out at me. i mentioned in some tags the other day his r sounds in bonne journée (skip to 1:24):

Si l'bonheur [tap/flap?] des autres [elided] te rend [trill] malheureux [trill] C'est qu't'es un rageux [tap/flap?] Si l'malheur [trill?] des autres [elided] te rend [trill] heureux [approximant??] C'est qu't'es un rageux [tap/flap?]

that sound in heureux in the third line is really interesting because he pronounces that exact word (within the word malheureux) two lines before, but there he's clearly trilling the r, and here he is not, and it doesn't sound like a tap or flap to me either! it sounds like an approximant!

he does do the uvular fricative as well...specifically in consonant clusters (also in variation with trills) (skip to 1:37):

Tu profites [fricative] jamais vraiment [trill?] de ce moment présent [fricative] En fait t'es juste dépressif [fricative]

elsewhere in the song he seems to trill a lot of consonant cluster rs, so i think it may also be a function of syllables/second - in these two lines he's going really fast, and possibly fricatives are faster to pronounce than trills? they certainly are for me, but i'm not sure if that's because i'm not a native speaker or because of some fundamental property of trilling.

between a vowel and a consonant he's sometimes doing a trill and sometimes something else, i think an approximant but it might be a fricative. hell, maybe it's a tap/flap. (rs in this context are fairly difficult for me to distinguish with any accuracy if they're not trills or really emphasized fricatives, so fuck if i know.)

ultimately i think he (at least in song) trills every r possible and resorts to (not consciously, obviously) one of the other options when necessary. i am nowhere near that proficient at uvular trills and can pretty much only do them on extended notes (because they take extra time for me to pronounce) and on higher pitches for some reason. i'd love to learn the uvular tap/flap, and it's probably the fastest of all the options (citation needed but it feels right lol), so maybe a year from now, when my speaking speed has increased another incremental amount, i'll notice that i've started spontaneously producing those as well. i live in hope.

[thepandalion]

celebrating my successful interaction with a real human person by writing the first two paragraphs I have for the house md casefic featuring actual dog people and also whatever the fuck is wrong with these guys

[epicdogymoment]

remembers a reddit comment thread where someone said that っ basically works as a glottal stop. and sighs.

[daisychainsandbowties]

do the palmer station crew develop the antarctic winter accent

oh that’s a really interesting question. for anyone curious, here’s the academic journal article discussing a study of phonetic change over i think an 8 month period. it’s a small sample size but the premise has a firm grounding in phonology. actually the urge to also link back to this post, as a related point.

i think ava and camila notice it first, as the people who talk the most (although, if you count the fact that lilith chats to all of her little creatures almost constantly, she actually talks the most).

ava’s accent has always been a mess of different vowel sounds anyway because she went from portuguese to irish-accented english (derogatory in this case) and daytime TV spanish to german and french for a while and then to american english so she’s got. all of the vowels acting like strangers to her anyway.

but she also has an ear for this because unlike beatrice, she picked up her vast repertoire of languages out of necessity, wheras all but two of bea’s were picked up in more academic settings. so she hears beatrice in the cafeteria one morning insiting loudly (for her) that “muesli is absolutely a food”. and ava just has a ‘huh?’ moment over that ‘oo’ sound and the way it latches onto the ‘d’ (and yes, she does let out a little self-satisfied chuckle at the innuendo). it’s still beatrice, especially in the deliberateness of the ‘f’, but the vowels are faintly different.

then she hears lilith roll her eyes (this is somehow possible) before saying, “it looks like something you feed to the crows if you want them to like you.”

then cam, “aw lilith did you make friends with crows? that’s adorable.”

ava slips into the cafeteria just as lilith darts crossly out into the corridor with a blunt “ava” as what passes for politness, clutching her mug and trying to hide her blush. and that, too, catches ava off-guard; her vowel-thick name just a little bit different in lilith’s mouth.

she and cam spend weeks laughing at beatrice and lilith and their slowly-eroding accents. beatrice and ava having settled into a routine of mutual infodumping sessions during the winter months. listening to beatrice turn a bit soft in her sounds, and how it matches the way she speaks, full of quiet, reverant joy.

[madelinelovesick]

Sound Change of the Day - 2024 July 1

/iə/ becomes /ɪ/.

(presently occurring in American English)

Why are there no Sound Changes of the Day after this one?

[kigiom]

you should be able to cite wikipedia in academic essays

[panvani]

I will say I'm not the best at foreign orthography but I am still shocked whenever someone very badly mispronounces a romanized Japanese word given that romanized Japanese is very common esp in online spaces and Japanese (Hepburn) romanization is incredibly straightforward and intuitive for English speakers

[faire-rosalind]

It's not my fault vinland came out in the middle of seven exams i have to take now i have to control my obsession plus study plus finally start posting manga panels that match the episodes and talk about them! Life is truly exhausting

[tragedykery]

dutch linguist voice adapted loanwords? you mean bastard words? how scandalous that words are getting derived from another languages without getting married! linguistic processes these days >:/

[itdissonans]

searching for non-ai sources like I'm diving for pre-war steel