Possible phonological changes (was: Rate of change)

[Gabor Sandi]

>From: Rick Mc Callister <RMCCALLI at SUNMUW1.MUW.EDU>
>Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 17:27:36 -0500

>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: <X99LYNX at AOL.COM>
>> Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001 7:13 AM

>>> Then he went on to point out that European Portuguese has the rolled r,
>>> but (Northern) Brazilian Portuguese has an /h/ reflex of /r/, to which I
>>> added that the Puerto Rican Spanish rolled ("double") rr is often
>>> pronounced as a velar like in French etc. The implication is that
>>> Brazilian may have passed through this stage in the evolution of r > h.

>> [Ed Selleslagh]

>> Isn't there a little confusion here? Isn't the Brazilian Portuguese r that's
>> pronounced as uvular r, as [rx] in final position, or as [x] or even [h],
>> the original rr (cf. Spanish), the rolling r (>3 taps)? Not the single r
>> (originally one tap, now often more). [Note that double r is not always
>> written as such, as orthography is different according to position in a
>> word, e.g. initially or finally].

> I think that's what he meant. Some varieties of Brazilian
>Portuguese use /h/ for trilled /rr/. I've heard it from people from the
>South as well, from Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro. The northerners
>I've met used a type of uvular /R/. I've been told that /rr/ is also
>trilled in parts of Brazil

>> Did you mean that Puertoricans use the Brazilian pronunciation of double r?
>> I wasn't aware of that.

> Not all Puerto Ricans, but some. It was a rural pronunciation but
>is now found among urban working class people of rural origin in Puerto
>Rico and New York --or so I've been told by Puerto Ricans. It's also found
>among some Dominicanos and --I've been told-- among some Orientales (Far
>Eastern Cuba). You hear a lot among Hispanics from all over who have
>settled in New York and lived among Puerto Ricans --including one of my
>Costa Rican brothers-in-law

>> Maybe Portuguese influence stretched farther north than I thought: in
>> Curagao Papiamento there is a considerable Portuguese base, but that's still
>> far more to the south than P.R.

>> In the mid-southern Andes (parts of Perz, Bolivia, N. Argentina), the double
>> r is pronounced [Z] (French j), strongly reminescent of Polish rz or Czech
>> r-hacek, which - as far as I know - have the same origin (rolling r). All
>> seem to be results of retroflexion.

> This is common all over most of Spanish-speaking Latin America
>outside of the Caribbean and northern Mexico: Costa Rica, Guatemala,
>western Panama, southern Mexico, parts of Highland Columbia & Venezuela,
>parts of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, etc.

Since in many varieties of Argentinian Spanish (as well as in Chile and
Uruguay), the phonetic realizations of orthographic <y> and <ll> are also [Z],
do these examples imply that there are varieties of Spanish where lluvia 'rain'
and rubia 'blonde' are homophones, pronounced as ['ZuBya]? Same for callo 'corn
(on foot)' and carro 'cart, car', both [kaZo]?

Gabor