sound replacement in loans

[Rankin, Robert L]

I understand the copyright constraints you are operating under, but I'm afraid that probably most of us would need a little more information in order to attempt to answer your query.  If the example you have in mind is, say, polysyllabic and there are several attractive phonetic matches between your projected source and recipient words, the replacement of "sh" with "%" (the pharyngeal stop) would pose an interesting problem.  If, however, the posited source and loan have approximately the form you give an example, e.g., VshV to V%V, then I might tend to question whether it is really a borrowing or merely a chance resemblance.  Even if the semantic match is exact, the VCV is pretty short for us to be certain.  
 
The only case I can think of that is even close is a change within a single language:  15th century Spanish "sh" (written "x") evolving into modern Spanish /x/ varying dialectally with /h/.  The velar or laryngeal is at least a little closer, but is never a stop.
 
Best wishes,
 
Robert L. Rankin
University of Kansas

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From: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu on behalf of Wolfgang Schulze
Sent: Sun 12/16/2007 1:29 AM
To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
Subject: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans


Dear friends,
Claire Bowern had suggested to post my following question (originally addressed to the LINGTYP list) to HISTLING, too.:

Within the context of my research on Caucasian Albanian (Old Udi), I  came across a rather remarkable instance of 'sound replacement' in loans: A palatal voiceless fricative (<sh>) is (systematically?) replaced by a voiced pharyngeal stop. I wonder whether some of you have come across a parallel process in other languages...To be more concrete: What I have in mind are cases of replacement within loans (!), not sound changes within the history of a given language. That is, Language A has a <sh> in a term that is borrowed into Language B with a voiced pharyngeal (I write <%>) instead, say /asha/ in Language A (donor language) > /a%a/ in Language B (recipient language). [Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to give concrete examples from Caucasian Albanian, as long as the corresponding text (the so-called Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest) has not been edited. Sorry for this! But I have to respect the copyright of others....]
Thanks for any suggestions....
Best wishes,
Wolfgang 

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Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze                                                                     

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Institut für Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft      

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Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München                                                       

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Second contact:                                                                                                                       

Katedra Germanistiký                                                                                        

Fakulta humanitných vied                                                                                  

Univerzita Mateja Béla / Banská Bystrica                                     

Tajovského 40                                                                                                                         

SK-97401 Banská Bystrica                                                                                  

Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108                                                           

Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512                                                                              

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