rhotacism from Ray Hickey

[H.M.Hubey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Larry Trask wrote:
>
> On Fri, 6 Nov 1998, H.M.Hubey wrote:
 
> That being so, certain sound changes are indeed reversible.  For
> example, PIE */t/ generally changed to theta in Germanic, but this theta
> has changed back to /t/ in the continental Scandinavian languages.  This
> is `Rueckverwandlung', or `reversal'.  It is not particularly common.
 
So what does that mean? If there are only 20 consonants and 10 vowels
there are (30)(30)-30 = 870 possible sound changes and out of this
only 30 can be changing back to the original.
 
> But some sound changes are quite irreversible.  Consider loss.
 
Why irreversible? don't languages sometimes add sounds?
 
> Another type of irreversible change is merger.  Once accomplished, a
> merger cannot be reversed by purely linguistic means -- though it *can*
 
What happened to adding of sounds?
 
> But there are other mechanisms, such as unpacking.  In some varieties of
> Basque, the historical palatal nasal /n~/ has been unpacked into a
> cluster /jn/, and in some varieties of French palatal /n~/ has been
> unpacked into the cluster /nj/.
 
So sounds can be added after all.
 
 
> English has acquired some final clusters by excrescence: `vermin' to
> regional `varmint', `no' to `nope', `amiddes' to `amidst', `betwix' to
> `betwixt', and so on.  And note also cases like `empty' and `thunder',
> whose /p/ and /d/ were formerly absent but have been inserted by
> epenthesis, presumably to ease the transitions between unlike sounds.
 
Ditto.
 
 
> So, all of the questions that Mark asks are interesting ones, but they
> have answers which have been largely worked out in the only way
> possible: by looking at the evidence.
 
CAn you look at evidence that you don't have?
 
This is only what we can see.
 
So then what is wrong with "if it can happen once, it can happen twice"
or "if it happened in the past, it can happen in the future".
 
That means that unless there are many many examples collected over
many many years of changes that "never" seem to occur, then it is
still "all possibly go".
 
 
--
Best Regards,
Mark
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