Possible phonological changes (was: Rate of change)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2001 07:47:10 +0300, Ante Aikio
<anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi> wrote:

>Most examples of bizarre changes that I know are from various Samoyedic
>languages, e.g. *w- > q-, *j- > q-, *V- > ngV-, *mp > ngf and even *s- >
>k- before /e/ and /i/! But I'd be most interested in other examples of
>uncommon phonetic developments.

>And, if anyone can make any sense of the phonetic side of the change *s >
>*k mentioned above, I'd be glad to hear it...

Well, *s > *t in Samoyedic (whether *s was really /s/ or perhaps
something like /T/ is a matter we discussed some time ago).  Then, /t/
before a front vowel palatalizes to /t^/, a sound intermediate between
/t/ and /k/.  Then it further shifts to /k/ (cf. Egyptian Arabic */d^/
> /g/).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl