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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Unlikely sound changes
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Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 15:04:07 GMT
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In article <3330F2F4.7EE6@scruznet.com>,
Mike Wright  <darwin@scruznet.com> wrote:
>Daniel von Brighoff wrote:
>> 
>[...]
>> Actually, in Classical Arabic (and still today in some dialects, notably
>> some Bedouin ones and Sudanese), [g] became, er, a voiced palatal stop.
>> (I use it so rarely here I've forgotten the transcription; it's the
>> undotted barred <j> in IPA).  The shift to [dZ] is later and has something
>> to do with that odd preference for affricates I mentioned above.  The
>> especially odd aspects of the Arabic change are 1) it's universal (not due
>> to the effect of a following high vowel/glide, as in the other examoples)
>> and 2) it destroys the symmetry of the system (leaving /k/ without a
>> voiced counterpart).
>
>It remains [g] in Egyptian Arabic. I wonder why.

It shifts *back* to [g] in Egyptian Arabic.  This seems to me to be a
natural result of the pressure for symmetry I mentioned.

>I recall seeing the word for camel romanized as "dyemel" when referring
>to a Bedouin dialect. Could that actually be the voiced palatal stop you
>mentioned?

Sure looks that way, don't it?

>Speaking of lack of symmetry, why no [p] in Arabic? Did it go to [f], or
>what? If so, what might have caused that?

Exactly.  Another universal, unmotivated, asymmetrical change of the kind
that just makes me scratch my head.  And, as far as I know, it hasn't been
"corrected" like the [g] -> [j-] change.  (E.g., outside of the shift in
Egyptian, [q] -> [g] in many dialects, thus restoring the symmetry.  In
some (Levantine, IINM), [k] makes a parallel shift to [tS], sometimes
triggering a shift of [q] -> [k].)

>> >How about /w/ -> /v/, which occurred in Latin, various Germanic languages,
>> >and Hebrew (et al.?)? Its easy to understand how this one may have
>> >happened, as the phones are quite similar, but not why it happens so often.
>> 
>> Does it really happen that often?  The examples you give are practically
>> all limited to Europe (do Oriental Jews also have the shift of [w] ->
>> [v]?); 
>
>I have an old Biblical Hebrew textbook from before the founding of
>Israel. It shows "waw" for "vav". This could have been done on the model
>of Arabic, but I've always assumed that that was known to be the correct
>pronunciation, and that the change to "vav" came about because most Jews
>from Germany and Eastern Europe spoke Hebrew with a Yiddish accent which
>became the standard. (I've also assumed that the loss of distinction
>between the sounds that are emphatic in Arabic and the non-emphatics was
>due to European Jews being unfamiliar with such sounds.)

That or the [w] -> [v] shift could have taken place sometime after
Biblical times and before the Diaspora.  I know that Oriental Jews
preserve many emphatics, as well as the ayin, and that their pronunciation
is gaining popularity in Israel, thus returning these sounds to the
language.  But I don't think they distinguish waw and veth at all.

[interesting bit on Hakka removed]


-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
