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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Unlikely sound changes
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References: <adinkin-ya023180001703971944030001@news.usa1.com> <3335e20f.10696197@news.xs4all.nl> <E7Ewrx.9nq@midway.uchicago.edu> <333a12dc.23191735@news.xs4all.nl>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 17:49:16 GMT
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In article <333a12dc.23191735@news.xs4all.nl>,
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@pi.net> wrote:
>On Fri, 21 Mar 1997 21:23:57 GMT, deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von
>Brighoff) wrote:
>
>>In article <3335e20f.10696197@news.xs4all.nl>,
>>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@pi.net> wrote:
>>>[Egyptian Arabic /g/ < /dZ/]
>>>Are you sure of that?  I hate to say "I don't believe it" without any
>>>data to back me up, but I don't believe it.
>>
>>As sure as I am about anything wrt Arabic, which is not
>>if-I'm-wrong-take-my-thumbs sure, but isn't terribly unsure either.  I
>>think I first encountred this claim in the _Handbuch der arabischen
>>Dialekte_ (W. Fischer, O. Jastrow [eds.].  Wiesbaden, 1980) though could
>>also have been in Bergstraesser's _Einfuehrung in die semitische
>>Sprachen_ (Muenchen, 1928; Eng. trans. Winona Lake, c1983).  Since then I
>>have seen it confirmed elsewhere, so I assume there's textual evidence
>>(e.g. early Arabic borrowings into neighboring languages) to back it up.
>
>That's a lot surer than I am.
>
>>After all, the other option is that sometime after the Islamic expansion,
>>[g] shifts to [J] or [dZ] absolutely everywhere in the Arabic-speaking
>>world except Lower Egypt--including in the most conservative Bedouin
>>dialects of the Arabian peninsula.  Is that somehow more plausible?
>
>I think the change /dZ/ > /g/ is the only one I've seen mentioned so
>far on this thread that really lives up to the thread's title.  Not
>only that, but I'm also suspicious about the fact that /dZ/ just
>happened to shift back to /g/, its previous value.  

Part of the problem you're having may stem from viewing this as an [dZ] ->
[g] shift.  From what I've read about Classical Arabic (for example, in
Fischer/Jastrow), the consensus seems to be that <jiim> had the value of
[J] rather than [dZ].  Now, I agree that a [J] -> [g] shift is not going
to win any prizes for banality in the interlinguistic olympics, but it's
a whole lot more plausible than [dZ] -> [g].  You may even know some
other languages in which it's occured.  (Offhand, I can't think of any.)

(Incidently, the change to [dZ] over [J] argues against your
"fricatisation" hypothesis presented earlier.)

[snip]
>Actually, the scenario I
>had in mind was slightly less radical than you describe it: /g/ would
>have shifted to /dZ/ long *before* the Islamic expansion, in Mecca and
>Medina and elsewhere, but not *everywhere*.  And just maybe Fustat was
>initially settled by a large component of soldiers from an "unshifted"
>tribe.  

The problem here is that Cairo--site of so many conquests and gateway to
the Maghreb--is one of the last places I would expect conservatism.  I've
encountred many innovations in phonology, morphology, and lexicon (one of
my favourites is "life" -> "bread") in Cairene Arabic, but precious few
exceptional retentions.  Then again, English retains [T], so I suppose
this is a rather weak line of argumentation.

>I'm reminded of the discussion we had some time ago about
>Valencia being West-Catalan speaking.

Hmm.  I must be losing my memory (I think somebody once told me that), but
I don't remember this discussion.  It seems natural to me that settlers
from western Catalonia ("l'Extremadura catalana" ^_^) would predominate in
the reconquered Llevant.

>>If it's the idea of a sound spontaneously palatising, then unpalatising
>>back to its former quality that troubles you, what's your preferred
>>explanation for palatalisation of the velars before Vulgar Latin /a(:)/ in
>>northern Gallo-Romance and Rhaeto-Romance?  Mine is [ka] -> [k%] -> [c%]
>>-> [ca]/[tSa] (and, in Francien, ultimately to [Sa]/[SE]/[S@]/etc.), which
>>requires /a/ to be fronted and then to shift back after it's done its job.
>
>Yes, completely agreed.  But the developments /a/ > /%/ (/ae/) and 
>/%/ > /a/ are both not unusual.  Old English <ae> became ME <a>, which
>became NE /%/.  I'd be just as worried about French as I am about
>Arabic had /tS%/ suddenly reverted to /ka/ (or /k%/).  Of course the
>French case is different, in that /k/ did not disappear completely, so
>there would have been no pressure to restore the symmetry of the
>system.  However, as a native speaker of Dutch, and being somewhat
>familiar with Czech, I must say that I have no overly great confidence
>in the self-restoring capacities of /g/.

Neither do I, though the widespread [q] -> [g] change in Arabic does give
me hope.  [g] certainly seems more easily restored than [p], long absent
from Arabic and only recently on the comeback trail in Japanese.


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