Re: Orthography supporting sound changes?

Aidan Kehoe wrote:

> > So you switched the topic, without notice, from spelling pronunciation
> > to "language shift." They may look to you like the same thing, but they
> > most assuredly aren't.
>
> The topic was how spelling pronunciation interacts with sound changes. I
> haven't seen anything ruling out language shifts between related dialects
> and the changes of sound inherent in that as "sound changes" in the
> specialised sense, and indeed the definitions I've seen leave room for such
> an interpretation; please provide something ruling this out, if you have it.

No. Scientists don't bother thinking up explanations for why every
imaginable contingency does not occur. You provide an example of it
happening, and we'll try to explain why it does.

And spelling pronunciations have nothing whatsoever to do with sound
change.

I cleaned up your fucking curly quotes, and your paragraph isn't any
more sensible.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.