Re: The monumental stupidity of PIE theorists further illustrated

Nathan Sanders wrote:
"John Atkinson" <johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Nathan Sanders wrote:
Jack Campin - bogus address <bogus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Is there evidence of sound change be conditioned by
part-of-speech?
I'm not quite sure what you mean, but the answer is probably no.
If two words are homophonous, they will undergo the same sound
changes with the same results, regardless of their parts of
speech. (Keep in mind that I'm talking about systematic change
here. Sporadic change is always possible, and it's one of the few
ways homophones can diverge.)

Can't word order affect that? If some particular part of speech
is always sentence-final, won't it be subject to different sound
changes than a homophone which is aways initial or medial? (I'm
not pretending to have an example).

Note that occurring phrase-finally or phrase-medially is still
technically a phonetic environment, since you have the
absence/presence of some sound following the word.

But yes, this sort of thing could be a way of distinguishing two
homophones (an analogous example is "to" versus "two"; the former is
nearly always unstressed, leading to reduction of the vowel, while
the latter is nearly always stressed, preserving the vowel quality).

A more convincing example (at least in my dialect) is the difference
in the final consonant of <of> and <off>, which were originally the
same word -- when used adverbly <off> it was typically phrase-final,
thus had the voiceless allophone of the OE fricative, while
preposition <of> was frequently followed by a vowel or voiced
consonant, which induced the voiced allophone.

Right, this is the sort of thing I'm talking about. It's possible for
homophones, by the nature of their meanings or lexical categories, to
appear predominately in different phonetic environments, and
eventually cease being homophonous via leveling of the altered
pronunciation of one of them across all environments (one factor in
language change is allomorphy avoidance, which can sometimes cause one
of many allomorphs to be lexicalized, wiping out many/all of the other
allomorphs).

But it is still the phonetic environment that triggers (or blocks) the
relevant sound change. "Of" didn't undergo voicing because it was a
preposition---it underwent voicing because it was in a phonetic
environment conducive to voicing, and instances of "of" not in that
environment were changed to match the most commonly used form (again,
not because they are prepositions, but because of another functional
factor).

ISTM that sound changes may occasionally be blocked (at least
temporarily) when they would otherwise lead to loss of an "important"
distinction. I'm thinking of things like the loss of Latin final
/s/ in Spanish, which appears to have been blocked only when it
denoted the plural of nouns (there, it was later extended even to
nouns that didn't have it in the first place). Today, even that
final /s/ is beginning to be lost in some varieties -- over a
millenium after it was dropped elsewhere.

Without having thought too hard about it, isn't this sort of thing
pretty close to Analyst's "sound change conditioned by
part-of-speech"?

Whatever blocked s-deletion was most likely a phonetic environment
that the relevant words typically occurred in. I don't know the
relevant facts here however, so this is just a guess, but I'd expect
the non-deleting /s/s to have typically occurred pre-vocalically
(causing them to be resyllabified as onsets, and thus, blocking
deletion).

Well, Andrew Woode completely shot down that particular example, at least as far as Spanish is concerned (should have checked my facts before posting!). Maybe it (blocked s-deletion in plurals) still works in other Western Romance languages (Catalan, Occitan, earlier French?) -- or even Middle English -- but I don't know enough about them to say.

I guess the question is whether phonetic environment is the _only_ factor governing sound changes, or whether preservation of an important (for the language involved) distinction is _ever_ a factor in blocking a merger or deletion.

Today, even that final s is beginning to
be lost in some varieties -- over a millenium after it was dropped
elsewhere.

[Andrew:]
Though in many the phonological distinction in the relevant syllables
is not quite gone (often being expressed in new vowel distinctions).

Like this:
Before s-deletion, <la mula>, [la mula], /la mula / has plural <las mulas>, [l&s mul&s], /las mulas /.
After s-deletion, <la mula>, [la mula], /la mula / has plural <las mulas>, [l& mul&], /l& mul& /.
Similarly, /e / > /e, E / and /o / > /o, O /.

If the singular/plural distinction in nouns and adjectives and the 2nd/3rd person distinction in verbs weren't "important" ones, and therefore worth maintaining, presumably the loss of final -s wouldn't have induced the splits in the vowels in these Eastern Andalusian varieties? That is:

After s-deletion, <la mula>, [la mula], /la mula/ would have plural <las mulas>, [la mula], /la mula/.

Here, [a] and [&] have remained allophones of /a /, and <las mulas> is pronounced [la mula], because the allophony is governed by whether the syllables are open or closed. The singular/plural distinction would be completely lost in nouns ending in -a and -o, though it would still be there in the masculine definite article (/el / vs /lo /), and in nouns ending in a consonant (<la paz> /la pas / would have plural <las paces> /la pase /).

In French, final s-deletion _did_ lead to loss of the singular/plural distinction in most nouns with no compensating split elsewhere. (Admittedly, French maintains the distinction in both masculine and feminine definite articles, except when followed by a vowel). Does this imply that the sing/pl distinction is "less important" in French than in Spanish?

John.

.

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