Zompist Bboard Again

It doesn't bode well that "North Caucasian" is already bonkers. North Caucasian seems well enough like a valid family (more solid than e.g. Afrasian or Niger-Congo sensu lato, IMO), the problem is that it's Phonology Hell and it might be a while before we get reconstructions that are both...

Basque–North Caucasian is probably not totally bonkers. (The proposal that it's moreover the same family as Dene-Yeniseian, though, kind of is.)

Pabappa wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2020 12:29 amBy the way, whats up with yo₂? Do we believe that there really was a labialized version of /yo/? That one has been tough for me to accept.

This would also be trivial if we went Altaistic and interpreted /i₁ i₂ e₁ e₂ o₁ o₂/ as qualitatively distinct /i y e ø ə o/.

The most established near-synonym is certainly Mon-Khmer. In case Munda is not an outgroup but merely typologically divergent, as seems to be the most common opinion these days, this might well be equivalent to the entire family.

Another question I have is can postalveolar, strongly palatalized affricates become true palatal stops? Insofar as "true palatal stops" are a thing at all, yes. – Hungarian gy , though phonologists still debate if it's better to call it /ɟ/ or /ɟʝ/ or /dʲ/, has *ntɕ as one source. – Old Y...

How many of these plosive-only seeds have nasals triggered by nasal vowels or epenthetic semivowels?

what are some other ways in which /ŋ/ could evolve? A few attested paths from Uralic for getting rid of *ŋ: (1) Vocalization Finnic: *ŋ > *w next to rounded vowels, *ŋ > ∅ otherwise Mordvinic: *ŋ > *w (> v) next to back vowels, *ŋ > j next to front vowels (2) POA changes Komi: *ŋ > m next to rounde...

I've been looking at some articles about the accuracy of oral history, and it looks like historians consider it to be equally as useful as written history, or even more so due to greater time depth. (…) Also, historians probably generally ignore the inaccurate aspects of oral histories when espousi...

I found something pretty spectacular today. The Austronesian language Bonggo has erkua(t) as its numeral 'two'. And the path of sound change is the following: PMP *duha > *dua > POc *rua > *ruwa > *rukwa-t > *rkwat > erkuat. How's that for a convergent development? The same correspondence in Armeni...

Also, can ʃp ʃt ʃk → f ʃt x, i.e. can the middle cluster remain as the other two simplify? This is basically attested from Albanian: word-initial *sp *st *sk > /f ʃt h/. Some sources suggest that there was an intermediate step with metathesis to *ps *ks, another route could be debuccalization or as...

It has recently come to my attention that Robert Blust's handbook The Austronesian Languages is available freely as an updated digital edition.

The allophony of /p k/ before /t/ found in the standard language also applies to colloquial Salvadoran: eructar 'to burp' can be [eɾuɣˈtaɾ] or, more carefully, [eɾukˈtaɾ], see also reptar [reβˈtaɾ] ~ [repˈtaɾ] 'to slither' That's interesting: specifically [βt ɣt] and not voice-assimilated to [ɸt xt...

Interesting points: the notion of a phonetic difference between breathy voice, which they identify in Armenian, and voiced aspiration, which they note to be common in Indic; and the observation of variable tenseness in the "plain" series. If this breathy voice is indeed an archaism (all th...

Yea, "behaves morphophonologically like overlong vowels" is not really well-defined. If you mean something like a vowel shortening process that turns e.g. the diphthongs into short vowels vs the long vowels into diphthongs? Sure, why not, but this does not have to involve any overlength an...

Finnish has a small set of verbs for 'to appear color X(ish)': vihertää / green sinertää (rarely sineltää ) / blue punertaa / red kellertää / yellow (rarely lilertää / purple) but no equivalents for black or white, so clearly not in the Berlin–Kay hierarchy. Verbs for 'to become color X' have a slig...

There's not a lot of actual precedents on what pharyngeals in clusters can do; but Chukchi does *Cʕ > Cʔ, *(C)VʕC > (C)ʔVC (with metathesis).

Dongwang Tibetan Consonants: /pʰ p b ᵐb tʰ t d ⁿd kʰ k g ᵑg ʔ/ /t͡sʰ t͡s d͡z ⁿd͡z t͡ʂʰ t͡ʂ d͡ʐ ⁿd͡ʐ t͡ɕʰ t͡ɕ d͡ʑ ⁿd͡ʑ/ /sʰ s z ɮ ʂʰ ʂ ʐ ɕʰ ɕ ʑ h/ /m̥ m n̥ n ɲ̊ ɲ ŋ̊ ŋ/ /ɾ~r rʰ w l ɦj j/ ‹pp p b bb tt t d dd kk k g gg 7› ‹cc c z zz čč č ž žž ǩǩ ǩ ǧ ǧǧ› ‹ss s sz ll šš š šž xx x yy h› ‹hm m hn n hň ň ...

"Not pooping outside" does not have to mean removing it from local circulation entirely, there's also the long-known cluster of farming technologies of first collecting excrement, dung, etc. separately, maybe allowing it to compost for some time, and only then periodically spreading it acr...

Ahom, Kanu Gera Ruma

A few examples from Võro with palatalized velars:
olg /olk/ 'shoulder'
olg' /olkʲ/ 'straw'
vang /ʋɑŋk/ 'handle'
vang' /ʋɑŋkʲ/ 'prisoner'