Richard Wordingham wrote:

--- In phoNet@yahoogroups.com, "H.M. Hubey" <HubeyH@M...> wrote:
[Mark]
... still fits into the "nearest-neighbor" shift pattern.

[Richard]
So does [S] > [s] !

[Mark]
Don't think so.

I think Kazakh has s instead of sh as in other Turkic languages but
I do not believe there was a collapse. I think new language learners
simply learned only s.

[Richard - new text]
You appear to be making the following statements, one claimed as
true, the other as your belief:

1. A change [S] > [s] is not a case of a sound changing to a nearest
neighbour.

Either 2a or 2b (I can't decide which):
2a. Under substrate influence, Turkic *s and *S both becam
Kazakh /s/.  They did not collapse to a single phoneme.

2b. Kazakh child stopped learning to distinguish [s] and [S].  This
is not a case of collapse.

What did you mean to say?

I do not know when Common Turkic sh developed or how. I think Chuvash is most
archaic and it has 3 way split of unvoiced sibilants. Common Turkic has only 2 (mostly).
Some seem to have only 1, and I think it is because:

As the language spread  eastwards, it was learned by speakers in such a way that s and sh collapsed into a single
sound, s. I am not sure that Kazakh, Yakut etc have sh. I think they do not.

Richard.




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-- 
Mark Hubey
hubeyh@...
http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey