From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 1912
Date: 2000-03-21
----- Original Message -----From: Gregory L. EyinkSent: Friday, March 17, 2000 2:58 PMSubject: [cybalist] Re: Odp: LabiovelarsGregory wrote:The changes [kW]>[kP]>[p] had, of course, occurred to me as a possible transitional sequence. However, just the fact you mentioned, that [kP] involves "extra emphasis" compared to [kW], made me doubt it as a likely transformation. (Don't most phonetic changes seem to involve weakening rather than strengthening emphasis?)
Most, yes. This is known as the least effort (or maximum ease of articulation) principle. But strengthenings also occur, and are quite common with glides and off-glides. A typical case is the change *w > *v which took place independently (and often quite recently) in the Romance languages, Slavic, Baltic, modern Indic, Iranian, and most of Germanic, or *w > gW, as in Welsh, or *w > *gW > g as in Armenian. In other words, in most IE languages the consonantal character of *w came to be emphasised (cf. also Latin j > Romance dzh, zh, etc.). English is quite exceptional in preserving its IE-ish articulation of /w/ as a glide! Articulatory strengthening also commonly affects stressed vowels (which may be "drawled", tensed, etc.) and initial consonants of stressed syllables. E.g. English /t/ may be weakened (tapped, glottalised, etc.) in many positions but is strengthened (= [tH]) when it begins a stressed syllable, as in attend.Piotr