On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 23:33:51 -0000, "J. Klek" <
jekl@...> wrote:
>When reading the discussion on slavic endings I started to
>wonder how easy/likely is the /s/ to /x/ sound change?
>I know it happens, but these sounds are no so similar (well,
>both voiceless fricatives), so this sound change is not that
>trivial as palatalization, for example. I would rather imagine
>/s/ > /S/ > /x/. What (phonetically) help such a change?
Being Spanish, the change of final /-s/ to /-h/ (before voiceless
consonant or pause often sounded [x]), although not occurring in my
dialect, is something that I'm so accustomed to that I have actually
never stopped and wondered what may cause it. I suppose an
intermediate phase /S/ (> /x/) is possible (/S/ went to /x/ in Spanish
somewhere in the 16th or 17th century, and /S/ appears to be going to
/x/ in Swedish at present), but is maybe not necessary: -s > -h is
also a feature of Sanskrit, and in Greek (as well as Armenian, Welsh,
etc.) most /s/'s went to /h/ in any position, and to my knowledge, no
phase with /S/ is known to have intervened.
Coming back to the Southern Spanish phenomenon (-s > -h), I believe it
was a characteristic of Mozarabic that Romance /s/ was rendered as
/s^/ (shi:n) in the Arabic script, and such words as were borrowed
back from Mozarabic into the Northern dialects often show the /S/
(e.g. Sp. jabón "soap" < SAPONEM, etc.).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...