From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 23353
Date: 2003-06-15
Every language has its own phonotactic constraints. Obligatory regressive voicing assimilation between adjacent obstruents (e.g. zk --> sk, sd --> zd) is a very common phenomenon, and can be observed in nearly all modern Slavic languages (except Ukrainian, where the rules are a little different). However, *v was originally a semivowel ([w]) without a voiceless conterpart, which means that it was not _distinctively_ voiced and did not cause the voicing of a preceding consonant. As a result, Slavic *sv-, *tv-, *kv- were retained, and when *v was strengthened into a fricative ([v]), as it was in most of Slavic, some Slavic dialects (e.g. Russian or Czech) came to pronounce these clusters as [sv], [tv], [kv], while others (including my variety of Polish) devoiced the second fricative: [sf], [tf], [kf]. In Romanian, [sf] was phonetically the most faithful rendering of Slavic [sv] or [sf] that was pronounceable in terms of Romanian phonology.generalisation less Slavic or is there an another explanation for slavic "sv-"?
Piotr