From: Mate Kapovic
Message: 30404
Date: 2004-01-31
----- Original Message -----
From: "elmeras2000" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 4:10 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Estimated timeframe of albanian s->sh transformation
> I have been observing this thread with some scepticism. I think the
> question can only make sense if it means, "How long time passed
> between the first sign of a new fashion (sh) and the last sign of
> the old one (s) it came to replace?" Now for a small village that
> can probably be quick, if the villagers have been observing the
> speech of outsiders with increasing tolerance and suddenly act in
> unison in adopting it. But then it's not the story of a whole speech
> community. If anyone knows of a well-documented case of an absolute
> innovation that saw its first light and immediately exploded to
> encompass an entire language within a generation or two it would be
> very interesting to hear about it.
I guess that would be Polish [³] > [w]. It happened almost everywhere in
Poland I think. Only old people and the dialects on the outskirts or in
isolation (like in Lithuania) preserve the old pronounciation.
Mate