--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, alex <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
> Richard Wordingham schrieb:
> > > So only Romanian would remain a unique 'modern case'..in this
> > > model?
> > No, Sardinian has a similar change.
> Richard, is your answer linked to the sintagm "modern case" or do
> you include more here?
My point is that Romanian is not the only Romance language to show kw
> p. It's not as simple as that - in Romanian there are special
developments such as kwe > ce, and we have both kwa > ka and kwa > pa,
without any obvious phonetic conditioning.
Piotr made the point long ago that [kw] > [p] is not an uncommon sound
change. Indeed, [kHw] > f is a stigmatised feature of one Siamese
speech variety, and I even heard it as a stress-induced change in the
English of a Thai. [hw] (or [xw]?) > [f] is not rare either - it
occurs in Northern Scots (Aberdonian, apparently). These are all
sound changes that can spread through a language word by word, so if
the process should be stopped, we will have an irregular sound change.
Examples of mergers spreading word by word include the merger of the
French nasal vowels of <brun> and <vin>, and the Southern Welsh change
of initial [xw] to [w].
Richard.