From: G&P
Message: 66796
Date: 2010-10-24
>but the point is that
the constrast in Danish was once part of a set of shibboleth allophones
separating 'rustic' from 'upper Copenhagen' sociolects, which has now been
neutralized and the two forms have undergone lexical canonization based on
idiosyncratic circumstances of the individual entry. I imagine similar
processes took place eg. in Rome
when the old Patrician/Plebeian (Latin/Sabine?) divide dissolved in favor of
something new.
Famously, certain Latin words do not show the expected sound change. The reason is that they are borrowings from a rural dialect that did not share those changes. They tend to be words for farm things: cow, plough, and so on. This process can surely be found in almost any language? It does not mean “optional sound change”; it means more than one dialect as a source of vocabulary.
Peter