Re: The essence of sound shifts: a conceptual question.

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 70587
Date: 2012-12-12

But it's not just Brazil in Portuguese. Northern Portugal and the Azores are famous, at least according to what I was told in grad school.
In any case, in Brazil, there was really only one Native American substrate that mattered, Tupi-Guaraní --mainly in the form of Léngua Geral. The other languages really weren't encountered until after independence or even the 1900s.
Retroflex /r/ wouldn't be from Slavic. If there is an assibilated /r^/ --as across the border in Northern Argentina and about half of Latin America, then it's probably from Spanish but also exists in Czech.

From: Joao S. Lopes <josimo70@...>
To: "cybalist@yahoogroups.com" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 5:13 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] The essence of sound shifts: a conceptual question.
 
But in Brazil we have very complex mix of Amerindian substrata, African adstrata and European substrata.  Amerindian diversity would explain regional variations, that's how they use to explain the retroflex R present in Brazilian Southern hinterland (an alternative explanation claims for North American slavocratic immigrants in some towns in Sao Paulo state), as a Tupi influence. But the mix is very, very complex. In Rio de Janeiro final S is palatalized, in Northeast vowels opened in particular positions, in Southern Brazil the L is not velarized. It's hard to understand shifts in places without substrata, as Iceland or Azores. JS Lopes


De: Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
Para: "cybalist@yahoogroups.com" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Enviadas: Terça-feira, 11 de Dezembro de 2012 23:20
Assunto: Re: [tied] The essence of sound shifts: a conceptual question.
 
Interesting question but look around a bit within Portuguese. Unlike Spanish, Portuguese is full of dialects that twist the standard language every which way. Even in Brazil, there is probably more phonetic diversity than in the whole Spanish-speaking world.
Look at <R-/-rr> as /rr/ vs. /h/
at /tio/ as /tiu/ vs. /c^iu/ , at <leite> as /leyti/ vs. /leyt/ vs. /leyc^i/ vs. /leyc^/
at <americana> as /@merikan@/ vs /@mErik@...@/
at my favorite <lã> as /l@~/ vs something like /lö~ö~/ a nasalized vowel somewhere between that US English foot and French feu
and so on. 
My only experience in a Portuguese-speaking country was in Alentejo, where, except for the border, they spoke right out of the book. But I've met people from all over and the diversity amazes me. In grad school, was told that there's a different vowel system for every island of the Azores and a different dialect for every valley of N. Portugal.
But look at regional and social dialects in your own country. They're astounding.

From: Joao S. Lopes <josimo70@...>
To: Cybalist <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 8:01 PM
Subject: [tied] The essence of sound shifts: a conceptual question.
 
Listers, forgive a humble laic friend, and let me ask just a conceptual doubt. What is the essence of a sound shift. I'll try to explain: let's suppose there 's a word <sak> in a hypothetical language, meaning "river". People say <sak>, everybody knows understand its meaning. Why will any person or group start to say, for example <sag> or <zag> or <sok>? I can understand situations when there's different strata. I understand that a French or a Portuguese will not pronnounce easily the English <th> or the German <ich>, but when there's not a contact between two layers of languages it's hard to understand shifts. It's also understandable that different synonyms substitute other ones, but not the shift of sounds. Is ther any hypothesis to explain the universal and continuous sound shifts around the world? Joao S. Lopes