[Histling-l] histling-l Digest, Vol 5, Issue 3

[Guillaume Jacques]

Dear Martha,


> Does anyone know of a reconstruction in which someone has posited a
> regular change involving insertion of a consonant between two other
> consonants?  I had always thought of excrescence as a sound change that
> operates on individual words in an unpredictable fashion (that is, the
> low-level transitional consonant is phonologized unpredictably), but am
> wondering if there are cases where someone believes it to have operated in
> a regular, rule-governed fashion to an entire set of words.
> I am especially interested in insertions of the ?thimble?/?hombre? type,
> but would be interested in examples of the ?Hampshire? type as well.
>

There are several sound laws in Tibetan that are of the type you mention,
(1) *ry- > rgy- (Li Fang-kuei's law, which even applies to indic
borrowings, so it is incontrovertible)
(2) *Nr- > Ndr-, *mr > mbr-.
(3) *Ns- > Ntsʰ-, *Nɕ- > Ntɕʰ-
see the following article by Nathan W. Hill:

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.academia.edu_2528975_An-5FInventory-5Fof-5FTibetan-5FSound-5FLaws&d=DwIFaQ&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=aZHn_NgFClfVQ_OuWQ2rpCVznfaFFLPOQhkDMHzWo4Y&s=ypugLcpV9w0Ho8jZj2ekNA_7b1b4lHPuVUbrxSe7uvA&e= 

Similar sound changes are extremely common in Indo-European, found in many
families (Martin Kümmel's book has a copious list).

In Rgyalrongic, we find *mr- > mbr-, and *mɕ > mpɕ- (merging with *mpʰj-),
see p 35 of my 2004 dissertation:
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.academia.edu_968764_Phonologie-5Fet-5Fmorphologie-5Fdu-5Fjaphug-5FrGyalrong-5F&d=DwIFaQ&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=aZHn_NgFClfVQ_OuWQ2rpCVznfaFFLPOQhkDMHzWo4Y&s=rul2XNSaArzs_nNFheaCsVOB9yoJBH1S0O9E8zGuqow&e= 

Best wishes,

Guillaume




-- 
Guillaume Jacques
CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__cnrs.academia.edu_GuillaumeJacques&d=DwIFaQ&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=aZHn_NgFClfVQ_OuWQ2rpCVznfaFFLPOQhkDMHzWo4Y&s=rfBjBP0Q6P4xAl7mQIQwvSnNIjYu__jvpuLlt6ggGWI&e= 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__panchr.hypotheses.org_&d=DwIFaQ&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=aZHn_NgFClfVQ_OuWQ2rpCVznfaFFLPOQhkDMHzWo4Y&s=7JglnekvpQOE0xXl3btgTRm3KlraGRVSO3HbYdeeVuE&e= 
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