Re: THEORY: more questions

Amanda Babcock wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 11:58:48AM -0500, Roger Mills wrote:
>
> > "eu, äu" = [oj] is interesting, an example of what's known as
"misphasing of
> > roundness".  It's fairly rare. You have an original  sequence of
> >
> > [low front unround V] [high back round vowel/glide]
> >
> > changing to:
> >
> > [low back round V] [high front unr. V/glide]-- you can see which
features
> > have switched places.
>
> And is this any more likely than the reverse - oj going to ew?  I have
> the impression that oj is a lot more common in the world than ew, but is
> that just my English bias?
>
I suspect both changes are rare; but it may well be that, as a diphthong,
[oj] _is_ more common than [ew] or [iw], or so it seems to me, too.

A "similar but different" case of misphasing in an oj-like diphthong-- in
Achehnese, standard (dictionary) has an o-schwa diphthong "o@" while one
dialect has schwa-w ([@w]).  Interestingly, it's the reflex of proto *-i;
when Ach. developed strong final stress, it led to breaking/
diphthongization--
*tali 'rope' (Ml. et al. táli) > Ach. talo@ [ta'lo@ ~ ta'l@w].