Re: Question about T and D

Ph. D. wrote:
<<
Phonology is not my strong suit. I want to include [T] and [D]
in my conlang. Can someone suggest what sounds might
develop into [T] and [D] (and under what conditions) in a
languages which does not have those sounds? I'm looking
for something plausible here.
 >>

Oh, plausible?  I was going to suggest that [T] comes from *b
and [D] comes from *stroskoftopli, but if you want plausible,
I suppose the obvious would be [T] comes from *t_h and [D]
also possibly from *d_h (or intervocalic instances of /T/, which
can then appear on word boundaries due to final or initial
vowel deletion).  Moro, the language we were studying, had /D/
as a phoneme with a voiceless allophone [T] in word-final
position.  It might arise from, for example, a dental stop.  Moro
has /b/ and /g/, but no /d/, so it's quite likely that the /d/
was dental, and that it spirantized over time.  I suppose also
that /s/ and /z/ could move ever so slightly forward until
they became rather dental.  How did Arabic get its /T/ and /D/?

-David
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"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
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-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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