🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <930004.111621.slie@pchf20>, slie@ulrik (Svein Lie) writes:
>>From: jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)

>>Z to r is also strange; once again, it's usually the other way around as far
>>as I know, e.g. French chaire --> chaise, and, if memory serves, Latin r -->
>>s.  Off-hand, I can't think of cases of a regular change of sh into l, or of
>>z into r. Could it be that it is Chuvash that has been the conservative one,
>>phonologically?
>
>z > r is attested in the development from Proto-Nordic to Old Icelandic. E.g.
>in masc. nouns nom. sing. the endings -os and -is (as in Greek, cf. Latin
>-us/-is) became Proto-Germanic -az/-iz, which gave proto-Nordic -aR/-iR (where
>R is supposed to be a voiced palatal fricative), which gave Old Icelandic -r
>(gastis > gastiR > gestr ('guest'), cf. Latin hostis, Church Slavonic gostu -
>and Gothic gasts).

*z > r in the history of English and German, as well.  For example, in English,
the past tense forms for "to be" reflect this change:

	sg.	pl.
	was	were

It occurred within historical time in Latin, leading to doublets such as
flo:s/flo:r and hono:s/hono:r, which are examples of paradigmatic leveling:
Under pressure of animates with nominatives in -o:r, genitive -o:ris, the older
forms such as flo:s/flo:ris --> flo:r/flo:ris.  This occurred late enough after
the introduction of writing that we have examples of both.

There were no neuters in -o:r, so s-stems such as genus/generis <
*genos/genesos do not undergo similar paradigmatic leveling.

(Note that I will define "paradigm" in a separate posting.)
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_