Cognate crossovers

[alice]

I don't know if there's an actual name for this phenomenon in historical linguistics, so hopefully this will do if there isn't.

Consider the reflexes of Germanic /ai/ and /au/ in English and Dutch. Dutch straightforwardly has /e/ and /o/ respectively, but English, after some unusual sound-changes, has /o/ and /e/ (later /i/). For example, Germanic stainaz and straumaz are steen and stroom in Dutch, but stone and stream in English.

The phenomenon may be summarised as /X Y/ > /W Z/ and /Z W/. So:

1. Is there already a name for this?

2. Can anyone think of any other examples with the appropriate historical details?

3. Have you ever done this deliberately in one or more of your conlangs for fun?

[Niedokonany]

PIE ā, ō > PSl. ā, PGmc. ō
PIE a, o > PSl. o, PGmc. a

The phenomenon may be summarised as /X Y/ > /W Z/ and /Z W/. So:

That's what happens when you are transforming a mammal into a bird.

No, wait, that'd be XY > ZZ.

No, wait...

[TomHChappell]

I don't know if there's an actual name for this phenomenon in historical linguistics, so hopefully this will do if there isn't.

Consider the reflexes of Germanic /ai/ and /au/ in English and Dutch. Dutch straightforwardly has /e/ and /o/ respectively, but English, after some unusual sound-changes, has /o/ and /e/ (later /i/). For example, Germanic stainaz and straumaz are steen and stroom in Dutch, but stone and stream in English.

The phenomenon may be summarised as /X Y/ > /W Z/ and /Z W/. So:

1. Is there already a name for this?

2. Can anyone think of any other examples with the appropriate historical details?

3. Have you ever done this deliberately in one or more of your conlangs for fun?

Well, as for question 1, it's called "English finally getting it as the LORD intended."

Isn't it? You're the expert.

[Soap]

The Western dialects of Armenian often have swapped voicing in consonants with respect to the Eastern (conservative) dialects. e.g. Hakob ~ Hagop "Jacob", vardapet ~ vartabed "doctor" (in some senses). Most of the other pairs I can think of are names, but the change affected everything in the language that uses any of the 10 or so consonants that were affected. It's the best example of a "swap" in phonology that I know. However, the voiceless aspirates were not affected. The actual shift was:

b d dz dž g> pʰ tʰ tsʰ tšʰ kʰ
p t ts tš k > b d dz dž g
(pʰ tʰ tsʰ tšʰ kʰ stayed as is)

[linguoboy]

Eastern Catalan has the interesting change of /e/ > /ə/. In Balearic dialects, /ə/ remains in all positions, but in Central Catalan it becomes /ɛ/ in tonic syllables. Meanwhile, VL tonic /ɛ/ became /e/ everywhere. So if I need to remember the quality of a Catalan stressed e, I think of what it would be in VL and then use the opposite.

There's also the case of Limousin, which reversed /s/ and /ʃ. vis-à-vis all other Occitan varieties, but I don't know the details of this.

[Jipí]

I once read about a Classic Greek dialect that had vowel length swapped compared to Attic Greek.

[WeepingElf]

In my romlang Roman Germanech, I have Latin short /i/ becoming /e/ and Latin short /e/ becoming /i/ in what could be called a "leap-frogging" change (accordingly, /u/ and /o/ as well as their umlauted counterparts /y/ and /ø/). This fell out from the combination of a widespread change in Western Romance with one from the history of German:

(1) /e/ > /E/ (Vulgar Latin)
(2) /i/ > /e/ (dito)
(3) /E/ > /ie/ (happened in several Romance languages)
(4) /ie/ > /i/ (happened in German)

There you are. Long /i:/ has become /ai/, and long /e:/ has become /e/.

[WeepingElf]

I once read about a Classic Greek dialect that had vowel length swapped compared to Attic Greek.

Also, Lithuanian has flipped rising and falling tones, I have read.

[Zhen Lin]

I imagine an example can probably be found in the Indo-European plosive system somewhere, especially if we look all the way to modern reflexes. For example, PIE /p b b_h/ > Latin /p b f/ but Gothic /f p b/.

[spats]

I imagine an example can probably be found in the Indo-European plosive system somewhere, especially if we look all the way to modern reflexes. For example, PIE /p b b_h/ > Latin /p b f/ but Gothic /f p b/.

And there you go: PIE /t/, /d/ > Proto-Germanic /T/~/D/, /t/ > Low West Germanic /d/, /t/, but remained /t/, /d/ in Latin

One imagines this sort of thing happens all the damn time with chain shifts.