# sk > ʃ



## Gavril

In some languages, the cluster [sk] undergoes palatalization to [ʃ] or a similar sound, even when the sound [k] does not otherwise undergo this change. E.g., in German, the sound _k_ remains velar before front and back vowels (_Kamm _"comb"_, Kinn_ "chin", etc.), but earlier *sk- has become ʃ before both front (_Schiff_ < *_skip_-) and back vowels (_Schatten_ < *_skad_-).

What are thought to be the steps through which [sk] is palatalized to [ʃ] without the general palatalization of [k]?

Thanks


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## ahvalj

Dutch has _sch_ [sx]: _schip, schrijven_.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> Dutch has _sch_ [sx]: _schip, schrijven_.



Are you saying that [sx] is thought to be an intermediary step between [sk] and [ʃ]? 

That could be true, but how (i.e., through what phonetic or phonological mechanism) do we get from [sx] to [ʃ]? It's not clear to me how a back consonant like [x] would act as a trigger of palatalization.

Also, how is it thought that Dutch (and perhaps also German) went from [sk] to [sx]? In English and in some other Germanic languages, a preceding [s] blocks the aspiration of [k] and other voiceless stops ([ski] "ski" vs. [khi] "key"), whereas the change of [sk] to [sx] seems to show the opposite sort of development.

(Thanks again)


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## ahvalj

I wouldn't call it palatalization: the German _sch_ is not palatalized and most probably never was. 

I cannot comment the phonetic side of this shift in West Germanic languages, but it happened after the first written records and occurred not universally (e. g. Afrikaans has _sk_ reflecting the situation in some Dutch dialects).

I guess, the developmet went through _sk>sx>šx>š_, but indeed I have no idea why _k_ became a spirant after _s_, whereas e. g. _sp_ has preserved everywhere.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> I wouldn't call it palatalization: the German _sch_ is not palatalized and most probably never was.



How are you using the term palatalization here? German <sch> is pronounced [ʃ] (an alveopalatal fricative) as far as I know, so either [s] or [k] (in the cluster _sk_) must have been palatalized to [ʃ] at some point.


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## berndf

Gavril said:


> Are you saying that [sx] is thought to be an intermediary step between [sk] and [ʃ]?


As far as German is concerned: of course! Why do you think it is spelled <sch> (=<s> + <ch>)? [s̺k]* > [s̺x] (2nd Germanic sound shift) > [s̺ç] (allophonic distribution /x/=[x],[ç]) > [ʃ].
_____________
*There is some controversy how the Old High German /s/ must have sounded. The only thing clear it was somewhere in between the modern /s/ and /ʃ/ sound. Some say it must have been apical [s̺] like the modern Iberian Spanish /s/, some say it must have been [ɕ].


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## Gavril

berndf said:


> As far as German is concerned: of course! Why do you think it is spelled <sch> (=<s> + <ch>)?



The English spelling _sh_ was apparently preceded by the spelling _sch_, which was influenced by the French "ch" spelling, but neither of these English spellings (_sh_ or _sch_) ever reflected a pronunciation [sx]. So, it wasn't _prima facie_ obvious to me that German _sch_ must reflect earlier [sx].



> [s̺k]* > [s̺x] (2nd Germanic sound shift) > [s̺ç] (allophonic distribution /x/=[x],[ç]) > [ʃ].



Are you saying that [x] would have become [ç] through assimilation to the position of [s̺]?


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## berndf

Gavril said:


> So, it wasn't _prima facie_ obvious to me that German _sch_ must reflect earlier [sx].


It was more a rhetorical question. In German the spelling <ch> has always (since it emerged in early Middle High German) been associated with the phoneme /x/.


Gavril said:


> Are you saying that [x] would have become [ç] through assimilation to the position of [s̺]?


In German it is simply allophonic distribution: /x/ is always realized [ç] after a front vowel or consonant. In Dutch this is not so consistent and there the realization of <sch> varies between [sx] and [sç] (here the top of the list sample is with [sç] and the others are with [sx]).


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## Gavril

berndf said:


> In German it is simply allophonic distribution: /x/ is always realized [ç] after a front vowel or consonant.



OK, but if

1) _sch_ was historically [s̺ç] before front vowels and [s̺x] before back vowels
and
2) only [s̺ç] is phonetically likely to develop to [ʃ]

then how did we get to the modern situation where [ʃ] is found before both front and back vowels (Schiff, Schatten)?


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## berndf

Gavril said:


> _sch_ was historically [s̺ç] *before* front vowels and [s̺x] *before* back vowels


You didn't read carefully: _In German it is simply allophonic distribution: /x/ is always realized [ç] *after *a front vowel or consonant._
/s/ is a consonant, hence the realization is [ç].


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## Gavril

berndf said:


> You didn't read carefully: _In German it is simply allophonic distribution: /x/ is always realized [ç] *after *a front vowel or consonant._



Sorry about that. I had forgotten that the [x]/[ç] contrast is mainly correlated with the preceding vowel, not the following one.



> /s/ is a consonant, hence the realization is [ç].



Incidentally, do we have proof that *any* preceding consonant will trigger the realization [ç], or is it simply that most consonants that precede [ç] in words happen to be coronal: _Mi*l*ch_, _ma*n*che_, etc.?

E.g., are there examples where a "back" consonant such as velar [k] or [g] is followed by [ç], when this [ç] is not part of a common suffix like -_chen_?


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## ahvalj

I don't think the German development _sk>sx>š _is related to the Second consonant schift: first of all, both Germanic consonant shifts didn't operate after _s_, second, Dutch and English are not affected by the Second consonant shift, and third, the Old High German had _skînan, fisk, skiff, skuld_. 

Manuals tell that Westphalian dialects have _sx_ as in Dutch.

_š_ is palatalized in English, but it is not necessarily palatalized as a kind of consonant: e. g. Russian and Lithuanian have two _š _— a velarized (_прошу, šuo_) and a palatalized (_прощу, šiuo_) one. The German variant to me sounds non-palatalized.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> You didn't read carefully: _In German it is simply allophonic distribution: /x/ is always realized [ç] *after *a front vowel or consonant._
> /s/ is a consonant, hence the realization is [ç].


And what about the following vowel? How does this affect the "ch" in words beginning with it?


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## berndf

Not at all. Besides, there are no native words starting "ch" except for a few toponymes.


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## merquiades

Is the initial s- element paramount in triggering this change to [x] and or [ʃ] in German/Germanic languages?  Are there instances of this happening when [k] is alone or preceded by another consonant?
Not to suggest a link, but it is interesting to note that in the evolution of Spanish "g" went from [g] to [j] to [ʒ] to [ʃ] to [ç] to [x] before a frontal vowel, a movement in the opposite direction but involving the same sounds. It occurred whatever the preceding consonant or vowel was, hence my question.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> I don't think the German development _sk>sx>š _is related to the Second consonant schift.


This becomes almost philosophical. You may well call it a different shift; but it is customary to regards the shifts _θ/ð > d _and _sk > sx _as belonging to the final stage of the seconds consonant shift. Characteristic of these shifts is that it is not limited to High German but extends also to Low German and Low Frankonian (i.e. Dutch). The seconds consonant shift isn't a consistent set of developments anyhow. The different stages of the second consonant shift affected different parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum and. E.g. the area between the _ick/ich_ and _Appel/Apfel_ isoglosses is inhabited by close to 1/3 of the German speaking population.


ahvalj said:


> _š_ is palatalized in English...


I don't think this is true. English and German distinguish only two unvoiced, fricative sibilants, /s/ and /ʃ/. The location of /ʃ/ is much less clearly defined as in Slavic or Baltic. Since English has lost [ç], English has even less need to define the location of /ʃ/ precisely and partial palatalization is an insignificant phenomenon as should, I think, count as free variation. For me, the most conspicuous difference between the English and German /ʃ/ is lip-rounding (German has less lip rounding, almost none).


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Is the initial s- element paramount in triggering this change to [x] and or [ʃ] in German/Germanic languages?


I think this applies only to West Germanic languages excluding Anglo-Frisian. In Old English the developmment seems to have been related to _k-_palatalization (/k/>/͜tʃ/): /sk/>/s͜tʃ/>/ʃ/.


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## Gavril

berndf said:


> I think this applies only to West Germanic languages excluding Anglo-Frisian. In Old English the developmment seems to have been related to _k-_palatalization (/k/>/͜tʃ/): /sk/>/s͜tʃ/>/ʃ/.



_k_ was only palatalized before front vowels in OE, whereas _sk_ was palatalized before front (_ship, shift_ etc.) and back vowels (_shade_, _shot_ etc.), as in German. How do we account for *sk becoming [ʃ] in all environments?


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## berndf

There are some strange _k/g_-palatalizations like _gung_ > _young_. They occured together with diphthongizations (_ġung_>_ġeong_). It is a bit of a hen and egg problem which was first. Similar things happened with your examples: _shade_ is from _sc*e*ad_, _short_ from _sc*e*ort_, _shot_ from _sc*e*ot_ and _shop_ from _sc*e*oppa_, etc. In case of _young_, the palatalization was most certainly first (because it isn't an etymological /g/). In the _sċ-_ cases, I don't know.


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## Gavril

berndf said:


> There are some strange _k/g_-palatalizations like _gung_ > _young_. They occured together with diphthongizations (_ġung_>_ġeong_). It is a bit of a hen and egg problem which was first. Similar things happened with your examples: _shade_ is from _sc*e*ad_, _short_ from _sc*e*ort_, _shot_ from _sc*e*ot_ and _shop_ from _sc*e*oppa_, etc. In case of _young_, the palatalization was most certainly first (because it isn't an etymological /g/). In the _sċ-_ cases, I don't know.



I don't think I understand. Since there was always a glide [j] in the word _young_, where does palatalization (i.e., the phonetic change of a velar to a palatal/coronal) enter into this?

I always thought that the -_e_- in the OE spellings _scead_(_u_), (< Germanic *_skad_-), _sceort_ (< *_skurt_-) and so on was purely graphical, used to indicate that the -_c_- was palatalized, rather than indicating the actual addition of a vowel. I may be wrong about this, but if so, why didn't _sceot_ result in the modern-day pronunciation "sheet" (just as e.g. _deop_ results in "deep" or _deor_ in "deer"), and why didn't _sceoppa_ result in "sheep" or "shep"?

Since standard Dutch shows *sk > [sx] without having otherwise (as far as I know) undergone the change -_k_- > -_x_-, it doesn't seem hugely far-fetched to say that a similar development could have happened in a pre-stage of Old English, and perhaps this pre-OE [sx] developed into [ʃ] along the same lines as the German cluster.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> This becomes almost philosophical. You may well call it a different shift; but it is customary to regards the shifts _θ/ð > d _and _sk > sx _as belonging to the final stage of the seconds consonant shift. Characteristic of these shifts is that it is not limited to High German but extends also to Low German and Low Frankonian (i.e. Dutch). The seconds consonant shift isn't a consistent set of developments anyhow. The different stages of the second consonant shift affected different parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum and. E.g. the area between the _ick/ich_ and _Appel/Apfel_ isoglosses is inhabited by close to 1/3 of the German speaking population.


Why there is no _sp>sf_ then? Isn't it strange that the sound _k_, otherwise the most resistant to the Second shift, was the only subject of spirantization after _s_ in a consonant cluster that had successfully survived the First shift?


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## ahvalj

Swedish and Norwegian, which also palatalize and assibilate _sk_, do this only in the fronted environment (before _j, e, i, ä, ö,_ and _y_), and the English forms like _shall, bush_ or _shrub_ cannot be explained this way. I suspect that the English _ʃ_ was a result of two simultaneous processes: the West Germanic (though not universal) tendency of _sk>sx>__ʃ_ and the Ingaevonic palatalization and assibilation of velars before front vowels. What bothers me, however, is the absence of the intermediate _sx _in the Old English texts.


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## berndf

Gavril said:


> Since standard Dutch shows *sk > [sx] without having otherwise (as far as I know) undergone the change -_k_- > -_x_-, it doesn't seem hugely far-fetched to say that a similar development could have happened in a pre-stage of Old English, and perhaps this pre-OE [sx] developed into [ʃ] along the same lines as the German cluster.


Because ON loans remained generally unaffected (e.g. _sky_) at least inital steps of the shift that started with /sk/ and ended with /ʃ/ must have happened relatively early in OE. If there had been an intermediary step /sx/ we should also see spellings <sh> and not only <sc> in OE which we don't. That makes /sx/ relatively unlikely. In continental WGermanic, we don't see the spelling <sch> before the 12th century and only <sc> before that, again no <sh>. This suggests that the continental development took place much later.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Why there is no _sp>sf_ then? Isn't it strange that the sound _k_, otherwise the most resistant to the Second shift, was the only subject of spirantization after _s_ in a consonant cluster that had successfully survived the First shift?


As I said, the "second consonant shift" is a collection of shifts that was given a common label though they are not necessarily related. If you feel this one merrits a different name, be my guest.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> As I said, the "second consonant shift" is a collection of shifts that was given a common label though they are not necessarily related. If you feel this one merrits a different name, be my guest.


I think that _þ>d_ is a separate development, since it eventually happened everywhere but English, Faroese and Icelandic (in continental Scandinavian initial _þ>t_ in stressed words). The rest, _p>pf/ff, k>kx/x, t>ts/ss, b>p, g>k,_ and _d>t_ can nicely be explained (and are being explained since, as I recall, Grimm's times) as phenomena of the Second consonant shift, which radiated from the southern extreme of the German language area and affected various regions to the north in various degrees. Interestingly, it is first attested in Langobardian — the texts of a tribe that left Scandinavia as North Germanic speakers but after several generations reached Italy as Herminones.


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## berndf

I suspect this change to be related to the South-Allemanic weakening of /k/>/kx/ and in some dialect further to /x/ in *all* conditions, even initially (compare _Küche=Chuchi _in Swiss German and _Kchuche_ in Tyrolian; not itself an Alemannic dialect but showing characteristics of a transition dialect from Bavarian to Alemannic). In the 12th century, Alemannic asserted its biggest influence on MHG. But that is just a surmise. I have nothing to prove it.


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