[d]→[t]Certainty: 5/5Commonality: 5/5
Tonogenesis Register Split Voice Loss Devoicing Consonants Sino-Tibetan Austroasiatic Nilo-Saharan Sinitic Tai-Kadai
Voiced alveolar plosive to Voiceless alveolar plosive
The Voice Loss of the initial dental stop [d] to [t] is a major driver of Tonogenesis through Register Split. Voiced initials like [d] traditionally lowered the Pitch Contour (leading to 'Yáng' or low-register tones), while their voiceless counterparts [t] produced higher pitch ('Yīn' or high-register tones).
Phonetic Effects
Voice Loss, Devoicing, Register Split, Tonogenesis
Language Examples
*da→đà /ɗaː˨˩/— Initial voicing loss in Mon-Khmer expanded the Vietnamese tonal inventory by splitting existing tones into high and low register pairs.
Historical *d-→t-— Part of the systemic devoicing of initial obstruents which doubled the tonal categories.
*ding→tíng /tʰiŋ˧˥/— Early Middle Chinese [d] (Quánzhuó) devoiced in later stages, causing a split in the four classical tones.
*da→tâa /taː˥˩/— Proto-Tai initial *d triggered the low-register tones in the subsequent Thai tonal split.
Proto-Tai *d-→t-— Led to the split of the historic tones into Low and High registers based on initial voicing.
Middle Chinese *d-→t- (aspirated or unaspirated based on tone)— The low register of modern Cantonese tones reflects original voicing in the initial.
[d] (stem-final stop)→[t] (word-final or utterance-final position)— Voicing is not distinctive at the end of a stem in Nuer, regardless of whether it is at the end of a word or utterance. Voiced stop /d/ is neutralized with voiceless /t/ in final position; the distinction resurfaces (with voiced [d]) only when a vowel-initial suffix follows, placing the consonant in intervocalic position. This is a classic positional neutralization of the voicing contrast.
[d] (voiced stop in stop series)→[t]— Kanuri (Saharan branch, spoken in Nigeria and Chad) shows positional devoicing of obstruents, with the voice contrast neutralized in certain prosodically weak positions. The prenasalized stop series /nd/ is the robust voiced dental stop cluster; the simple /d/ shows devoicing tendencies in final and pre-pause positions, converging toward [t].
Related Transformations
More Tai-Kadai Shifts
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