| Sound change andalternation |
|---|
| Fortition |
| Dissimilation |
Inhistorical linguistics andlanguage contact,unpacking is the separation of thefeatures of asegment into distinct segments. It is a subtype oftransphonologization.
One of the most common examples of unpacking is the separation ofnasal vowels into sequences of a vowel and a nasal consonant when are borrowed into languages that do not have nasal vowels. That can be seen inEnglish borrowings ofFrench andPortuguese words likemonsoon[mɒnˈsuːn] from Portuguesemonção[mõsɐ̃ũ]; likewise,Lingala[balansi] reflects French[balɑ̃s] "balance". In such examples, the nasality of the vowel is separated out as anasal consonant; otherwise, the nasality would be lost.
Unpacking occurs also as asound change within the same language. For example,Classical Armenian changed theProto-Indo Europeansyllabicsonorants *m̥, *n̥, *r̥, and *l̥ toam,an,ar, andal: this kept the syllabic nature of the sound, while preserving the consonant value. Thus, the privative prefix *n̥- becameան-an-, and the word*mr̥tos becameմարդmard.
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