Place feature metathesis

Question

Familiar cases of metathesis involve segments changing places, but metathesis can also operate at the subsegmental level, affecting individual features. I'm specifically interested in metathesis of POA features, like the following examples:

• German finster "dark, gloomy" < * θimster (edit: this is doubtful as a case of feature metathesis, see jknappen's comments)

• Colloquial Hebrew maʃaz "massage" < masaʒ

Questions:

1. What are some other examples of this process? It's difficult to find data as this type of metathesis seems to be rare and not much studied.
2. Are there any studies that deal specifically with POA feature metathesis -- e.g. examining its typology, which features do and don't undergo metathesis under which kinds of circumstances, etc.?
3. As a bonus question, are there any attested cases of voicing metathesis (e.g. tab > dap)? I'm aware that this shows up in child language acquisition errors, but beyond that?

Answer 1

In Greek declensions there are a couple examples of metathesis quantitatis which is simply vowel length swapping.

Within the second declension we have the Attic declension which consists of nouns like νεώς or λεώς. Originally these forms had long stem vowel and a typical short thematic vowel. Due to a regular sound change the lengths of the vowels changed places.

νηός > νεώς

ληός > λεώς

This is seen throughout the whole paradigm. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_grammar_(tables)#Attic_second_declension)

There is quantitative metathesis happening also in the third declension, in the genetive of nouns like βασιλεύς or πόλις.

The standard Attic genetive is βασιλέως and πόλεως whilst the Homeric Greek yields βασιλῆος and πόληος.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_metathesis

A Greek Grammar for Colleges, Herbert Weir Smyth

Gramatyka grecka, Marian Auerbach, Marian Golias

Answer 2

I suggest Ultan's typological study for an overview, and the metathesis database for a few examples. I'm extremely skeptical about the prospects for finding a general case where just place features are moved but not voicing and manner, but place is certainly relevant as a conditioning factor.

Answer 3

This isn't direct evidence, but this paper mentions several proposed etymologies that make use of feature metathesis: Feature metathesis and the change of PIE *du̯ to Classical Armenian -rk (Diachronica 2013), by Jessica DeLisi

The only example of possible place feature metathesis mentioned is on page 481, and the evidence is ambiguous between that and a simple segmental metathesis.

However, there are some interesting examples in it of "aspiration anticipation," which could be regarded as a kind of metathesis, where an aspirated consonant or the segment /h/ is lost in the middle of a word, but the start of the word receives compensatory aspiration. Here's one of them:

PIE *h¹eu̯s “to burn” became Greek heúō “to burn, scorch” with unexpected rough breathing compared to Sanskrit oṣati “burns”. Aspiration anticipation is quite common in Greek in words with internal *-s- > Pre-Homeric *-h-.

Answer 4

Maybe the following two examples from German count ...

• Sybille /zy:bɪlə/, a given name coming from the classical name Sibylle /zi:bʏlə/. The rounding is swapped between the first and second vowel while other features (like length and tenseness) are kept.
• Popular mispronounciation of Libyen as "Lübien". Again a vowel rounding swap.