Sound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures. Sound change can consist of the replacement of one speech sound by another, the complete loss of the affected sound, or even the introduction of a new sound in a place where there had been none. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned, meaning that the change only occurs in a defined sound environment, whereas in other environments the same speech sound is not affected by the change. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes—that is, changes in a language's sound system over time; "alternation", on the other hand, refers to changes that happen synchronically and which do not change the language's underlying system. However, since "sound change" can refer to the historical introduction of an alternation —the label is inherently imprecise and often must be clarified as referring to phonemic change or restructuring.
Research on sound change is usually conducted on the working assumption that it is regular, which means that it is expected to apply mechanically whenever its structural conditions are met, irrespective of any non-phonological factors. However, apparent exceptions to regular change can occur—due to dialect borrowing, grammatical analogy, or other causes known and unknown—and some changes are described as "sporadic", meaning that they affect only one particular word or a few words, without any apparent regularity.
The Neogrammarian linguists of the 19th century introduced the term "sound law" to refer to rules of regular change, perhaps in imitation of the laws of physics, and the term "law" is still used in referring to specific sound rules named after their authors, such as Grimm's Law, Grassmann's Law, :Category:Sound laws|etc. Real-world sound changes often admit exceptions; nevertheless, the expectation of their regularity or absence of exceptions is of great heuristic value, since it allows historical linguists to define the notion of regular correspondence.
Each sound change is limited in space and time. This means it functions within a limited area and during a limited period of time. For these reasons, the term "sound law" has been criticized for implying a universality that is unrealistic with regard to sound change.
Sound change that affects the phonological system, in the number or distribution of its phonemes, is covered more fully at phonological change.
Formal notation
A statement of the formis to be read, "sound A changes into sound B". Therefore, A belongs to an older stage of the language in question, whereas B belongs to a more recent stage. The symbol ">" can be reversed, B < A, still meaning that the B derives from the A".
For example,
The two sides of such a statement indicate start and end points only, and do not imply that there are no additional intermediate stages. The example above is actually a compressed account of a sequence of changes; *t changed first into a voiceless dental fricative , which has yielded present-day . This can be represented more fully as:
Unless a change operates unconditionally, the context in which it applies must be specified:
For example:
A second example:
The symbol "#" stands for a word boundary. Thus the notation "/__#" means "word-finally", and "/#__" means "word-initially". For example:
This can be simplified to
where capital P stands for any plosive.
Principles
The following statements are used as heuristics in formulating sound changes as understood within the Neogrammarian model. However, for modern linguistics, they are not taken as inviolable rules; rather, they are seen as guidelines.Sound change has no memory: Sound change does not discriminate between the sources of a sound. If a previous sound change causes X,Y > Y, a new one cannot affect only an original X.
Sound change ignores grammar: A sound change can only have phonological constraints, like X > Z in unstressed syllables. For example, it cannot only affect adjectives. The only exception to this is that a sound change may or may not recognise word boundaries, even when they are not indicated by prosodic clues. Also, sound changes may be regularized in inflectional paradigms, in which case the change is no longer phonological but morphological in nature.
Sound change is exceptionless: if a sound change can happen at a place, it will. It affects all sounds that meet the criteria for change. Apparent exceptions are possible, due to analogy and other regularization processes, or another sound change, or an unrecognized conditioning factor. This is the traditional view, expressed by the Neogrammarians. In past decades it has been shown that sound change does not necessarily affect all the words that in principle it could. However, when a sound change is initiated, it often expands to the whole lexicon given enough time, though not always. For example, in Spanish the fronting of the Vulgar Latin before seems to have reached every possible word it could. By contrast, the voicing of word-initial Latin to occurred in colaphus > golpe and cattus > gato, but not in canna > caña. See also lexical diffusion.
Sound change is inevitable: All languages vary from place to place and time to time, and neither writing nor media prevent this change.
Terms for changes in pronunciation
In historical linguistics, a number of traditional terms designate types of phonetic change, either by nature or result. A number of such types are often sporadic, that is, more or less accidents that happen to a specific form. Others affect a whole phonological system. Sound changes that affect a whole phonological system are also classified according to how they affect the overall shape of the system; see phonological change.- Assimilation: One sound becomes more like another, or two sounds become more like each other. Example: in Latin the prefix *kom- becomes con- before an apical stop or : contactus "touched", condere "to found, establish", connūbium "legal marriage". The great majority of assimilations take place between contiguous segments, and the great majority involve the earlier sound becoming more like the later one. Assimilation between contiguous segments are exceptionless sound laws rather than sporadic, isolated changes.
- Dissimilation: The opposite of assimilation. One sound becomes less like another, or two sounds become less like each other. Examples: Classical Latin quīnque "five" > Vulgar Latin *kinkʷe ; Old Spanish omne "man" > Spanish hombre. The great majority of dissimilations involve segments that are not contiguous, but, as with assimilations, the great majority involve an earlier sound changing with reference to a later one. Dissimilation is usually a sporadic phenomenon, but Grassmann's Law exemplifies a systematic dissimilation. If the change of a sequence of fricatives such that one becomes a stop is dissimilation, then such changes as Proto-Germanic *hs to in English would count as a regular sound law: PGmc. *sehs "six" > Old English siex, etc.
- Metathesis: Two sounds switch places. Example: Old English thridda became Middle English third. Most such changes are sporadic, but occasionally a sound law is involved, as Romance *tl > Spanish ld, thus *kapitlu, *titlu "chapter ", "tittle" > Spanish cabildo, tilde. Metathesis can take place between non-contiguous segments, as Greek amélgō "I milk" > Modern Greek armégō.
- Lenition, softening of a consonant, e.g. stop consonant to affricate or fricative; and its antonym fortition, hardening of a consonant.
- Tonogenesis: Syllables come to have distinctive pitch contours.
- Sandhi: conditioned changes that take place at word-boundaries but not elsewhere. It can be morpheme-specific, as in the loss of the vowel in the enclitic forms of English is, with subsequent change of to adjacent to a voiceless consonant Frank's not here. Or a small class of elements, such as the assimilation of the of English the, this and that to a preceding or : all the often, in the often, and so on. As in these examples, such features are rarely indicated in standard orthography. In a striking exception, Sanskrit orthography reflects a wide variety of such features; thus, tat "that" is written tat, tac, taj, tad, or tan depending on what the first sound of the next word is. These are all assimilations, but medial sequences do not assimilate the same way.
- Haplology: The loss of a syllable when an adjacent syllable is similar or identical. Example: Old English Englaland became Modern English England, or the common pronunciation of probably as. This change usually affects commonly used words. The word haplology itself is sometimes jokingly pronounced "haplogy".
- Elision, aphaeresis, syncope, and apocope: all losses of sounds. Elision is the loss of unstressed sounds, aphaeresis the loss of initial sounds, syncope is the loss of medial sounds, and apocope is the loss of final sounds.
- * Elision examples: in the southeastern United States, unstressed schwas tend to drop, so "American" is not but. Standard English is possum < opossum.
- * Syncope examples: the Old French word for "state" is estat, but the s disappeared, yielding état. Similarly, the loss of in English soften, hasten, castle, etc.
- * Apocope examples: the final -e in Middle English words was pronounced, but is only retained in spelling as a silent E. In English and were apocopated in final position after nasals: lamb, long.
- Epenthesis : The introduction of a sound between two adjacent sounds. Examples: Latin humilis > English humble; in Slavic an -l- intrudes between a labial and a following yod, as *zemya "land" > Russian zemlya. Most commonly, epenthesis is in the nature of a "transitional" consonant, but vowels may be epenthetic: non-standard English film in two syllables, athlete in three. Epenthesis can be regular, as when the Indo-European "tool" suffix *-tlom everywhere becomes Latin -culum. Some scholars reserve the term epenthesis for "intrusive" vowels and use excrescence for intrusive consonants.
- Prothesis: The addition of a sound at the beginning of a word. Example: word-initial + stop clusters in Latin gained a preceding in Old Spanish and Old French; hence, the Spanish word for "state" is estado, deriving from Latin status.
- Nasalization: Vowels followed by nasal consonants can become nasalized. If the nasal consonant is lost but the vowel retains its nasalized pronunciation, nasalization becomes phonemic, that is, distinctive. Example: French "-in" words used to be pronounced, but are now pronounced, and the is no longer pronounced.
Examples of specific historical sound changes
- Umlaut
- Grimm's law
- Grassmann's law
- Verner's law
- Great Vowel Shift
- High German consonant shift
- Slavic palatalization
- Canaanite shift
- Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law
- Kluge's law
- Dahl's law
- Sound change in Japanese