Bringing signed languages into the study of regular sound change

This paper presents evidence for a regular sound change in 12th-century Old French where word-initial /k/ voiced to /ɡ/ before /la/ or /ra/. My treatment is the first to propose a unified account, as due to a regular sound change, for 13 reflexes of inherited etyma and 4 reflexes of Germanic borrowings that all exhibit velar onset voicing (VOV) contemporaneously. A dating in the late 12th century for VOV is supported by both corpus evidence and how it is bled, counterbled, and fed by other sound changes whose dating is established in prior literature. The ultimate origins of this Old French velar onset voicing most likely lie in an older and phonetically conditioned synchronic voicing process that originally operated both word-internally and at boundaries. Word-internally, where conditioning was static, the alternation became a phonemic difference and thereafter lost productivity relatively early. But synchronic alternation continued at boundaries, where its conditioning continued to depend on the adjacent word. It survived in a progressively reshaped manner word-initially, until the late 12th century, when this voicing alternation, now much narrower in scope, gave rise to VOV as a regular diachronic sound change. Previous treatment of the words in question considered each only in isolation, bypassing the chance to consider the proposed regular sound change as a possibility. Thus, this study shows the importance of considering both lexically focused approaches and the probing for regular sound changes as necessarily complementary methods.

Detecting Regular Sound Changes in Linguistics as Events of Concerted Evolution

Reviewed by: Sounds and systems: Studies in structure and change: A festschrift for Theo Vennemann ed. by David Restle, Dietmar Zaefferer Andrea Pham Sounds and systems: Studies in structure and change: A festschrift for Theo Vennemann. Ed. by David Restle and Dietmar Zaefferer. (Trends in linguistics: Studies and monographs 141.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002. Pp. viii, 484. ISBN 311017569X. $108 (Hb). This handsomely produced volume consists of twenty-one papers published to honor Theo Venne-mann on the occasion of his 65th birthday. The wide range of Vennemann’s own interests is amply demonstrated in the list of his publications (459–74). Since the papers are so fittingly wide ranging in topic, the editors have chosen to present them under two general headings: ‘Historical studies in sounds, words, and systems’ (subdivided into papers on ‘Sound change’ and ‘Language change’) and ‘Synchronic studies on sounds, words, and uses’. Fifteen of the papers are in English and the remainder in German, with each of the latter prefaced by an abstract in English. This is a book with something for everyone. Several diachronic papers caught my attention. Henning Andersen’s ‘Preglottalization in English and a North Germanic bifurcation’ (15–34) provides evidence that this phenomenon is not spreading by means of language contact but is ‘developing in different places, apparently at different rates, but by and large following the same step-wise progression, evincing the same internal logic. This mode of development is probably the most usual one in internally motivated sound change’ (31). Such a view suggests the possibility that a sound change can originate in different places by polygenesis rather than in one place and then spread. Joan Bybee’s ‘Lexical diffusion in regular sound change’ (59–74) adds to the ongoing discussion concerning the relationship, if any, between regular, gradual sound change and change through lexical diffusion. Bybee says that both operated. ‘The discovery that sound change can be both phonetically gradual and lexically gradual forces a different view of the mental representation of the phonology of words... an accurate model of phonological representation must allow phonetic detail in the cognitive representation of words’ (68–69). Raymond Hickey’s ‘Language change in early Britain: The convergence account’ (185–203) discusses evidence for a multicausal account of language change that goes well beyond language contact alone: ‘Convergence scenarios in which both internal and external factors play a role provide credible models for language change in that they offer the possibility of multicausal accounts which, given our knowledge of situations in later attested languages, are definitely known to exist’ (197). Among the synchronic papers, ‘The meter of nursery rhymes: Universal versus language-specific patterns’ (241–67) by Patrizia Noel, Aziz Hanna, Katrin Lindner, and Andreas Dufter presents evidence from nursery rhymes in fifteen languages to show that the metrical patterns of these languages vary widely. However, ‘the manifestation of prosody in natural versification is always language specific’ (256), that is, ‘prosody shapes verse forms at least as far as autochthonous poetry is concerned’ (261). Space does not allow for highlighting other papers worthy of comment. Suffice it to say that there is something here for tastes as diverse as the history of English, problems of language contact, constraints in phonological structure, and lexical pragmatics. All in all, this book is a fine tribute to a highly regarded scholar. Andrea Pham University of Florida Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

A number of Latin words show -urC- where -orC- would be etymologically expected. In this article, a collection is made of the reliable examples, and previous explanations are assessed. No regular sound change that explains all the good examples exists, and it is concluded that an origin in dialectal Latin, although superficially supported by the apparent parallel of cases of -irC- for -erC-, is difficult to substantiate. Instead, there seem to be two sources: firstly, a regular Latin sound change * ΣorC- > urC-, as in *Σor-Σo- > uruum ‘plough’; and secondly, borrowing from Umbrian, where, it is argued, -ur- is the regular reflex of *-‰- (e.g. the preverb pur- < *pr̥-).

Almost universally, diachronic sound patterns of languages reveal evidence of both regular and irregular sound changes, yet an exception may be the languages of Australia. Here we discuss a long-observed and striking characteristic of diachronic sound patterns in Australian languages, namely the scarcity of evidence they present for regular sound change. Since the regularity assumption is fundamental to the comparative method, Australian languages pose an interesting challenge for linguistic theory. We examine the situation from two different angles. We identify potential explanations for the lack of evidence of regular sound change, reasoning from the nature of synchronic Australian phonologies; and we emphasise how this unusual characteristic of Australian languages may demand new methods of evaluating evidence for diachronic relatedness, and new thinking about the nature of intergenerational transmission. We refer the reader also to Bowern (this volume) for additional viewpoints from which the Australian conundrum can be approached.

Sound change is a universal phenomenon and is strongly influenced by contextual factors. Variant sounds that appear as cognates across languages can be identified and explained through linguistic analysis within a cultural framework. This study aims to identify sound changes in the Haloban language by comparing them with a related language spoken on Simeulue Island, the Defayan language. A qualitative method was employed in this research. Data were collected through recordings of Halobanese wordlist utterances and interviews with native Halobanese speakers. Six informants participated in the study, comprising three male and three female native speakers. Data collection involved documentation techniques, including recording, transcription, and translation into both Indonesian and English. The data were analyzed for regular and semi-regular (sporadic) sound changes between Proto-Austronesian (PAN) and Haloban. The Haloban language is spoken in only two villages in the Pulau Banyak District, Aceh Singkil Regency, Aceh Province. The results showed a regular sound change in which the PAN sound /b/ becomes /w/ in Haloban. Semi-regular changes included sound loss, addition, fusion, and unpacking. In comparison with the Defayan language, two regular sound changes were identified in Haloban: /b/ and /f/ becoming /w/. These sound changes contribute to the linguistic identity of the Halobanese people.

The article deals with the origin of palatalisation in the plural paradigm of the Khotanese i-declension. According to the common view, palatalisation resulted from regular sound change only in the nominative-accusative plural, with the etymological form of the endings remaining not-palatalised in the rest of the plural inflection. Subsequently, there emerged a tendency for the palatalised allomorph to become generalised and extend across the paradigm. However, a thorough examination of older and later Old Khotanese manuscripts challenges this perspective, revealing no evidence of original allomorphy between the palatalised and non-palatalised stem variants in the plural. This study demonstrates that palatalisation did not originate from analogical levellings but rather arose from regular sound change. Additionally, the article draws a comparison between the i-declension plural paradigm and the inflection of most numerals greater than ‘three’, which exhibit palatalisation in all case forms except for the nominative-accusative.

Word frequency effects in sound change as a consequence of perceptual asymmetries: An exemplar-based model

This paper presents a method of using association rule data mining algorithms to discover regular sound changes among languages. The method presented has a great potential to facilitate linguistic studies aimed at identifying distantly related cognate languages. As an experimental example, this paper presents the application of the data mining method to the discovery of regular sound changes between the Hungarian and the Sumerian languages, which separated at least five thousand years ago when the Proto-Sumerian reached Mesopotamia. The data mining method discovered an important regular sound change between Hungarian word initial /f/ and Sumerian word initial /b/ phonemes.

ABSTRACTGondi is a Dravidian language spoken by 2.2 million speakers (Census of India 1981) in the mountains and forests of four adjacent states in central India. Gondi is a chain of several dialects, some of which, at distant points, are perhaps not mutually intelligible. A major dialect division is provided by a two-step sound change: s- &gt; h- in the west, north, and northwest and h- &gt; - in the south and southeast. The present article studies this two-step sound change, which is still in progress, and establishes two facts. First, contrary to the normal expectation that this sound change would be phonetically gradual and lexically abrupt (Neogram-marian type), there is evidence that it has been lexically gradual and perhaps also phonetically gradual (lexical diffusion). Second, phonetic gradualness and regularity in implementation of sound change are properties not incompatible with the mechanism of lexical diffusion. Labov's observation that s &gt; h &gt; has not been reported as a lexically diffused change in many quantitative studies of Portuguese and Spanish (1981) finds a clear exception in Gondi. Under the lexical diffusion model, the regularity of a sound change is defined as the final outcome in a three-stage change of the relevant lexicon: unchanged (u), variant (u ˜ c), and changed (c). If the entire eligible lexicon passed from u to c through u ˜ c, the change would become regular. If all u ˜ c became c and for some reason no item under u became u ˜ c, the sound change would die prematurely, since the variant stage which provided the rule for the innovation would be absent. Since a regular sound change can result from either the Neogrammarian model or the lexical diffusion model, Labov's (1994:542–543) theoretical proposal of complementarity between the kinds of changes resulting from the two mechanisms calls for more studies of sound change in progress to decide the issue.

Irregular sound change due to frequency in Latin

The Neogrammarians of the Leipzig School introduced the principle that sound changes are regular and that this regularity is without exceptions. At least as a working hypothesis, this principle has remained the basis of the comparative method up to this day. In the first part of this paper, I give a short account of how historical linguists have defended this principle and have dealt with apparent counter evidence. In the second part, I explore if a sound change can be regular if it is attested in one instance only. I conclude that it is, provided that the concomitant phonetic (and phonotactic) evidence supporting it is also based on regularity. If the single instance of a sound change is the result of developments which are all regular in themselves, it is still in line with the regularity principle.

This paper examines whether data from a large cross-linguistic corpus of adult and child productions can be used to support an assumed corollary of the Neogrammarian distinction between two types of phonological change. The first type is regular sound change, which is assumed to be incremental and so should show continuity between phonological development and the age-related variation observed in the speech community undergoing the change. The second type is dialect borrowing, which could show an abrupt discontinuity between developmental patterns before and after the socio-historical circumstances that instigate it. We examine the acquisition of two contrasts: the Seoul Korean contrast between lax and aspirated stops which is undergoing regular sound change, and the standard Mandarin contrast between retroflex and dental sibilants which has been borrowed recently into the Sōngyuán dialect. Acquisition of the different contrasts patterns as predicted from the assumed differences between continuous regular sound change and potentially abrupt dialect borrowing. However, there are substantial gaps in our understanding both of the extent of cross-cultural variability in language socialization and of how this might affect the mechanisms of phonological change that must be addressed before we can fully understand the relationship between the time courses of the two.

On system-driven sound change: Accent shift in Markina Basque

Blair A. Rudes and David J. Costa (eds.), Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics Memoir 16, Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, 2003, ix + 296 pages.Reviewer: Paul ProulxAs a specialist in Algonquian, I will limit my comments to Algonquian papers. Three are written by scholars generally found lunching together at Algonquian conferences: Ives Goddard, group's leader; Richard Rhodes, his disciple; David Costa, a student of Rhodes and Algonquianist co-editor of volume. The signs of intellectual inbreeding are everywhere, and Goddard clearly suffered from too gentle an editorial hand.Group isolation and status within it can be estimated from volume bibliography, which indexes frequency of citation. 1 count 31 separate Goddard publications cited, versus only seven for Bloomfield. Rhodes has 10 and Costa six, while Peter Denny, a psychologist (these days converted into an amateur archaeologist) who hangs out with them, and remaining linguist, Philip LeSourd, are tied at four.Goddard's contribution is of monograph length (65 pages). Its merit lies in assembling a huge amount of data on Algonquian demonstratives. However, rather than comparing all Algonquian languages, as comparative method calls for, Goddard bases his reconstruction of Proto Algonquian (PA hereafter) demonstratives only on his two fieldwork languages (and some neighbouring ones he regards as closely related to them).These he reconstructs internally, producing something like a 1960s underlying structure. This resemble an earlier stage of a language, or not. In any event, it is a synchronic representation, hypothesizes in simplified and abstract terms about daughter studied, and how to get from there to its more complex concrete (surface) structure.Goddard then reconstructs comparing two underlying systems, and argues away all rest of data in second half of paper. Once this choice of sample and method are made, nothing like a genuine reconstruction is possible. He has discarded far too much information.For example, Goddard claims demonstratives may undergo phonetic reduction beyond what can be accounted for by general sound laws of a language (p. 80). He proposes ad hoc deletion of whole demonstrative roots (VC-) in some languages. In Ojibwa, PA *4eyo(:)- (set A) was reduced to CO *4o-, and *4en- (set B) was completely (p. 63); in Cree-Montagnais, word-initially *4ey- was lost (p. 69); in Menominee, the sequences *4eyo:- and *4eni- were reduced to M *4a- (p. 76); and in Miami, initial I 4iy- is in set A, and I 4n- is in set B (p. 78).I submit this is not just wrong, it's utter nonsense. Even if one believes in ad hoc sound change, wherever Goddard claims reduction has totally deleted a root, he has no evidence root was ever there in first place. Arguably, it is simply a convenient fiction, to avoid recognizing following element is itself a root, and thus existence of additional stems. (For those who believe in regularity of sound change, where his ad hoc reduction has totally deleted a root, although regular sound change would not have done so, he has proven it was never there.)Many of his other claims also go against linguistic intuition and common sense. For example, he says Fox 4i:niya that (animate, inaccessible) and Eastern Cree 4(a)niya: that (animate, inaccessible) do not attest a stem *4eniy- as suggested by Pentland, but rather are separate parallel compoundings of his roots *4en- and *4ey- (p. 38, 71, 91).However, notice attested stems are not Fox *4i:n i:ya nor Eastern Cree *4(a)n-aya:, as a word-initial position for second syllable would have produced by his own rules. The compounding, if such it was, clearly came early, and one wonders by what criteria he refuses to reconstruct it for his Western dialect of (in which *4e > *4i). …