Chapter 9 The Phonology of the Lexicon

Abstract

Abstract In many areas of linguistics, examining the nature of diachronic changes leads to a more accurate modeling of synchronic systems. Lexical diffusion—the way a sound change spreads through the lexicon—has yet to be exploited as a potential source of evidence about the phonological shape of lexical representations. This chapter presents evidence that sound change is both phonetically gradual and lexically gradual and that the rate at which words undergo sound change is positively correlated with their text frequency. This correlation is found in monomorphemic words, regularly inflected words, and irregularly inflected words. It is argued that frequency effects in sound change may be explained by assuming that cognitive representations are affected by every token of use. The data show that the higher rate of deletion found in past tense verbs that also have a stem change is largely a frequency effect, since these verbs are generally of high frequency.