Preinitials and their development in Horpa and Tangut

This paper presents several conditioned sound changes in the Rapanui language: replacement of rhotics with glottal stops in the final syllable, further loss of glottal stops in polymoraic words, retention of Proto-Polynesian *h in certain phonetic contexts, metathesis of consonants in adjacent syllables, dissimilation of velar nasals in the vicinity of velar stops, and assimilation of central and back vowels. The sound changes under discussion systematically distinguish between bimoraic and polymoraic lexical roots and some of them also distinguish between lexical and grammatical morphemes. Some of the sound changes are recent and operate on borrowings from Tahitian and European languages. This paper also provides new information on the phonology of Rapanui and, by extension, the Eastern Polynesian subgroup. The findings imply that, in the case of Rapanui, a phonological description would not be satisfactory without an account of productive recent and on-going sound changes.

The preceding chapters have presented data supporting a number of conclusions regarding the lexical diffusion of sound change, including the following: • Phonetically gradual and phonetically abrupt changes are both lexically diffused. • Whether the most frequent words or the least frequent are affected first in a sound change is dependent on the degree of analysis required in order to implement the change. Changes that affect the most frequent words require no analysis beyond the phonetic encoding. Changes that affect the least frequent words first require such analysis (word class, syllable structure, phonotactic constraints, etc.) • Lexical diffusion occurs within phonological environments. There is therefore no dichotomy between lexically diffused changes and phonetically conditioned changes. A sound change usually proceeds through phonetic analogy, i.e. by making connections between phonetically similar portions in the phonological representations of lexemes. • Word class and word frequency are independent influences upon the direction of a sound change. Lexical diffusion occurs within word classes, probably because word class is accessed in production prior to phonological form. • Function words change first in weakening sound changes, whereas content words change first in strengthening sound changes. • Lexical diffusion is one part of the implementation of a sound change. As a change is dispersing through the population and across phonological environments, it is simultaneously being diffused through the lexicon. • Word frequency effects are found in production, not in perception. • Lexical representations, including phonological representations, are linked in a connectionist network to other lexical representations, allowing generalizations to emerge which form the basis for the spread of the sound change to new words depending on phonetic or morphological resemblance. • Connections between lexical items can also lead to generalizations based on morphology or semantics, resulting in so-called “gang effects” (as in the patterning together of why, what, when, where in the loss of /h/ before /w/). • A usage-based, connectionist phonology best accounts for the varying routes of sound change. If words are stored in the lexicon and the phonology emerges from lexical connections, then the path of a sound change may be affected by any information in the lexicon, whether it be word frequency, word class, neighborhood density, semantics, or social correlates. KeywordsLexical DecisionWord FrequencyLexical ItemPhonological RepresentationLexical RepresentationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2015) Phonetic Sources of Morphological Patterns in Sound Change: Fricative Voicing in Athabascan Jonathan Manker University of California, Berkeley While most modern Athabascan languages are described as having contrastive voicing in fricatives, the patterns of fricative voicing still follow both transparent and sometimes more complex morphological (as well as phonological) environments. While a synchronic analysis of the language seems to demonstrate a direct connection between phonological patterns and morphology, such an analysis may also suggest the possibility of morphological conditions in sound change, which has been proposed by some (Crowley 1997, Donohue 2005). This paper investigates the development of fricative voicing in two Athabascan languages and demonstrates that purely phonetic conditions can be identified that led to what appears to be a case of a morphologically conditioned sound change, following a similar analysis in Blevins & Lynch (2009). Both class-specific affixation and prominence patterns are shown to provide phonetic environments that may result in synchronic phonological patterns following morphological environments. 1. Introduction Early models of linguistic organization suggest the impossibility that non-phonetic factors (morphosyntax, semantics, etc.) can influence sound change. For example, the Neogrammarians proposed that sound change is a “purely phonetic process,” occurring under “strictly phonetic conditions” (Bloomfield 1933:364, concerning the Neogrammarians). The American structuralists (Hockett 1942, Trager & Smith 1951) similarly proposed that different levels of linguistic organization, such as phonetics, morphology, and syntax, were considered to be autonomous modules, and thus phonetic properties could not be influenced by factors such as part of speech, grammatical function, or semantic class. Opposition to these claims existed throughout the first half of the 20 th century despite their seemingly widespread acceptance. For example, Sapir

Since the 19th century linguists have expected to find conditioned sound changes in environments that make phonetic sense: consonants palatalize adjacent to front vowels, back vowels front if a front vowel occurs in the next syllable, stops voice between voiced segments, and so forth. Most conditioned sound changes conform to this expectation, but a surprising number do not. Some of these are well known, as the palatalization of *s before most word-initial consonants in High German. Since there is no obvious explanation for them, such changes are generally ignored in discussions of historical phonology. The result of this practice has been to give the false impression that what appear to be phonetically unmotivated sound changes are rare abnormalities that probably would conform to expectation if we had more information about them. This paper draws attention to examples of conditioning in Austronesian languages in which the phonetic properties of the context appear unrelated to those of the change, and it questions why such changes should occur. Although finding a completely satisfactory explanation has proven difficult, one general conclusion suggested by the data is that native speakers have an intuitive recognition of natural classes that is independent of phonetic motivation.

1 Notes on the Diachronic Phonology 2 of Nauruan 3 Lev Blumenfeld 4 CARLETON UNIVERSITY 5 This paper investigates the Nauruan reflexes of Proto-Micronesian phonemes. 6 Nauruan participates in most reductive sound changes found elsewhere in 7 Micronesian. The attrition patterns of *t and *k in Nauruan resemble similar 8 developments in Eastern Chuukic. An unusual developments are shifts of 9 major place of articulation, from coronal to velar, and from velar to labial. 10 This paper contains a discussion of the reflexes of Proto-Oceanic palatals 11 in Micronesian. A list of Kiribati loans in Nauruan is supplied. 12 Keywords: Nauruan; Kiribati; Micronesian; Sound Change; Lenition 13 1. INTRODUCTION.1 14 1.1. OVERVIEW. This paper investigates the internal phonological develop15 ments in Nauruan (NAU), a Micronesian spoken by just under 10,000 people in 16 the Republic of Nauru and diaspora (Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig 2021). The 17 status of NAU as a Micronesian language was established by Hughes (2020a,b). 18 Building on that work, this paper investigates the reflexes of Proto-Micronesian 19 (PMC) phonemes in NAU. 20 The phonemic inventory of NAU is given in table 1, following the proposals 21 in the synchronic description in Blumenfeld (2022). Closely related proposals 22 are found in Hughes (2020b); see discussion in Blumenfeld (2022) on the dif23 ferences between the two proposals. The rhotic ř is distinguished from r by a 24 higher degree of constriction and frication (Hughes 2020b:92ff.). Distinct from 25 the glides /j,w/ are semivowels /i̯,u ̯ /, which in turn are in complementary dis26 tribution with corresponding vowels /i,u/; see Blumenfeld (2022) for details. 27 The vowel inventory is shown in table 2. In addition, the symbol [a] is used 28 as a disjunction of [ʌ] and [ɑ] where the identity of the vowel is uncertain (see 29 details in Blumenfeld 2022). 30 This paper sets up the correspondences for consonants in table 3 (vowels are 31 discussed separately in section 2.9). The symbol *z in this table refers to the 1. I am grateful to my Nauruan (NAU) consultants, two anonymous reviewers, and to Bob Blust, Kevin Hughes, Artemij Keidan, and Ken Rehg for helpful comments on an earlier draft, and to Alamanda Lauti for continuing kind help with all aspects of my work on NAU. The work was supported in part by an SSHRC Insight Development Grant #430-2013-000826. Oceanic Linguistics, Volume 61, no. 2 (December 2022)© by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved. 32 post Proto-Oceanic (POC) lenis counterpart of *s (Ross 1988:71ff.; Geraghty 33 1983, 1986). The updated picture of POC palatal reflexes in Micronesian is dis34 cussed in section 2.5. For the origins of NAU /p/ and /kʷ/, see below. 35 Conditioned changes are described in table 4. Note the commonality in the 36 environments of the major place shifts (velar outcomes of *n, *l, *s, *S, labial 37 outcome of *ŋ). The degree of regularity of each of these changes will be illus38 trated in relevant sections below. I will start with some highlights of the 39 findings. TABLE 1. NAU CONSONANT INVENTORY. pʷ p t k kʷ bʷ b d ɡ mʷ m n ŋ ř r j, i̯ w, u ̯ TABLE 2. NAU VOWEL INVENTORY. i ɨ u e ʌ o æ ɑ TABLE 3. NAU REFLEXES OF POC AND PMC CONSONANTS. POC *b *bʷ, *b *p *m *mʷ, *m *k *t *g,*y,*w PMC *p *pʷ *f *m *mʷ *k *t *x,*y,*w NAU b bʷ Ø m mʷ k,t,w,Ø t,j,Ø Ø POC *s, *c (*z), *j *j *d,*dr *r *R *l *ŋ *n *ñ PMC *s *S *Z *c *r *r,Ø *l *ŋ *n *ñ NAU d, ɡ ? ř r r,Ø j,ŋ,n,Ø ŋ,mʷ n,ŋ n TABLE 4. CONDITIONED CHANGES. Sound Change Environment Notes *k *k > w adjacent to u almost regular *k > t ＿i rare; t → ts before i *k > k, Ø irregular; see section 2.2 *t *t > t, j, Ø irregular; see section 2.2 *s, *S *s, *S > ɡ {#,a,o}＿{a,o} almost regular *l *l > j adjacent to *{i,u} *l > ŋ {#,a,o}＿{a,o} almost regular *l > n, Ø irregular; rare *ŋ *ŋ > mʷ {#,a,o}＿{a,o} almost regular *n *n > ŋ {#,a...

The purpose of this study was to describe articulation/phonological errors and sound changes in a group of normally developing, Arabic-speaking children aged between 2;0 and 4;4. Elicited samples from 50 children were examined to determine the percentages of consonants that were produced in an unacceptable manner (errors) and that were changed from Educated Spoken Arabic, to determine the effect of these sound changes on classes of consonants, and to determine the phonological processes or patterns that would describe these two types of sound changes. Difficulties with emphatic consonants, consonant sequences and /r/ were felt to be due to articulatory difficulty, whereas the early accuracy of back fricatives and /l/ may be due to their high frequency in the language and relatively high functional load.

Introduction: types of sound change In this chapter we shall investigate change in phonetics and phonology, primarily by outlining the approaches of three schools of linguists, in chronological order the Neogrammarians, Structuralists and early Generativists. This provides an opportunity to explore the development of sound change theory and introduce schools of linguistic thought which will be mentioned intermittently throughout the book. First, however, it may be useful to outline some of the types of sound change one might expect to encounter in any language. Many sound changes affect single sounds, or vowel or consonant segments, and we shall concentrate on these below. However, some sound changes involve larger units, such as clusters of consonants, or diphthongs; and supra-segmentals such as rhythm, stress and intonation may also change. For instance, students of Germanic languages propose an early Germanic Accent Shift, which in general placed the main word stress on the first syllable of the stem; and English and German intonation patterns differ, although these languages are descended from a common source, so that we must assume changes in the intonational system of one or both daughters. It is certainly harder to study changes in suprasegmental features, since stress and intonation are rarely recorded in writing; but they do nonetheless occur. Segmental sound changes can be conditioned, occurring in particular, specifiable environments, or unconditioned, applying to all occurrences of a particular sound. They may also be regular, or irregular and sporadic.

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- > h- in the west, north, and northwest and h- > - 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 > h > 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.

This research deals with the sound change of Japanese numeral quantifiers. The data were collected through introspection method and by asking Japanese native speakers as verifiers. The data were identified in order to investigate which numerals have the potential to undergo some sound change. They were then analyzed phonemically and some phonetically as well. The data analysis focused on the segmental elements and it was conducted synchronically. The results show that there are some processes of and reasons underlying the sound change in the Japanese numeral quantifiers. The most common process of the sound change is assimilation, especially regressive assimilation. Meanwhile, the reasons underlying the sound change are the presence of sound co-articulation, phonotactics in Japanese that prevents any consonant clusters except /QC/ and /NC/, devoicing of high vowel /i/, and to comply with the construction of similar numerals.

Johnson Pump, Sweden

The phonetic origins of /s/-retraction: Acoustic and perceptual evidence from Australian English

The question of whether or not grammatical factors can condition or block sound change has been discussed from many perspectives for more than a century without resolution (Melchert, 1975). Here we consider studies of sound change in progress which show that words or phrases that are used frequently in the phonetic environment for change undergo the change before those whose use is less frequent in these contexts. Because words of different categories and with different structures also have different distributions, they may occur preferentially in certain phonetic environments. Thus, some apparent cases of influence by grammatical and lexical factors can be explained by phonetic factors if we expand our notion ofphonetic environmentto include frequency within the environment for change, which includes the segmental environment as well as factors that affect the degree of prominence a word receives in context.

Previous studies on Cantonese tone merging have examined monosyllabic materials so far, yet disyllabic words are common in daily conversation. Sound change often originates from a pool of synchronic variations, and coarticulation from neighbouring units is a common source. The current study examined how tonal coarticulation in disyllabic words contributes to Cantonese tone merging by examining both monosyllabic and disyllabic data from 17 merging speakers and 2 reference speakers. Materials with well-controlled tonal context for the target tones appearing as the first and the second syllables in disyllabic words were used. Results showed that tonal coarticulation and tone merging coexist, with carryover coarticulation in extreme tonal contexts being the most vulnerable condition for change. Large amounts of individual variation were observed, both in terms of cross- and within-speaker variations which could blur the difference between merging and non-merging speakers. The disyllabic data reveal both the independence and interaction of coarticulation and sound change, and allow us to consider various factors in sound change from a wider perspective at the suprasegmental level.

The analysis of Old Romance geographical names in early South Slavic confirms that the majority of late Proto-Slavic sound changes were still operative in the period of the earliest Old Romance-Slavic language contacts in the Balkan Peninsula and eastern Alps from the second half of the 6th century and the beginning of the 7th century onwards. Phonetic substitutions of the type Rom. *kE, *gE → Sl. *c, *ʒ (Balk. Rom. *Kersu → Sl. *Cersъ, Balk. Rom. *Gīla → Sl. *Ʒiĺa) and Rom. *auC → Sl. *ovC (Balk. Rom. *Laurentiu > *Laurenču → Sl. *Lovręčь) point to the fact that the first palatalization of velars as well as the monophthongization of the inherited diphthongs were no longer among the ongoing processes. All other late Proto-Slavic sound changes were either still operative or only took place after the borrowing. This is confirmed by the relative chronology of the following set of Romance-Slavic correspondences: simplification of consonant clusters: Rom. *ps → Sl. *s (Balk. Rom. *Apsaru → Sl. *Osorъ), development of prothetic consonants: Rom. *ū- → Sl. *uū- > *vy- (Alp. Rom. *Ūdẹnu → Sl. *(V)ydьnъ), simplification of j-clusters: Rom. *Ci → Sl. *Cʹ (Balk. Rom. *Arsia → Sl. *Orša), delabialization of *o after *r: Rom. *ro → Sl. *ry > *ri (Rom. *Roma → Sl. *Rymъ > *Rimъ), second regressive palatalization of velars (see above Sl. *Cersъ, *Ʒiĺa), rise of nasal vowels: Rom. *ENC, *ONC → Sl. *ęC, *ǫC (Balk. Rom. *Parentiu > *Parenču → Sl. *Poręčь, Balk. Rom. *Karantānu → Sl. *Korǫtanъ), progressive palatalization of velars: Rom. *Ek, *Eg → Sl. *c, *ʒ (Balk. Rom. *Longātẹku → Sl. *Lǫgatьcь), delabialization of *ū1 > *y: Rom. *ū/*o → Sl. *y (Balk. Rom. *Allūviu → Sl. *Olybъ), labialization of *a > *o: Rom. *a → Sl. *o (Balk. Rom. *Kapra → Sl. *Koprъ), vowel reduction of *i, *u > *ь, *ъ: Rom. *ẹ, *ọ → Sl. *ь, *ъ (Balk. Rom. *Kọrẹku → Sl. *Kъrьkъ, Balk. Rom. *Tọrre → Sl. *Tъrъ).

Abstract: Ende is a Central Flores (Austronesian) language of eastern Indonesia which features a contrast between vowel-initial words and words that begin with an underlying glottal stop. The contrast is realized by the insertion of an epenthetic [ɦ-] before vowel-initial words in phrase-initial position. Comparison with the other Central Flores languages shows that the epenthetic Ende [ɦ-] is the regular outcome of what was once a *kl- consonant cluster in Proto-Central Flores. I propose that *kl- clusters underwent a series of sound changes resulting in a segment pronounced [ɦ-], which was reanalyzed as an epenthetic phrase boundary marker instead of a fricative phoneme. The presence and development of epenthetic breathiness in nearby languages such as Keo, Ngadha, Palu'e, Sika, and Kedang will be discussed as well.