In
historical linguistics
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include:
# to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
# ...
, transphonologization (also known as rephonologization or cheshirization, see
below
Below may refer to:
*Earth
*Ground (disambiguation)
*Soil
*Floor
*Bottom (disambiguation)
Bottom may refer to:
Anatomy and sex
* Bottom (BDSM), the partner in a BDSM who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or ...
) is a type of
sound change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
whereby a
phonemic contrast that used to involve a certain
feature X evolves in such a way that the contrast is preserved, yet becomes associated with a different feature Y.
For example, a language contrasting two words * vs. * may evolve historically so that final
consonants are dropped, yet the modern language preserves the contrast through the nature of the
vowel, as in a pair vs. . Such a situation would be described by saying that a former contrast between
oral and
nasal
Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination:
* With reference to the human nose:
** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery
** ...
consonants has been ''transphonologized'' into a contrast between
oral vs.
nasal
Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination:
* With reference to the human nose:
** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery
** ...
vowels.
The term ''transphonologization'' was coined by
André-Georges Haudricourt. The concept was defined and amply illustrated by Hagège & Haudricourt; it has been mentioned by several followers of
Panchronic phonology, and beyond.
Transphonologization resulting in a new contrast on vowels
Umlaut
A common example of transphonologization is
Germanic umlaut
The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to (raising) when the following syllable conta ...
.
;Germanic
In many
Germanic languages around 500–700 AD, a sound change fronted a back vowel when an or followed in the next syllable. Typically, the or was then lost, leading to a situation where a trace of the original or remains in the fronted quality of the preceding vowel. Alternatively, a distinction formerly expressed through the presence or absence of an or suffix was then re-expressed as a distinction between a front or back vowel.
As a specific instance of this, in prehistoric
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, a certain class of nouns was marked by an suffix in the (nominative) plural, but had no suffix in the (nominative) singular. A word like "mouse", for example, had a plural "mice". After umlaut, the plural became pronounced , where the long back vowel was fronted, producing a new subphonemic front-rounded vowel , which serves as a secondary indicator of plurality. Subsequent loss of final , however, made a
phoneme and the primary indicator of plurality, leading to a distinction between "mouse" and "mice". In this case, the lost sound left a trace in the presence of ; or equivalently, the distinction between singular and plural, formerly expressed through a suffix , has been re-expressed using a different feature, namely the front-back distinction of the main vowel. This distinction survives in the modern forms "mouse" and "mice" , although the specifics have been modified by the
Great Vowel Shift.
;Outside Germanic
Similar phenomena have been described in languages outside Germanic.
* Seventeen
Austronesian
Austronesian may refer to:
*The Austronesian languages
*The historical Austronesian peoples
The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, M ...
languages of northern Vanuatu have gone through a process whereby former *CVCV
disyllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
s lost their final vowel, yet preserved their contrast through the creation of new vowels: e.g.
Proto-Oceanic
Proto-Oceanic (abbr. ''POc'') is a proto-language that historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Oceanic is a descendant ...
*paRi "stingray" and *paRu "hibiscus" transphonologized to and in
Mwesen. This resulted in the expansion of vowel inventories in the region, from an original five-vowel system (*a *e *i *o *u) to inventories ranging from 7 to 16 vowels (depending on the language).
Nasalization of vowels
* In French, a final sound disappeared, but left its trace in the
nasalization of the
preceding vowel, as in ''vin blanc'' , from historical .
* In many languages (
Sino-Tibetan
Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...
,
Austroasiatic,
Oceanic,
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
* Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Fo ...
…), a vowel was nasalized by the nasal consonant preceding it: this "historical transfer of nasality between consonantal onset and vowel" is a case of transphonologization.
Compensatory lengthening
* In
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
, the words ''rider'' and ''writer'' are pronounced with a instead of and as a result of
flapping. The distinction between the two words can, however, be preserved by (or transferred to) the length of the vowel (or in this case, diphthong), as vowels are pronounced longer before voiced consonants than before voiceless consonants.
Before disappearing, a sound may trigger or prevent some phonetic change in its vicinity that would not otherwise have occurred, and which may remain long afterward. For example:
* In the
English word ''night, '' the sound (spelled ''gh'') disappeared, but before, or perhaps as it did so (see "
compensatory lengthening"), it lengthened the vowel , so that the word is pronounced "nite" rather than the "nit" that would otherwise be expected for a
closed syllable.
Tone languages
*The existence of
contrastive tone in modern languages often originates in transphonologization of earlier contrasts between consonants: e.g. a former contrast of consonant voicing (* vs. *) transphonologizes to a tonal contrast (* vs. *)
* The
tone split
The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area is a sprachbund including languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Kra–Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic families spoken in an area stretching from Thailand to China. Neighbou ...
of
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
, where the
voiced consonants present in
Middle Chinese lowered the
tone of a syllable and subsequently lost their voicing in many varieties.
*
Floating tone
A floating tone is a morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains neither consonants nor vowels, but only tone. It cannot be pronounced by itself but affects the tones of neighboring morphemes.
An example occurs in Bambara, a Mande language o ...
s are generally the remains of entire disappeared syllables.
Transphonologization resulting in a new contrast on consonants
*
Consonant mutation in
Celtic languages (a lost vowel triggered initial consonant
lenition, and a lost nasal triggered nasalization).
* In
Sanskrit, voiced sibilants *z and *ž of the
Proto-Indo-Iranian
Proto-Indo-Iranian, also Proto-Indo-Iranic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian/Indo-Iranic branch of Indo-European. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium B ...
language were deleted, which lengthened the preceding vowel. Additionally, the elision of the sound *ž resulted in the following voiced dental consonant to become retroflexed, as seen in the development of
Proto-Indo-European ''*nizdós'' ("nest") -->
Proto-Indo-Iranian
Proto-Indo-Iranian, also Proto-Indo-Iranic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian/Indo-Iranic branch of Indo-European. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium B ...
''*niždás'' -->
Sanskrit ''nīḍáḥ''. In case of a plain *z, the preceding vowel was lengthened without causing the retroflexion of the following consonant as seen in
Proto-Indo-European ''*sízdeti'' ("sits down") -->
Proto-Indo-Iranian
Proto-Indo-Iranian, also Proto-Indo-Iranic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian/Indo-Iranic branch of Indo-European. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium B ...
''*sízdati'' -->
Sanskrit ''sī́dati''.
Other examples
* The prevention of sound change by a lost consonant in
Lahu;
* In
Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also ...
and some other
Uralic languages, when case endings are elided, the changed root indicates the presence of the case, see
consonant gradation.
Other names
Rephonologization was a term used by
Roman Jakobson (1931
972 to refer to essentially the same process but failed to catch on because of its ambiguity. In a 1994 paper,
Norman
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Norm ...
(1994) used it again in the context of a proposed
Old Chinese sound change that transferred a distinction formerly expressed through putative
pharyngealization
Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound.
IPA symbols
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicated ...
of the initial consonant of a syllable to one expressed through presence or absence of a palatal glide before the main vowel of the syllable. However, ''rephonologization'' is occasionally used with another meaning, referring to changes such as the
Germanic sound shift
Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Gri ...
or the Slavic change from to , where the phonological relationships among sounds change but the number of phonemes stays the same. That can be viewed as a special case of the broader process being described here.
James Matisoff (1991:443) coined cheshirization as a synonym for transphonologization. The term jokingly refers to the
Cheshire Cat, a character in the book ''
Alice in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatur ...
'', who "vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone".
[ Lewis Carroll, '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'']
1866 edition
page 93
''Cheshirization'' has been used by some other authors (e.g.
John McWhorter in McWhorter 2005, and Hilary Chappell in Chappell 2006).
Notes
References
* Chappell, Hilary. 2006,
Language contact and areal diffusion in Sinitic languages" In ''Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance: problems in comparative linguistics''. Aleksandra Aikhenvald & Robert M. W. Dixon, eds. Oxford University Press, p. 344.
*
Dahl, Östen, 2004, ''The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity. '' John Benjamins, p. 170.
*
* .
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Matisoff, James, 1991, "Areal and universal dimensions of grammatization in Lahu." In ''Approaches to grammaticalization'', Traugott & Heine, eds. John Benjamins, pp. 383–453.
*
*
McWhorter, John H., 2005,
Defining Creole', Oxford University Press, pp. 12–13.
*
{{Wiktionary, transphonologization, cheshirization, rephonologization
Historical linguistics
Linguistic morphology
Neologisms
Phonology