A sound change, 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
# ...
, is a
change
Change or Changing may refer to:
Alteration
* Impermanence, a difference in a state of affairs at different points in time
* Menopause, also referred to as "the change", the permanent cessation of the menstrual period
* Metamorphosis, or change, ...
in the
pronunciation
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...
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 change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (
phonological change
In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones ...
), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some
sound environments, and not others.
The term "sound change" refers to
diachronic
Synchrony and diachrony are two complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis. A ''synchronic'' approach (from grc, συν- "together" and "time") considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. Synchronic l ...
changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, "
alternation" refers to changes that happen
synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's
underlying system (for example, the ''-s'' in the
English plural
English nouns are inflected for grammatical number, meaning that, if they are of the countable type, they generally have different forms for singular and plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plural nouns are formed ...
can be pronounced differently depending on the preceding sound, as in ''bet''
''bed''
which is a form of alternation, rather than sound change). Since "sound change" can refer to the historical introduction of an alternation (such as postvocalic /k/ in the
Tuscan dialect
Tuscan ( it, dialetto toscano ; it, vernacolo, label=locally) is a set of Italo-Dalmatian varieties of Romance mainly spoken in Tuscany, Italy.
Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine dialect, and it became the lan ...
, which was once
as in ''di''
'arlo'' 'of Carlo' but is now
''di''
'arlo'' and alternates with
in other positions: ''con''
'arlo'' 'with Carlo'), that label is inherently imprecise and must often be clarified as referring to either phonemic change or restructuring.
Research on sound change is usually conducted under 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 like the meaning of the words that are affected. Apparent exceptions to regular change can occur because of dialect borrowing, grammatical analogy, or other causes known and unknown, and some changes are described as "sporadic" and so they affect only one or a few particular words, without any apparent regularity.
The
Neogrammarian
The Neogrammarians (German: ''Junggrammatiker'', 'young grammarians') were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change ...
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 that are named after their authors like
Grimm's Law
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 Grim ...
,
Grassmann's Law etc.
''Et Cetera'' ( or (proscribed) , ), abbreviated to ''etc.'', ''etc'', ''et cet.'', ''&c.'' or ''&c'' is a Latin expression that is used in English to mean "and other similar things", or "and so forth". Translated literally from Latin, means 'an ...
Real-world sound changes often admit exceptions, but the expectation of their regularity or absence of exceptions is of great
heuristic
A heuristic (; ), or heuristic technique, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, ...
value by allowing historical linguists to define the notion of ''regular correspondence'' by the
comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
.
Each sound change is limited in space and time and so it functions in a limited area (within certain
dialects
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
) and for a limited period of time. For those and other reasons, the term "sound law" has been criticized for implying a universality that is unrealistic for sound change.
A sound change that affects the phonological system or the number or the distribution of its
phonemes
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
is a
phonological change
In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones ...
.
Principles
The following statements are used as heuristics in formulating sound changes as understood within the
Neogrammarian
The Neogrammarians (German: ''Junggrammatiker'', 'young grammarians') were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change ...
model. However, for modern linguistics, they are not taken as inviolable rules but 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 (features X and Y merge as Y), a new one cannot affect only an original X.
Sound change ignores grammar: a sound change can have only phonological constraints, like X > Z in
unstressed syllables. For example, it cannot only affect
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
s. 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
In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, str ...
clues. Also, sound changes may be
regularized in inflectional paradigms (such as verbal inflection), in which case the change is no longer
phonological
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
but
morphological in nature.
[See Hill, Nathan W. (2014)]
Grammatically conditioned sound change
' ''Language and Linguistics Compass,'' 8 (6). pp. 211-229.
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, because of
analogy
Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject ( ...
and other regularization processes, another sound change, or an unrecognized conditioning factor. That is the traditional view expressed by the Neogrammarians. In past decades, however, it has been shown that sound change does not necessarily affect all possible words. However, when a sound change is initiated, it often eventually expands to the whole
lexicon
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...
. For example, the
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
fronting of the
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
(
voiced velar stop
The voiced velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages.
Some languages have the voiced pre-velar plosive, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototyp ...
) before
e ɛseems to have reached every possible word. 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 Lexical diffusion is the hypothesis that a sound change is an abrupt change that spreads gradually across the words in a language to which it is applicable.
It contrasts with the Neogrammarian view that a sound change results from phonetically-condi ...
.
Sound change is inevitable: All languages vary from place to place and time to time, and neither writing nor media prevents that change.
Formal notation
A statement of the form
::A > B
is to be read, "Sound A changes into (or is replaced by, is reflected as, etc) sound B". Therefore, A belongs to an older stage of the language in question, and B belongs to a more recent stage. The symbol ">" can be reversed, B < A, which also means that the (more recent) B derives from the (older) A":
::POc. *t > Rot. f
:means that "
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 ...
(POc.) *t is reflected as in the
Rotuman (Rot.)".
The two sides of such a statement indicate only the start and the end of the change, but additional intermediate stages may have occurred. The example above is actually a compressed account of a ''sequence'' of changes: * first changed to (like the initial consonant of
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
''thin''), which has since yielded and can be represented more fully:
:: t > > f
Unless a change operates unconditionally (in all environments), the context in which it applies must be specified:
::A > B /X__Y
:= "A changes to B when it is preceded by X and followed by Y."
For example:
::It. b > v /
owel
OWEL is an alternative indie rock band formed in Woodbridge, NJ in late 2012. The band currently consists of Jay Sakong (lead vocal, guitar, keys), Nunzio Moudatsos (bass, vocals), Seamus O'Connor (guitar, keys, vocals), Jane Park (violin, viola ...
_
owel
OWEL is an alternative indie rock band formed in Woodbridge, NJ in late 2012. The band currently consists of Jay Sakong (lead vocal, guitar, keys), Nunzio Moudatsos (bass, vocals), Seamus O'Connor (guitar, keys, vocals), Jane Park (violin, viola ...
which can be simplified to just
::It. b > v /V__V (in which the V stands for any vowel)
:= "Intervocalic
(inherited from
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
) became
in
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
" (such as in ''caballum, dēbet'' > ''cavallo'' 'horse', ''deve'' 'owe (3rd pers. sing.)'
Here is a second example:
::PIr.
minus;cont−voi] >
cont
The Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT) is a committee of the European Parliament. with 30 permanent members. It can be seen as the European Union's internal "political watchdog", seeking to identify undesirable developments within EU institutio ...
__
+cont]
:= "A preconsonantal voiceless non-continuant (voiceless stop) changed into corresponding a voiceless continuant (
fricative consonant, fricative) in
Proto-Iranian
Proto-Iranian or Proto-Iranic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Iranian languages branch of Indo-European language family and thus the ancestor of the Iranian languages such as Pashto, Persian, Sogdian, Zazaki, Ossetian, Mazandarani ...
(PIr.)" when it was immediately followed by a continuant consonant (a
resonant
Resonance describes the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of an applied periodic force (or a Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts. When an oscillatin ...
or a fricative):
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 ...
*''pra'' 'forth' >
Avestan
Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...
''fra''; *''trayas'' "three" (masc. nom. pl.)> Av. ''θrayō''; *''čatwāras'' "four" (masc. nom. pl.) > Av. ''čaθwārō''; *''pśaws'' "of a cow" (nom. *''paśu'') > Av. ''fšāoš'' (nom. ''pasu''). Note that the fricativization did not occur before stops and so *''sapta'' "seven" > Av. ''hapta''. (However, in the variety of
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
that led to
Old Persian
Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native ...
, fricativization occurred in all clusters: Old Persian ''hafta'' "seven".)
The symbol "#" stands for a word boundary (initial or final) and so the notation "/__#" means "word-finally", and "/#__" means "word-initially":
::Gk.
top
A spinning top, or simply a top, is a toy with a squat body and a sharp point at the bottom, designed to be spun on its vertical axis, balancing on the tip due to the gyroscopic effect.
Once set in motion, a top will usually wobble for a few ...
> ∅ /__#
:= "Word-final stops were deleted in
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
(''Gk.'')".
That can be simplified to
::Gk. P > ∅ / __#
in which P stands for any
plosive
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
.
Terms for changes in pronunciation
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
# ...
, a number of traditional terms designate types of phonetic change, either by nature or result. A number of such types are often (or usually) 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
In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones ...
''.
*
Assimilation: One sound becomes more like another, or (much more rarely) 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 (e.g. in ''connūbium,'' ''m- + n'' becomes ''-nn-'' rather than ''-mm-''). Assimilation between contiguous segments are (
diachronically speaking) exceptionless sound laws rather than sporadic, isolated changes.
*
Dissimilation
In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less similar. In English, dissimilation is particularly common with liquid consonants such as /r/ and ...
: The opposite of assimilation. One sound becomes less like another, or (much more rarely) two sounds become less like each other. Examples: Classical Latin ''quīnque'' "five" > Vulgar Latin *''kinkʷe'' (whence French ''cinq'', Italian ''cinque'', etc.);
Old Spanish
Old Spanish, also known as Old Castilian ( es, castellano antiguo; osp, romance castellano ), or Medieval Spanish ( es, español medieval), was originally a dialect of Vulgar Latin spoken in the former provinces of the Roman Empire that provided ...
''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 (in Sanskrit and Greek) 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
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...
*hs to (spelled ''x'') in English would count as a regular sound law: PGmc. *''sehs'' "six" >
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 ...
''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 (of a cathedral)", "
tittle
A tittle or superscript dot is a small distinguishing mark, such as a diacritic in the form of a dot on a letter (for example, lowercase ''i'' or ''j''). The tittle is an integral part of the glyph of ''i'' and ''j'', but diacritic dots can ap ...
" > Spanish ''cabildo, tilde''. Metathesis can take place between non-contiguous segments, as Greek ''amélgō'' "I milk" > Modern Greek ''armégō.''
*
Lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonority hierarchy, sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronic analysis, s ...
, softening of a consonant, e.g.
stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
to
affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
or
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
; and its
antonym
In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. For example, something that is ''long'' entails that it is not ''short''. It is referred to as a 'binary' relationship because there are two members ...
fortition
Fortition, also known as strengthening, is a consonantal change that increases the degree of stricture. It is the opposite of the more common lenition. For example, a fricative or an approximant may become a stop (i.e. becomes or becomes ). Al ...
, hardening of a consonant.
*
Tonogenesis
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
: Syllables come to have distinctive
pitch contour
__NOTOC__
In linguistics, speech synthesis, and music, the pitch contour of a sound is a function or curve that tracks the perceived pitch of the sound over time. Pitch contour may include multiple sounds utilizing many pitches, and can relate t ...
s.
*
Sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
: conditioned changes that take place at word-boundaries but not elsewhere. It can be
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
-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 (including the of ''and'' when the is elided) 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
Haplology (from Ancient Greek, Greek "simple" and , "speech") is, in spoken language, the elision (elimination or deletion) of an entire syllable through dissimilation (a differentiating shift that affects two neighboring similar sounds). The ...
: The loss of a syllable when an adjacent syllable is similar or (rarely) 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
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
,
aphaeresis,
syncope, and
apocope
In phonology, apocope () is the loss (elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word.
Etymology
''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", from ...
: 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 orthography, many words feature a silent (single, final, non-syllabic ‘e’), most commonly at the end of a word or morpheme. Typically it represents a vowel sound that was formerly pronounced, but became silent in late Middle En ...
. In English and were apocopated in final position after nasals: ''lamb, long'' .
*
Epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable ('' prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epenth ...
(also known as anaptyxis): 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'' (земля). 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'' (so ''speculum'' "mirror" < *''speḱtlom'', ''pōculum'' "drinking cup" < *''poH
3-tlom''). 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
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
In the Internationa ...
: Vowels followed by nasal consonants can become nasalized. If the nasal consonant is lost but the vowel retains its nasalized pronunciation, nasalization becomes
phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
, that is, distinctive. Example: French "-in" words used to be pronounced , but are now pronounced , and the is no longer pronounced (except in cases of
liaison
Liaison means communication between two or more groups, or co-operation or working together.
Liaison or liaisons may refer to:
General usage
* Affair, an unfaithful sexual relationship
* Collaboration
* Co-operation
Arts and entertainment
* Li ...
).
Examples of specific sound changes in various languages
*
Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law
In historical linguistics, the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law (also called the Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic nasal spirant law) is a description of a phonological development that occurred in the Ingvaeonic dialects of the West Germanic lan ...
*
Canaanite shift
In historical linguistics, the Canaanite shift is a vowel shift/sound change that took place in the Canaanite languages, Canaanite dialects, which belong to the Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic languages family. ...
*
Cot-caught merger
*
Dahl's law
Dahl's law (German: ''Das Dahlsche Gesetz'') is a sound rule in some of the Northeast Bantu languages that illustrates a case of voicing dissimilation. In the history of these languages, a voiceless stop, such as , became voiced () when immediatel ...
*
Grassmann's law
*
Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through ...
(English)
*
Grimm's law
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 Grim ...
*
High German consonant shift
In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development (sound change) that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases. It probably ...
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Kluge's law
Kluge's law is a controversial Proto-Germanic sound law formulated by Friedrich Kluge. It purports to explain the origin of the Proto-Germanic long consonants ''*kk'', ''*tt'', and ''*pp'' (Proto-Indo-European lacked a phonemic length distinction ...
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Phonetic change "f → h" in Spanish
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Ruki sound law
The ruki sound law, also known as the ruki rule or iurk rule, is a historical sound change that took place in the satem branches of the Indo-European language family, namely in Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian. According to this sound la ...
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Slavic palatalization
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Sound change in Japanese
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Umlaut
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Verner's law
Verner's law describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby consonants that would usually have been the voiceless fricatives , , , , , following an unstressed syllable, became the voiced fricatives , , , , . The law was ...
Notes
References
* Anttila, Raimo (1989). ''Historical and Comparative Linguistics''. John Benjamins.
* Campbell, Lyle (2004). ''Historical Linguistics: An Introduction''. The MIT Press.
* Hale, Mark (2007). ''Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method''. Oxford, Blackwell
* Hock, Hans Henrich (1991). ''Principles of Historical Linguistics''. Mouton De Gruyter.
* McDorman, Richard E. (1999). ''Labial Instability in Sound Change''. Organizational Knowledge Press.
* Morley, Rebecca (2019). ''Sound Structure and Sound Change: A Modeling Approach''. Berlin: Language Science Press. . . Open Access. http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/251
* Sihler, Andrew L. (2000). ''Language History: An Introduction''. John Benjamins.
{{Authority control
Historical linguistics
Phonology
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