Sound change Research Papers

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- by Anneke Neijt
- •
- 7
  Germanic linguistics, Linguistics, Dutch, Analogy

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- by Ruiqing Shen
- •
- 5
  Geolinguistics, Chinese Dialects, Sound change, Min Dialects

｢兒化｣是國語音系中的重要詞形音變，在音位與音節結構之建立中扮演重要的角色。本文採取動態的歷時性觀點加以描繪，試圖以普世音變規律捕捉北京世代間的兒化差異，並在北京近、遠郊的河北方言中探索兒化的過去與未來。　　對於北京近郊的保定、滿城、定興、定州、清苑、易縣、高碑店等縣市，本文分析兒尾與兒化的分布規律，發現兒化過程嚴格遵守前尾韻 (–i, –n) ＞開尾韻＞後尾韻 (–ŋ, –u)... more

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- by Chris Wen-chao Li
- •
- 6
  Sound change, Mandarin Chinese, Feature Geometry, Rhoticity

This paper examines individual differences in constraints on linguistic variation in light of Labov's (2007) proposal that adult change (diffusion) disrupts systems of constraints and Tamminga, MacKenzie, and Embick's (2016)... more

In production, word-initial voicing contrast of plosives in Tokyo Japanese is not robustly based on VOT, since young speakers tend to devoice previously voiced plosives. Meanwhile, speakers rely heavily on f0. The present study aims to... more

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- by Jiayin Gao
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- 3
  Japanese, Phonetics and Phonology, Sound change

This paper aims to describe pre-aspirated and post-aspirated stops in an endangered language, Scottish Gaelic. Our small-scale study investigates several acoustic parameters of Scottish Gaelic stop consonants designed to measure the... more

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- by Claire Nance
- •
- 11
  Acoustics, Languages and Linguistics, Celtic Studies, Phonetics

San Francisco English has been previously identified as distinct from Californian English, based on its maintenance of a low back vowel distinction [13]. Subsequent work has shown participation in the low back merger and other Californian... more

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- by Lauren Hall-Lew
- •
- 8
  Dialectology, Language Variation and Change, Sociophonetics, Vowels

This study investigates the participation in the California Vowel Shift by Korean Americans in Los Angeles. Five groups of subjects participated in a picture narrative task: first-, 1.5-, and second-generation Korean Americans,... more

This study investigates the participation in the California Vowel Shift by Korean Americans in Los Angeles. Five groups of subjects participated in a picture narrative task: first-, 1.5-, and second-generation Korean Americans, Anglo-Californians, and (non-immigrant) Korean late learners of English. Results showed a clear distinction between early vs. late bilinguals; while the first-generation Korean Americans and the late learners showed apparent signs of Korean influence, the 1.5-and the second-generation Korean Americans participated in most patterns of the California Vowel Shift. However, divergence from the Anglo-Californians was observed in early bilinguals' speech. Similar to the late bilinguals, the 1.5-generation speakers did not systematically distinguish prenasal and non-prenasal /ae/. The second-generation speakers demonstrated a split-/ae/ system, but it was less pronounced than for the Anglo-Californians. These findings suggest that age of arrival has a strong effect on immigrant minority speakers' participation in local sound change. In the case of the second-generation Korean Americans, certain patterns of the California Vowel Shift were even more pronounced than for the Anglo-Californians (i.e., / Languages 2020, 5, x; doi: FOR PEER REVIEW Abstract: This study investigates the participation in the California Vowel Shift by Korean Americans in Los Angeles. Five groups of subjects participated in a picture narrative task: first-, 1.5-, and second-generation Korean Americans, Anglo-Californians, and (non-immigrant) Korean late learners of English. Results showed a clear distinction between early vs. late bilinguals; while the first-generation Korean Americans and the late learners showed apparent signs of Korean influence, the 1.5-and the second-generation Korean Americans participated in most patterns of the California Vowel Shift. However, divergence from the Anglo-Californians was observed in early bilinguals' speech. Similar to the late bilinguals, the 1.5-generation speakers did not systematically distinguish prenasal and non-prenasal /ae/. The second-generation speakers demonstrated a split-/ae/ system, but it was less pronounced than for the Anglo-Californians. These findings suggest that age of arrival has a strong effect on immigrant minority speakers' participation in local sound change. In the case of the second-generation Korean Americans, certain patterns of the California Vowel Shift were even more pronounced than for the Anglo-Californians (i.e., /ɪ/-lowering, /ɑ/-/ɔ/ merger, /ʊ/-and /ʌ/-fronting). Moreover, the entire vowel space of the second-generation Korean Americans, especially female speakers, was more fronted than that of the Anglo-Californians. These findings suggest that second-generation Korean Americans may be in a more advanced stage of the California Vowel Shift than Anglo-Californians or the California Vowel Shift is on a different trajectory for these speakers. Possible explanations in relation to second-generation Korean Americans' intersecting gender, ethnic, and racial identities, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

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- by Ji Young Kim and +1
  Nicole Wong
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- 6
  Bilingualism, Sound change, Second Language Phonology, California Vowel Shift

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- by Andrea Hoa Pham
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- 5
  Gender Studies, Vietnamese Language, Gender and Language, Sound change

This paper entitled "The [l] Sound Changes in Wasei-Eigo" aimed to analyze the sound change [l] to [r] in Wasei-eigo. In sound change, there is dissimilation which used to reduce the number of shared phonetic features between two sounds.... more

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- by Rode Rossen and +1
  Fina Kamilah
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- 3
  Historical Linguistics, Sound change, Dissimilation

Video poster presentation with narration available here: https://youtu.be/_Ma7PfrSSn4 We present here a new unified model to explain the origins and evolution of tone and register in East and Southeast Asia, topics which have generally... more

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- by Ryan Gehrmann and +1
  Rikker Dockum
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- 12
  Historical Linguistics, Phonology, Phonetics, Sinitic Languages

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- by Aude Noiray
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- 20
  Acoustics, Phonology, Phonetics, Slavic Languages

The reduplicative systems of the ancient Indo-European languages are characterized by an unusual alternation in the shape of the reduplicant. The related languages Ancient Greek, Gothic, and Sanskrit share the property that root-initial... more

The reduplicative systems of the ancient Indo-European languages are characterized by an unusual alternation in the shape of the reduplicant. The related languages Ancient Greek, Gothic, and Sanskrit share the property that root-initial consonant clusters exhibit different reduplicant shapes, depending on their featural composition. Moreover, even though the core featural distinction largely overlaps across the languages, the actual patterns which instantiate that distinction are themselves distinct across the languages. For roots beginning in stop-sonorant clusters (TRVX– roots), each of these languages agrees in displaying a prefixal CV reduplicant, where the consonant corresponds to the root-initial stop: TV-TRVX–. These three languages likewise agree that roots beginning in sibilant-stop clusters (STVX– roots) show some pattern other than the one exhibited by TRVX– roots. However, each of the three languages exhibits a distinct alternative pattern: V-STVX– in the case of Ancient Greek, STV-STVX– in the case of Gothic, TV-STVX– in the case of Sanskrit. This dissertation provides an integrated synchronic and diachronic theoretical account of the morphophonological properties of verbal reduplication in the ancient Indo-European languages, with its central focus being to explain this core alternation between TRVX– roots and STVX– roots. Set within Base-Reduplicant Correspondence Theory, a framework for analyzing reduplication in Optimality Theory, the comprehensive synchronic analyses constructed in service of understanding this distinction and other interrelated distinctions allow us to probe complex theoretical questions regarding the constraints and constraint interactions involved in the determination of reduplicant shape. This dissertation seeks not only to develop in depth, consistent accounts of both the productive and marginal/archaic morphophonological aspects of reduplication in the Indo-European languages, it aims to understand the origins of these patterns—from a historical and comparative perspective, and from the perspective of morphophonological learning and grammar change — and attempts to motivate the conditions for the onset, development, and retention of the changes that result in the systems observed in the attested languages. As such, these analyses constitute a valuable set of case studies on complex systemic change in phonological grammars.

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- by Sam Zukoff
- •
- 12
  Historical Linguistics, Phonology, Phonetics, Morphology

This thesis examines language variation and change in a context of minority language revitali- sation. In particular, I concentrate on young fluent speakers of Scottish Gaelic, a minority language of Scotland that is currently undergoing... more

This thesis examines language variation and change in a context of minority language revitali- sation. In particular, I concentrate on young fluent speakers of Scottish Gaelic, a minority language of Scotland that is currently undergoing revitalisation. Data from three groups of speakers are presented: older speakers in the Isle of Lewis, a Gaelic heartland area in north-west Scotland; adolescent Gaelic-speakers in Lewis learning the language in immersion schooling; and adolescent Gaelic-speakers in immersion schooling in Glasgow, an urban centre where Gaelic has not traditionally been spoken as a widespread community language.

The sociolinguistic analysis examines potential language changes, explores patterns of linguistic variation, and uncovers the role that Gaelic plays in identity formation for each of the participants. In order to gain an insight into the role of Gaelic in different speakers’ lives, I report on ethnographic studies carried out in Lewis and in Glasgow. The phonetic analysis then explores patterns of variation in the production of laterals, vowels, and tone and intonation.
The results indicate large differences between the speech of older and adolescent speakers in Lewis, while differences between young speakers in Lewis and Glasgow suggest that Glasgow Gaelic is developing as a phonetically and socially distinct variety of the language. For example, older speakers in Lewis speak Gaelic as a partial tone language, unlike young people in Lewis and in Glasgow. Differences are also present between young people in Lewis and in Glasgow, such as in the acoustics of the vowel [ʉ], the production of the lateral system, and intonation patterns.

The developments detailed in this thesis are the result of a complex interaction between the internal sound structure of Gaelic, language contact with varieties of English, identity construction, and differing conceptions of the self. All of these factors are conditioned by the status of Gaelic as a minority endangered and revitalised language. In exploring these avenues, I advance an account of language variation and change and apply it to a context of minority language revitalisation.

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- by Claire Nance
- •
- 21
  Language revitalization, Contact Linguistics, Celtic Studies, Phonetics

The position of the so-called ‘Baltic’ languages Lithuanian, Latvian and Old Prussian within the Balto-Slavonic branch of Indo-European is still a matter of debate. Within Balto-Slavonic, the Slavonic sub-branch is clearly identifiable... more

Among Vietnamese dialects, Quảng Nam as a southern dialect, stands out for its rimal peculiarities. Many of these peculiarities are not reported in any Vietnamese dialects. However, some are recently found in small dialects of Hà Tĩnh... more

According to etymological dictionaries of Slavic languages there should not be any words of synesthetic sound symbolic origin (i.e. words with a direct linkage between their sound form and non-sound meaning) in these languages or their... more

The paper deals with two Germanic sound changes which are traditionally believed to postdate the disintegration of the Proto-Germanic parent language. The lengthening in several monosyllables, attested in West Germanic languages, is... more

Through comparison of Swadesh-200 word list cognates and the employment of lexicostatistics, accompanied by detailed cognate sound changes, the branching of some Uralic languages have been statistically determined. Assuming linear... more

The seemingly contradictory influences of r on neighboring sounds in the early Germanic languages have fueled controversy over r’s articulation in Proto-Germanic and later dialects. In this paper, we examine a number of these early... more

Eski Türkçe yaŋa ~ yaŋan ~ yagan “fil” kelimesinin etimolojisi üzerine yapılan bu çalışma, kelimenin 6. yüzyıl civarlarında Çinceden doğrudan ve yalnızca Genel Türkçeye *žaŋ olarak girdiğini ve +gA ile +gAn eklerini alarak Eski Türkçede... more

The handout from a presentation at "XII International Congress for Finno-Ugric Studies", University of Oulu, Aug 19, 2015

The discovery by Karl Verner in 1875 of the eponymous accent-conditioned sound law explaining apparent exceptions to Grimm’s Law in Germanic made a lasting impact on the discipline of historical linguistics, not only by providing decisive... more

Based on the relationship of phonetic components in Ancient Chinese Scripts, the purpose of this study was to find out the changing history of phonetic components and phonetics. The resources of Ancient Chinese Scripts included Oracle... more

Based on the relationship of phonetic components in Ancient Chinese Scripts, the purpose of this study was to find out the changing history of phonetic components and phonetics.

The resources of Ancient Chinese Scripts included Oracle bone script(Jia Gu Wen, 甲骨文), Chinese bronze inscriptions(Jin Wen, 金文), Bamboo and Silk scripts(Jian Buo Wen Zhi, 簡帛文字),and Ancient Seal(Xi In, 璽印). The study would analyzed those scripts by using ancient phonetic systems such as Wan Li(王力), Fang-Kuei Li(李方桂), Zhengzhang Shangfang(鄭張尚芳), and the reconstruction system of William H. Baxter(白一平)and Laurent Sagart(沙加爾).

In the development process of Chinese characters, Complexization(Fan Hua, 繁化) was to add new phonetic elements in original word. For example, “甫” transformed into “父”( ), and ”齒” put on ”止”to be” ”。

However, some of the non-phonetic words(Wu Sheng Zhi, 無聲字) or phono-semantic compounds (Xing Sheng Zhi, 形聲字) changed their phonetic components because of the changing phonetic. For instance, non-phonetic words” 華” was in intial Xiao(曉母) rhymes Yu(魚部). Yet its phonetic components “化” converted into “花”, which was in intial Xiao(曉母) rhymes Ge(歌部). Therefore, it appealed that syllable coda lenition (Uen Uei Rhuo Hua, 韻尾弱化) made rhymes Ge-al(-ar) more close to initial Yu rhymes Ma(麻韻).

On the other hand, phono-semantic compounds such as “聞” in Warring States period was composed by “耳” and phonetic component “昏”( ). Then it could also transformed the phonetic component into “門”( ). According to the development process of *hm> h, “昏” lost the phonetic ability, and then it was replaced by “門”. This case was an important evidence of ancient phonetic changing.

The research of ancient Chinese scripts and phonetic systems would improve the ancient phonetic constructions, in order to figure out the changing and division history of ancient phonetic.

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- by 濬豪楊
- •
- 3
  Paleontology, Sound change, Old Chinese

We examine the origin of labial-velar stops in Lingombe, a language from the northern Bantu borderland. Labial-velar stops are uncommon in Bantu. It is generally believed that they were acquired through contact with neighboring non-Bantu... more

Historical linguistics aims at describing and explaining diachronic developments. Well-established approaches to historical linguistics, such as the neo-grammarian paradigm, structuralism, generative grammar, and economy in language,... more

This paper presents and discusses regular correspondences between Uralic geminate items and Yukaghiric with proposed sound change laws and new and some modified older cognate suggestions (twenty-four nouns and eight verbs). Geminate items... more

In Kiranti languages, the presence of rich alternations in verbal paradigms make internal reconstruction possible, and allow a better understanding of the vowels and codas of the proto-language than is possible for other parts of speech.... more

This dissertation presents a preliminary reconstruction of the phonology and lexicon (268 items) of Proto-Central Naga (PCN), the putative ancestor of a group of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily in Nagaland, a state in northeast... more

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- by Daniel Bruhn
- •
- 8
  Languages and Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Phonology, Linguistics

It has been observed that pre-PIE *d sometimes turns into PIE *h₁, also referred to as the Kortlandt effect, but much is still unclear about the occurrence and nature of this change. In this thesis, I provide an elaborate discussion aimed... more

The origin and the meanings of the words <สยาม> and <ขอม> seem to be the most problematic in the fields of Archaeology, History, Philology, and Linguistics, since they cannot be defined with absolute certainty. The controversy originates... more

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- by Orçun Ünal
- •
- 42
  Historical Linguistics, Greek Language, Chinese Studies, Etymology

In this paper, Middle Proto-Yukaghir (i.e. Pre-PY) lexicon is reconstructed for the first time from Late Proto-Yukaghir (PY) roots using internal reconstruction techniques taking semantics, phonology and suffixation patterns into account.... more

This article studies diphthongization or vowel breaking in some Bantu languages. Diphthongization is a well-known phenomenon in the languages of the world but occurs only rarely in Bantu languages. Nevertheless, it is well attested in the... more

The reduplicative systems of the ancient Indo-European languages are characterized by an unusual alternation in the shape of the reduplicant. The related languages Ancient Greek, Gothic, and Sanskrit share the property that root-initial... more

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- by Sam Zukoff
- •
- 13
  History, Historical Linguistics, Phonology, Phonetics

The paper considers two typologically rare phonological phenomena related to the development of sound lengthening and reduction that appear in two dialects of the severely endangered Ingrian language in North-Western Russia. The first is... more

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- by Natalia Kuznetsova
- •
- 8
  Phonology, Phonetics, Typology, Acoustic Phonetics

This paper shows that Yukaghir underwent a regular sound change whereby all word-internal and -final w phonemes became j, probably in Early Proto-Yukaghir. After degemination had occurred, possibly in Middle Proto-Yukaghir, any j in an... more

(An unpublished paper from 2013 containing some opinions on the historical phonology of Turkic which I no longer entertain) The ambiguous verbal suffix -zU occurs only twice in the whole Old Turkic corpus. In the introduction, it is... more

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- by Orçun Ünal
- •
- 20
  Historical Linguistics, Mongolian Studies, Old Turkic, Türk Dili

This study describes and explains the paradox of related languages in contact that show signs of both linguistic divergence and convergence. Seventeen distinct languages are spoken in the northernmost islands of Vanuatu. These closely... more

In several studies on sound change, it has been suggested that change is not possible without allophonic variation; indeed, it appears to be the triggering factor in phonetic evolution. This paper examines the process of yeísmo in... more

The dialect of Meänkieli traditionally spoken in the village of Nattavaara in Jellivaara (Gällivare) municipality is arguably the most innovative of all Meänkieli varieties. Among the characteristic features of this dialect, there is a... more

U ovom se članku prikazuje cjelovit glasovni razvoj nekoličine novošto-kavskih riječi od njihovih praslavenskih likova do današnjih. Te se riječi obrađuju u natuknicama, koje su poredane po abecednom redu; u njima se navode pojedinačno i... more

In the first half of the 20th century following the Neogrammarian tradition, most researchers believed that sound change was always conditioned by phonetic phenomena and never by grammar. Beginning in the 1960s, proponents of the... more

When it comes to words for tea in the languages of the world, the common perception is that the vast majority can be traced to one of two sources [te] and [t ͡ ʃa], both of which come from the Chinese language. There is, however, a third... more

When it comes to words for tea in the languages of the world, the common perception is that the vast majority can be traced to one of two sources [te] and [t ͡ ʃa], both of which come from the Chinese language. There is, however, a third variant [t ͡ ʃai], of which much less is known, distributed over a large swath of territory stretching from Central Asia south to Persia and the Indian subcontinent, and west to the fringes of Eastern Europe. How exactly [t ͡ ʃa] became [t ͡ ʃai] is a mystery to most linguists (Chen 2011, p. 65). While some point to Persian origination (Driem 2019, p. 248), believing the term to be a truncation of the Persian expression čā-ye-khatāi "cha of Cathay", as documented by Venetian author Giovanni Battista Ramusio as early as 1559, the explanation fails to account for the much earlier spread of tea to Central Asia prior to its more recent popularity in Persia. This paper presents an alternative account, arguing that [t ͡ ʃai] arose as a result of Sino-Altaic language contact, and can be analysed as [t ͡ ʃa] plus a fossilized form of the Northern Chinese diminutive suffix 兒. This new analysis accounts for a number of hitherto unexplained coincidences: it explains why the [t ͡ ʃai] variant occurs only adjacent to regions speaking Northern Chinese, and is consistent with the observation that the diminutive suffix is more popular in populations of Altaic descent (Hashimoto 1986, p. 86; Zhao 1996, p. 117). Geographically, the overlap of the [t ͡ ʃai] region with the territory of the Mongol empire supports Laufer's (1919, p. 553) claim that it was "the Mongols who assumed the role of propagators". The fact that the 兒 suffix surfaces as [i] and not the earlier reflex [ɲʑi] or present day [ɚ] further limits the timing of this propagation to around the time of the Chinese Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) (Li 1986, p. 141). The stages of sound change and the areal distribution of lexical forms, together with mechanisms of language contact and sociolinguistic variation between ethnic populations combine to give us a more accurate picture of how and when [t ͡ ʃai] arose to become a variant of [t ͡ ʃa].

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- by Chris Wen-chao Li
- •
- 6
  Language contact, Tea, Sound change, Linguistic Reconstruction

Sound change

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