Re: THEORY: sound change (was RE: Language revival)

Nik:
> And Rosta wrote:
> > Changes in phonetic realization of phonemes are regular. Changes in
> > phonemic incidence (=which phonemes occur in which words in which order)
> > are not inherently regular; they can progress word by word, driven
> > quite possibly by analogy, among other factors.
> >
> > So the regularity of sound change remains a fact, provided "sound
> > change" is taken in a restricted meaning of "phonetic change".
>
> Do you mean that changes in allophony are regular,
Yes. Such changes apply to the whole lexicon in one go.

> while changes in the phonemes of words may be irregular?
Such changes may proceed word-by-word. In addition, the
conditioning factors may change over time, making the change
potentially applicable to more or fewer forms than originally.

> If so, probably quite true, given a note that phonemic change is
> *usually* regular.
I don't know enough to say. And there are sufficiently many
complicating factors (such as the change in conditioning factors)
that it could be hard to say what counts as regular.

--And.