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Re: Sound Change Susceptibility

From:JS Bangs <jaspax@...>
Date:Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 20:42
H. S. Teoh sikyal:

> > In addition to frequency, there is also a hierarchy: /s/ will be learned > > before /f/, which will be learned before /T/, if I am remembering > > correctly - that was over ten years ago, after all. /m/ is one of the > > first sounds that a baby can pronounce (thus accounting for the > > frequency of [ma] as a component in the word for 'mother' in a lot of > > unrelated languages. > > Do you know where I would find more info about this hierarchy? It sounds > fascinating. (No pun intended.)
If you google for "phonology order of acquisition", you'll get a wide variety of papers touching on this phenomenon. Googling "phonology markedness hierarchy" gets others, which offer varying degrees of information. I wasn't able to find anything that listed exact orders of acquisition. However, I was reminded that such heirarchies are actually fairly controversial--different children acquire sounds in different orders, and the reasons and justifications for these things aren't always obvious. For general purposes, a broad markedness heirarchy is about like the following: In order from less marked -> more marked CONSONANTS Place of Articulation: Dental > Labial > Velar > Palatal, Uvular, Glottal > Pharyngeal, Interdental, Other Manner of Articulation: Stops > Fricatives Nasals > Liquids Nasals often contrast at fewer PoA's than stops. Voicing: Voiceless > Voiced, Aspirated > Other VOWELS Basic vowels: a > i > u Front unrounded > front rounded Back rounded > back unrounded High rounded > Low rounded Low central > high central
> > I would imagine that the sounds that are objectively more difficult to > > pronounce would tend to be more prone to change to something easier to > > pronounce, but there are plenty of examples of the opposite happening, so I > > could be completely wrong. > [snip]
This is mostly right. The problem is that there are multiple different ways that something can be "unmarked", and rules tend to push segments in different directions, ending up with things that are marked. It's a tricky game, sound change, but my favorite one :). -- Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/ http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog "We're counting on our virtues, Cause it's too hard to count the dead." - Jason Webley