Re: Sound changes

Dear all,

the view that sound changes create irregularity and analogy creates
regularity is the standard view, though it's a little old-fashioned and
simplistic.

Sound change is a very complex subject, and sound changes cover a range of
types. Most changes have their origins in the phonetic-phonology interface,
and are subject to production effects (e.g. coarticulation, articulatory
reduction), or perceptual effects (e.g. dissimilation). In actual fact, as
language is transmitted indirectly via sound, an acoustic (re)analysis of
the signal is always an element, i.e. although changes may have an
articulatory origin (pehaps a case of reduction or assimilation licensed by
perceptual factors) perceptual factors dominate what gets reanalysed and
what does not. Changes may then be transmitted in accordance with prevailing
social factors.

There is major dispute over the role of lexical frequency in sound change,
and whether lexical diffusion (changes spreading word-by-word) is at all
relevant (and whether this is a kind of analogy). There are still lots of
unanswered questions here, but research is ongoing into things like paradigm
uniformity and frequency effects in perception and production (e.g. exemplar
theories).

The bottom line can perhaps be succinctly expressed by saying that the
changes themselves are never random and involve contextual factors, though
when a change applies in a particular language is unpredictable.

To get an idea of some of the more common sound changes, take a look at
books like

Campbell, Lyle. (1998). Historical Linguistics. Edinburgh Uni Press,
Crowley, Terry. (1992). An Intro to Historical Linguistics, Oxford Uni Press

Some discussion on the theoretical treatment of sound change can be found in

Joseph, Brian D., and Richard Janda (eds). (2003). The Handbook of
Historical Linguistics, Blackwells, Oxford.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Mark J. Jones
Department of Linguistics
University of Cambridge
http://kiri.ling.cam.ac.uk/mark
mjj13@cam.ac.uk