Re: sound change

On Sun, 6 May 2001 22:27:14 EDT, David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>
wrote:

>    I vote for often-used words being more prone to sound change.
It seems to me that it's not the frequency of use in itself, but rather
the use as clitic (or bordering with such: lack of phrasal stress), that
facilitates changes. Indeed, this use correlates with overall frequency.

Which raises a difficult question: as lack of (phrasal) stress is itself
a distinct phonetic position, maybe, all changes in clitics are actually
regular, but we never have enough examples to prove that?

Other categories where irregularities are common are: 1) descriptive (or
'false' descriptive) words; 2) inflectional morphemes; 3) borrowings.

Terms whose pronunciation is influenced by traditional spelling can be
viewed as a specific category of interdialectal loans (borrowings from
a sociolect).

A propos de dialectisms: there are certain categories more frequently
borrowed (e. g. words often used in trade, like numerals); they are often
difficult to distinguish from other types of irregularities, and may be
more innovative or more conservative than the normal inherited words.

>It
>certainly explains the irregular German, Spanish and English verbs and some
>of the irregular root changes in Arabic.  [...]
What do you mean specifically in Arabic? (Just curious; the literary Arabic
seems rather regular to me, phonetically).


Basilius