Post-nasal devoicing and the blurring process

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 689-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
GAŠPER BEGUŠ
Keyword(s):  
Sound Change ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Central Topic ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Phonological Typology ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Individual Accounts

This paper addresses one of the most contested issues in phonology: unnatural alternations. First, non-natural phonological processes are subdivided into unmotivated and unnatural. The central topic of the paper is an unnatural process: post-nasal devoicing (PND). I collect thirteen cases of PND and argue that in all reported cases, PND does not derive from a single unnatural sound change (as claimed in some individual accounts of the data), but rather from a combination of three sound changes, each of which is phonetically motivated. I present new evidence showing that the three stages are directly historically attested in the pre-history of Yaghnobi. Based on several discussed cases, I propose a new diachronic model for explaining unnatural phenomena called the Blurring Process and point to its advantages over competing approaches (hypercorrection, perceptual enhancement, and phonetic motivation). The Blurring Process establishes general diachronic conditions for unnatural synchronic processes and can be employed to explain unnatural processes beyond PND. Additionally, I provide a proof establishing the minimal sound changes required for an unmotivated/unnatural alternation to arise. The Blurring Process and Minimal Sound Change Requirement have implications for models of typology within the Channel Bias approach. This paper thus presents a first step toward the ultimate goal of quantifying the influences of Channel Bias on phonological typology.

Areal sound change and the distributional typology of affricate richness in Eurasia

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 562-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Nikolaev ◽  
Eitan Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Sound Change ◽  
European Area ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
Western Eurasia ◽  
Phonological Typology

Abstract This paper makes a contribution to phonological typology by investigating the distribution of affricate-rich languages in Eurasia. It shows that affricate-rich and affricate-dense languages cluster areally within Eurasia and have area-specific histories. In particular, the affricate-rich areas of western Eurasia – a ‘European’ area and a Caucasian area – are not the result of contact-induced sound changes or borrowing, while the two affricate-rich areas of eastern Eurasia – the Hindukush area and the Eastern Himalayan area – are the result of contact. Specifically, affricate-dense areas depend on the emergence of retroflex affricates. Moreover, languages outside these affricate-dense areas tend to lose retroflex affricates.

Diachronic effects of rhinoglottophilia, symmetries in sound change, and the curious case of Basque

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iván Igartua
Keyword(s):  
Sound Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The particular affinity linking glottality and nasality to each other, a connection which is grounded both on articulatory and acoustic bases, seems to be responsible for various phonetic phenomena in different languages. In sound changes associated to what has been termed rhinoglottophilia (Matisoff 1975), the two logically possible diachronic pathways show up: from glottality to secondary nasalization, on the one hand, and from nasality to secondary laryngealization, on the other. The innovations concerned can thus be considered symmetrical, a feature that is rarely found in sound change. This paper first reviews the evidence at our disposal for positing a class of replacive phonetic changes caused by rhinoglottophilia, and then argues for an explanation of the diachronic correspondence n > h in the history of the Basque language based on the (primarily acoustic) effects of this specific connection between glottality (more specifically, aspiration) and nasality.

Sound Change, Phonological Rules, and Articulatory Phonology

1994 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
April McMahon ◽  
Paul Foulkes
Keyword(s):  
Sound Change ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Articulatory Phonology ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Segmental Phonology ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Casual Speech ◽  
Lexical Phonology ◽  
Phonological Rules

Abstract. The gestural model of Articulatory Phonology currently being developed by Browman and Goldstein provides a new way of modelling both synchronic and diachronic phonetic processes as well as certain types of synchronic phonological rules. Although Browman and Goldstein place stringent restrictions on the model, ruling out categorical deletion and insertion of gestures, as well as gestural permutation not resulting from magnitude and timing changes, Articulatory Phonology can nonetheless provide enlightening accounts of various types of sound change, including historical developments which have previously been analysed as segmental insertions and deletions. The application of Articulatory Phonology to sound changes is beneficial in that it allows the formulation of a change to include some account of its motivation from the point of view of the speaker (or indeed, though less straightforwardly, the hearer). We aim to extend Browman and Goldstein's preliminary applications of their model to sound change, by demonstrating that changes which have been analysed as entirely separate developments in a traditional segmental phonology can be seen instead as part of an integrated complex of interrelated changes within Articulatory Phonology. Focussing on the development of non-rhotic varieties of English, we show that the sound changes producing present-day linking [r], which are typically given as three independent developments of Pre-[r] Breaking, Pre-Schwa Laxing, and /r/-Deletion, can be shown to be interdependent and analysed in an explanatory way using the gestural model. However, we argue that not all the synchronic phonological processes to which such sound changes give rise can be analysed in gestural terms, given the current restrictions on Articulatory Phonology. For instance, in present-day English varieties which exhibit intrusive as well as linking [r], and which seem to be best characterised by an [r]-Insertion analysis, synchronic addition of gestures must be permitted. Insertion processes of this sort may initially seem incompatible with Articulatory Phonology, but there is clear motivation to retain the gestural framework, given its ability to model many sound changes, casual speech processes and phonological rules using the same mechanisms. Consequently, we propose that, to account for English [r] and similar cases, the current constraints on Articulatory Phonology must be relaxed to a limited extent at some level of the grammar. We suggest that this might be achieved by integrating the gestural approach into a model of Lexical Phonology.

Shades of Things to Come

1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gordon ◽  
Peter Trudgill
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Early Evidence ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
To Come ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
New Zealanders

In Trudgill's 1983 follow-up of his 1968 urban dialect survey of Norwich, he showed that a labio-dental approximant pronunciation of /r/ which he had formerly dismissed as purely idiosyncratic, was actually early evidence of a sound change. Using this insight, the authors have taken present-day changes in New Zealand English and looked for evidence of them in an archive of recorded English spoken by New Zealanders born between the 1860s and 1890s. In this paper they demonstrate that early examples of present-day changes can be found in the speech of a few New Zealand speakers born as early as the 1860s, showing that some sound changes have their origins much further back than was ever realised. This new evidence raises the interesting question as to why some early variants should later develop into present-day features of New Zealand English and others disappear completely.

Old French declension

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Kihm
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Old French ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
French Language ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Plural Form ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
History Of

Old French noun inflection emerged and disappeared early in the history of the French language. A number or reasons are examined including the nature of sound changes occurring between Late Latin and Old French. Paradigm structure is another reason. The declensional paradigms of masculine nouns produced a mismatch between morphological and semantic defaults for the number and case features. This was because the non-default values of these features came to be expressed by a morphologically default, uninflected word-form, thus resulting in a system that was both weird in terms of the morphology-semantics interface and probably hard to acquire and to process. Repairing the mismatch entailed giving up declension in favour of a simple number contrast where the semantic non-defaultness of plurality matches the inflectedness of the plural form. Default considerations thus played the role of analogy in the Neogrammarian scenario of language change, restoring order where sound change had created chaos.

Nasal Elision and Universals: Evidence from Romance

1990 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Fagan
Keyword(s):  
Sound Change ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Structural Relationships ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
History Of

The postulation of diachronic universals derives from certain conclusions reached in the investigation of synchronic universals, i.e., that there are natural (universal) phonological subsystems in languages or dialects, and that there are natural (universal) structural relationships between the elements in these subsystems. In essence, a hypothesis about a particular diachronic universal is a claim that a shared natural state in various languages or dialects is the product of the same diachronic process (a sound change, series of linked sound changes, etc.). A counterproposal to this hypothesis would specify that there are multiple diachronic routes which can link two parallel states in the history of two or more innovating languages or dialects. If the latter view is correct, and I believe that it is, then the theory of diachronic universals will require refinement if it is to retain theoretical value.

Nikolay Sieber in the history of prerevolutionary Russian economic thought

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
L. D. Shirokorad
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Organic Synthesis ◽  
Marginal Utility ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Three Stages

This article shows how representatives of various theoretical currents in economics at different times in history interpreted the efforts of Nikolay Sieber in defending and developing Marxian economic theory and assessed his legacy and role in forming the Marxist school in Russian political economy. The article defines three stages in this process: publication of Sieber’s work dedicated to the analysis of the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital and criticism of it by Russian opponents of Marxian economic theory; assessment of Sieber’s work by the narodniks, “Legal Marxists”, Georgiy Plekhanov, and Vladimir Lenin; the decline in interest in Sieber in light of the growing tendency towards an “organic synthesis” of the theory of marginal utility and the Marxist social viewpoint.

Frontiers of Visibility

Transfers ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Torma
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
History Of ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Popular Images ◽  
Cinematic Technology

This article deals with the history of underwater film and the role that increased mobility plays in the exploration of nature. Drawing on research on the exploration of the ocean, it analyzes the production of popular images of the sea. The entry of humans into the depths of the oceans in the twentieth century did not revitalize myths of mermaids but rather retold oceanic myths in a modern fashion. Three stages stand out in this evolution of diving mobility. In the 1920s and 1930s, scenes of divers walking under water were the dominant motif. From the 1940s to the 1960s, use of autonomous diving equipment led to a modern incarnation of the “mermen“ myth. From the 1950s to the 1970s, cinematic technology was able to create visions of entire oceanic ecosystems. Underwater films contributed to the period of machine-age exploration in a very particular way: they made virtual voyages of the ocean possible and thus helped to shape the current understanding of the oceans as part of Planet Earth.

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