Commentary on Crowley
Chapter Two
TYPES OF SOUND CHANGE
TWO PARAMETERS
 FORTITION / LENITION
 UNIVERSAL SONORITY SCALE
Crowley attempts to treat them as somehow related, as if
fortition/lenition can be derived from the Sonority Scale.
This approach has long been abandoned. It confuses
synchronic and diachronic principles, which Saussure warned
us about. Thus Crowley’s discussion of *p>f in this chapter
is incoherent, according to me. (Do you agree?)
Saussurean Conundrums Revisited
 Consider the common change *p > f. Crowley says it
exemplifies “lenition” on the one hand, while implying an
increase in sonority on the other. How to reconcile these
two statements?
 Do they refer to the speaker or the hearer?
 Do they refer to articulation or perception?
 Do they refer to universal (synchronic) principles or a
language-specific (historical) tendency?
According to Elizabeth Selkirk (1984)
 Fortition/Lenition is best considered as a language-specific
phenomenon. In North American English, for example, of
the set /p t k/, /t/ is by far the most subject to weakening
when before an unstressed vowel. Witness the American
pronunciation of /t/ as a flap in later, but normally no
weakening of /p/ in caper or of /k/ in faker).
Reference
Selkirk, Elizabeth (1984). "On the major class features and
syllable theory". In Aronoff, Mark & Oehrle, Richard,
Language sound structure. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Universal Sonority Scale
 In principle the SS is straightforward. It is a purely auditory
concept, and it is universal rather than language-specific. The
SS says that sounds can be arranged according to relative
sonority, or loudness.
 Thus /a/ is the loudest sound, and voiceless stops including
/ɂ/ are the least loud (nearest to silence).
Rejang Infixation: Selection of Allomorphs Follows the
Sonority Scale
(adapted from Blevins 1995, 2004:159)
HIGH
LOW
low V > mid V > high V > glides > liquids > nasals > fricatives > affricates > oral stops
3
2
1
The choices among the three allomorphs of ‘active’ (-əm- ~ m- ~ mə-) and
‘passive’ (-ən- ~ n- ~ nə-) are each governed by a continuous segment of the
Sonority Scale, and all other affixes are likewise accounted for.
Infixation (-əm-, -ən-)t-əm-im̅ak, s-ən-im̅et, c-ən-rito, d-əm-uley.
Prefixation (mə-, nə-) mə-lie, mə-wakea, nə-maɂ, nə-luo, nə-ribut
Prefix V Del (m-, n-) m-onoaɂ, n-acap, n-acaw, m-adəaɂ.
Hole in the sonority scale account: no evidence of infixed p-, byielding p-əm-... and b-əm-...
HIGH
LOW
low V > mid V > high V > glides > liquids > (nasals) > fricatives > affricates > oral stops
3
2
1
Infixation selects continuum 1 (c-əm-rito), with the following interesting
proviso: there is no evidence of a word (native or borrowed) where p-, blicenses an infix. Bases that begin with p- and b- are opaque to infixation; they
select simple prefixation, exactly like sonorant-initial bases and minimal words.
Thus e.g. mə- burəw is treated exactly like mə- liləy, except that mə-burəw
co-varies with murəw, thus foreshadowing emergent back-formation, yielding
synchronic free variation (məbaco ~ macəy).
(EP approach: Synchronic rules can ignore this whole issue because there is a
historical change explaining it.)
How to dominate the conversation with
linguistic terminology
 rhoticism: English was ~ were alternation reflects a change in
Germanic *s > z > r/V__V which occurred as part of
Verner’s Law.
Five Kinds of Phonological Change
Broadly Considered
Sounds (consonants & vowels) are subject to:
 Loss
 Addition
 Rearrangement
 Assimilation
 Dissimilation
Loss
 Aphaeresis
 Apocope
 Syncope
 Cluster Reduction
 Haplology
Initial sound disappears
Final sound disappears
Medial vowel disappears
CC > C
Medial CV(C) disappears
Loss
 Aphaeresis
 Apocope
 Syncope
 Cluster Reduction
 Haplology
Rejang: sudo ~ udo ‘already’
AAVE desk > des; hold > ___
Brit: secretary > secretary
often > often; Belawi tukat =
Matu-Daro tuŋkət
Worcestershire sauce >
(wooster or worstersher)
Addition
 Prothesis
 Paragoge
 Excrescence
 Epenthesis (Anayptyxis)
 Vowel Breaking
Initial sound added
Final sound added
Medial sound added
CC > CVC
V > VV̯ or V̯V
Addition
 Prothesis




school > [iskul]
Paragoge
(rhymes with
dog > doggy; dingpedagogy)
dong > dinka-donka
Excrescence
*emty > empty;
warmth > [warmpth]
Epenthesis (Anayptyxis)
film > filəm
Vowel Breaking
mule > [mi̯ul] (myule);
Tuesday > [ti̯usday] (Tyuesday);
both > [bəu̯Ɵ]
Rearrangement
 Unpacking Complex sound > two simpler sounds
 Fusion
Two simple sounds > one complex sound
 Metathesis (rare) Adjacent sounds exchange places
 Spoonerism Initial sounds of whole words exchange places.
(Not a type of sound change, fortunately.)
Rearrangement
 Unpacking
 Fusion
 Metathesis
(rare)
 Spoonerism
Bislama: aksidã > aksidoŋ
Rejang: *tanda > tan̅o ‘sign’
*brid > bird; *flutterby > butterfly
"Is it kisstomary to cuss the bride?
(customary to kiss)
Famous Spoonerisms
“Three cheers for our queer old dean!" (dear old queen,
referring to Queen Victoria) "The Lord is a shoving
leopard." (a loving shepherd) "A blushing crow." (crushing
blow) "A well-boiled icicle" (well-oiled bicycle) "You were
fighting a liar in the quadrangle." (lighting a fire) "Is the bean
dizzy?" (dean busy) "Someone is occupewing my pie. Please
sew me to another sheet." (occupying my pew...show me to
another seat) "You have hissed all my mystery lectures.You
have tasted a whole worm. Please leave Oxford on the next
town drain." (missed...history; wasted...term; down train).
Assimilation
 Progressive A sound following a phoneme assimilates a
feature from a preceding sound. (This is relatively rare.)
e.g. xy > xx
 Regressive A sound preceding a phoneme assimilates a
feature from a following sound. (This is ‘anticipatory’.)
e.g. xy > yy
Assimilation
 Progressive
In Indonesian, the name Amran has no
nasal vowels, Armãn has one nasal vowel, and Nãw̃ãw̃i ̃ has all
nasal vowels.
 Regressive
inconsistent > [ɪŋkənsɪstənt]
Dissimilation
 Psycholinguistic test: Say
Peggy Babcock
five times, and observe the result.
Dissimilation
Grassman’s Law
PIE *bho:dha > bo:dha ‘bid’
PIE *phewtho > pewtho ‘bid’
Sanskrit
Greek
Question: How would you describe Grassman’s Law?
“Unnatural” Sound Changes
 Spurious, resolved by discovery of (a chain of) intermediate
natural changes.
 Interesting, because they offer (counter-) evidence bearing
on hypotheses with respect to established universals.
“Unnatural” Sound Changes
 All natural: *t > w in Trukese looks unnatural at first. The
historical facts prove otherwise:
*t > Ɵ > f > v > w
 Interesting: Consider the Rejang change:
*-mb-, *-nd- > m̅, n̅ which occurred / V__V.
An “Interesting” Syllable Structure
The result was an “unnatural” syllable structure for Rejang,
given Donca Steriade’s implicational universal:
“If a sound cannot begin or end a word, it cannot begin or
end a syllable.”
An “Interesting” Syllable Structure
If a sound cannot begin or end a word, it cannot begin or end a syllable.
This universal applies pretty well to languages with medial
consonant clusters e.g. CVC1.C2VC. That is, if a sound
cannot begin a word it also cannot begin a syllable (= .C2).
But Rejang is a language with no consonant clusters.
An “Interesting” Syllable Structure
Rejang is a language with no consonant clusters. The fusion
of *-mb- and *-nd- as “barred nasals”, becoming m̅ and n̅
respectively, resulted in a so-called unnatural syllable
structure.
jambu > [ja.m̅əw]
‘guava fruit’
*tanda > [ta.n̅o]
‘sign’
Thus m̅ and n̅ cannot begin a word, but they can and must
begin a syllable. The distribution follows “naturally” from the
history.
HISTORY RULES !
LING 485/585
Winter 2009