ch4, interaction of sound change and grammar Flashcards
why sound change is important?
sounds are used in morphemes, words and phrases, it is more that just changing pronunciation
effect of regularity of sound change
it happens within morphological paradigm, it is regular, some voices are being changed in an environment and some don’t.
example of sound change in old English
voiceless fricatives become voiced between sonorants. seofon = seven , heafig= heavy Lufian= love
how sound change works in morphological paradigm
some instances of a morpheme undergoes change and some do not. in some morphologically related words this sound change makes alternation: Wife = Wives
Definition of Alternation
in some instances, some variation of morphed undergo change because of sound change and some do not. Wife = wives Thiefe = Thieves. calf, house, bath, path, roof.
Alternation because of sound change: how is it related to phonology
it is not related to phonological conditioning because the phonological condition does not exist anymore. (the fricative is not intervocalic anymore)
what glasses and kissing show
sound change is not a phonologically productive condition anymore, the sound does not change in this word.
what happens after sound change is completed or Obsolete
the words does not with switch back to their previous conditions. the sound change becomes permanent effect in the words that underwent change while that change was happening.
alternation in inflectional paradigms
because change happenes in morphologically related words (singular- plural forms of a word)
variations in morphemes
allomorphs - alternation in the paradigm - derivationally affected: give - gift
Alternation can either have:
- phonetic conditioning when the sound change is still alive
- morphologic or lexical conditioning. (alternation happens in plural and nor possesive)
Lexical conditioning
not all similar words undergo alternation: Grass, Chief, Myth
you just know, irregularity
lexical conditioning of sound change
most common direction of change
from phonetic to morphology
which alternations always go together
lexical and morphological
what does it mean that being morphologised
when a alternation becomes part of a paradigm, it stands for the meaning that that form within the paradigm has. it becomes morphologized meaning that alternation that was ruled by phonology is associated morphologically.
why the direction from phonology to morphology
language is used to express meaning
changes that start for phonetic reason start to be associated with meanings.
derivational change example
shortening of the vowels in Middle English
derivational change example
ME vowel shortening. happens for the third syllable from the end, because this syllable is usually the affix. vowel shortening became associated with the affix. (crime, criminal, vain, vanity, sign, signify, )
how do we know that this change is morphologized?
because there are words that did not undergo these changes: obese: obesity , pirate: piracy
what do exceptions show?
the change is unproductive,
what show that a change became unproductive
exceptions and variaions
example of syntactic alternation
a, an, coming from ein: one
evidence of alternation syntactically
reanalysing nickname
what happens in nickname regarding direction
direction of morphologically conditiond alternation is opposite of the sound change. it is not like n is added, historically a deletion
inverted directionality
possesive, plural and past suffixes. synchronical analysis: adding vowel because it hs more restricted conditions. historically: the vowel was there, deletion of unstressed vowel happened.
what are exceptions
strong indicators that the result of language change is morphologized and the change is not active on phonetic basis.
example of exceptions that show morphological changes which stopped
borrowed words:
word that were borrowed before 14th century have undergone change. (voiced fricative between two vowels.) (geyser)
the words that are borrowed after 14th century have not handergone changes. (phonological conditions were the same) (fifer) (mathematics)
Neogrammarian Hyphothesis
sound change is blind to everything except phonetics. sound change is regular, applies to all the lexical items that have the same conditions regardless of lexical or grammatical factors. it means that there is no change that only happens in verbs or nouns, it also indicates that there should not be any exceptions.
What false Negrammarian Hypothese
language change targets more frequent word sooner than the other words.
is negrammarian right at the end
yes because at the end grammar or lexical categories are never the things that make change
