Historical Linguistics Flashcards
Assimilation
- Increasing the efficiency of articulation through a simplification of articularatory movements
- Partial assimilation involving place or manner of articulation is very common, overtime can result in total assimilation
Palatalization
effect that front vowels in the palatal glide typically have on velar, alveolar, and dental stops, making their place of articulation more palatal
affrication
change in which palatized stops become affricates
Nasalization
nasalized in effect that a nasal consonant can have on an adjacent vowel
Umlaut
effect of our will or sometimes the glide in one syllable can have on the Bible of another syllable, usually proceeding one
Dissimilation
One segment is made less like another segment and its environment, is much less frequent than assimilation
Epenthesis
- Insertion of a consonant or vowel into a particular environment
- Results from the anticipation of an upcoming sound
- Serves as a bridge for the transition between the segments on either side
Epenthesis
•Vowel epenthesis Serves to break up a sequence of sounds that would otherwise be difficult to pronounce or even inconsistent with the phonotactic patterns of the language
Metathesis
•A change in the relative positioning of segments
Apocope
vowel deletion commonly involves a word final vowel
Syncope
deletion of a word internal vowel
Deletion
- A vowel and then unstressed syllable is particularly susceptible to deletion, especially when a nearby syllable is stressed
- Proceeded diachronically by vowel reduction
- Consonant deletion is also very common
- Word initial cluster [kn] was found in old and middle English
- Loss of word final consonants has played a major role in the evolution of modern French
Weakening
- Full vowel is reduced to a Schwa like vowel
* Vowel reduction and subsequent deletion occurred in middle English and early modern English
Consonant weakening
- Strongest to Weakest: voiceless stops - voiceless fricatives - voiced stops – voice fricatives – nasals – liquids – glides
- Geminates weaker to non-Geminates – Degemination
- We can and can ultimately result in the deletion of the consonant
- Subject in an intervocalic environment
Rhotacism
common, involves the change of [z] to [r]
Phonetic sounds change
creation of a new allophone in an already existing phoneme
Phonological split
allophones of the same phoneme come to contrast with each other due to the loss of the conditioning environment, with the result that one or more new phonemes are created
Mergers
- Two or more phonemes collapse into a single one, thereby reducing the number of phonemes in the language
- /thetha/ + /f/ become /f/
Shifts
- change in which a series of phonemes systematically modified so that their organization with respect to each other is altered
- Great vowel shift: beginning in the middle English. And continuing into the 18th century, the language underwent a series of modifications to its long vowels
Comparative method
procedure of reconstructing earlier forms on the basis of a comparison of later forms
Comparative reconstruction
- Systematic phonetic correspondences in the forms of two or more languages must point towards a common source in the vocabulary items of different languages
- Cognates: words that have descended from a common source
- Protolanguage: made up of proto-forms, which are written with the preceding*
Phonetic plausibility strategy
any changes deposited to account for differences between the Proto-forms and later forms must be phonetically plausible
Majority rules strategy
if no phonetically plausible change can account for the observed differences, then the segment found in the majority of cognates should be assumed
Reconstructing proto-Romance
- Proto forms = reconstructed forms
* Protolanguage = reconstructed language
