Historical Linguistics Flashcards
What are the 4 stages of english?
Old, Middle, Early Modern, Modern
What is regressive assimilation?
Loss of the nasal consonant
What is umlaut (aka vowel harmony)?
When the vowel in one syllable influences the vowel in another
What is it called when you lose a sound at the beginning of the word?
Apheresis
“cot” and “caught” used to sound different. What is the process of them becoming more phonologically similar called?
merging
consonant deletion and vowel insertion are examples of ___
articulatory simplification
____ reflects the preference of speakers for regular patterns over irregular ones
analogy
hamburger is an example of
reanalysis
When did the Great Vowel Shift occur?
Around 1500– during the time of the Black Plague
What are two methods of affix addition?
borrowing – taking an affix from another language
grammaticalization – taking a lexical item and weakening its lexical properties
What are two methods of affix deletion?
final consonant deletion
vowel deletion
The process of overgeneralizing particular rules in a language/dialect you don’t know very well is called
hypercorrection
sequential change involving place or manner articulation is called ___
partial assimilation
sequential change involving the effect of front vowels and [j] on velar, alveolar and dental stops is called ___
palatalization
palatalization is a kind of ___
assimilation
sequential change involving a nasal consonant and its adjacent vowel is called ___
nasalization
sequential change involving the vowel from one syllable and its effect on a vowel in another syllable is called ___
umlaut
the 4 types of assimilation are:
partial assimilation, palatalization, nasalization, umlaut
the process whereby one segment is made less like another segment in its environment is called __
dissimilation
the insertion of a consonant/vowel into a particular environment is called __
epenthesis
the change in relative positioning of segments is called __
metathesis
vowel deletion that involves a word-final vowel is called __
apocope
vowel deletion that involves a word-internal vowel is called
syncope
the step that precedes vowel deletion is called __
vowel reduction
what is a common example of consonant deletion in english?
many things starting with k – knee, knight, etc.
the weakening term that involves change of [z] to [r] is called ___
rhotacism
the term that involves changing a glide to an affricate is called ___
consonantal strengthening
what is the term for the phonological change of adding a phoneme?
splitting
what is the term for the phonological change of moving around the organization of phonemes in a word?
shifting
what is the term for a word’s meaning changing to become more positive?
amelioration
what is the term for a word’s meaning changing to become more positive?
pejoration
what is the term for a word’s meaning changing to become weaker?
weakening
what is the term for a word’s meaning changing to become more inclusive?
broadening
what is the term for a word’s meaning changing to become more exclusive?
narrowing