Commentary on Crowley

Chapter Two TYPES OF SOUND CHANGE

Commentary on Crowley

TWO PARAMETERSFORTITION / LENITIONUNIVERSAL 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 RevisitedConsider 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).

ReferenceSelkirk, Elizabeth (1984). "On the major

class features and syllable theory". In Aronoff, Mark & Oehrle, Richard, Language sound structure. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Universal Sonority ScaleIn 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 stops3 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-imak, s-ən-imet, c-ən-rito, d-əm-uley.Prefixation (mə-, nə-) mə-lie, mə-wakea, nə-maɂ, nə-luo, nə-ributPrefix V Del (m-, n-) m-onoaɂ, n-acap, n-acaw, m-adəaɂ.

Hole in the sonority scale account: no evidence of infixed p-, b- yielding 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-, b- licenses 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 ChangeBroadly ConsideredSounds (consonants & vowels) are subject

to:

Loss Addition Rearrangement Assimilation Dissimilation

LossAphaeresis Initial sound

disappearsApocope Final sound

disappearsSyncope Medial vowel

disappearsCluster Reduction CC > CHaplology Medial CV(C)

disappears

Loss

AdditionProthesis Initial sound addedParagoge Final sound addedExcrescence Medial sound

addedEpenthesis (Anayptyxis) CC > CVCVowel Breaking V > VV or VV

AdditionProthesis school > [iskul]Paragoge (rhymes with dog > doggy; ding-

pedagogy) dong > dinka-donkaExcrescence *emty > empty;

warmth > [warmpth]Epenthesis (Anayptyxis) film > filəmVowel Breaking mule > [miul] (myule);

Tuesday > [tiusday] (Tyuesday); both > [bəuƟ]

RearrangementUnpacking 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.)

RearrangementUnpacking Bislama: aksida > aksidoŋFusion Rejang: *tanda > tano

‘sign’Metathesis (rare) *brid > bird; *flutterby >

butterflySpoonerism "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 > xxRegressiveA 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, Arman has one nasal vowel, and Nawawi has all nasal vowels.

Regressive inconsistent > [ɪŋkənsɪstənt]

DissimilationPsycholinguistic test: Say

Peggy Babcock five times, and observe the result.

DissimilationGrassman’s Law

PIE *bho:dha > bo:dha ‘bid’ SanskritPIE *phewtho > pewtho ‘bid’ 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 ChangesAll 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- > m, n 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.”


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.


Rejang is a language with no consonant clusters. The fusion of *-mb- and *-nd- as “barred nasals”, becoming m and n respectively, resulted in a so-called unnatural syllable structure.jambu > [ja.məw] ‘guava fruit’*tanda > [ta.no] ‘sign’

Thus m and n cannot begin a word, but they can and must begin a syllable. The distribution follows “naturally” from the history.

HISTORY RULES !

LING 485/585Winter 2009

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Commentary on Crowley