Principles of Sound Change
The following statements are used as heuristics in formulating sound changes as understood within the Neogrammarian model. However, for modern linguistics, they are not taken as inviolable rules; rather, they are seen as guidelines.
Sound change has no memory: Sound change does not discriminate between the sources of a sound. If a previous sound change causes X,Y > Y (features X and Y merge as Y), a new one cannot affect only an original X.
Sound change ignores grammar: A sound change can only have phonological constraints, like X > Z in unstressed syllables. For example, it cannot only affect adjectives. The only exception to this is that a sound change may or may not recognise word boundaries, even when they are not indicated by prosodic clues. Also, sound changes may be regularized in inflectional paradigms (such as verbal inflection), in which case the change is no longer phonological but morphological in nature.
Sound change is exceptionless: If a sound change can happen at a place, it will. It affects all sounds that meet the criteria for change. Apparent exceptions are possible, due to analogy and other regularization processes, or another sound change, or an unrecognized conditioning factor. This is the traditional view, expressed by the Neogrammarians. In past decades it has been shown that sound change doesn't necessarily affect all the words that in principle it could. However, when a sound change is initiated, it often expands to the whole lexicon given enough time, though not always. For example, in Spanish the fronting of the Vulgar Latin (voiced velar stop) before seems to have reached every possible word it could, but the change involving voicing of word-initial Latin to as in colaphus > golpe and cattus > gato did not, e.g. canna > caña. See also lexical diffusion.
Sound change is unstoppable: All languages vary from place to place and time to time, and neither writing nor media prevent this change.
Read more about this topic: Sound Laws
Famous quotes containing the words principles of, principles, sound and/or change:
“That, upon the whole, we may conclude that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“...at this stage in the advancement of women the best policy for them is not to talk much about the abstract principles of women’s rights but to do good work in any job they get, better work if possible than their male colleagues.”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)
“Al: Ain’t you gonna look back, Ma? Give the old place a last look?
Ma Joad: We’re goin’ to California, ain’t we? Alright then, let’s go to California.
Al: That don’t sound like you, Ma. You never was like that before.
Ma Joad: I never had my house pushed over before. Never had my family stuck out on the road. I never had to lose everything I had in life.”
—Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)
“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)