Sound Laws - Terms For Changes in Pronunciation

Terms For Changes in Pronunciation

There are a number of traditional terms in historical linguistics designating types of phonetic change, either by nature or result. A number of such types are often (or usually) sporadic, that is, more or less accidents that happen to a specific form. Others affect a whole phonological system. Sound changes that affect a whole phonological system are also classified according to how they affect the overall shape of the system; see phonological change.

• Assimilation: One sound becomes more like another, or (much more rarely) two sounds become more like each other. Example: in Latin the prefix *kom- becomes con- before an apical stop or : contactus "touched", condere "to found, establish", connūbium "legal marriage". The great majority of assimilations take place between contiguous segments, and the great majority involve the earlier one becoming more like the later one (e.g. in connūbium, m- + n becomes -nn- rather than -mm-). Assimilation between contiguous segments are (diachronically speaking) exceptionless sound laws rather than sporadic, isolated changes.
• Dissimilation: The opposite of assimilation. One sound becomes less like another, or (much more rarely) two sounds become less like each other. Examples: Latin quīnque /kʷiːnkʷe/ "five" > Proto-Romance *kinkʷe (whence French cinq, Italian cinque, etc.); Old Spanish omne "man" > Spanish hombre. The great majority of dissimilations involve segments that are not contiguous, but as with assimilations, the great majority involve an earlier sound changing with reference to a later one. Dissimilation is usually a sporadic phenomenon, but Grassmann's Law (Sanskrit and Greek) is an example of a systematic dissimilation. If the change of a sequence of fricatives such that one becomes a stop is dissimilation, then such changes as Proto-Germanic *χs to /ks/ (spelled x) in English would count as a regular sound law: PGmc. *seχs "six" > Old English siex, etc.
• Metathesis: Two sounds switch places. Example: Old English thridda became Middle English third; English comfortable pronounced as if spelled comfterble. Most such changes are sporadic, but occasionally a sound law is involved, as Romance *tl > Spanish ld, thus *kapitlu, *titlu "chapter (of a cathedral)", "tittle" > Spanish cabildo, tilde. Metathesis can take place between non-contiguous segments, as Greek amélgō "I milk" > Modern Greek armégō.
• Tonogenesis: Syllables come to have distinctive pitch contours.
• Sandhi: conditioned changes that take place at word-boundaries but not elsewhere. It can be morpheme-specific, as in the loss of the vowel in the enclitic forms of English is /ɪz/, with subsequent change of /z/ to /s/ adjacent to a voiceless consonant Frank's not here /ˈfræŋksnɒtˈhɪər/. Or a small class of elements, such as the assimilation of the /ð/ of English the, this and that to a preceding /n/ (including the /n/ of and when the /d/ is elided) or /l/: all the often /ɔːllə/, in the often /ɪnnə/, and so on. As in these examples, such features are rarely indicated in standard orthography. A striking exception is Sanskrit, whose orthography reflects a wide variety of such features: thus tat "that" is written tat, tac, taj, tad, tan depending on what the first sound of the next word is. These are all assimilations, but medial sequences do not assimilate the same way.
• Haplology: The loss of a syllable when an adjacent syllable is similar or (rarely) identical. Example: Old English Englaland became Modern English England, or the common pronunciation of probably as . This change usually affects commonly used words. The word haplology itself is sometimes jokingly pronounced "haplogy".
• Elision, aphaeresis, syncope, and apocope: All losses of sounds. Elision is the loss of unstressed sounds, aphaeresis the loss of initial sounds, syncope is the loss of medial sounds, and apocope is the loss of final sounds. Elision examples: in the southeastern United States, unstressed schwas tend to drop, so "American" is not /əˈmɛɹəkən/ but /ˈmɚkən/. Standard English is possum < opossum. Syncope examples: the Old French word for "state" is estat, but then the s dropped, yielding, état. Similarly the loss of /t/ in English soften, hasten, castle, etc. Apocope examples: the final -e in Middle English words was pronounced, but is only retained in spelling as silent E. In English /b/ and /ɡ/ were apocopated in final position after nasals: lamb, long /læm/ /loŋ/.
• Epenthesis (also known as anaptyxis): The introduction of a sound between two adjacent sounds. Examples: Latin humilis > English humble; in Slavic an -l- intrudes between a labial and a following yod, as *zemya "land" > Russ. zemlya (земля). Most commonly epenthesis is in the nature of a "transitional" consonant, but vowels may be epenthetic: non-standard English film in two syllables, athlete in three. Epenthesis can be regular, as when the Indo-European "tool" suffix *-tlom everywhere becomes Latin -culum (so speculum "mirror" < *speḱtlom, pōculum "drinking cup" < *poH₃-tlom. Some scholars reserve the term epenthesis for "intrusive" vowels and use excrescence for intrusive consonants.
• Prothesis: The addition of a sound at the beginning of a word. Example: word-initial /s/ + stop clusters in Latin gained a preceding /e/ in Old Spanish and Old French; hence, the Spanish word for "state" is estado, deriving from Latin status.
• Nasalization: Vowels followed by nasal consonants are usually nasalized. If the nasal consonant is lost but the vowel retains its nasalized pronunciation, nasalization becomes phonemic, that is, distinctive. Example: French "-in" words used to be pronounced, but are now pronounced, and the is no longer pronounced (except in cases of liaison).