Diachronic dynamics of Middle English phonotactics provide evidence for analogy effects among lexical and morphonotactic consonant clusters

Baumann, Andreas; Ritt, Nikolaus; Prömer, Christina

doi:10.2218/pihph.1.2016.1693

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…There has been some previous work on diachronic phonotacticsas well as discussion of relevant issues in general volumes such as Minkova (2014), some focused work exists, such as Lutz (1988Lutz ( , 1991, Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (2005) and the work of Ritt and others at Vienna (e.g. Baumann et al 2016). Some issues are quite clear to consider, such as the questions of how phonotactics can be innovated into or lost from a language (in OT terms: how do they rise to prominence or fall into insignificance in a language's phonology?).…”

Section: Patrick Honeybonementioning

confidence: 99%

Can phonotactic constraints inhibit segmental change? Arguments from lenition and syncope

Honeybone

2019

Folia Linguistica

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This article considers the interaction of phonotactics and diachrony. I argue two things: (i) language-specific phonotactic constraints on phonological forms can inhibit otherwise regular innovations, and (ii) the fact that such phonotactically-motivated process inhibition occurs in historical phonology is itself evidence for the reality of phonotactic constraints. I assume that there is a difference between those gaps in a language’s lexicon which are due to chance (‘A-gaps’) and those which are ruled out by the grammar (‘S-gaps’) and I consider some evidence in favour of this view. I consider two case studies where an understanding of phonotactics is necessary to analyse the patterning of change: Mid-Scots θ-debuccalisation and a late Middle English syncope. I ground the discussion in arguments about what phonotactic constraints are, and how they can be involved in diachrony. This involves a consideration of a number of examples from English, including onset-OCP-related constraints, the OCP (sibilance) constraint, and the constraint which imposes the defective distribution of [h].

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Section: Patrick Honeybonementioning

confidence: 99%

Can phonotactic constraints inhibit segmental change? Arguments from lenition and syncope

Honeybone

2019

Folia Linguistica

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“…These frequencies can be extracted from the ECCE database, which contains probabilistic weights computed for each token. Predicted frequencies in ECCE then are simply the sums of all weights in each century (note that these weights were computed based on a logistic model which only depends on the right context and time; see Baumann et al forthcoming, and for a related approach Baumann, Ritt & Prömer 2016). .…”

Section: Application: Inferring the Diachrony Of Final /Mb(ə)/mentioning

confidence: 99%

Machine learning in diachronic corpus phonology: mining verse data to infer trajectories in English phonotactics

Baumann¹

2018

PiHPh

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Machine learning is a powerful method when working with large data sets such as diachronic corpora. However, as opposed to standard techniques from inferential statistics like regression modeling, machine learning is less commonly used among phonological corpus linguists. This paper discusses three different machine learning techniques (K nearest neighbors classifiers; Naïve Bayes classifiers; artificial neural networks) and how they can be applied to diachronic corpus data to address specific phonological questions. To illustrate the methodology, I investigate Middle English schwa deletion and when and how it potentially triggered reduction of final /mb/ clusters in English.

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“…There has been some serious work in diachronic phonotactics, such as Lutz (1988Lutz ( , 1991, Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (2005) and the work of Ritt and others at Vienna (e.g. Baumann et al 2016) which also led to a Special Issue of Folia Linguistica Historica (number 50:2) on diachronic phonotactics. Additionally, general volumes on historical phonology and/or phonological history do sometimes contain some consideration of relevant matters (as in Hogg 1992 andMinkova 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonotactics, prophylaxis, acquisitionism and change: *Rime-xxŋ and ash-tensing in the history of English

Honeybone¹

2019

PiHPh

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This article revisits, extends and interrogates the position advocated in Honeybone (2019) — that phonotactic constraints are psychologically real phonological entities (namely: constraints on output-like forms), which have a diachrony of their own, and which can also interfere with diachronic segmental change by inhibiting otherwise regular innovations. I focus in the latter part of the article on the role of one phonotactic constraint in the history of English: *Rime-xxŋ. I argue that we need to investigate the emergence of such constraints in the history of languages and I show how this particular constraint, once innovated (which occurs through constraint scattering), can be understood to have inhibited the patterning of ash-tensing in certain varieties of American English (and also that it may now have been lost in some varieties). To do this, I adopt a phonological model which combines aspects of Rule-Based Phonology and aspects of Constraint-Based Phonology, and which is firmly rooted in the variation that exists when changes are innovated. Finally, I evaluate the extent to which the type of phonotactically-driven process-inhibition that I propose here involves prophylaxis in phonological change (I show that it doesn't), and I consider the interaction of these ideas with the proposal that all change occurs in language acquisition (‘acquisitionism’).

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Diachronic dynamics of Middle English phonotactics provide evidence for analogy effects among lexical and morphonotactic consonant clusters

Cited by 5 publications

References 21 publications

Can phonotactic constraints inhibit segmental change? Arguments from lenition and syncope

Can phonotactic constraints inhibit segmental change? Arguments from lenition and syncope

Machine learning in diachronic corpus phonology: mining verse data to infer trajectories in English phonotactics

Phonotactics, prophylaxis, acquisitionism and change: *Rime-xxŋ and ash-tensing in the history of English

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