Labov, sound change, and phonological theory

Kiparsky, Paul

doi:10.1111/josl.12196

Cited by 16 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…From the perspective of human speech processing, Pierrehumbert () notes that positional allophones may be a more viable form of abstraction than phonemes because phoneme classes are often too coarse for parametric distributions to be distinguished from each other. Sub‐phonemic abstraction is compatible with the idea that non‐contrastive phonetic variants can form part of the lexicon (Kiparsky, , ) and with recent studies from perceptual learning showing that listeners adapt to units that are more fine‐grained than the phoneme (Reinisch & Mitterer, ; Reinisch, Wozny, Mitterer, & Holt, ). There is also other evidence for sub‐phonemic processing from second language (Polka, ) and new dialect learning (German, Carlson, & Pierrehumbert, ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

“…This is because of principle (2), according to which, for example, an outlier /b/ from “tab” could never be absorbed into the phonological category associated with “tap”, even if the outlier falls well within the /p/ space acoustically. The model was therefore extended to incorporate mergers and category splits both of which are common types of sound change (Kiparsky, ; Labov, , Ch. 12).…”

Section: Splits and Mergersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Linking Cognitive and Social Aspects of Sound Change Using Agent‐Based Modeling

Harrington¹,

Kleber²,

Reubold³

et al. 2018

Topics in Cognitive Science

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The paper defines the core components of an interactive-phonetic (IP) sound change model. The starting point for the IP-model is that a phonological category is often skewed phonetically in a certain direction by the production and perception of speech. A prediction of the model is that sound change is likely to come about as a result of perceiving phonetic variants in the direction of the skew and at the probabilistic edge of the listener's phonological category. The results of agent-based computational simulations applied to the sound change in progress, /u/-fronting in Standard Southern British, were consistent with this hypothesis. The model was extended to sound changes involving splits and mergers by using the interaction between the agents to drive the phonological reclassification of perceived speech signals. The simulations showed no evidence of any acoustic change when this extended model was applied to Australian English data in which /s/ has been shown to retract due to coarticulation in /str/ clusters. Some agents nevertheless varied in their phonological categorizations during interaction between /str/ and /Str/: This vacillation may represent the potential for sound change to occur. The general conclusion is that many types of sound change are the outcome of how phonetic distributions are oriented with respect to each other, their association to phonological classes, and how these types of information vary between speakers that happen to interact with each other.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Section: Splits and Mergersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linking Cognitive and Social Aspects of Sound Change Using Agent‐Based Modeling

Harrington¹,

Kleber²,

Reubold³

et al. 2018

Topics in Cognitive Science

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“…This is in line with what was stated by Adda-Decker & Lamel (1999) about dialectical influence as one of the factors that shapes pronunciation variants. However, as consonants are more resistant to change (Dinkin, 2008;Holmes, 2008;Kiparsky, 2016), vowel shift is found to be more common in reading aloud. Readers consistently change the vowel /o/ or /ɔ/ to /u/, for instance, by reading words duduk and ketuk as /duduʔ-ketuʔ/ instead of their Aceh dialectical forms, /dudoʔ/ and /ketɔʔ/.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…261). High-frequency words are reported to be affected earlier than the low frequency ones (Dinkin, 2008;Kiparsky, 2016;Schleef, 2013), although some other theorists believe word frequency does not play any role in some cases (Phillips, 2006). The present study aimed to examine if the plosive glottal change occurring in the context of the Indonesian-Aceh dialect follows the lexical diffusion theory.…”

Section: Introduction and Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 88%

The Plosive Sound Change in Indonesian Final -k Syllabic Words

Irnanda¹,

Sabrina²,

Putri³

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Applied Linguistics (CONAPLIN 2020)

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This study examines the sound shift from plosive /ʔ/ to /k/ as a coda in final -k syllabic words, such as duduk, anak, bisik, and pojok in the Indonesian-Aceh dialect. The Indonesian dialect developed in Aceh province area has /ʔ/ variant for most words with final-k spelt syllables. However, due to the increasing popularity of and contact with the Standard dialect via television, internet and travels, there is now a new variant of final plosive production for orthographically final -k syllabic words. The present study aimed to verify if this sound shift is occurring in the dialect by asking 25 Acehnese who spoke the Indonesian-Aceh dialect for daily basis to read an Indonesian text consisted of 39 final -k words with varied vowel letters preceding it, and varied degrees of word-frequency effect. The results show that the final -ik and final -ek syllables tend to be more prone to change to the Standard dialect. The position of the syllable also determines the rapidity of the shift, as /ʔ/ positioned as the coda in the non-final syllable, like words makna anda paksa, changes faster to /k/ sound compared to those positioned in the final syllable. It can be summed up that the sound shift from coda /ʔ/ to /k/ in the Indonesian-Aceh dialect context confirms the lexical diffusion theory, with the speed of the change determined by factors that include word frequency, the position of the syllable (whether at the beginning or the end), and the onset-nucleus combination of the syllable.

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“…This has been contentious in historical phonological debate, as is well known (see, for example, Wang 1969, Labov 1981, Phillips 2015, and the details cannot all be considered here. 6 I assume, following Labov (2006), Bermúdez--Otero (2015) and Kiparsky (2016), that it has been shown beyond doubt through the investigation of change in progress that neogrammarian--type exceptionless change does occur, and that N-changes can thus indeed be expected to show this kind of regularity because they involve lexicon--independent phonological structures (such as segments). I set out a basis for this, with reference to the precise types of changes considered in this paper, in section 5.…”

Section: We Need To Distinguish Between 'N--changes' and 'A--changes'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Are there impossible changes? θ > f but f ≯ θ

Honeybone

2016

Papers in Historical Phonology

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One question that historical phonology should reasonably seek to answer is: are there impossible changes? That is: are there plausible changes that we could reasonably expect to occur in the diachrony of languages' phonologies, but which nonetheless do not ever occur? In this paper I seek to spell out what it really means to consider this question and what we need to do in order to answer it for any specific case. This will require a consideration of some fundamental issues in historical phonology, including the distinction between exceptionless and lexically-specific/sporadic changes (which I call 'N-changes' and 'A-changes'), and the connection between that distinction and the 'misperception' model of phonological change. It will involve an analysis of aspects of the phonological history of Pulo Annian, Arabic, Italic, Spanish and several varieties of English. I argue that the current state of evidence indicates that there are indeed impossible changes (which I symbolise using 'x ≯ y' to represent that 'x cannot change into y') in a very specific but phonologically real way, and that f ≯ θ is one. 14 The basic observation is much older. Ohala points back to Sweet (1888), who discusses "[s]uch isolative changes as to and to " under the heading of 'acoustic changes' (1888, 43), showing an awareness of the acoustic similarity of the sounds, and the implication that this similarity can drive such changes. Sweet is using his revised version of Bell's (1867) 'Visible Speech', in which = θ, = f, = ɾ, = ʀ. SOUND NOTATIOX. BY HIENBY swmm, M.A. 215 might be written n k , QJW. I might be written in the slurred pronunciation of aguind-Iabsu. The other glide-vowels being simply the full vowel symbols shortened, do not require to be enumerated. CONSONANTS. o (q) throat(-open-breath). orn=habic Aha (?). e (a) throat-voice. w=Dan. r. ofn=Arabic uifj (3). x (;) throat-stop (glottal catch). D a s h ' stijdtone.' c (x) back. Sc. and Germ. M. 6 (a) back-voice. ?diddle Germ. tage. o(f)=Germ. r. o (9) front. Sc. hue. Germ. kh. 01 Germ. siichtig. m~ o (j) front-voice. E. yes. o (r) point. oi=IceL hr. (D (r) point-voice. E. red. w=&. red. (f) lipteeth. 3 (v) lip-teeth-voice. E (4) back-divided. 8 (t) back-divided-voice. o (I) front-divided. co (Z) front-divided-voice. Italian gl. South Sw. depp. Romaic Ip (-2). Middle and South Germ. W. >\ RUES. krod. Ruseian and Polish guttural L SOUND NOTATIOX. BY HIENBY swmm, M.A. 215 might be written n k , QJW. I might be written in the slurred pronunciation of aguind-Iabsu. The other glide-vowels being simpl...

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Labov, sound change, and phonological theory

Cited by 16 publications

References 47 publications

Linking Cognitive and Social Aspects of Sound Change Using Agent‐Based Modeling

Linking Cognitive and Social Aspects of Sound Change Using Agent‐Based Modeling

The Plosive Sound Change in Indonesian Final -k Syllabic Words

Are there impossible changes? θ > f but f ≯ θ

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