Using acoustic-phonetic simulations to model historical sound change

Abstract

We introduce a method for investigating sound change using audio proxies and interpolation between them. Using this method leads us to consider the possible trajectories of attested sound changes in acoustic space and allows us to run speech perception experiments with the interpolated sounds to examine the patterning of perceptual judgements. We discuss the implications for understanding rate and magnitude of sound changes and present the approach as one which might fruitfully be applied to a wide range of studies.