are found (phoneme inventory, rules) （发现(音素库存,规则)）.pdf

Mark J. Jones Historical Linguistics Lectures: week 5 mjj13@cam.ac.uk SOUND CHANGE 5: THE ROLE OF THE LEXICON Introduction Today’s lecture focuses on the location of change within language: is it at the level of the sound, or the level of the word? Traditional view When a word is heard, it is stripped of information relating to speaker (identity and emotional state) to get to the distinctive sound structure, and the distinctive sounds in it are stripped of contextual information (e.g. nasalisation is factored out), sometimes erroneously (Ohala, see McMahon 1994). This process is necessary to identify words from different speakers (including new voices). Grammar vs. lexicon Grammar – where regular patterns are found (phoneme inventory, rules) Lexicon – lexical items/morphemes stored with information on category and any irregularities Neogrammarian sound change Regularity hypothesis on sound change Sound change is regular and exceptionless Occurs in all words presenting the right conditioning environment Phonetically gradual Lexically abrupt For example, Stage 1: PIE *wértō Stage 2: Proto-Germanic *werTō Phonetically gradual – changes must not be noticed Lexically abrupt – all words affected across lexicon So change is seen as operating at some abstract level: t T Exceptions Reformulate change – closer inspection of data Dialect borrowing – words look like they are from dialect X, but come from dialect Y after change Analogy – sound change does not apply in some cases, e.g. sword but swore (cf. swear) of which more later … Alternative changes: phonetically gradual and lexically gradual phonetically abrupt and lexically gradual phonetically abrupt and lexically abrupt Are these attested? Lexical diffusion Classic example: Cháozhōu Chinese (Chen and Wang 1975) Tonal split – 4 tones 8 tones depending on voici