Commentary on Crowley
Chapter Four
PHONETIC AND PHONEMIC CHANGE
This chapter discusses six topics.
 Phonetic change without phonemic change
 Phonetic change with phonemic change
 Phonemic loss
 Phonemic addition
 Rephonemicization
 shifts
 mergers
 splits
This chapter discusses six topics.
1. Phonetic change without phonemic change
Why do languages have
phonological rules?
The explanation is historical: languages constantly undergo
phonetic changes, and these have cumulative effects upon the
system. Minimally, phonetic change causes dialect
differences; further changes cause systemic alterations—
allophones added or lost, forcing restructuring of the sound
system. Periodic restructuring accounts for language
divergence, e.g. Latin evolved into modern Italian.
Minimally, phonetic changes cause
dialect differences, also called
allophonic rules.
 This is what the textbook means by the phrase: “Phonetic
change without phonemic change.”
 For example, the Scottish /r/ is the same as the North
American /r/ except for one small and—some might say—
linguistically “insignificant” detail: it is pronounced
differently.
The explanation is historical.
Every pronunciation difference between two dialects is the
result of phonetic change. This fact raises two questions:
 Which dialect is more conservative (with respect to this one
comparison)?
 Which dialect is more innovative (with respect to this one
comparison)?
Scottish trilled /r/ is conservative; North American
/r/ is innovative.
Logically, of course, it is possible that neither dialect is
conservative, because both are innovative. This idea was
introduced by Sir William Jones about the relationship of Latin,
Greek and Sanskrit.
Phonetic change can also lead to
structural changes, in 5 ways.
2. Phonemic loss
3. Phonemic addition
Rephonemicization
4. shifts
5. mergers
6. splits
Crowleyan Howlers
 On p. 74 Crowley says that “Phonemic loss is self-
explanatory” and on the same page he says “Phonemic
addition is also self-explanatory.”
 In my personal experience, any sentence I have ever read
containing the word “phoneme” or “phonemic” is not selfexplanatory.
 Crowley’s discussion on p. 74 is clear and accurate; you may
judge for yourself whether it is self-explanatory.
Phonemic loss can be partial or total.
 Small phonetic changes can, over time, alter the phonological
system.
 For example, the inventory of phonemes can be reduced
through total loss of all allophones of a phoneme. Thus Motu
was described in Chapter 2 as having lost the velar nasal via
unconditioned change: *ŋ > Ø.
 This change altered the inventory of phonemes, reducing it
by one phoneme.
Phonemic loss can be partial.
 Much more common is partial loss of a phoneme, meaning
that an allophone disappeared. For example, in Rejang, final
*-l disappeared in all native words: *l > Ø/__#. Elsewhere,
/l/ was retained.
 More radically, in many Oceanic languages, all final
consonants disappeared: *C > Ø/__#. For each such language,
every consonant phoneme lost one allophone.
NEVER FORGET: “PHONEMES
CHANGE (ONE ALLOPHONE AT A
TIME)”
 A phoneme is a bunch of allophones—up to ten or more.
 Partial loss of a phoneme means one allophone disappears,
e.g. word-initially. The inventory of phonemes is unaffected.
 Total loss of a phoneme means all allophones of a phoneme
disappear. In this case, the inventory of phonemes is
affected—it has been reduced by one.
PHONEMIC ADDITION
 Again, phonemic addition can be partial or total.
 Partial phonemic addition means a new allophone is added;
this does not alter the inventory of phonemes.
 Total phonemic addition means that a new phoneme is added,
increasing the number of phonemes in the system.
Prothesis means adding a sound at the
beginning of a word. It may or may not
add a new phoneme to a language.
Motu added a new phoneme /l/ before word-initial /a/:
Ø > l /#__a.
Before the change, /l/ did not exist in Motu, so this change added a new
phoneme to the language.
Rejang added a new allophone [ɂ] before word-initial vowels:
Ø >Ɂ /#__V.
Before the change, Rejang already had glottal stop between vowels and
word-finally, so this change did not add a new phoneme to the language.
Amazingly, prothesis may occur
without adding either a phoneme
or an allophone.
 Does Crowley really think this is self-explanatory?
 Crowley’s example is Mpakwithi (N. Australia) which adds a prothetic
schwa before word-initial fricatives and /r/:
Ø > ə / #___ fricative
r
Crazy as it may sound, since Mpakwithi does not have a schwa phoneme,
it cannot have a schwa allophone. Therefore, this change just “hangs out
there” phonemically. It is an example of phonetic change without
phonemic change.
I’ll admit it
 The Rejang and Mpakwithi examples might make you think
that linguists have lost their minds.
 Actually, it is only synchronic linguists that get all tangled up
like this.
 Notice how easy and natural the phenomena are when
viewed simply as sound changes.
PHONETIC DETAIL PERVADES
THROUGHOUT
 Don’t think this is as an isolated example.
 American speech is filled with sounds that never make it to
allophonic status.
 For example most Southern American dialects are like
Rejang in that a glottal stop is added before any word
beginning with a vowel: Ø >Ɂ /#__V.
In most Southern American dialects a glottal stop is added
before every word beginning with a vowel: Ø >Ɂ /#__V.
 This change has a profound effect on the distribution of
allophones of /r/.
 Consider the distribution of /r/ between Boston and Atlanta
in the sentence:
Park your car in HarvardYard.
Glottal stop is added before every word
beginning with a vowel: Ø >Ɂ /#__V.
(Let h represent deleted /r/.)
 Boston: Pahk yoah car in Hahvahd Yahd.
 Atlanta: Pahk yoah cah ɂin Hahvahd Yahd.
 Both Boston and Atlanta have a rule dropping /r/ before a
consonant. In Boston, /r/ occurs between two vowels in the
phrase car in (with smooth onset for in); by contrast, in
Atlanta the sequence is pronounced cah ɂin (with glottal
onset preceding in), in perfect conformity with the rule.
This chapter discusses six topics.
 Rephonemicization
4. shifts
5. mergers
6. splits
These constitute 90% of Historical Phonology.
These topices are not—repeat not—self-explanatory.
THE IDENTIFICATION OF A SHIFT,
MERGER OR SPLIT DEPENDS ON THE
EFFECT ON THE LANGUAGE SYSTEM.
 Shift: When a series of phonemes change positions without
affecting the number of phonemes in the system, e.g.
Grimm’s Law and the Great Vowel Shift.
 The most famous shifts are so profound one might be
surprized at the lack of mergers and splits, which would have
resulted in loss or addition of phonemes. Instead, the
phonemes simply got shifted around inside the articulatory
quadrangle, in a series of movements called a “chain shift”.
Famous Chain Shifts
 Grimm’s Law (Germanic)
 Second Consonant Shift (Germanic)
 Great Vowel Shift (English, 1400-1600) Note: Chaucer was born
in 1400 and Shakespeare died in 1619.
 Northern Cities Shift (American English, 1950 - present)
English represents older Germanic
English and the Low German languages-Dutch, Flemish, and
Plattdeutsch differ from Modern Standard German partly
because Standard German has undergone a second or High
German Consonant Shift. English preserves the older
common Germanic sounds which were changed in High
German between the sixth and the eighth centuries.
Below are some English and High German cognates that show sound
correspondence according to the Second Consonant Shift.
A SHIFT NEED NOT ALTER THE
NUMBER OF PHONEMES IN THE
SYSTEM.
SEE AND HEAR THE GVS
http://facweb.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/seehear.htm
Merger
Mergers in American English
 Don/Dawn merge in many dialects of American English.
 pin / pen merge / __n in South Midlands (Athens) and most
of the South.
MERGER
As you might guess, a merger can be partial or total.
Partial mergers are the most common; the allophones of two or
more phonemes merge, e.g. C > ɂ / ___# (all word-final
consonants became glottal stop in Minangkabau (Sumatra)).
The phonemic inventory was unchanged.
Total mergers also occur, e.g. Mentŭ, in Sarawak, Borneo,
where *l and *r merged as *r. This change altered the
phonemic inventory of Mentŭ, which now lacks /l/.
Splits
Split
For a phonemic split to occur there must be two factors in play.
a) A phoneme X undergoes a conditioned change:
X > Z /A__B
b) Z (and X) are phonemes in the language.
Suppose there is a change n > m /__p, as in English:
*in+possible > impossible. It can be said that /n/ has
undergone partial split, because one allophone became /m/
while the rest remained /n/.
Split of *a /__# in Rejang
Rejang underwent a three-way split under complex conditions:
*a
o
ə
əy
*kena > kəno
*ita > itə
*mata > matəy
‘strike’
‘we (incl)’
‘eye’
PHONEMIC CHANGE WITHOUT
PHONETIC CHANGE
Watch out for linguist-speak. Don’t be taken in by the
smooth talk. Broadly speaking, what the above implies is
impossible. But speaking very narrowly, Crowley means that
a sound can be re-classified without ITSELF undergoing any
change. The re-phonemicization change may simply occur
elsewhere in the language.
Consider what happens to the books in
the library.
 In a local library, Book A was displayed in a section called
“Young Adult” and Book B was displayed under “Adult
Fiction”.
 Some parents complained that “Adult Fiction” sounded like
dirty books, which they weren’t. Nevertheless, to avoid
confusion the Library changed the display to read: “Young
Adult” and “New Fiction”.
 In this way, the books were re-classified without any change
in the books themselves.
Consider how /ŋ/ became a
phoneme of English.
 Step 1: OE had disyllables like /singe/ [siŋge].
 Step 2: Middle English lost final -e by apocope, causing words to acquire a
final CC: /sing/ [siŋg].
 Step 3: Modern English simplified the consonant cluster by dropping the final
-g, but kept the velar pronunciation of the nasal: /siŋ/.
 Step 4: Linguists recognized/ŋ/ as a new phoneme with a limited distribution
(cannot begin a syllable).
Psycholinguistic test
What is your aptitude for learning Tagalog?
ŋunit
‘now’
ŋaŋa
‘gape’
ŋumaŋaŋa
‘chew thoroughly’
[ŋu.ma.ŋá.ŋa]
End of Chapter Four
Historical Linguistics
Winter 2009