Germanic Aspiration: Phonetic enhancement and language contact*
Gregory K. Iverson
University of Maryland
Center for the Advanced Study of Language
giverson@umd.edu
Joseph C. Salmons
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures
jsalmons@wisc.edu
0. Introduction. One of the thorniest, most enduring issues in Germanic historical linguistics
is the possible influence of pre-Indo-European substrate languages on earliest Germanic,
including effects on the famous consonant shifts associated with Grimm’s Law. Substrate or
contact-oriented accounts of the first and second shift have often been proposed,1 of course,
although many historical linguists are inclined to reject all substrate-based accounts out of
hand, as deus ex machina — this is the view encapsulated, for example, in Hock & Joseph’s
widely used textbook (1996:387): “in most cases, substratist accounts simply are either
unnecessary and unenlightening, or difficult to establish beyond a reasonable doubt, or both.”
Such stories about these sound shifts, then, are inherently controversial.
Our aim here is simply to provide a rigorous examination of the plausibility of consonantal
changes, from minor phonetic adjustments on up to comprehensive chain shifts, being driven
by language contact. We will not outline a detailed theory of language contact here, but instead
assume the framework of van Coetsem (1988, 1995), particularly as recently interpreted by
Winford (2005). The most relevant point is that many types of structural interference, including
both low-level phonetic processes and systematic phonological ones, are typical of ‘imposition’
resulting from second language acquisition. As van Coetsem puts it, “the source language
speaker is the agent, as in the case of a French speaker using his French articulatory habits
while speaking English” (1988:3, also quoted in Winford 2005:376). Like some other views,
this framework thus predicts that language shift through contact is more apt to produce chain
shift effects than borrowing. For a case like Northwest Indo-European becoming Germanic, a
typical substrate view would involve the indigenous, pre-Indo-European population learning the
language of newcomers. These speakers then would have transferred their articulatory habits
and practices onto the new language, transforming it into the very earliest Germanic. In order
to trigger chain shifts in the obstruent system under this scenario, the pre-Indo-European
An initial version of this paper was presented in the “Origins of Germanic” workshop at the 18th International
Conference on Historical Linguistics, Montréal, August 6-11, 2007. We thank Theo Vennemann and Kurt
Braunmüller for the invitation to participate in this session, as well as the following for discussions on this topic and
comments on earlier versions of the manuscript: Jennifer Cole, Bala Venkat Mani. The usual disclaimers naturally
apply.
1 On the first sound shift, see Schrodt (1974:200-218) for a review of key literature, along with Lange 1998, 2001,
and others on the second. The most notable current work on language contact in the shaping of early Germanic is
obviously the copious research of Theo Vennemann, for instance 2003.
*
2
population would somehow have to recapitulate the effects of Grimm’s Law, i.e., match IndoEuropean voiceless stops with voiceless fricatives, voiced aspirates with voiced stops/fricatives,
simple voiced (or glottalized) stops with voiceless stops.
We will first review our notion of aspiration in Germanic as an enduring “phonetic
enhancement”. We discuss how this enhancement has and has not been shaped across a set of
historical language-contact settings. More specifically, in §1, we argue that the crucial moment
in the origin of the Germanic obstruent system lies not in the erste Lautverschiebung per se, but
rather in the early emergence of a consistent, core aspect of the phonetics and phonology which
remains active in most of the family down to the present day, viz., the aspirated (or [spread
glottis]) nature of fortis stops. Grimm’s Law, the Second Consonant Shift and a variety of less
well-known changes all reflect this “…‘persistent change’ rising out of the enduring ‘base of
articulation’ that came to characterize Germanic” (Iverson & Salmons 2003a).
Once introduced into the system, the germ of aspiration has persisted, never leaving the
grammar in most members of the family. Otherwise, rather like a dormant viral infection,
aspiration is inherent, residing in the body of its Germanic host all the time and erupting with
special effects — the Kreislauf or Lautverschiebungskreis or circle of sound shifts, as in (1) —
particularly at moments of stress. In §§2-3, we sketch two cases where, according to familiar
views, enhancement has been lost historically due to external linguistic influences: Dutch and
Yiddish in contact with Romance and Slavic, respectively. At the same time, some modern
instances of language shift show apparent substratal after-effects, which we review in §4. But
such examples are merely contact- or shift-induced instances of changes in the laryngeal
phonetics and phonology: They do not proffer parallels to the kind of wholesale chain shifts we
find in Germanic. In §5, then, we provide an initial exploration of a possible case of this. We
conclude in §6, with a general assessment of the role of contact, especially language shift, in
consonantal chain shifts.
(1) “Kreislauf” or rotation of consonant shifts, from Schrodt (1974:207)
3
1. Germanic enhancement. The subfield of linguistics called ‘laryngeal phonology’ is,
perhaps unfortunately for Indo-Europeanists, concerned with states of the glottis, including
voicing, glottalization and aspiration, and not with the ‘laryngeal consonants’ posited for IndoEuropean. Especially in early North American generative phonology, a whole range of
consonant distinctions were captured under the single rubric of ‘voicing’, pushing aside, for
instance, a long tradition in German phonetics and phonology that regards German and most of
its dialects as distinguishing fortis vs. lenis obstruents rather than voiceless vs. voiced. The
now-familiar view known as ‘laryngeal realism’, taking Honeybone’s (2005) term, reestablishes
a distinction between languages for the relevant laryngeal feature is [voice], like French or
Polish, and those for which it is [aspiration], like German or Somali.
An important, and obvious, reason for laryngeal realism lies in the fundamental phonetic
patterns of stops. In languages like German, English, and the Scandinavian languages, the stops
written <p t k> are heavily aspirated in prosodically prominent positions, as in (2b) below,
while those written <b d g> typically show no or only partial voicing, as in (2a and c).
Romance and Slavic languages, in contrast, realize <p t k> as in (2a), without aspiration,
while <b d g> are fully voiced, as in (2d).
(2) Degrees of voicing in stops, from Hall (2000:20)
Other arguments for laryngeal realism, specifically for Germanic as an aspiration language,
include the following:


Phonology: Patterns of assimilation in obstruent clusters, where voice languages show
spread of voicing, while voicelessness normally spreads in aspiration languages.
Sound change: The failure of both the first and second sound shifts to change fortis
stops after s is readily accounted for by treating sC clusters as sharing aspiration, thus
preventing shift.
4
As we called attention to some years ago now (Iverson & Salmons 2003a), it has generally
been assumed that the development of phonetic aspiration in the pre-Germanic or late IndoEuropean voiceless stops was a necessary step in order to trigger the suite of changes known as
Grimm’s Law (Braune 1987, Calabrese & Halle 1998, others). We defined this as follows
(2003a:44):
We see the early emergence of voiceless stop aspiration as instituting a new basis of
articulation for the Germanic languages, one which persists to the present day. We term this
pervasive innovation ‘Germanic Enhancement’, and consider it to be not a one-time sound
change in the traditional sense, but rather the emergence of a persistent articulatory
constraint that has continued to affect newly arising voiceless stops over the course of
roughly 2,500 years.
In that same paper, we sketched the long history of ‘articulatory set’ in phonetic science, the
idea that languages or dialects are characterized by particular configurations of the vocal tract,
especially where laryngeal features like ‘voicing’ are concerned. It has also been suggested that
such patterns are targets of language change, e.g., by Sapir (1921:181): “Phonetic drift … is
not so much a movement toward a particular set of sounds as toward particular types of
articulation.”
Without pursuing speculation on the origins of Germanic Enhancement, we earlier noted that it
might perhaps “derive from language contact among speakers of the pre-Germanic variety of
Indo-European and local substrate language(s), as a number of previous scholars have
suggested” (2003a:55).2 This paper puts this notion of Germanic enhancement into the context
of language contact: Where and under what types of contact do we find changes in laryngeal
phonetics and phonology?
2. Netherlandic. Historically, we assume, the Netherlandic system evolved from a Germanic
system where laryngeal distinctions employed the feature [spread glottis], cf. Iverson &
Salmons (1995, 1999). Many, including Iverson & Salmons (2003b), presume that contact with
some variety or varieties of Romance led Netherlandic speakers to move from this aspiratedunaspirated (or fortis-lenis) system of stops to a voiced-voiceless system, perhaps as a
substratal effect when former Romance speakers adopted a Germanic language and imposed
their stop phonetics on the new variety. And there is a pattern of highly suggestive evidence for
Romance influence on Dutch pronunciation: Kloeke (1954), for instance, argues that not only
the unaspirated character of the voiceless stops (which he calls a “curiously un-Germanic
habit”, 1954:5), but also the unconditioned fronting of û to [y:], vocalization of /l/ in codas (cf.
2
Note that consonantal shifts are thoroughly possible without language contact or other ‘crises’, as shown for
Liverpool by Honeybone (2005, elsewhere).
5
Dutch oud vs. English old, German alt) and other features of Netherlandic pronunciation derive
from what is sometimes called the Franse expansie. The velar or uvular /r/ of Dutch has
likewise been attributed to earlier French or Romance contact (Weijnen 1958:262-263) and
some regional features of Netherlandic dialects almost certainly have Romance origins, like hloss in the southwest or the presence of nasalized vowels (even outside of French loans) in
some areas, cf. van Coetsem (1988:144-162).3 Van Haeringen regards these Romance-like
sound changes in Dutch as too numerous to be coincidental — though not secure enough to
provide a smoking gun (1934:109-110) — but argues that such changes began in southern
dialects, an area of intense contact and thus “een ideale sfeer voor ontlening” [an ideal realm
for loaning] (1934:97). From there, he argues that these Romance-influenced innovations
spread to the north and east. Other scholars have suggested that pre-Germanic substrate
languages helped shape Netherlandic in a variety of ways, such as Gysseling 1981 on ‘Belgic’,
but such work is yet more speculative. Just when and how contact might have led to the
laryngeal characteristics of Dutch stops, or what languages might have been the source, is
unclear, though, and a topic beyond the scope of the present paper.
Still, under almost any scenario of how this change in the ‘base of articulation’ took place,
Dutch attests a mixed pattern, retaining aspiration-language fricatives but adopting a [voice]
system in the stops. For speakers starting from a typical Germanic [spread glottis] system in
stops and moving toward a typically Romance [voice] system, the difference in fricatives
would not have been so salient: The basic phonetics of fricatives — that is, the relative ease of
maintaining voicing in fricatives as compared with the difficulty of maintaining it in stops, in
combination with the impact of ‘Vaux’s Law’ [Vaux 1998] imposing [spread glottis] even on
unmarked voiceless fricatives — brings about the result that both systems have relatively
similar surface realizations. Where a difference would have been more apparent is in patterns
of stop + fricative and fricative + stop assimilation. Here Dutch speakers of the time (either
the generation caught up in the change or a later one) could have heard and learned patterns of
assimilation more like those attested in the modern standard, a language codified from eclectic
origins and built from an admixture of different dialects. Netherlandic, under this scenario, thus
would reflect shift-induced change from an aspiration to a voice language with respect to stops
while retaining its aspiration language legacy with respect to fricatives.
3.Yiddish. Another continental West Germanic language, Yiddish, is famously regarded as a
“fusion language” (cf. Jacobs 2005). The best-supported view in the literature is that the
language was forged as speakers of Semitic languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, shifted to
regional varieties of Middle High German, retaining a considerable Hebrew-Aramaic
component alongside basic German-like structures. We do not know what effects this had on
3
But see Howell (1991, elsewhere) for compelling arguments against Romance origins of uvular rhotics in
Germanic.
6
the earliest phonetics of obstruents, of course, and almost no systematic phonetic analysis of
Yiddish phonetics has been undertaken (as noted by Kleine 1998:201). But some western
varieties, including those formerly spoken in what is now German-speaking central Europe,
distinguished obstruents based on ‘fortisness’ and/or ‘aspiration’ (Herzog et al. 1992). Some
Western Yiddish varieties kept obstruent phonetics and phonology closely parallel to those of
co-territorial German dialects. For instance, Herzog et al. (1992, vol. 1:36-37) points to
Alsatian Yiddish having collapsed traditional p ~ b and t ~ d, maintaining a laryngeal
distinction only with aspirated [kh] contrasting with a lenis counterpart. Sources on Alsatian
German (e.g. Keller 1961:132-133) point to a similar system. Some modern Western Yiddish
dialects are reported to have had a three-way contrast (Herzog et al. 1992, vol. 1: 36-38), in
some cases with [ph] corresponding to Standard German [pf]:
(3)
[p]
[ph]
[b]
pé:sax ‘Passover’
phéfər ‘pepper’
bé:sər ‘angry’, MASC
Guggenheim-Grünberg’s descriptions of Swiss Yiddish (1961 and other work) show its
obstruent phonetics to be closely parallel to what is found in co-territorial German dialects.
In contrast, beyond these westernmost areas, Herzog et al. write (1992, vol. 1:36):
In all of E(astern) Y(iddish), the opposition appears to be based on unvoiced/voiced.
However, the situations in e(astern) W(estern) Y(iddish) and w(estern) E(astern) Y(iddish)
are not yet clear. Notations like Sudeten-Yiddish kh … or th … and the like for western
Poland …, suggest that fortisness and aspiration of prevocalic consonants may play a role
here.
The traditional assumption in the literature appears to be that eastern dialects adopted a Slaviclike voicing system. That is, whatever the laryngeal phonetics and phonology of early Jewish
populations in central Europe, they had acquired a German-like aspiration system, which
became a voicing system after they moved or were driven eastward. The sociohistorical
circumstances of this period are one of the enduring issues in Ashkenazic history, linguistic and
cultural, but Louden (2000), in particular, has focused on the role of Knaanic Jews, the
communities that were established in eastern Europe before the arrival of Ashkenazi coming
from the west. He argues that numerous features of Eastern Yiddish most plausibly reflect the
“community-wide shift in the direction of Yiddish” by speakers of Knaanic-Slavic languages
(2000:106).
Here, too, then, we would have the transformation of the laryngeal phonetics and phonology of
a Germanic language when that language was adopted by large numbers of speakers of a
7
language with a significantly different system, both voicing systems in the cases at hand. A
number of similar situations across Germanic have been proposed in the literature, e.g. where
aspiration has apparently been lost in Scots English.
4. Laryngeal substrate effects. In the two cases just discussed, the details of far-reaching
changes in laryngeal phonetics and phonology are shrouded in prehistory. The contact-based
accounts, however intuitively appealing and plausible, rest on circumstantial evidence and
speculation. The case for contact-induced obstruent changes would be greatly strengthened by
present-day examples, where instrumental phonetic analysis and direct native-speaker
judgments are available.
Recent studies have begun to explore this, namely Purnell et al. 2005a, 2005b, Salmons et al.
2006, and Tepeli et al. 2007. A stereotype of the dialects of the American Upper Midwest is
that speakers ‘devoice’ final ‘voiced’ (or, in the terms of laryngeal realism: ‘harden’ final
‘lenis’) obstruents, as made famous on Saturday Night Live’s da Bears routines, where ‘bears’,
‘beers’ and other words are pronounced with a clear final [s]. In eastern Wisconsin, this pattern
is readily apparent and the population generally sees this as connected to the heavy German
immigration to the area. In some other areas, like Chicago and parts of Milwaukee, it is
connected to Polish immigration. In fact, these areas were settled by a range of groups whose
native languages and dialects had final devoicing or final fortition (Auslautverhärtung), among
them German, Dutch, Frisian, and Polish.
Using historical recordings of speakers born back well into the 19th century and made as early
as the mid 20th century, these works point to an intricate pattern of change. Most studies of
American English report that laryngeal distinctions in final position are carried primarily by
duration of the preceding vowel — where longer vowels signal a lenis coda consonant — and
voicing is widely considered to play a relatively minor role, as laryngeal realism would
suggest. The earliest speakers, raised in communities where immigrant languages, especially
German, actually produce the distinction largely by actual voicing, and produce slightly shorter
vowels before lenis obstruents than fortis. Later generations have moved away from that
system, but without ever coming to resemble closely the usually reported patterns for American
English. The youngest group of speakers, those born since 1966, have substantially reduced the
phonetic realization of the distinction, to the extent that both final s and z can be heard,
certainly by outsiders, as s. These changes are summarized graphically in (4), and the reader is
referred to especially Purnell et al. 2005b for additional discussion.
8
(4) Final laryngeal distinctions in Wisconsin English over time, from Purnell et al. 2005b.
Arrow A highlights a relation change between the older two groups of speakers and the third group (the
dotted line) primarily with respect to lenis obstruents. Arrow B highlights a relational shift from the 1920
to 1939 group to the 1966 to 1986 group.
The Wisconsin case, then, hardly represents a simple continuation of German phonetics and
phonology in English, but instead arose from a reinterpretation that has taken place over several
generations.While we can draw no sweeping conclusions at this point, from what we know at
present, it is likely that this reflects the slow crystallization of a new dialect and social
transmission of changes, as early L2 speakers of English strived to master the laryngeal
distinction in finals and, with the help of teachers and textbooks, overshot their goal
phonetically. Later generations appear to have returned to patterns found in the speech of
earlier members of the community and fortition has clearly established itself a salient social
and regional marker today, transcending the bounds of its original ethnic communities. We will
not pursue it here, but note that one of the traditional problems with numerous substrate
accounts has been the apparent time lag between language shift and the rise of the alleged
substrate feature. Instead of vitiating substrate accounts, this delayed reaction may simply
reflect the sociolinguistic spread of the new grammar over generations.
In sum, then, the Wisconsin evidence strongly suggests that laryngeal substrate effects are
possible in the case of a phonological process, but show tremendous complexity along various
lines. For instance, there is no direct line of transmission from German-influenced speech to the
present, but an ongoing negotiation of this distinction. It is hardly a simple categorical pattern,
but rather still best seen as a phonetic process which has achieved the stage of near-merger:
9
Even young speakers show differences in production, and it is still unclear how or to what
extent this is reflected in perception.4
5. Laryngeal imposition in Second Language Phonology. As noted in the
introduction, we have to this point treated only changes in the basic laryngeal phonetics and
phonology, but not chain shifts per se. In a section on “phonological nativization”, Hock
(1991:393-394) discusses what he calls “system-based substitution processes”, where Hindi and
related languages have long integrated loanwords from an array of languages — such as Farsi,
Arabic, English — in chain-shift-like fashion. He exemplifies this as follows:
(5)
Sound in source word
f, θ, x
pʰ, tʰ, kʰ
Integrated Hindi form
ph, t̪h, kh
p, t̪ /ṭ, k
In reference to that passage, Winford (2005: 381-382) notes that this process is relevant not
only to borrowing, but can be found as imposition:5
When speakers of Hindi speak English, they adapt English sounds in precisely the same
way; this is a well-known feature of Indian English. … In imposition, they transfer varying
degrees of their L1 structure to an external recipient language.
In fact, discussions with speakers of South Asian languages and those on study them indicate
that the same pattern exists across the region — considered a typical trait of Bengali English,
and found among Sindhi speakers, and so on.
The surprise here is not that the foreign voiceless fricatives [f, θ, x] are rendered in Hindi
phonemically as /ph, ṭh, kh/, because voiceless aspirated stop phonemes are the phonetically
most proximate native sounds that Hindi has available to stand for foreign non-sibilant
fricatives (like voiceless aspirated stops, voiceless fricatives are also articulated with the feature
[spread glottis], following Vaux 1998). As Hindi itself, with respect to fricatives, has only
native /s/ and /š/ (which of course substitute directly for foreign [s, š]), foreign [f, θ, x] match
up most closely with Hindi /ph, ṭh, kh/, hence the observed stop-for-fricative substitutions. It is
quite surprising, however, that foreign voiceless aspirated stops do not emerge in Hindi also as
4
West Frisian may offer something of a parallel here, as the literature indicates that it has acquired final devoicing,
perhaps under Dutch influence. Striking here is that this would be a phonological rule or constraint spreading by
contact but without language shift. Of course, final devoicing is such a frequent independent development in the
languages of the world that contact might simply serve as catalyst. See Cohen et al. (1959: 123) and Tiersma
(1984:30) for literature and references.
5 See a similar note also in Gimson/Cruttenden (2001:154), and somewhat more extensive discussion along these
lines in Wells (1982:627-628).
10
voiceless aspirated stops, because these appear to be essentially in a one-to-one phonetic match.
That is, English aspirated [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] approximate Hindi /ph, ṭh, kh/ quite closely in terms of
Voice Onset Time (VOT) lag (Dixit 1989, Davis 1994, Ladefoged website), yet the regular
substitution for foreign [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] is not /ph, ṭh, kh/ in Hindi, but rather phonemically
unaspirated /p, ṭ, k/, as exemplified in the adaptation of English words listed in (6).
(6) Hindi adaptions of English voiceless fricatives and aspirated stops (Hock 1986:393)
tin
proof
concrete
phone
thermos
[tʰɪn]
→
[pʰɹuf]
→
[kʰaŋkʰɹitʰ] →
[fon]
→
[θɝməs]
→
ṭīn
prūph
kaŋkrīṭ
phōn
t̪harmas
(*ṭhīn)
(*phrūph)
(*khaŋkhrīṭh)
(*pōn)
(*t̪armas)
(ṭ = retroflex)
(t̪ = dental)
Extensive recent work in the phonology of loanword adaptation has established that perceived
phonetic similarity of foreign pronunciation to native sound categories accounts for the vast
range of observed substitutions (Iverson & Lee 2006, Peperkamp 2005), even when there are
allophonic/phonemic mismatches between the phonological systems. Thus, Kenstowicz &
Suchato (1996) report that the phonetically aspirated stops of English, as in pin, are adapted as
phonemically aspirated in Thai ([phīn]), while phonetically unaspirated fortis stops in English,
as in spare, are adapted as phonemically unaspirated in Thai ([səpēe]). Aspirated and
unaspirated fortis stops are in the same phonemic category in English, of course, but these
phonetic differences happen to correlate with phonemic distinctions in Thai, which then adapts
foreign aspirated and unaspirated stops according to its own contrastive categories. Thai has a
third series of laryngeally distinguished stops, too, the plain voiced series, which Kenstowicz &
Suchato point out generally match up with English lenis stops at the labial and dental places of
articulation even though these in phrase-initial position are largely voiceless: busy [b̥ɪzi] >
[bīisîi], domain [d̥omeɪn] > [dōomēen]. As Thai does not have a voiced velar stop phoneme,
native /k/ substitutes for English [g̊] (goal [g̊oʊl] > [kōo]), but from a phonetic approximation
point of view it could be expected that Thai would substitute its voiceless unaspirated /p/ and /t/
for English initial [b̥] and [d̥], too. Kenstowicz & Suchato appeal to the lower pitch (F0)
following lenis stops in English as a possible clue that Thai listeners may use to identify
English [b̥] and [d̥] with Thai /b/ and /d/; but they recognize as well that the awareness
bilingual adapters likely have of English phonemic/orthographic correspondences will result in
the regular match-up of English b and d with Thai /b/ and /d/ irrespective of the absence of
phonetic voicing in the phrase-initial stops of the source words.
Indeed, the evidence is quite persuasive in loanword adaptation studies that external factors
may play a confounding role, particularly prescriptive influences (Iverson 2005) and listener
awareness of the source language’s orthographic traditions (Vendelin & Peperkamp 2006). In
parallel to the English match-up with the laryngeal system of Thai, LaCharité & Paradis (2005)
11
also observe that, with respect to Spanish, the lenis stops of English in initial position are
phonetically closer to the voiceless stop phonemes of that language than to its voiced stop
phonemes. In terms of VOT values relative to closure release, they report as follows:
(7) VOT correlates of stops in Spanish vs. English (LaCharité & Paradis 2005)
Phonetic Implementation
Phonological value
voiced
/b, d, g/
voiceless /p, t, k/
SPANISH
ENGLISH
-VOT (-40 to 0 msec)
+VOT (0 to 30 msec)
+VOT (0 to 30 msec)
+VOT (> 50 msec)
In view of the laryngeal identity between the p t c/k stops of Spanish and the b d g stops of
English, it should be expected that Spanish-speaking listeners will perceive English initial lenis
stops ([b̥, d̥, g̊]) as equivalent to Spanish voiceless stops (/p, t, k/), and so substitute Spanish p t
c/k for English b d g. Indeed, this is the case for Mexican Spanish speakers with little previous
exposure to English, according to other studies reported on by LaCharité & Paradis. But
LaCharité & Paradis also show that, as familiarity with English increases, Spanish-speaking
learners come to interpret the English lenis stops (written b, d, g, like Spanish voiced stops) as
phonemically voiced and equivalent to Spanish b, d, g, even though the English initial lenis
stops are phonetically most like the Spanish voiceless stops in terms of VOT relations:
(8) English loans in Mexican Spanish (Iverson 2006, generalizing LaCharité & Paradis 2005)
ENGLISH
SPANISH
EXPECTED EQUIVALENCES
Stop phonemes: /b̥ d̥ g̊/
/b d g/
Eng /b̥ d̥ g̊/ = Sp /p t k/
bar
[b̥ɑɹ]
[baɾ]
*[paɾ]
baseball
[b̥esb̥ɑl]
[besbɔl]
*[pespɔl]
dip
[d̥ɪp]
[dip]
*[tip]
darling
[d̥ɑɹlɪŋ]
[daɾlin]
*[taɾlin]
golf
[g̊ɑlf]
[gɔlf]
*[kɔlf]
gang
[g̊æŋ]
[gaɲ]
*[kaɲ]
It appears, then, that increased exposure to English among Mexican Spanish speakers carries
with it an increased awareness of the graphemic correspondences between the spelling
traditions of the two languages — specifically, that the phonemically voiced stops of Spanish
line up orthographically with the phonemically lenis stops of English.
12
A further expression of the orthographic awareness effect stands out in Korean, which, like
Thai, regularly and expectedly adapts English voiceless aspirated stops as its own phonemic
series of aspirates rather than as its unaspirated (tense) series of stops, as exemplified in (9a).
But unlike Thai, Korean substitutes its aspirates for English allophonically unaspirated fortis
stops, too, at least in formal registers and in most published sources, as exemplified in (9b) for
English words with medial unaspirated voiceless stops and in (9c) for words sourced in English
s+stop clusters:
(9)
Korean adaptations of English voiceless aspirated and unaspirated stops (Iverson 2006)
(a) panorama [pʰænəɹæmə] →
tennis
[tʰɛnəs]
→
camera
[kʰæməɹə]
→
[pʰanoɾama]
[tʰɛnis’ɨ]
[kʰamɛɾa]
(b) pickle
potato
happy
[pʰɪkəl]
[pʰətʰeɪɾo]
[hæpi]
→
→
→
[pʰikʰɨl]
(*[pʰik’ɨl])
[pʰotʰɛitʰo] (*[pʰotʰɛit’o])
[hɛpʰi]
(*[hɛp’i])
(c) stick
stop
spoon
[stɪk]
[stap]
[spun]
→
→
→
[sɨtʰik]
[sɨtʰop]
[sɨpʰun]
(*[sɨt’ik])
(*[sɨt’op])
(*[sɨp’un])
The awareness of English spelling traditions is very strong on the part of educated Koreans, all
of whom are exposed to English in school, and accounts for the obvious spelling
pronunciations of the vowel sounds in the adaptations of panorama, camera, etc. Similarly, the
[o] (rather than [a]) in adapted stop ([sɨtʰop]) gives away its source in English spelling.
Moreover, explicit grounds for the rendering of this word with aspirated /tʰ/ rather than
expected unaspirated /t’/ can be found in the prescriptions of the authoritative National
Academy of the Korean Language, which hold that foreign words spelled with p, t, c/k, even if
unaspirated in the source (as is always the case in Romance languages like French, but also
sometimes in Germanic English, too), should be rendered in Korean as aspirated. Hence, stop
[stap] > [sɨtʰop], Paris [paʁi] > [pʰaɾi], etc. But as Lee (2006) has shown, pronunciations
without aspiration (and with a phonetically more approximate vowel) are possible as well, and
actually preferred, under either experimental or more informal conditions: [sɨt’ap], [p’aɾi]. This
points to the duality of influences in loanword adaptation — prescription/orthography, on the
one hand ([sɨtʰop], [pʰaɾi]), and phonetically informed perception, on the other ([sɨt’ap],
[p’aɾi]).
It is instructive, then, that Korean parallels Hindi in being stop-rich but fricative-poor. Hindi
natively contrasts four manners of stops, including affricates (voiceless unaspirated, voiced,
voiceless aspirated, voiced aspirated) at five places of articulation (labial, dental, retroflex,
13
palatal, velar), making 20 stop phonemes, but the language has only two native fricative
phonemes (/s, š/). Korean contrasts three manners of stops, including affricates (glottally tense,
lax, aspirated) at four places of articulation (labial, alveolar, postalveolar, velar), for a total of
12 stops opposed also to two fricatives (/s, s’/). And as Hindi substitutes its aspirated labial
stop /ph/ for English /f/, Korean similarly substitutes its aspirated labial stop /pʰ/ for English /f/
(film → [pʰillɨm]). But whereas Korean also substitutes its aspirated labial stop /pʰ/ for English
/pʰ/ (park → [pʰakʰɨ]), thus merging English /f/ and /pʰ/, Hindi keeps these distinct by shifting
the adaptation of English /pʰ/ over to the Hindi voiceless unaspirated stop phoneme, /p/.6
Hock appeals to two factors to explain the system-based nature of the Hindi systematic
substitution, that is, why the usual pattern of matching most similar native sound appears to be
overridden here. First, he argues, Hindi obstruents are heavily skewed toward stops with few
fricatives, while the donor languages, like English, are relatively balanced in this regard.
Second, he suggests that:
the distinctive aspiration of languages like Hindi has a much more noticeable turbulence
than the non-distinctive, allophonic aspiration of English. … English aspiration therefore
may perhaps be perceived as not turbulent enough to be considered ‘true’ aspiration.
This impression is supported by the intuitions of at least one Hindi speaker we have discussed
this with, who finds the English word-initial p “somehow softer” than the Hindi voiceless
aspirate. Still, the question invites systematic perceptual testing.
Whatever its explanation, a substitution pattern of this sort for obstruent chain shift is
suggestive of the Germanic type. While speculation about possible shift-induced triggers for the
consonant shifts is one of the oldest parlor games in historical linguistics, concrete proposals
of particular obstruent systems and contact settings have hardly if ever been explored. Given
the potential modern parallel that the Hindi-English case proffers, we then would like to see
how such a scenario could have played out.
Under any reconstruction, Proto-Indo-European was also rich in stops but poor in fricatives —
three or even four stop series at probably five places of articulation, against, even assuming that
the laryngeals were lost before the relevant point in time, only one fricative, *s. Hindi, like the
other languages of South Asia mentioned here, presents a parallel system. In contact with
fricative-rich languages such as English, Farsi or Arabic, then, Hindi speakers map fricatives
from foreign sources onto stops in their own system. Speakers of a language with a system of
this general sort who acquired, imperfectly, a Pre-Germanic language with an Indo-European
obstruent system could, in principle, have reshaped the system in Grimmian fashion.
Under influence from neighboring Urdu, Clancey Clements and others inform us, more educated speakers
employ borrowed /f/ in such cases.
6
14
Of course, the Hindi-English case is a kind of mirror image of Grimm’s Law: Instead of the
substitution of fricatives by aspirated stops, the first sound shift involved aspirated stops
becoming fricatives, and so on, as illustrated in (10). For ease of presentation, we have simply
left aside the issues of palatal stops and labiovelar stops.
(10) Mirror-image Hindi-English substitution = substrate situation for triggering Grimm’s Law
(a) Late (Northwest) IE obstruents (simplified)
ph
b̥
bh
th
d̥
dh
s
kh
g̊
gh
(b) A possible pre-IE substrate system
f
p
b
θ
t
d
s
x
k
g
Drawing parallels to the Hindi-English case, of course, requires that aspiration (‘Germanic
enhancement’, as we have argued for it) already be present in the late Northwest IndoEuropean obstruent system, thus setting a perceptual equivalence between voiceless aspirated
stops and voiceless fricatives. The match-up between late NWIE voiced (presumably now lenis)
stops and substrate plain voiceless stops is phonetically quite close, moreover, as is that
between voiced aspirates and plain voiced stops in the possible substrate system we have
postulated, which is of a widely attested, commonplace type. We see similarities, then, between
the results of modern Hindi contact with English and the probable exposure of autochthonal
residents of Northwest Europe to the obstruent system of advancing Indo-European speakers.
In summary, attested patterns of sound substitutions involving obstruent series generally do not
provide clear models for the Germanic Sound Shift. The closest we find is a kind of mirrorimage situation, involving the stop-heavy languages of South Asia in contact with fricativericher tongues. However, as we have sketched above, even as a kind of inverse parallel, it
seems fraught with complexity.
6. Conclusion. We have argued that the basis of articulation we call “Germanic
Enhancement” created a launching pad for large-scale obstruent changes of the sort which have
marked Germanic since its split from the (Northwest) Indo-European parent language down to
the present. It may well be plausible that language contact triggered such wholesale changes
and, of course, could serve as trigger to renewed episodes of shift as well. This is the
celebrated Kreislauf expressed in Grimm’s understanding of first the Erste, then the Zweite
Lautverschiebung, both ably argued by scholars at this conference to have been rooted
culturally and linguistically in the influences of language contact.
15
Our investigations suggest that laryngeal phonetics and phonology are susceptible to reshaping
in contact, too, particularly transmission through shift, of the sort van Coetsem and Winford
and others call ‘imposition’. The particular laryngeal features employed appear particularly
susceptible to restructuring, but when it comes to wholesale shift, we find only one attested
example that is suggestive of a historical model. In the Hindi-English case, the paucity of
fricatives in Hindi which might have prompted a substitution with stops matching fricatives,
yielding a chain of mismatches on down the line. Note that even here, Germanic enhancement
remains a necessary precondition to shift, and the directionality would have to be the reverse of
what we observe in this one attested case. Overall, then, while shift-induced restructuring of
laryngeal phonetics and phonology can be found, within Germanic even, the likelihood of
contact-induced chain shifting à la Grimm’s Law does not strike us as particularly high.
Still, the loanword and second language phonology of Hindi-English contact (and similar cases)
is ill understood at present. We are beginning to plan perceptual and acoustic phonetic work
that would shed some light on the accounts provided to date in the literature.
Most strikingly, though, if one did pursue a substrate account of the First Sound Shift, Grimm’s
Law qua chain shift would simply disappear, and instead the famed Germanic consonant shift
would reflect a ‘systematic substitution’.
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