TRASK´S HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS SUMMARY
CHAPTER 3: CHANGE IN PRONUNCIATION
All types of change in pronunciation are collectively known as phonological change, or, using a more traditional
term, sound change.
Syntagmatic change: change in the sequence of speech sounds representing the pronunciation of a particular
word, or, more accurately, of groups of similar words.
Syntagmatic changes have been classified into several different types, and these types have been given names
in technical terms.
3.1 THE PHONETIC BASIS OF PHONOLOGICAL CHANGE
When we speak, we produce a stream of speech sounds, or segments, one after the other. We know that these
segments are more of a psychological reality than a physical one: physically, the various speech organs are all
moving about at their own pace, and they do not all simultaneously and instantly jump from one configuration
to another, as you move from one speech sound to the next. Instead, the organs spend a good deal of time
moving away from one configuration and towards the next one, leaving and arriving at different times.
Despite such unsynchronized timings, our ears and brains still hear the individual segments that are ‘supposed’
to be there.
3.2 ASSIMILATION AND DISSIMILATION
One of the most common types of sound change is assimilation: the process by which two sounds that occur
close together in speech become more alike. Moving the speech organs all over the place requires effort, and
making nearby sounds more similar reduces the amount of movement required, and hence the amount of
effort. Total assimilation: the sound undergoing assimilation has become identical to the influencing sound.
Most assimilations are partial assimilations: the assimilated sound becomes only more similar, and not
identical, to the influencing sound.
These are also examples of contact assimilation, in which the two sounds involved are directly adjacent, but we
also often encounter distant assimilation, in which the sounds in question are separated by other sounds.
The assimilation of an earlier sound to a later one is called anticipatory assimilation. When a later sound
assimilates to an earlier one, we speak of perseverative or progressive assimilation.
Assimilation can operate in both directions at the same time, here we speak of mutual assimilation.
Any assimilation can be classified as partial or total, as contact or distant, and as anticipatory, perseverative, or
mutual. All possible combinations are found, though some are more common than others.
Specialists in particular languages sometimes give distinctive names to specific types of assimilation which are
important in those languages. For example, the types of anticipatory vowel assimilation shown in the preceding
example of German Gast/gaste is important in the Germanic languages: umlaut.
The opposite of assimilation is dissimilation: making sounds more different than they were before. You might
wonder why dissimilation should occur at all. The explanation lies in what we call the ‘tongue-twister effect’.
One reason why a tongue-twister is hard to say is that our speech organs can get weary of making the same
sound (or very similar sounds) repeatedly. This effect occasionally shows up in ordinary speech.
,Dissimilation of liquid consonants is particularly common, but other types occur. Early Modern High German
Tartoffel ‘potato’ and is now kartoffel.
3.3 LENITION AND FORTITION
Another major class of changes is represented by lenition, or weakening, which affects only consonants.
Consonants can be classified as stronger or weaker on several scales; the symbol ‘>’ here means ‘is stronger
than’:
Geminate > simplex
Stop > fricative > approximant stop > liquid
Oral stop > glottal stop non-nasal > nasal voiceless > voiced
Each of these scales has a clear phonetic basis: the first four all reflect differing degrees of obstruction of the
airflow in the mouth+ the fifth reflects differing degrees of obstruction of the airflow through the nasal cavity;
the last reflects differing degrees of distance from a vowel and often also differing degrees of tension in the
speech organs. A ‘weaker’ consonant involves less articulatory effort than a corresponding ‘stronger’ one, or
which is generally less ‘consonantal’ and more ‘vocalic’.
The consonant becomes more ‘vowel-like’, this type of lenition can therefore be regarded as a kind of
assimilation. Some examples involving the six scales. ‘>’ means ‘develops into’:
Latin cuppa ‘cup’ > Spanish Copa ‘wine glass’
This type of lenition is called degemination
Latin faba ‘bean’ > Italian fava
This type of lenition is called spirantization (conversion to a fricative)
English wa[t]er > General American wa[r]er
This is known as glottalization of intervocalic /t/ in several urban accents of Britain. The development
of an oral stop into a glottal stop is called Debuccalization (literal translation: removal of activity from
the mouth.
Latin sabanu ‘covering’ > pre-Basque *zabanu > Basque zamau ‘tablecloth’
This is one type of nasalization, a change in which the velum, formerly raised, comes to be lowered.
Latin strata ‘road’ > Italian Strada
This type of lenition is called voicing
Lenition can continue to the point at which the affected segment disappears entirely, such disappearance is
called loss or deletion. Here are some examples:
Old English heafod > English head
Latin regale ‘royal’ > Spanish real
, Lenition and loss are by no means confined to intervocalic position, though they are particularly common there.
There are a few examples in other positions.
Word-initially:
Pre-Japanese *pana ‘flower’ > Japanese hana
PIE *porko- ‘pig’ > Irish orc
Word-finally:
Latin nos ‘we’, vos ‘you’ > Italian noi, voi
There are various other processes, both phonological and morphological, which tend to oppose the effects of
lenition. The most obvious one is fortition, or strengthening: the evolution of a consonant from right to left.
Fortition is less frequent than lenition, but it is not rare. Here are a few examples illustrating fortition:
Latin aqua ‘water’ [akwa] > Italian acqua [akkwa]
This type of fortition is gemination
Latin maiu ‘May’ > Italian Maggio
This is denasalization
Russian xl’eb ‘bread’ > xl’e[p]
Such devoicing of consonants at the end of a word is very common; it might be regarded as a kind of
assimilation to the following silence.
3.4 ADDITION AND REMOVAL OF PHONETIC FEATURES
Most types of phonological change involve the redistribution of phonetic features on segments: a feature is
added to a segment or removed from a segment, or it spreads from one segment to another. Particular types
of such feature rearrangements are so common that they are given individual names; the majority of these can
be regarded as varieties either of assimilation or of lenition.
Palatalization the process of sound change in which a nonpalatal consonant, like k, changes to a palatal
consonant, like Ch or sh.
Less obvious is the phonetic motivation for velarization, the back of the tongue comes to be raised towards the
velum during an articulation.
Lowering of the velum during articulation is nasalization, this process chiefly affects vowels. Nasalization is
most often induced by the presence of a neighboring nasal consonant, especially a following one: the velum is
lowered a little too ‘early’, and the preceding vowel acquires a nasal character.
The redistribution of features was so great as to change the number of segments in a word, leading to results
that almost belong to the next section. Such a combination of two segments into one is called fusion. Fusion is
common in English with sequences like /tj/, /dj/, and /sj/.
The opposite of fusion is unpacking, also called segmentalization. The phonetic features formerly present in a
single segment are split into a sequence of two segments. Unpacking is less common than fusion, but not rare.
There exist a few other labels for specific types of change which you may occasionally encounter, such as
CHAPTER 3: CHANGE IN PRONUNCIATION
All types of change in pronunciation are collectively known as phonological change, or, using a more traditional
term, sound change.
Syntagmatic change: change in the sequence of speech sounds representing the pronunciation of a particular
word, or, more accurately, of groups of similar words.
Syntagmatic changes have been classified into several different types, and these types have been given names
in technical terms.
3.1 THE PHONETIC BASIS OF PHONOLOGICAL CHANGE
When we speak, we produce a stream of speech sounds, or segments, one after the other. We know that these
segments are more of a psychological reality than a physical one: physically, the various speech organs are all
moving about at their own pace, and they do not all simultaneously and instantly jump from one configuration
to another, as you move from one speech sound to the next. Instead, the organs spend a good deal of time
moving away from one configuration and towards the next one, leaving and arriving at different times.
Despite such unsynchronized timings, our ears and brains still hear the individual segments that are ‘supposed’
to be there.
3.2 ASSIMILATION AND DISSIMILATION
One of the most common types of sound change is assimilation: the process by which two sounds that occur
close together in speech become more alike. Moving the speech organs all over the place requires effort, and
making nearby sounds more similar reduces the amount of movement required, and hence the amount of
effort. Total assimilation: the sound undergoing assimilation has become identical to the influencing sound.
Most assimilations are partial assimilations: the assimilated sound becomes only more similar, and not
identical, to the influencing sound.
These are also examples of contact assimilation, in which the two sounds involved are directly adjacent, but we
also often encounter distant assimilation, in which the sounds in question are separated by other sounds.
The assimilation of an earlier sound to a later one is called anticipatory assimilation. When a later sound
assimilates to an earlier one, we speak of perseverative or progressive assimilation.
Assimilation can operate in both directions at the same time, here we speak of mutual assimilation.
Any assimilation can be classified as partial or total, as contact or distant, and as anticipatory, perseverative, or
mutual. All possible combinations are found, though some are more common than others.
Specialists in particular languages sometimes give distinctive names to specific types of assimilation which are
important in those languages. For example, the types of anticipatory vowel assimilation shown in the preceding
example of German Gast/gaste is important in the Germanic languages: umlaut.
The opposite of assimilation is dissimilation: making sounds more different than they were before. You might
wonder why dissimilation should occur at all. The explanation lies in what we call the ‘tongue-twister effect’.
One reason why a tongue-twister is hard to say is that our speech organs can get weary of making the same
sound (or very similar sounds) repeatedly. This effect occasionally shows up in ordinary speech.
,Dissimilation of liquid consonants is particularly common, but other types occur. Early Modern High German
Tartoffel ‘potato’ and is now kartoffel.
3.3 LENITION AND FORTITION
Another major class of changes is represented by lenition, or weakening, which affects only consonants.
Consonants can be classified as stronger or weaker on several scales; the symbol ‘>’ here means ‘is stronger
than’:
Geminate > simplex
Stop > fricative > approximant stop > liquid
Oral stop > glottal stop non-nasal > nasal voiceless > voiced
Each of these scales has a clear phonetic basis: the first four all reflect differing degrees of obstruction of the
airflow in the mouth+ the fifth reflects differing degrees of obstruction of the airflow through the nasal cavity;
the last reflects differing degrees of distance from a vowel and often also differing degrees of tension in the
speech organs. A ‘weaker’ consonant involves less articulatory effort than a corresponding ‘stronger’ one, or
which is generally less ‘consonantal’ and more ‘vocalic’.
The consonant becomes more ‘vowel-like’, this type of lenition can therefore be regarded as a kind of
assimilation. Some examples involving the six scales. ‘>’ means ‘develops into’:
Latin cuppa ‘cup’ > Spanish Copa ‘wine glass’
This type of lenition is called degemination
Latin faba ‘bean’ > Italian fava
This type of lenition is called spirantization (conversion to a fricative)
English wa[t]er > General American wa[r]er
This is known as glottalization of intervocalic /t/ in several urban accents of Britain. The development
of an oral stop into a glottal stop is called Debuccalization (literal translation: removal of activity from
the mouth.
Latin sabanu ‘covering’ > pre-Basque *zabanu > Basque zamau ‘tablecloth’
This is one type of nasalization, a change in which the velum, formerly raised, comes to be lowered.
Latin strata ‘road’ > Italian Strada
This type of lenition is called voicing
Lenition can continue to the point at which the affected segment disappears entirely, such disappearance is
called loss or deletion. Here are some examples:
Old English heafod > English head
Latin regale ‘royal’ > Spanish real
, Lenition and loss are by no means confined to intervocalic position, though they are particularly common there.
There are a few examples in other positions.
Word-initially:
Pre-Japanese *pana ‘flower’ > Japanese hana
PIE *porko- ‘pig’ > Irish orc
Word-finally:
Latin nos ‘we’, vos ‘you’ > Italian noi, voi
There are various other processes, both phonological and morphological, which tend to oppose the effects of
lenition. The most obvious one is fortition, or strengthening: the evolution of a consonant from right to left.
Fortition is less frequent than lenition, but it is not rare. Here are a few examples illustrating fortition:
Latin aqua ‘water’ [akwa] > Italian acqua [akkwa]
This type of fortition is gemination
Latin maiu ‘May’ > Italian Maggio
This is denasalization
Russian xl’eb ‘bread’ > xl’e[p]
Such devoicing of consonants at the end of a word is very common; it might be regarded as a kind of
assimilation to the following silence.
3.4 ADDITION AND REMOVAL OF PHONETIC FEATURES
Most types of phonological change involve the redistribution of phonetic features on segments: a feature is
added to a segment or removed from a segment, or it spreads from one segment to another. Particular types
of such feature rearrangements are so common that they are given individual names; the majority of these can
be regarded as varieties either of assimilation or of lenition.
Palatalization the process of sound change in which a nonpalatal consonant, like k, changes to a palatal
consonant, like Ch or sh.
Less obvious is the phonetic motivation for velarization, the back of the tongue comes to be raised towards the
velum during an articulation.
Lowering of the velum during articulation is nasalization, this process chiefly affects vowels. Nasalization is
most often induced by the presence of a neighboring nasal consonant, especially a following one: the velum is
lowered a little too ‘early’, and the preceding vowel acquires a nasal character.
The redistribution of features was so great as to change the number of segments in a word, leading to results
that almost belong to the next section. Such a combination of two segments into one is called fusion. Fusion is
common in English with sequences like /tj/, /dj/, and /sj/.
The opposite of fusion is unpacking, also called segmentalization. The phonetic features formerly present in a
single segment are split into a sequence of two segments. Unpacking is less common than fusion, but not rare.
There exist a few other labels for specific types of change which you may occasionally encounter, such as
