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6 - Other common sound patterns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Juliette Blevins
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Summary

These results add to the growing body of evidence pointing to the crucial role of the listener in initiating certain sound changes … This is not to deny that much of the synchronic variation in speech – from which diachronic variation arises – can be traced to the speaker or the physical principles which map articulation to sound …

Ohala (1990b: 266)

In this chapter, I investigate potential explanations for common sound patterns not detailed in earlier chapters. For the purposes of this discussion, common sound patterns are those for which there is good evidence of multigenesis. Unlike the uncommon sound patterns detailed in chapter 8, these sound patterns are not limited to a few languages, a few language families, or a small number of geographic regions.

This chapter is organized in terms of the general phonetic source of sound change for the sound patterns in question. Where possible, I begin by demonstrating a particular sound pattern in the synchronic grammar of one or more spoken languages. I then give an example of the same pattern attested as a sound change, and go on to present a phonetic explanation for the sound change in question. After illustrating sound patterns with sources in misperception, feature localization, vowel length, and articulation, I turn to sound patterns with multiple, mythical, and mysterious sources.

Perception as the primary source of sound change

In chapters 4 and 5, perception-based accounts were proposed for certain recurrent cross-linguistic patterns in the distribution of laryngeal features and place features.

Type
Chapter
Information
Evolutionary Phonology
The Emergence of Sound Patterns
, pp. 133 - 167
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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