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97-448: Palatalization is sometimes an example of assimilation . In some cases, it is triggered by a palatal or palatalized consonant or front vowel, but in other cases, it is not conditioned in any way. Palatalization changes place of articulation or manner of articulation of consonants. It may add palatal secondary articulation or change primary articulation from velar to palatal or alveolar , alveolar to postalveolar . It may also cause

194-410: A in the following syllable ( Germanic a-mutation ) although that had already happened significantly earlier: Another example of a regular change is the sibilant assimilation of Sanskrit in which if there were two different sibilants as the onset of successive syllables, a plain /s/ was always replaced by the palatal /ɕ/ : Lag assimilation to an adjacent segment is tolerably common and often has

291-750: A [ɡ] and ⟨ ق ⟩ represents a [q] , which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of ⟨ ج ⟩ to [d͡ʒ] and the pronunciation of the ⟨ ق ⟩ as a [ɡ] as shown in the table below: Some modern Arabic varieties developed palatalization of ⟨ ك ⟩ (turning [ k ] into [ tʃ ] , [ ts ] , [ ʃ ] , or [ s ] ), ⟨ ق ⟩ (turning [ɡ~q] into [ dʒ ] or [ dz ] ) and ⟨ ج ⟩ (turning [ d͡ʒ ] into [ j ] ), usually when adjacent to front vowel, though these palatalizations also occur in other environments as well. These three palatalizations occur in

388-467: A chain shift , one phoneme moves in acoustic space, causing other phonemes to move as well to maintain optimal phonemic differentiation. An example from American English is the Northern cities vowel shift [1] , where the raising of /æ/ has triggered a fronting of /ɑ/ , which in turn has triggered a lowering of /ɔ/ , and so forth. If a phoneme moves in acoustic space, but its neighbors do not move in

485-410: A sound change , is usually triggered only by mid and close (high) front vowels and the semivowel [j] . The sound that results from palatalization may vary from language to language. For example, palatalization of [t] may produce [tʲ], [tʃ], [tɕ], [tsʲ], [ts] , etc. A change from [t] to [tʃ] may pass through [tʲ] as an intermediate state, but there is no requirement for that to happen. In

582-567: A velar , giving [x] ( c.  1650 ). (See History of the Spanish language and Phonological history of Spanish coronal fricatives for more information). Palatalization has played a major role in the history of English, and of other languages and language groups throughout the world, such as the Slavic languages . In Anglo-Frisian , the language that gave rise to English and the Frisian languages ,

679-472: A bit, Old English fricatives were voiced between voiced sounds and voiceless elsewhere. Thus /f/ was [f] in fisc [fiʃ] "fish", fyllen "to fill" [fyllen], hæft "prisoner", ofþyrsted [ofθyrsted] "athirst", líf "life", wulf "wolf". But in say the dative singular of "life", that is lífe , the form was [li:ve] (as in English alive , being an old prepositional phrase on lífe ); the plural of wulf, wulfas ,

776-461: A chain shift, a phonemic merger may occur. In that case, a single phoneme results where an earlier stage of the language had two phonemes (that is also called phonetic neutralization ). A well known example of a phonemic merger in American English is the cot–caught merger by which the vowel phonemes /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ (illustrated by the words cot and caught respectively) have merged into

873-543: A change historically, *keeli → tšeeli 'language', but there is currently an additional distinction between palatalized laminal and non-palatalized apical consonants. An extreme example occurs in Spanish , whose palatalized ( 'soft' ) g has ended up as [x] from a long process where Latin /ɡ/ became palatalized to [ɡʲ] (Late Latin) and then affricated to [dʒ] (Proto-Romance), deaffricated to [ʒ] (Old Spanish), devoiced to [ʃ] (16th century), and finally retracted to

970-548: A change results in a single segment with some of the features of both components, it is known as coalescence or fusion. Assimilation occurs in two different types: complete assimilation, in which the sound affected by assimilation becomes exactly the same as the sound causing assimilation, and partial assimilation, in which the sound becomes the same in one or more features but remains different in other features. Tonal languages may exhibit tone assimilation (in effect tonal umlaut), but sign languages also exhibit assimilation when

1067-476: A consonant to change its manner of articulation from stop to affricate or fricative . The change in the manner of articulation is a form of lenition . However, the lenition is frequently accompanied by a change in place of articulation. Palatalization of velar consonants commonly causes them to front, and apical and coronal consonants are usually raised. In the process, stop consonants are often spirantised except for palatalized labials. Palatalization, as

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1164-523: A contrast between two or more phonemes, is not very common. Most mergers are conditioned. That is, most apparent mergers of A and B have an environment or two in which A did something else, such as drop or merge with C. Typical is the unconditioned merger seen in the Celtic conflation of the PIE plain voiced series of stops with the breathy-voiced series: * bh, *dh, *ǵh, *gh are indistinguishable in Celtic etymology from

1261-435: A different test, Read also found that many of the children believed that words like train and chicken both started with /tʃ/ . Anticipatory assimilation at a distance is rare and usually merely an accident in the history of a specific word. However, the diverse and common assimilations known as umlaut in which the phonetics of a vowel are influenced by the phonetics of a vowel in a following syllable, are common and in

1358-463: A distance is rare and usually sporadic (except when part of a broader change, as for the Sanskrit śaśa - example, above): Greek leirion > Lat. līlium "lily". In vowel harmony , a vowel's phonetic features are often influenced by those of a preceding vowel. For example, most Finnish case markers come in two forms, with /ɑ/ (written a ) and /æ/ (written ä ), depending on whether

1455-403: A female) /ʕajnu ki / is pronounced: Speakers in these dialects that do not use the palatalization would merge the feminine and masculine suffix pronouns e.g. عينك [ʕe̞ːn ək ] ('your eye' to a male/female) as opposed to Classical Arabic /ʕajnuk a / عَيْنُكَ ('your eye' to a male) and /ʕajnuk i / عَيْنُكِ ('your eye' to a female) and most other modern urban dialects /ʕeːn ak / (to

1552-452: A following adjacent segment account for virtually all assimilatory changes and most of the regular ones. Assimilations to an adjacent segment are vastly more frequent than assimilations to a nonadjacent one. Those radical asymmetries might contain hints about the mechanisms involved, but they are not obvious. If a sound changes with reference to a following segment, it is traditionally called "regressive assimilation". Changes with reference to

1649-482: A frequent assimilation of /kt/ and /bt/ was rather reinterpreted as reflecting /tt/. The structural sequence /kt/ is now all but absent in Italian, since all items in popular speech underwent the same restructuring, /kt/ > /tt/. On the rare occasion that Italian /kt/ is encountered, however, the same assimilation that triggered the restructuring can occur at the phonetic level. For example, the medical term ictus 'stroke',

1746-474: A hard ⟨c⟩ is a spelling pronunciation , since the actual Old English pronunciation gave rise to witch . Others include the following: In some English-speaking areas, the sound /s/ changed to /ʃ/, like for example in the words Worcestershire (/wʊs.tɚ.ʃiɹ/ to /wʊʃ.tɚ.ʃiɹ/) and Association (/əˌsoʊsiˈeɪʃən/ to /əˌsoʊʃiˈeɪʃən/). Various other examples include asphalt , (to) assume . While in most Semitic languages, e.g. Aramaic , Hebrew , Ge'ez

1843-465: A higher F2 than rounded vowels. Thus unrounded front vowels and rounded back vowels have maximally different F2s, enhancing their phonemic differentiation. Phonemic differentiation can have an effect on diachronic sound change . In chain shifts , phonemic differentiation is maintained, while in phonemic mergers it is lost. Phonemic splits involve the creation of two phonemes out of one, which then tend to diverge because of phonemic differentiation. In

1940-479: A historical sound law can only affect a phonological system in one of three ways: This classification does not consider mere changes in pronunciation, that is, phonetic change, even chain shifts , in which neither the number nor the distribution of phonemes is affected. Phonetic change can occur without any modification to the phoneme inventory or phonemic correspondences. This change is purely allophonic or subphonemic. This can entail one of two changes: either

2037-431: A kind of conditioned merger (when only some expressions of a phoneme are lost) and a disappearance of a whole structure point. The former is much more common than the latter. The ends of words often have sound laws that apply there only, and many such special developments consist of the loss of a segment. The early history and prehistory of English has seen several waves of loss of elements, vowels and consonants alike, from

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2134-457: A language at a given point in time, or diachronic , a historical sound change . A related process is coarticulation in which one segment influences another to produce an allophonic variation, such as vowels becoming nasalized before nasal consonants ( /n, m, ŋ/ ) when the soft palate (velum) opens prematurely or /b/ becoming labialized as in "boot" [bʷuːt̚] or "ball" [bʷɔːɫ] in some accents. This article describes both processes under

2231-400: A limited period of time, and once established, new phonemic contrasts rarely remain tied to their ancestral environments. For example, Sanskrit acquired "new" /ki/ and /gi/ sequences via analogy and borrowing, and likewise /ču/, /ǰu/ , /čm/, and similar novelties; and the reduction of the diphthong */ay/ to Sanskrit /ē/ had no effect at all on preceding velar stops. Phonemic merger is

2328-425: A loss of distinction between phonemes. Occasionally, the term reduction refers to phonemic merger. It is not to be confused with the meaning of the word "reduction" in phonetics, such as vowel reduction , but phonetic changes may contribute to phonemic mergers. For example, in most North American English dialects , the vowel in the word lot and vowel in the word palm have become the same sound and thus undergone

2425-418: A male) and /ʕeːn ik / (to a female). Assyrian Neo-Aramaic features the palatalization of kaph (turning /k/ into [ tʃ ] ), taw (turning /t/ into [ ʃ ] ) and gimel (turning /ɡ/ into [ dʒ ] ), albeit in some dialects only and seldom in the standardized version of the language. The Romance languages developed from Vulgar Latin , the colloquial form of Latin spoken in

2522-547: A merger . In most dialects of England , the words father and farther are pronounced the same due to a merger created by non-rhoticity or "R-dropping". Conditioned merger, or primary split, takes place when some, but not all, allophones of a phoneme, say A, merge with some other phoneme, B. The immediate results are these: For a simple example, without alternation, early Middle English /d/ after stressed syllables followed by /r/ became /ð/: módor, fæder > mother, father /ðr/, weder > weather , and so on. Since /ð/

2619-416: A post-alveolar affricate instead, resulting in the all-postalveolar consonant clusters [tʃɹ] and [dʒɹ] . This phenomenon also occurs in /str/ , resulting in the all-postalveolar consonant cluster [ʃtʃɹ] . The affrication of /tr, dr/ has been seen in American English, British English, Australian English, and New Zealand English. It is suspected that this change has occurred due to assimilation. One of

2716-640: A preceding segment are traditionally called "progressive". Many find those terms confusing, as they seem to mean the opposite of the intended meaning. Accordingly, a variety of alternative terms have arisen, not all of which avoid the problem of the traditional terms. Regressive assimilation is also known as right-to-left, leading, or anticipatory assimilation. Progressive assimilation is also known as left-to-right, perseveratory, preservative, lagging, or lag assimilation. The terms anticipatory and lag are used here. Occasionally, two sounds (invariably adjacent) may influence each other in reciprocal assimilation. When such

2813-408: A relatively recent direct borrowing from Latin, is usually pronounced [ˈiktus] in deliberate speech, but [ˈittus] is frequent in more casual registers. There has been a notable change recognized across a variety of English dialects regarding the pronunciation of the /tr/ and /dr/ consonant clusters . Starting around the mid-20th century, the alveolar stop in /tr, dr/ has slowly been replaced by

2910-500: A single phoneme in some accents . In a phonemic split, a phoneme at an earlier stage of the language is divided into two phonemes over time. Usually, it happens when a phoneme has two allophones appearing in different environments, but sound change eliminates the distinction between the two environments. For example, in umlaut in the Germanic languages , the back vowels /u, o/ originally had front rounded allophones [y, ø] before

3007-453: A special condition ( miser "wretched", caesariēs "bushy hair", diser ( c ) tus "eloquent": that is, rhotacism did not take place when an /r/ followed the * s ). However, a new crop of /s/ between vowels soon arose from three sources. (1) a shortening of /ss/ after a diphthong or long vowel: causa "lawsuit" < * kawssā , cāsa "house' < * kāssā , fūsus "poured, melted" < * χewssos . (2) univerbation : nisi ( nisī ) "unless" <

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3104-525: A variety of dialects, including Iraqi , rural Levantine varieties (e.g. rural Palestinian ), a number of Gulf Arabic dialects, such as Kuwaiti , Qatari , Bahraini , and Emarati , as well as others like Najdi , parts of Oman, and various Bedouin dialects across the Arab World . Examples: Palatalization occurs in the pronunciation of the second person feminine singular pronoun in those dialects. For instance: Classical Arabic عَيْنُكِ 'your eye' (to

3201-489: A voiceless obstruent: This does not apply across word boundaries, so that the placename Grodzisk Wielkopolski is pronounced [ˈɡrɔdʑizɡ vjɛlkɔˈpɔlskʲi] , not [ˈɡrɔdʑisk fjɛlkɔˈpɔlskʲi] . In that context, /v/ patterns with other voiced obstruents. Because of a similar process, Proto-Indo-Iranian * ćw became sp in Avestan : Old Avestan aspa 'horse' corresponds to Sanskrit aśva Lag assimilation at

3298-404: A word or between words. It occurs in normal speech but becomes more common in more rapid speech . In some cases, assimilation causes the sound spoken to differ from the normal pronunciation in isolation, such as the prefix in- of English input pronounced with phonetic [m] rather than [n]. In this case, [n] becomes [m] since [m] is more phonetically similar to [p]. In other cases, the change

3395-499: Is a palato-alveolar sound; its palatal feature is derived from /j/ while its alveolar is from /t/. Another English example is ‘would you’ -> /wʊd ju/ -> [wʊdʒu]. There are examples in other languages, such as Chumburung where /ɪ̀wú ɪ̀sá/ -> /ɪ̀wúɪ̀sá/ becomes [ɪ̀wɪ́sá] - ‘three horns’. In this case, /ɪ/ is retained in the coalescence and the rising tone on /u/ appears on the coalesced sound. There are two major types of coalescence: reductive and unreductive. Reductive coalescence

3492-464: Is accepted as canonical for that word or phrase, especially if it is recognized in standard spelling: implosion pronounced with [m], composed of in- + -plosion (as in explosion ). English "handbag" (canonically / ˈ h æ n d b æ ɡ / ) is often pronounced / ˈ h æ m b æ ɡ / in rapid speech because the [ m ] and [ b ] sounds are both bilabial consonants , and their places of articulation are similar. However,

3589-411: Is conservative and the one that is innovative. When phonemic change occurs differently in the standard language and in dialects, the dialect pronunciation is considered nonstandard and may be stigmatized. In descriptive linguistics , however, the question of which splits and mergers are prestigious and which are stigmatized is irrelevant. However, such stigmatization can lead to hypercorrection , when

3686-521: Is historically a compound of "cup" / k ʌ p / and "board" / b ɔːr d / , is always generally pronounced / ˈ k ʌ b ər d / , and almost never / ˈ k ʌ p b ɔːr d / . Like in those examples, sound segments typically assimilate to a following sound, but they may also assimilate to a preceding one. Assimilation most commonly occurs between immediately adjacent-sounds but may occur between sounds that are separated by others. Assimilation can be synchronic , an active process in

3783-495: Is no alternation to give away the historical story, there, via internal reconstruction ; the evidence for these changes is almost entirely from comparative reconstruction. That reconstruction makes it easy to unriddle the story behind the weird forms of the Latin paradigm jubeō "order", jussī perfect, jussus participle. If the root is inherited, it would have to have been PIE * yewdh- . Unconditioned merger, that is, complete loss of

3880-513: Is not well known when this change occurred or if it is connected to the pronunciation of Qāf ⟨ ق ⟩ as a [ɡ] , but in most of the Arabian peninsula which is the homeland of the Arabic language, the ⟨ ج ⟩ represents a [d͡ʒ] and ⟨ ق ⟩ represents a [ɡ] , except in western and southern Yemen and parts of Oman where ⟨ ج ⟩ represents

3977-493: Is now spelled Běijīng [pèɪ.tɕíŋ] , and Tientsin and Sian were the former spellings of Tiānjīn [tʰjɛ́n.tɕín] and Xī'ān [ɕí.án] . 高 ( 古勞切 ) 交 ( 古肴切 ) Assimilation (linguistics) Assimilation is a sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants or vowels ) change to become more similar to other nearby sounds. A common type of phonological process across languages, assimilation can occur either within

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4074-466: Is pronounced [hæŋkɚtʃif] , handbag in rapid speech is pronounced [hæmbæɡ] ). In Italian , voiceless stops assimilated historically to a following /t/ : Italian otto , letto and sotto are examples of historical restructuring: otto and letto no longer contain /kt/ pronounced [tt], and sotto is no longer the structure /bt/ subject to the partial assimilation of devoicing of /b/ and full assimilation to produce [tt]. Over time, phonetic [tt] as

4171-423: Is sometimes unconditioned or spontaneous, not triggered by a palatal or palatalized consonant or front vowel. In southwestern Romance , clusters of a voiceless obstruent with /l/ were palatalized once or twice. This first palatalization was unconditioned. It resulted in a cluster with a palatal lateral [ʎ] , a palatal lateral on its own, or a cluster with a palatal approximant [j] . In a second palatalization,

4268-455: Is the phenomenon of a language maximizing the acoustic distance between its phonemes . For example, in many languages, including English , most front vowels are unrounded , while most back vowels are rounded. There are no languages in which all front vowels are rounded and all back vowels are unrounded. The most likely explanation for this is that front vowels have a higher second formant (F2) than back vowels, and unrounded vowels have

4365-477: Is the rise of the contrast between nasal and oral vowels in French. A full account of this history is complicated by the subsequent changes in the phonetics of the nasal vowels, but the development can be compendiously illustrated via the present-day French phonemes /a/ and /ã/: Phonemic split was a major factor in the creation of the contrast between voiced and voiceless fricatives in English. Originally, to oversimplify

4462-427: Is the rule whereby syllable-final stops , when followed by a nasal consonant , assimilated with it in nasality, while preserving their original point of articulation: In some cases, the underlying (pre-assimilation) root can be retrieved from related lexical items in the language: e.g. su p erior "higher"; Sa b īni "Samnites"; so p or "(deep) sleep". For some words, only comparative evidence can help retrieve

4559-510: Is the type of coalescence where sound segments are reduced after fusion is made. For example, in Xhosa, /i - lˈalaini/ becomes /e - lˈoleni/ (side). The /a-i/ segment in the first form reduces to /e/. On the other hand non-reductive coalescence have no reduction in sound segments even though there is evidence of fusion. For example, in Shona, [v_á] [tengesa] (they sell) becomes [ku] [téngésá] (to sell). Here,

4656-454: Is useful to have an overt marker on a singular noun in a sentence such as My head hurts because the syntactic mechanism needs something explicit to generate the singular suffix on the verb. Thus, all English singular nouns may be marked with yet another zero. It seems possible to avoid all those issues by considering loss as a separate basic category of phonological change, and leave zero out of it. As stated above, one can regard loss as both

4753-574: The /k/ was affricated to [tʃ] or spirantized to [ʃ] . In the Western Romance languages , Latin [kt] was palatalized once or twice. The first palatalization was unconditioned: the /k/ was vocalized to [i̯t] or spirantized to [çt] . In a second palatalization, the /t/ was affricated to [tʃ] : Palatalization may result in a phonemic split , a historical change by which a phoneme becomes two new phonemes over time through palatalization. Old historical splits have frequently drifted since

4850-631: The Gimel represents a [ɡ] , Arabic is considered unique among them where the Gimel was palatalized in most dialects to Jīm ⟨ ج ⟩ an affricate [d͡ʒ] or further into a fricative [ʒ] . While there is variation in Modern Arabic varieties, most of them reflect this palatalized pronunciation except in Egyptian Arabic and a number of Yemeni and Omani dialects, where it is pronounced as [ɡ] . It

4947-493: The Northumbrian dialect and from Old Norse , such as shirt and skirt /ˈʃərt, ˈskərt/ , church and kirk /ˈtʃɜrtʃ, ˈkɜrk/ , ditch and dike /ˈdɪtʃ, ˈdaɪk/ . German only underwent palatalization of /sk/ : cheese /tʃiːz/ and Käse /kɛːzə/ ; lie /ˈlaɪ/ and liegen /ˈliːɡən/ ; lay /ˈleɪ/ and legen /ˈleːɡən/ ; fish and Fisch /fɪʃ/ . The pronunciation of wicca as [ˈwɪkə] with

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5044-532: The Nupe language , /s/ and /z/ are palatalized both before front vowels and /j/ , while velars are only palatalized before front vowels. In Ciluba , /j/ palatalizes only a preceding /t/ , /s/ , /l/ or /n/ . In some variants of Ojibwe , velars are palatalized before /j/ , but apicals are not. In Indo-Aryan languages , dentals and /r/ are palatalized when occurring in clusters before /j/ , but velars are not. Palatalization sometimes refers to vowel shifts ,

5141-527: The Roman Empire . Various palatalizations occurred during the historical development of the Romance languages. Some groups of the Romance languages underwent more palatalizations than others. One palatalization affected all groups, some palatalizations affected most groups, and one affected only a few groups. In Gallo-Romance , Vulgar Latin * [ka] became * [tʃa] very early (and then in French become [ʃa] ), with

5238-411: The first palatalization they were fronted to *č *ž *š before the front vowels *e *ē *i *ī. In the second palatalization , the velars changed to *c, *dz or *z, and *s or *š (depending on dialect) before new *ē *ī (either from monophthongization of previous diphthongs or from borrowings). The third palatalization, also called the progressive palatalization, was triggered by a preceding *i or *ī and had

5335-506: The fronting of a back vowel or raising of a front vowel . The shifts are sometimes triggered by a nearby palatal or palatalized consonant or by a high front vowel. The Germanic umlaut is a famous example. A similar change is reconstructed in the history of Old French in which Bartsch's law turned open vowels into [e] or [ɛ] after a palatalized velar consonant. If it was true for all open vowels in Old French, it would explain

5432-510: The medials /i y/ and shifted to alveolo-palatal series /tɕ tɕʰ ɕ/ . Alveolo-palatal consonants occur in modern Standard Chinese and are written as ⟨ j q x ⟩ in Pinyin . Postal romanization does not show palatalized consonants, reflecting the dialect of the imperial court during the Qing dynasty . For instance, the name of the capital of China was formerly spelled Peking , but

5529-481: The nasalization of vowels before nasals (common but not universal), changes in point of articulation of stops and nasals under the influence of adjacent vowels. Phonetic change in this context refers to the lack of phonological restructuring, not a small degree of sound change. For example, chain shifts such as the Great Vowel Shift (in which nearly all of the vowels of the English language changed) or

5626-465: The reconstructed "palato-velars" of Proto-Indo-European ( *ḱ, *ǵ, *ǵʰ ) were palatalized into sibilants . The language groups with and without palatalization are called satem and centum languages, after the characteristic developments of the PIE word for "hundred": The Slavic languages are known for their tendency towards palatalization. In Proto-Slavic or Common Slavic times the velars *k *g *x experienced three successive palatalizations. In

5723-484: The "nominative singular masculine" is signaled by the absence of any affix. It is simpler to view alter as more than what it looks like, /alterØ/, "marked" for case, number, and gender by an affix, like the other 29 forms in the paradigm. It is merely that the "marker" in question is not a phoneme or sequence of phonemes but the element /Ø/. Along the way, it is hard to know when to stop positing zeros and whether to regard one zero as different from another. For example, if

5820-413: The 30 forms that make up the paradigm that is not explicitly marked with endings for gender, number, and case. From a historical perspective, there is no problem since alter is from * alteros (overtly nominative singular and masculine), with the regular loss of the short vowel after *- r - and the truncation of the resulting word-final cluster *- rs . Descriptively, however, it is problematic to say that

5917-814: The Romance languages. Palatal consonants in the Romance languages developed from / l / or / n / by palatalization. L and n mouillé have a variety of origins in the Romance languages . In these tables, letters that represent or used to represent / ʎ / or / ɲ / are bolded. In French, /ʎ/ merged with /j/ in pronunciation in the 18th century; in most dialects of Spanish , /ʎ/ has merged with /ʝ/ . Romanian formerly had both /ʎ/ and /ɲ/ , but both have either merged with /j/ or got lost: muliĕr(em) > *muʎere > Romanian muiere /muˈjere/ "woman"; vinĕa > *viɲe > Romanian vie /ˈvi.e/ "vineyard". In certain Indo-European language groups,

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6014-414: The allophonic differentiation of /s/, originally *[s] , into [s z ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ θ χ χʷ h] , do not qualify as phonological change as long as all of the phones remain in complementary distribution. Many phonetic changes provide the raw ingredients for later phonemic innovations. In Proto-Italic , for example, intervocalic */s/ became *[z]. It was a phonetic change, merely a mild and superficial complication in

6111-398: The characteristics of neighbouring cheremes may be mixed. Anticipatory assimilation to an adjacent segment is the most common type of assimilation by far, and typically has the character of a conditioned sound change, i.e., it applies to the whole lexicon or part of it. For example, in English , the place of articulation of nasals assimilates to that of a following stop ( handkerchief

6208-528: The disappearance of a segment, or even of a whole phoneme, was treated as a form of merger, depending on whether the loss was conditioned or unconditioned. The "element" that a vanished segment or phoneme merged with was " zero ". The situation in which a highly inflected language has formations without any affix at all (Latin alter "(the) other", for example) is quite common, but it is the only one (nominative singular masculine: altera nominative singular feminine, alterum accusative singular masculine, etc.) of

6305-902: The ends of words, first in Proto-Germanic, then to Proto-West-Germanic, then to Old and Middle and Modern English, shedding bits from the ends of words at every step of the way. There is in Modern English next to nothing left of the elaborate inflectional and derivational apparatus of PIE or of Proto-Germanic because of the successive ablation of the phonemes making up these suffixes. Total unconditional loss is, as mentioned, not very common. Latin /h/ appears to have been lost everywhere in all varieties of Proto-Romance except Romanian. Proto-Indo-European laryngeals survived as consonants only in Anatolian languages but left plenty of traces of their former presence (see laryngeal theory ). Phonemic differentiation

6402-523: The first papers that discussed the affrication of /tr, dr/ is "Pre-School Children's Knowledge of English Phonology" by Charles Read, published in 1971. The study discussed in this paper focuses on how children in pre-school analyze the phonetic aspect of language in order to determine the proper spelling of English words. Read noticed that many of the children involved in the study misspelled words that began with /tr, dr/ , spelling words like troubles and dragon as "chribls" and "jragin", respectively. In

6499-497: The nature of a sound law. Proto-Indo-European * -ln- becomes -ll- in both Germanic and Italic: * ḱl̥nis "hill" > PreLat. * kolnis > Lat. collis ; > PGmc *hulliz > OE hyll /hyll/ > hill . The enclitic form of English is , eliding the vowel, becomes voiceless when adjacent to a word-final voiceless nonsibilant: it is [ɪtɪz] , that is [ðætɪz] > it's [ɪts] , that's [ðæts] . In Polish , /v/ regularly becomes /f/ after

6596-460: The nature of sound laws. Such changes abound in the histories of Germanic languages , Romance , Insular Celtic , Albanian , and many others. For example, in the history of English , a back vowel became front if a high front vowel or semivowel (*i, ī, j) was in the following syllable, and a front vowel became higher unless it was already high: On the other hand, Proto-Germanic * i and * u > e, o respectively before *

6693-579: The original consonant: for example, the etymology of annus "year" (as * atnos ) is revealed by comparison with Gothic aþna "year". According to this rule of nasal assimilation, the sequences *-g-n and *-k-n would become [ŋn] , with a velar nasal [ŋ] : The sound [ŋ] was not a phoneme of Latin, but an allophone of /g/ before /n/. The sequence [ŋn] was regularly rendered in the orthography as |gn|. Some epigraphic inscriptions also feature non-standard spellings, e.g. SINNU for signum "sign, insigne", INGNEM for ignem "fire". These are witness to

6790-565: The original sound does not reduce with respect to sound segments even though the rising tone on the vowels in the coalesced form indicates the fusion of /á/ to the vowels. Phonological change#Phonemic splits In historical linguistics , phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones may emerge, or they may simply be rearranged. Sound change may be an impetus for changes in

6887-477: The originally-allophonic palatalization has thus become lexical. A similar change has also happened in Polish and Belarusian . That would also be true about most dialects of Brazilian Portuguese but for the strong phonotactical resistance of its native speakers that turn dental plosives into post-alveolar affricates even in loanwords: McDonald's [mɛkiˈdõnɐwdʒ(is)] . For example, Votic has undergone such

6984-481: The palatalization of velar plosives before /a/ . In Erzya , a Uralic language , the open vowel [ a ] is raised to near-open [ æ ] after a palatalized consonant, as in the name of the language, [erzʲæ] . In Russian , the back vowels /u o/ are fronted to central [ʉ ɵ] , and the open vowel /a/ is raised to near-open [æ] , near palatalized consonants. The palatalized consonants also factor in how unstressed vowels are reduced . Palatalization

7081-502: The phoneme turns into a new allophone—meaning the phonetic form changes—or the distribution of allophones of the phoneme changes. For the most part, phonetic changes are examples of allophonic differentiation or assimilation; i.e., sounds in specific environments acquire new phonetic features or perhaps lose phonetic features they originally had. For example, the devoicing of the vowels /i/ and /ɯ/ in certain environments in Japanese ,

7178-470: The phones *[t͡ʃ] and *[d͡ʒ] occurred only in that environment. However, when */e/, */o/, */a/ later fell together as Proto-Indo-Iranian */a/ (and */ē/ */ō/ */ā/ likewise fell together as */ā/), the result was that the allophonic palatal and velar stops now contrasted in identical environments: */ka/ and /ča/, /ga/ and /ǰa/, and so on. The difference became phonemic. (The "law of palatals" is an example of phonemic split.) Sound changes generally operate for

7275-462: The phonological structures of a language (and likewise, phonological change may sway the process of sound change). One process of phonological change is rephonemicization , in which the distribution of phonemes changes by either addition of new phonemes or a reorganization of existing phonemes. Mergers and splits are types of rephonemicization and are discussed further below. In a typological scheme first systematized by Henry M. Hoenigswald in 1965,

7372-418: The phonological system, but when *[z] merged with */r/, the effect on the phonological system was greater. (The example will be discussed below, under conditioned merger .) Similarly, in the prehistory of Indo-Iranian , the velars */k/ and */g/ acquired distinctively palatal articulation before front vowels (*/e/, */i/, */ē/ */ī/), so that */ke/ came to be pronounced *[t͡ʃe] and */ge/ *[d͡ʒe] , but

7469-403: The phrase * ne sei , quasi ( quasī ) "as if" < the phrase * kʷam sei . (3) borrowings, such as rosa "rose" /rosa/, from a Sabellian source (the word is clearly somehow from Proto-Italic * ruθ - "red" but equally clearly not native Latin), and many words taken from or through Greek ( philosophia, basis, casia, Mesopotamia , etc., etc.). A particular example of a conditioned merger in Latin

7566-459: The preceding vowel is back or front. However, it is difficult to know where and how in the history of Finnish an actual assimilatory change took place. The distribution of pairs of endings in Finnish is not the operation of an assimilatory innovation, but it is probably the outbirth of such an innovation long ago. In the opposite direction, in umlaut , a vowel is modified to conform more closely to

7663-524: The reflexes of * b *d *ǵ *g . The collapse of the contrast cannot be stated in whole-series terms because the labiovelars do not co-operate. PIE * gʷ everywhere falls together with the reflexes of * b and * bh as Proto-Celtic * b , but * gʷh seems to have become PCelt. * gʷ , lining up with PCelt. * kʷ < PIE * kʷ . Another example is provided by Japonic languages . Proto-Japanese had 8 vowels; it has been reduced to 5 in modern Japanese , but in Yaeyama ,

7760-444: The rise of a phonological contrast between hard (unpalatalized) and soft (palatalized) consonants. In Kashubian and the neighboring Polish dialects the reflexes of PS velars *k *g were palatalized a fourth time before front vowels, resulting in palatal affricates . In many varieties of Chinese , namely Mandarin , Northern Wu , and several others scattered throughout China, the velar series, /k kʰ x/ , were palatalized before

7857-426: The same root . This is the origin of some alternations in cognate words, such as speak and speech /ˈspiːk, ˈspiːtʃ/ , cold and chill /ˈkoʊld, ˈtʃɪl/ , burrow and bury /ˈbʌroʊ, ˈbɛri/ , dawn and day /ˈdɔːn, ˈdeɪ/ . Here ⟨k⟩ originates from unpalatalized /k/ and ⟨w⟩ from unpalatalized /ɡ/ . Some English words with palatalization have unpalatalized doublets from

7954-406: The same area): Proto-Italic * s > Latin /r/ between vowels: * gesō "I do, act" > Lat. gerō (but perfect gessi < * ges-s - and participle gestus < * ges-to -, etc., with unchanged * s in all other environments, even in the same paradigm). This sound law is quite complete and regular, and in its immediate wake there were no examples of /s/ between vowels except for a few words with

8051-407: The same number of structure points as before, /p t k b d g/, but there are more cases of /p t k/ than before and fewer of /b d g/, and there is a gap in the distribution of /b d g/ (they are never found in word-final position or before a compound boundary). More typical of the aftermath of a conditioned merger is the famous case of rhotacism in Latin (also seen in some Sabellian language spoken in

8148-422: The same outcomes as the second palatalization. In the process of iotation various sounds were also palatalized in front of the semivowel *j. The results vary by language. In addition, there were further palatalizing sound changes in the various Slavic languages after the break-up of Proto-Slavic. In some of them, including Polish and Russian , most sounds were palatalized by a following front vowel, causing

8245-535: The same, but it is possible for such splits to reduce the number of contrasts. It happens if all of the conditioned merger products merge with one or another phoneme. For example, in Latin, the Pre-Latin phoneme *θ (from Proto-Italic * tʰ < PIE * dh ) disappears as such by merging with three other sounds: * f (from PIE * bh and * gʷh ), * d , and * b: Initially *θ > f: Medially adjacent to * l, *r , or * u, *θ becomes b: Elsewhere, *θ becomes d: There

8342-409: The sequence [ d ] - [ b ] has different places but similar manner of articulation ( voiced stop ) and is sometimes elided , which sometimes causes the canonical [n] phoneme to assimilate to [m] before the [b] . The pronunciations / ˈ h æ n b æ ɡ / or / ˈ h æ n d b æ ɡ / are, however, common in normal speech. In contrast, the word "cupboard", although it

8439-409: The speakers' hesitancy on how to best transcribe the sound [ŋ] in the sequence [ŋn] . The regular nasal assimilation of Latin can be seen as a form of "merger", insofar as it resulted in the contrast between oral stops ( p, b , t, d ) and nasal stops ( m , n ) being regularly neutralized . One of the traits of conditioned merger, as outlined above, is that the total number of contrasts remains

8536-424: The subsequent deaffrication and some further developments of the vowel. For instance: Early English borrowings from French show the original affricate, as chamber /ˈtʃeɪmbəɾ/ "(private) room" < Old French chambre /tʃɑ̃mbrə/ < Vulgar Latin camera ; compare French chambre /ʃɑ̃bʁ/ "room". Mouillé ( French pronunciation: [muje] , "moistened") is a term for palatal consonants in

8633-481: The term assimilation . The physiological or psychological mechanisms of coarticulation are unknown, and coarticulation is often loosely referred to as a segment being "triggered" by an assimilatory change in another segment. In assimilation, the phonological patterning of the language, discourse styles and accent are some of the factors contributing to changes observed. There are four configurations found in assimilations: Although all four occur, changes in regard to

8730-609: The time they occurred and may be independent of current phonetic palatalization. The lenition tendency of palatalized consonants (by assibilation and deaffrication) is important. According to some analyses, the lenition of the palatalized consonant is still a part of the palatalization process itself. In Japanese , allophonic palatalization affected the dental plosives /t/ and /d/ , turning them into alveolo-palatal affricates [tɕ] and [dʑ] before [i] , romanized as ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨j⟩ respectively. Japanese has, however, recently regained phonetic [ti] and [di] from loanwords , and

8827-479: The velar stops /k ɡ/ and the consonant cluster /sk/ were palatalized in certain cases and became the sounds /tʃ/ , /dʒ/ , /j/ , and /ʃ/ . Many words with Anglo-Frisian palatalization survive in Modern English, and the palatalized sounds are typically spelled ⟨ch⟩ , ⟨(d)ge⟩ , ⟨y⟩ , and ⟨sh⟩ in Modern English. Palatalization only occurred in certain environments, and so it did not apply to all words from

8924-410: The vowel /i/ in a following syllable. When sound change caused the syllables containing /i/ to be lost, a phonemic split resulted, making /y, ø/ distinct phonemes. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether a split or a merger has happened if one dialect has two phonemes corresponding to a single phoneme in another dialect; diachronic research is usually required to determine the dialect that

9021-497: The vowel in the next syllable. Coalescence is a phonological situation whereby adjacent sounds are replaced by a single sound that shares the features of the two originally adjacent sounds. In other words, coalescence is a type of assimilation whereby two sounds fuse to become one, and the fused sound shares similar characteristics with the two fused sounds. Some examples in English include ‘don’t you’ -> /dəʊnt ju/ -> [dəʊntʃu]. In this instance, /t/ and /j/ have fused to [tʃ]. /tʃ/

9118-413: The vowel mergers progressed further, to 3 vowels. In a split (Hoenigswald's "secondary split"), a new contrast arises when allophones of a phoneme cease being in complementary distribution and are therefore necessarily independent structure points, i.e. contrastive. This mostly comes about because of some loss of distinctiveness in the environment of one or more allophones of a phoneme. A simple example

9215-460: The zero not-marking can (as in he can ) as "third person singular" is the same zero that not-marks deer as "plural", or if are both basically a single morphological placeholder. If it is determined that there is a zero on the end of deer in three deer , it is uncertain whether English adjectives agree with the number of the noun they modify, using the same zero affix. (Deictics do so: compare this deer, these deer .) In some theories of syntax it

9312-403: Was [wulvas], as still seen in wolves . The voiced fricative is typically seen in verbs, too (often with variations in vowel length of diverse sources): gift but give , shelf but shelve . Such alternations are to be seen even in loan words, as proof vs prove (though not as a rule in borrowed plurals, thus proofs, uses , with voiceless fricatives). In Hoenigswald's original scheme, loss,

9409-611: Was already a structure-point in the language, the innovation resulted merely in more /ð/ and less /d/ and a gap in the distribution of /d/ (though not a very conspicuous one). A trivial (if all-pervasive) example of conditioned merger is the devoicing of voiced stops in German when in word-final position or immediately before a compound boundary (see: Help:IPA/Standard German ): There were, of course, also many cases of original voiceless stops in final position: Bett "bed", bunt "colorful", Stock "(walking) stick, cane". To sum up: there are

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