Commentary on Crowley

1. Commentary on Crowley Chapter Two TYPES OF SOUND CHANGE

2. TWO PARAMETERS • FORTITION / LENITION • UNIVERSAL SONORITY SCALE Crowley attempts to treat them as somehow related, as if fortition/lenition can be derived from the Sonority Scale. This approach has long been abandoned. It confuses synchronic and diachronic principles, which Saussure warned us about. Thus Crowley’s discussion of *p>f in this chapter is incoherent, according to me. (Do you agree?)

3. Saussurean Conundrums Revisited • Consider the common change *p > f. Crowley says it exemplifies “lenition” on the one hand, while implying an increase in sonority on the other. How to reconcile these two statements? • Do they refer to the speaker or the hearer? • Do they refer to articulation or perception? • Do they refer to universal (synchronic) principles or a language-specific (historical) tendency?

4. According to Elizabeth Selkirk (1984) • Fortition/Lenition is best considered as a language-specific phenomenon. In North American English, for example, of the set /p t k/, /t/ is by far the most subject to weakening when before an unstressed vowel. Witness the American pronunciation of /t/ as a flap in later, but normally no weakening of /p/ in caper or of /k/ in faker).

5. Reference Selkirk, Elizabeth (1984). "On the major class features and syllable theory". In Aronoff, Mark & Oehrle, Richard, Language sound structure. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

6. Universal Sonority Scale • In principle the SS is straightforward. It is a purely auditory concept, and it is universal rather than language-specific. The SS says that sounds can be arranged according to relative sonority, or loudness. • Thus /a/ is the loudest sound, and voiceless stops including /ɂ/ are the least loud (nearest to silence).

7. Rejang Infixation: Selection of Allomorphs Follows the Sonority Scale(adapted from Blevins 1995, 2004:159) HIGH LOW low V > mid V > high V > glides > liquids > nasals > fricatives > affricates > oral stops 3 2 1 The choices among the three allomorphs of ‘active’ (-əm- ~ m- ~ mə-) and ‘passive’ (-ən- ~ n- ~ nə-) are each governed by a continuous segment of the Sonority Scale, and all other affixes are likewise accounted for. Infixation (-əm-, -ən-) t-əm-im̅ak, s-ən-im̅et, c-ən-rito, d-əm-uley. Prefixation (mə-, nə-) mə-lie, mə-wakea, nə-maɂ, nə-luo, nə-ribut Prefix V Del (m-, n-) m-onoaɂ, n-acap, n-acaw, m-adəaɂ.

8. Hole in the sonority scale account: no evidence of infixed p-, b- yielding p-əm-... and b-əm-... HIGH LOW low V > mid V > high V > glides > liquids > (nasals) > fricatives > affricates > oral stops 3 2 1 Infixation selects continuum 1 (c-əm-rito), with the following interesting proviso: there is no evidence of a word (native or borrowed) where p-, b- licenses an infix. Bases that begin with p- and b- are opaque to infixation; they select simple prefixation, exactly like sonorant-initial bases and minimal words. Thus e.g. mə- burəw is treated exactly like mə- liləy, except that mə-burəw co-varies with murəw, thus foreshadowing emergent back-formation, yielding synchronic free variation (məbaco ~ macəy). (EP approach: Synchronic rules can ignore this whole issue because there is a historical change explaining it.)

9. How to dominate the conversation with linguistic terminology • rhoticism: English was ~ were alternation reflects a change in Germanic *s > z > r/V__V which occurred as part of Verner’s Law.

10. Five Kinds of Phonological ChangeBroadly Considered Sounds (consonants & vowels) are subject to: • Loss • Addition • Rearrangement • Assimilation • Dissimilation

11. Loss • Aphaeresis Initial sound disappears • Apocope Final sound disappears • Syncope Medial vowel disappears • Cluster Reduction CC > C • Haplology Medial CV(C) disappears

12. Loss • Aphaeresis Rejang: sudo ~ udo ‘already’ • Apocope AAVE desk > des; hold > ___ • Syncope Brit: secretary > secretary • Cluster Reduction often > often; Belawi tukat = Matu-Daro tuŋkət • Haplology Worcestershire sauce > (wooster or worstersher)

13. Addition • Prothesis Initial sound added • Paragoge Final sound added • Excrescence Medial sound added • Epenthesis (Anayptyxis) CC > CVC • Vowel Breaking V > VV̯ or V̯V

14. Addition • Prothesis school > [iskul] • Paragoge(rhymes with dog > doggy; ding- pedagogy) dong > dinka-donka • Excrescence *emty > empty; warmth > [warmpth] • Epenthesis (Anayptyxis) film > filəm • Vowel Breaking mule > [mi̯ul] (myule); Tuesday > [ti̯usday] (Tyuesday); both > [bəu̯Ɵ]

15. Rearrangement • Unpacking Complex sound > two simpler sounds • Fusion Two simple sounds > one complex sound • Metathesis (rare) Adjacent sounds exchange places • Spoonerism Initial sounds of whole words exchange places. (Not a type of sound change, fortunately.)

16. Rearrangement • Unpacking Bislama: aksidã > aksidoŋ • Fusion Rejang: *tanda > tan̅o ‘sign’ • Metathesis (rare) *brid > bird; *flutterby > butterfly • Spoonerism "Is it kisstomary to cuss the bride? (customary to kiss)

17. Famous Spoonerisms “Three cheers for our queer old dean!" (dear old queen, referring to Queen Victoria) "The Lord is a shoving leopard." (a loving shepherd) "A blushing crow." (crushing blow) "A well-boiled icicle" (well-oiled bicycle) "You were fighting a liar in the quadrangle." (lighting a fire) "Is the bean dizzy?" (dean busy) "Someone is occupewing my pie. Please sew me to another sheet." (occupying my pew...show me to another seat) "You have hissed all my mystery lectures. You have tasted a whole worm. Please leave Oxford on the next town drain." (missed...history; wasted...term; down train).

18. Assimilation • Progressive A sound following a phoneme assimilates a feature from a preceding sound. (This is relatively rare.) e.g. xy > xx • Regressive A sound preceding a phoneme assimilates a feature from a following sound. (This is ‘anticipatory’.) e.g. xy > yy

19. Assimilation • Progressive In Indonesian, the name Amran has no nasal vowels, Armãn has one nasal vowel, and Nãw̃ãw̃i ̃ has all nasal vowels. • Regressive inconsistent > [ɪŋkənsɪstənt]

20. Dissimilation • Psycholinguistic test: Say Peggy Babcock five times, and observe the result.

21. Dissimilation Grassman’s Law PIE *bho:dha > bo:dha ‘bid’ Sanskrit PIE *phewtho > pewtho ‘bid’ Greek Question: How would you describe Grassman’s Law?

22. “Unnatural” Sound Changes • Spurious, resolved by discovery of (a chain of) intermediate natural changes. • Interesting, because they offer (counter-) evidence bearing on hypotheses with respect to established universals.

23. “Unnatural” Sound Changes • All natural: *t > w in Trukese looks unnatural at first. The historical facts prove otherwise: *t > Ɵ > f > v > w • Interesting: Consider the Rejang change: *-mb-, *-nd- > m̅, n̅ which occurred / V__V.

24. An “Interesting” Syllable Structure The result was an “unnatural” syllable structure for Rejang, given Donca Steriade’s implicational universal: “If a sound cannot begin or end a word, it cannot begin or end a syllable.”

25. An “Interesting” Syllable Structure If a sound cannot begin or end a word, it cannot begin or end a syllable. This universal applies pretty well to languages with medial consonant clusters e.g. CVC1.C2VC. That is, if a sound cannot begin a word it also cannot begin a syllable (= .C2). But Rejang is a language with no consonant clusters.

26. An “Interesting” Syllable Structure Rejang is a language with no consonant clusters. The fusion of *-mb- and *-nd- as “barred nasals”, becoming m̅ and n̅ respectively, resulted in a so-called unnatural syllable structure. jambu > [ja.m̅əw] ‘guava fruit’ *tanda > [ta.n̅o] ‘sign’ Thus m̅ and n̅ cannot begin a word, but they can and must begin a syllable. The distribution follows “naturally” from the history.

27. HISTORY RULES ! LING 485/585 Winter 2009