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Historical Phonology &
Morphology
How Sound Systems and Word
Structures Change over Time
Linguistic Structures
 Languages are made up of structured
systems
 These systems exist at different levels
 Languages have
Phonology: sound structures
Morphology: word structures
Syntax: sentence structures
Historical Linguistics
 When languages change over time, the
changes can occur in any of these
structured systems
 One therefore speaks of
Historical phonology
Historical morphology
Historical syntax
Historical Phonology
 Different types of sound change can
happen over time
 Question: how individual sound
changes affect the phonology of a
language; that is, how they effect the
number and relations of phonemes
Phonological Change
 A sound change might have
- No/little effect on the phonological system
- Change the allophones of a phoneme
- Decrease the number of phonemes
- Increase the number of phonemes
 If the number of phonemes changes, it
will affect minimal pairs
No effect on the phonological
system
# 1 EMidE /t d n/ = dentals
>> RETRACTION >>
ModE /t d n/ = alveolars
#2 Ogerm /*b *d *g/ >> OE /p t k/ =
unaspirated
ModE /p t k/ + STRESSED SYLLABLE =
aspirated
Phonological Change
Example 2: English hypothetical
 Ex
Suppose that we started to pronounce /g/
as [k] (weakening).
E.g. ‘bigger’ /’bıgɘ/ > [’bıkɘ]
The number of phonemes does not change
Bigger and bicker are still a minimal pair
/g/ [k] (same phoneme, new allophone)
This change is happening in the Northwest
CONDITIONED CHANGES
#1 ASSIMILATION (palatalisation + affrication)
WGerm * kirka > OE circe = ModE church
# 2 UMLAUT (distant assimilation)
- Back vowels >> fronted
• (pre-OE plur.) mūs-i << OE mīs
• (pre-OE plur.) gōs-i << OE gēs
#3 MANNER OF ARTICULATION
- OE modor >> MidE mother
DISSIMILATION
#1 LAT tutur >> turtle
- sporadic
- unstressed syllables
METATHESIS
# 1 West & South Slavic languages
- Milk : mleko
- Garden : ogród
# 2 Germanic languages
- OE þridda >> ModE third
HAPLOLOGY
#1
LOSS
# 1 WORD INITIAL /k/ + /n/
- Knowledge : acknowlwdge
# 2 POST-VOCALIC /r/
#3 LOSS + COMPENSATORY LENGTHENING
MidE sight /sɪxt/ >> /si:t/
- Apocope (final vowels)
- syncope (medial vowels)
Phonemic Merger
#1 Cockney English:
- Two unconditioned changes:
[θ] > [f] and [ð] > [v]
- 4 phonemes have been reduced to 2
That : vat were once minimal pairs; now
homophones [væt] (Cockney)
Thin : fin were once minimal pairs; now
homophones [fɪn] (Cockney)
Phonemic Split
#1 An earlier allophone >> a phoneme
(phonemisation)
OE /y y:/ >> UNROUNDING >> /i: ɪ/
- sea : see ; made : maid
#2 OE /f θ s/ >> PHONEMISATION >>
Middle English /v ð z/
EXCRESCENCE
#1 A sound appears /u/ + /x/:
- OE brohte >> MidE broughte
- Epenthesis (medial)
- Prothesis (initial)
Other phonological changes
#1 The phonology of a language can
change in more drastic ways than just
the addition/subtraction of phonemes
- SOUND SHIFT = the Great Vowel Shift
Long Vowels:
Raising/Diphthongising /i:/ & /u:/
Regularity of Sound Change
 A fundamental principle of historical
phonology
 Sound change is regular
 If sound A changes to sound B in a
particular environment in some words,
then sound A changes to sound B in all
words with that environment.
Regularity of Sound Change
 Example: Southern American English
 [e] > [ɪ] / _ [n] (vowel raising)
 Pen and ten are [phɪn] and [thɪn],
homophonous with pin and tin.
 This sound change is regular
 It affects [e] in all words with this
environment: when, tennis, Ben, men,
glen, etc.
Regularity of Sound Change
 Regularity of sound change is a very
important principle
 It will allow us to reconstruct the
pronunciation of languages in the
distant past, even when we have no
written records
 We will see how when we do historical
reconstruction
Historical Morphology
 Over time, the morphology of a
language changes
 The set of morphemes in the language
changes
 The function and meaning of
morphemes changes
 Inflectional paradigms change
 Derivational rules change
Historical Morphology
 In extreme cases, languages that were
once isolating can develop inflectional
morphology
 Likewise, languages can lose
inflectional morphology and become
isolating*
 In the last 1500 years, English has lost
much of its inflectional morphology
Historical Processes
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Some common types of morphological change are:
Grammaticalization (Grammaticization)
Analogy
Reanalysis
Folk Etymology
Back Formation
Root Creation
Functional Shift
Commonisation
Taboo Deformation
Compounding
Affixation
Acronymy
Abbreviation (Clipping)
Historical Processes
 Remember: The building blocks of
morphology are morphemes, not words
 The historical processes described here
involve changes to morphemes
Grammaticalization
 Over time, a free morpheme (i.e. a
word) acquires grammatical (i.e.
morphological or syntactic) function
 Often this process is accompanied by
Phonological reduction (gets shorter)
Fusion (becomes bound)
Semantic bleaching (loses original
meaning)
Grammaticalization
 Example 1: English be going to > be gonna
 Original meaning: motion through space
 New Function: future tense marker (“I’m
gonna take linguistics next quarter.”)
 Phonological reduction: 3 syllables > 2
syllables, vowels become schwa
 *I’m gonna the store to buy some soap.
 Semantic bleaching: sense of motion is lost
 I’m gonna stay right here.
Grammaticalization
 Example 2: English have
 Original meaning: possession
 Function: auxiliary verb (“I’ve eaten lunch
already”) indicating completed action
 Phonological reduction: have can be
pronounced /v/ only when grammaticalized:
 *Do you’ve any money on you?
 Semantic bleaching: possession meaning is
lost
Analogy
 A powerful force in morphological change
 A morphological rule is extended, or
generalized, to forms by analogy with other
forms that already fit the rule
 Q: Why can we make sentences or derive
words that we have never heard before?
 A: We have learned the morphological and
syntactic rules and can apply them
 But rules also have exceptions
Analogy
 Example: English past tense {-ed}
 Children growing up hear present and past
tense forms of verbs, and induce an
inflectional rule based on them:
 walk
 learn
walked
learned
+ /t/
+ /d/
 fade
faded
+ /˙d/
 Rule: Add an allomorph of {-ed} to verb stem
to make past tense
Analogy
 Having learned the rule, the child might
make an analogy:
 Walk : walked :: go : ______
 Learn: learned :: teach : ______
 By analogy, the child applies the rule and
says:
“Yesterday we goed to the park”
“Bill teached me how to tie my shoes”
“I taked some cookies”
Analogy
 Eventually the child may learn the
exceptions to the rule. But sometimes
analogical formations stay in the language,
and the exceptions are regularized.
 In some English dialects today, people say
teached and throwed.
 Similar changes have happened to many
verbs in English, and continue to happen.
 What’s the past tense of strive? cleave? dive?
Analogy
 Analogy often has the effect of reducing the
overall number of allomorphs
 Example 2: Old English {old} had two
allomorphs, /old/ and /eald/:
Old - elder - eldest
 Today these are obsolete. By analogy with
Red - redder - reddest (no change to stem)
 We now have only one allomorph:
Old - older - oldest
Reanalysis
 Speakers of a language reinterpret the
location of morpheme boundaries
 This may create new morphemes, or change
the forms of existing morphemes
 Example 1: English a napron > an apron
 Example 2: English an ewt > a newt
 Listeners put the morpheme boundary in a
new location, and changed the form of the
words napron and ewt.
Reanalysis
 Example 3: Creation of a new morpheme
 Historical morpheme boundary: alcohol-ic
 Alcohol: noun; -ic: adjective-forming suffix
 Alcoholic: adj (“an alcoholic beverage”)
 “An alcoholic person” > alcoholic: noun (“a
person addicted to alcohol)
 New morpheme boundary: alc-oholic
 -oholic/-aholic: derivational suffix: workaholic, choc-oholic
Reanalysis
 Example 4: Lollapalooza
 Slang: “Something outstanding or amazing”
 After the big Lollapalooza music tours,
palooza was reanalyzed as a derivational
suffix meaning “an event that’s big and
exciting”
 Country-palooza, Polka-palooza, Metalpalooza, Soap-a-palooza, Polar-palooza, …
Folk Etymology
 A specific type of re-analysis in which people
misunderstand the historical origin of a word
(etymology refers to word origins)
 Example 1: In some dialects of English, asparagus is
now called sparrow-grass.
 Example 2: Hamburger derives from the German
city Hamburg plus suffix -er.
 Speakers assume the word is a compound with first
morpheme ham, so conclude that burger is a
morpheme too, meaning a type of food patty.
Back Formation
 A specific type of reanalysis and/or analogy that
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creates new stems from derived or inflected forms
Happens when language speakers misidentify a word
as being composed of a stem and affix, then remove
the affix to get back to what they think is the
original stem
Child (pointing to plate of cheese): “What’s that?”
Parent: “Cheese”
Child (hearing /z/ and assuming it is a plural suffix):
“Can I have a chee?”
Back Formation
 Consider these verb-noun pairs
 compensate
 denigrate
 operate
 procrastinate
 delegate
 _________
compensation
denigration
operation
procrastination
delegation
orientation
 By analogy, speakers assume the verb stem is
orientate (historically it is orient). Orientate is a
back-formation.
Back Formation
 In Old English, the word for pea was pise (singular),
pisan (plural)
 In Middle English, singular pease was reanalyzed as
having a plural {-s} suffix.
 A new singular form pea was created by backformation, and peas was reanalyzed as a plural.
 The singular pease is still preserved in the old
nursery rhyme: “Pease porridge hot, pease porridge
cold, pease porridge in the pot nine days old.”
ROOT CREATION
 #1 Words out of nothing
GAS
NYLON
RAYON
FUNCTIONAL SHIFT
(ZERO-DERIVATION/CONVERSION)
A knee >> to knee
A shoulder >> to shoulder a burden
In and out >> to know the ins and outs
COMMONISATION
#1 Proper names, inventors, popularisers, trade
names:
The 4th Earl of Sandwich >> a sandwich
Diesel >> a diesel engile
Bowie >> a bowie knife
Derringer >> a derringer
Echo >> echo
Spartan >> spartan
A sliding fasterner >> zipper
TABOO DEFORMATION
GOD-DAMNED >> GOL-DARNED, GOL-DERNED, GOSH
DARNED
EUPHEMISMS:
TO DIE >> TO BE MET ONE’S MAKER, PASS AWAY, LEAVE
THE VALE OF TEARS
AFFIXATION
MORPHEMES ARE FUSED TOGETHER
ANTIESTABLISHARIANISM
COMPOUNDING
#1 NOUN + NOUN
OE wīfmann; MidE hūswīfe; ModE schoolboy
#2 ADJ. + ADJ.
OE wynsum; MidE snauwhīt; ModE red-hot
#3 NOUN + ADJ.
watertight, life-long, time-consuming
# 4 VERB + NOUN
MidE pickepurse; ModE pickpocket, press-button
#5 PREP. + NOUN/VERB
afterbirth, downfall, output
ACRONYMY
#1 The initial sounds of several words
 RADAR
 LASER
BLENDING
MOTEL
SMOG
URINALISYS
ABBREVIATING (CLIPPING)
TELLY
LAB
PROF.
DOC
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