Talk:Sound change

message: An example of epenthesis and a sound change currently happening is the "linking r" in some english dialects.  For example: "america and" is pronounced by some as "americar and".  Thoughts?
:Is that "current"? (OK, depending on the definition, I guess. Also, I'm not sure whether it's a sound change, or only dialectal usage, btw)
:: Even if it is dialectal usage, it is a phonetic change. And, it seems to be a regular phonetic change. Of course only in ethnolects (dialects) where it occurs. But each sound change is limited to some space (i.e. to some territory) and to some time (this important statement lacks in the article, I add it). --Grzegorj 08:17, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not epenthesis, if that means (and it does) a more or less mechanical development. The "intrusive r" is the result of a structural reinterpretation: in r-less dialects word-final /r/ was lost when it was in coda (i.e., terminated the syllable because the following word began with a consonant, or there was no following word) and remained when it was ambisyllabic (i.e., when the following word began with a vowel). Thus, words like fear, near, sister, etc., etc., had two automatic forms, those with and those without final /r/. However, there are also words that end in vowels in English, and the two classes could easily have remained distinct for ever, but on both sides of the Atlantic vowel-final words, like idea, were sucked into the alternating pattern of words like fear via the following analogical proportion: /fiyə#/ : /aydiyə#/ :: /firV/ : X, where X = /aydirV/ "idear". Structurally what this means is that /r/ was everywhere lost in word-final position, with /r/ becoming instead an automatic transistion between any word ending in a vowel and a word beginning with one. (There are theories of phonology that would downgrade such an [r] to a non-phoneme, but that's just silly. Of course it's an /r/, just like the others.) Alsihler 17:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Epenthesis 

message: Why has sound change no memory, is exceptionless and unstoppable, and ignores also grammar? --84.61.58.233 13:15, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's the basis behind language reconstruction, but the theory has been more questioned and criticized by modern linguists, currently. Still, I don't want to change the section, since it's very good written. 惑乱 分からん 14:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It has no memory because speakers don't know anything about the earlier stages of the language. The remaining statements were hypotheses which have turned out to be incorrect, especially now that the sociolinguists have spent 40 years documenting sound changes as they happen. Pfold 15:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That view simply shows no sympathy for the subtlety of the theory of language change that's behind the definition in question, and its accomplishments (e.g. Saussure's internal reconstruction of the vowel system of Proto-Indoeuropean).  Yes, it is certainly true that sociolinguistics has given us an invaluable picture of how language changes in a much shorter scale.  It is also quite true that the pervasive variation by factors such as age, gender, style and class show the flaws of the Neogrammarian assumptions about sound change.  It is also true, however, that variationist sociolinguistics' methods can't be applied over time ranges that the Neogrammarians' have (millenia). Sacundim 05:03, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually I don't dissent from the view of the Neogrammarians that sound change is regular, but the specific and strong claims given here are too strong for what we now know - and in fact I'm fairly sure that at least some of the Neogrammarians adopted this position for programmatic reasons (to boost the status of linguistics as a science, perhaps) and didn't actually hold these views in this extreme form. After all, even without modern reserach, a look at the results of the 2nd sound shift, which have been basically stable for perhaps 1300 years, and were very well known to the NGs shows that these claims do not stand up to scrutiny as stated, and the NGs must have recognized this. The NG position is what tends to be true over long periods, but it's only a tendency. I don't think it's a disservice to the NGs to point out that we now have data (and models) which give us a more differentiated picture. I certainly don't think a WP page should give the impression that no progress has been made in the last 130 years! --Pfold 12:33, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rules of sound change 

message: Is there really any dispute about the factual accuracy of this section? These principles are incredibly out of date. They still deserve a place on this page for their historical importance, and because they are widely known, but they shouldn't be given the appearance of having contemporary validity. --Pfold 17:00, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rules

message: First, this is a terrible term. I think "conditioned" is a much better—and more general—term, so I've changed it.
Cleaned up a lot of the definitions.
Specific points: "February" is now pronounced like "Febyuary" not because of dissimilation, but due to the influence of "Janyuary." Changed example.
Tonogenesis: I don't know where the old explanation came from, but it was not correct. Fixed it up.
Liaison: needs work. Any volunteers?
Corrected syncope example.
Epenthesis: not the best example; changed it.
Nasalization: changed the definition, but it needs work. Godfrey Daniel 21:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are plenty of recent examples of tonogenesis, such as Cheyenne & Arapaho, or ones which can be completely reconstructed, such as Vietnamese. kwami (talk) 19:06, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Influenced [sic] Sound Change

message: Can anyone help clear up this article and Phonological change to explain how they relate to each other. That one badly needs improvement in how the material is presented. Unfortunately what little I know about these topics I read in the articles, so I don't think I can be much help besides pointing out things that need to be explained to a layperson. - Taxman Talk 22:58, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've suggested an alternative to merging the articles at Talk:Phonological change.  Pi zero (talk) 18:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Please correct me if I am wrong: How a language sounds is its phonology, so surely they should be merged into one article because in theory sound change = phonological change. Ingramhk (talk) 06:24, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The merge proposal is discussed at great length over at the other article.  Alsihler argues there that the two articles have very different substance and therefore ought to be separate.  As for the name of the other article, I believe that's just a matter of standard terminology.  For example, the units of sound are "phones" while the units of sound meaning are "phonemes", but the subject concerned with phones is "phonetics" while the subject concerned with phonemes is "phonology".  Pi zero (talk) 13:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Phonological change should be the "main article" for a section of this article. kwami (talk) 19:04, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Phonological change]] 

message: Someone recently flagged this article for  various shortcomings. Honestly, I have to say I disagree with all of them. The article is actually pretty good, IMO, though it could be expanded.
I'm very much a dilettante in linguistics and have had no previous involvement whatsoever with this article. 
:This article may contain unsourced predictions, speculative material or accounts of events that might not occur. Please help improve it by removing unsourced speculative content. (March 2013)
: I see none. All the examples appear to be real, not speculative.
:This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve this article to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. The talk page may contain suggestions. (March 2013) 
: IMO, it does an admirable job of explaining the technical jargon and notation used in discussions of this issue. Would that all Wikipedia articles were so helpful.
:This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (March 2013) 
:This is a matter of opinion; I think it's fine. A bit more introductory material might be good. There's a rather abrupt transition into the discussion of notation. (Still, an excellent discussion, never seen a better one.)
:This article uses abbreviations that may be confusing or ambiguous. Specific concerns may be found on the Talk page. Please improve this article if you can. (March 2013) 
: True, it uses a lot of abbreviations, but they well explained.
:This article may contain too much repetition or redundant language. Please help improve it by merging similar text or removing repeated statements. (March 2013) 
: I don't see any unnecessary repetition.
:This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. Please help us clarify the article; suggestions may be found on the talk page. (March 2013) 
:An excellent, very clear article, IMO, although it could be expanded and perhaps better linked to related articles.
207.194.133.9 (talk) 18:52, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  March 2013 Flags 

message: What does a dollar sign ($) mean in sound change notation? For example, a book I'm reading contains the following:
::o, ɔ > ɛw/___$
::ɔ > uə/___C$
Does the dollar sign mean the same as #, or something different? (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 18:56, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: $ denotes a syllable boundary P M C 18:49, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notation 

message: Why do sound changes occur? What are/were the driving forces that cause(d) groups of people to change how they pronounce(d) words, to drop phonemes, or to acquire new ones? I think this is info that should be included in this article and in articles about specific instances/episodes of sound change. ZFT (talk) 00:28, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Good question, ZFT! See . — Sebastian 22:51, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why do they occur? 

message: I found a sound change formula that I don’t understand. It is a sound change that supposedly to place in the Proto-indo-European to Proto-Italic shift. It is written like
p → {p,kʷ}. I don’t understand what the curly brackets are to represent in this case. Hellowheezer75 (talk) 19:59, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question on sound change formula