How the Phoneme Inventory Changes its Shape: A Cognitive Approach to Phonological Evolution and Change
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20089704Keywords:
Cognitive phonology, Sound change, Semantic change, Old English, Linguistic variationAbstract
In this paper I propose an interpretation of a series of phonological changes in the history of English (including Old English Breaking and the early Modern English Great Vowel Shift) from a cognitive phonology perspective. My analysis is based on Nathan (1886, 1995, 1996), who applies prototype theory to phonological description. In Nathan's analysis, the louder a sound is, the more prototypical effects it possesses. In processes of phonological change, phonemes change their number of prototypical effects. According to this view, we propose a classification that is based on two different prototypicality effects: degree of height and degree of peripherality. By treating both sound and meaning unit as mental categories, I try to show how the principles of categorization and generalization motivate similar diachronic patterns both in the phonological and in the semantic domain.
Downloads
References
Blevins, Juliette. 2004. Evolutionary Phonology: The Emergence of Sound Patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P.
Díaz Vera, Javier E. 2001. “Fonología medieval: La lengua inglesa entre dos mutaciones vocálicas”. In de la Cruz, I. and J. Martín (eds.) Lingüística Histórica Inglesa. Madrid: Ariel: 109-160.
Eddington, David. 2007. “Flaps and Other Variants of /t/ in American English: Allophonic Distribution without Constraints, Rules, or Abstractions.” Cognitive Linguistics, 18 (2): 23-46.
Giegerich, Heinz J. 1992. English Phonology. An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford U. P.
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2007. “A Vowel Height Split Explained: Compensatory Listening and Speaker Control.” In Cole, J. and J. I. Hualde (eds.) Laboratory Phonology 9. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 145-172.
Guzmán González, Trinidad. 2005. “Revisiting the Revisited: Could we Survive without the Great Vowel Shift?” Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: International Review of English Studies, 39: 121- 132.
Hampton, James. 1993. “Prototype Models of Concept Representation.” In Van Mechelen, I. J. Hampton, R. S. Michalski and P. Theuns (eds.) Categories and Concepts: Theoretical Views and Inductive Analysis. London: Academic Press: 67-95.
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change I: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Labov, William, Malcah Yaeger and Richard Steiner. 1972. A Quantitative Study of Sound Change in Progress. Philadelphia: US Regional Survey.
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
—. 1993. “Cognitive Phonology.” In Goldsmith, John A. (ed.) The Last Phonological Rule: reflections on Constraints and Derivations. Chicago: University of Chicago: 117-145.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
—. 1999. Grammar and Conceptualization. Berlin: Mouton.
Lass, Roger. 1984. Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P.
—. 1994. Old English. A Historical linguistic Companion. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P.
Lindblom, Björn. 1963. “Spectographic Study of Vowel Reduction.” Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 65: 1773-81.
—. 1990. “Explaining Phonetic Variation: Sketch of the HandH Theory.” In Hardcastle, W. J. and A. Marchal (eds.) Speech Production and Speech Modelling. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher.
McCombs, Candalene J. 2006. “The Acoustic Properties of Vowels: A Tool for Improving Articulation and Comprehension of English.” Forum on Public Policy Online, Fall 2006 edition. http://www.forumonpublicpolicy.com/archive06/mccombs.pdf (accessed September 24, 2007).
Nathan, Geoffrey S. 1986. “Phonemes as Mental Categories.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 12: 212-223.
—. 1995. “How the Phoneme Inventory Gets its Shape—Cognitive Grammar’s View of Phonological Systems.” Rivista di Linguistica, 6.2: 275-287.
—. 1996. “Steps toward a cognitive Phonology.” In Hurch, Bernhard and Richard Rhodes (eds.) Natural phonology: The State of the Art. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter: 107-120.
—. 2006. “Is the Phoneme Usage-based? – Some issues.” International Journal of English Studies, 6.2: 173-194.
Rosch, Eleanor and Carolyn B. MERVIS. 1975. “Family Resemblances.” Cognitive Psychology, 7: 573-605.
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P.
Taylor, Jeremy. 1995. Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Thomas, Erik T. 2000. “Reevaluating and Refining Peripherality.” ERIC Document ED 452 711.
Valimaa-Blum, Riita. 2006. Cognitive Phonology in Construction Grammar: Analytic Tools for Students of English. Berlin: Mouton.
Vázquez-González, Juan Gabriel. 2005. Diccionario conceptual de verbos para la donación en inglés antiguo. Huelva: Universidad de Huelva.
Vihman, Marilyn May. 1996. Phonological Development. The Origins of Language in the Child. Oxford: Blackwell.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2008 Javier Enrique Díaz Vera
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
