Sound Change

3. Explain the difference between the following sound changes:

Sporandic / Regular

Sporandic = affects only a few words, not the entire language; the change is unpredictable.

Ex. OE spræc => PDE speech. Loss of r is not general – spring, spree etc. retain it

Regular = apply throughout language; are predictable

Ex. In Spanish, p changes into b when intervocalic

Conditioned/Unconditioned

Conditioned sound change = dependent on certain contexts and affects only some of the sound’s occurrences.

Ex. In Spanish, p changes into b when intervocalic

Unconditioned sound change = occurs generally and is not dependent on the phonetic context or restricted by neighbouring sounds

Ex. P at the beginning of words = p.

Phonemic/phonological and Non‐phonemic/phonetic

Non-phonemic (allophonic change) do not alter the total number of phonemes in the language => non-phonemic shift = change in pronunciation (phonetic level), but no changes in phonemic level.

Phonemic = change the structural organization of the inventory of sounds – adds/deletes phonemes/basic sounds in the langauge