Abstract
This article considers the interaction of phonotactics and diachrony. I argue two things: (i) language-specific phonotactic constraints on phonological forms can inhibit otherwise regular innovations, and (ii) the fact that such phonotactically-motivated process inhibition occurs in historical phonology is itself evidence for the reality of phonotactic constraints. I assume that there is a difference between those gaps in a language’s lexicon which are due to chance (‘A-gaps’) and those which are ruled out by the grammar (‘S-gaps’) and I consider some evidence in favour of this view. I consider two case studies where an understanding of phonotactics is necessary to analyse the patterning of change: Mid-Scots θ-debuccalisation and a late Middle English syncope. I ground the discussion in arguments about what phonotactic constraints are, and how they can be involved in diachrony. This involves a consideration of a number of examples from English, including onset-OCP-related constraints, the OCP (sibilance) constraint, and the constraint which imposes the defective distribution of [h].
Acknowledgements
A version of this paper was presented at the Diachronic Phonotactics Workshop at the University of Vienna in September 2017. I am very grateful to the workshop’s organisers and its other participants for the chance to reflect on the issues discussed here, and for the comments and questions that I received there. The paper has grown in conception since then and I am grateful for the comments of two anonymous reviewers, and especially to Niki Ritt for his detailed and insightful consideration of the piece and for many suggestions for clarification. All of this has considerably improved the article, and I am sorry that it still perhaps tries to say too much. I alone am responsible for this (and also, of course, for all the arguments that I put forth in it).
References
Balogné Bérces, Katalin & Patrick Honeybone. 2012. Splitting ‘intervocalic’: Expanding the typology of lenition environments. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 59. 27–48.10.1556/ALing.59.2012.1-2.2Search in Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2015. English phonotactics. English Language and Linguistics 19. 437–475.10.1017/S1360674315000179Search in Google Scholar
Baumann, Andreas, Nikolaus Ritt & Christina Prömer. 2016. Diachronic dynamics of Middle English phonotactics provide evidence for analogy effects among lexical and morphonotactic consonant clusters. Papers in Historical Phonology 1. 50–75.10.2218/pihph.1.2016.1693Search in Google Scholar
Blevins, Juliette & Sven Grawunder. 2009. *KL>TL sound change in Germanic and elsewhere: Descriptions, explanations, and implications. Linguistic Typology 13. 267–303.10.1515/LITY.2009.013Search in Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Silke Hamann. 2008. The evolution of auditory dispersion in bidirectional constraint grammars. Phonology 25. 217–270.10.1017/S0952675708001474Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Esther. 2005. New Mexican Spanish: Insight into the variable reduction of ‘la ehe inihial’(/s-/). Hispania 88. 813–824.10.2307/20063211Search in Google Scholar
Clark, Lynn & Graeme Trousdale. 2009. The role of frequency in phonological change: Evidence from TH-fronting in east-central Scotland. English Language and Linguistics 13. 33–55.10.1017/S1360674308002852Search in Google Scholar
Coltheart, Max. 1981. The MRC psycholinguistic database. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 33A. 497–505.10.1080/14640748108400805Search in Google Scholar
CUBE=Current British English searchable transcriptions=Lindsey, Geoff & Péter Szigetvári. 2013. http://cube.elte.hu/ (accessed May 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Davis, Stuart & Mi-Hui Cho. 2003. The distribution of aspirated stops and /h/ in American English and Korean: An alignment approach with typological implications. Linguistics 41. 607–652.10.1515/ling.2003.020Search in Google Scholar
Davis, Stuart & Michael Hammond. 1995. On the status of onglides in American English. Phonology 12. 159–182.10.1017/S0952675700002463Search in Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang & Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk. 2006. Proposing morphonotactics. Wiener Linguistische Gazette 73. 1–19.Search in Google Scholar
Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna. 2005. Phonotactics of consonant clusters in the history of English. In Antonio Bertacca (ed.), Historical linguistic studies of spoken English, 15–34. Pisa: PLUS – Pisana University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Everett-Heath, John. 2014. The Concise dictionary of world place names, 3rd edn, current online version. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780191751394.001.0001 (accessed May 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Evers, Vincent, Henning Reetz & Aditi Lahiri. 1998. Crosslinguistic acoustic categorization of sibilants independent of phonological status. Journal of Phonetics 26. 345–370.10.1006/jpho.1998.0079Search in Google Scholar
Faust, Noam, Adèle Jatteau & Tobias Scheer. 2018. Two phonologies. Paper presented at the 26th Manchester Phonology Meeting, Manchester, 24–26 May.Search in Google Scholar
Fudge, Erik. 1969. Syllables. Journal of Linguistics 5. 253–286.10.1017/S0022226700002267Search in Google Scholar
Gorman, Lyle. 2013. Generative phonotactics. University of Pennsylvania PhD thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Hammond, Michael. 1999. The phonology of English: A prosodic optimality-theoretic approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Harris, John. 1994. English sound structure. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Harris, John. 2000. The foot as a segmental domain. Paper presented at the 8th Manchester Phonology Meeting, Manchester, 18–20 May.Search in Google Scholar
Hockett, Charles. 1958. A course in modern linguistics. New York: Macmillan.10.1111/j.1467-1770.1958.tb00870.xSearch in Google Scholar
Holder, William. 1669. The elements of speech: An essay of inquiry into the natural production of letters. London: T. N. for J. Martyn.Search in Google Scholar
Honeybone, Patrick. 2002. Germanic Obstruent Lenition: Some mutual implications of theoretical and historical phonology. University of Newcastle upon Tyne PhD thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Honeybone, Patrick. 2003. Process inhibition in historical phonology. In Barry Blake & Kate Burridge (eds.), Historical linguistics 2001, 181–203. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.237.13honSearch in Google Scholar
Honeybone, Patrick. 2005. Sharing makes us stronger: Process inhibition and segmental structure. In Philip Carr, Jacques Durand & Colin Ewen (eds.), Headhood, elements, specification and contrastivity: Phonological papers in honour of John Anderson, 167–192. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.259.12honSearch in Google Scholar
Honeybone, Patrick. 2008. Lenition, weakening and consonantal strength: Tracing concepts through the history of phonology. In Joaquim Brandão de Carvalho, Tobias Scheer & Philippe Ségéral (eds.), Lenition and fortition, 9–93. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110211443.1.9Search in Google Scholar
Honeybone, Patrick. 2012. Lenition in English. In Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Traugott (eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of English, 773–787. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199922765.013.0064Search in Google Scholar
Jensen, John. 1993. English phonology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.99Search in Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1909. A modern English grammar on historical principles: Volume 1, sounds and spellings. Heidelberg: C. Winter.Search in Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1933. Voiced and voiceless fricatives in English. In Otto Jespersen (ed.), Linguistica: Selected papers in English French and German, Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard.Search in Google Scholar
Johnston, Paul. 1997. Regional variation. In Charles Jones (ed.), The Edinburgh history of the Scots Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9781474410977Search in Google Scholar
Jordan, Richard. 1974. Handbook of middle English grammar: phonology. Translated and revised by Eugene Crook. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110879414Search in Google Scholar
Kroonen, Guus. 2013. Etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Leiden: Brill. http://dictionaries.brillonline.com/proto-germanic (accessed May 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Kruisinga, Etsko. 1943. The phonetic structure of English words. Bern: A. Francke.Search in Google Scholar
Kümmel, Martin. 2007. Konsonantenwandel: Bausteine zu einer Typologie des Lautwandels und ihre Konsequenzen. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Search in Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter & Ian Maddieson. 1996. The sounds of the world’s languages. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1984. Phonology: An introduction to basic concepts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1999. Phonology and morphology. In Roger Lass (ed.), Cambridge history of the English language. Volume 3: 1476–1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CHOL9780521264761Search in Google Scholar
Lentz, Tomas & René Kager. 2015. Categorical phonotactic knowledge filters second language input, but probabilistic phonotactic knowledge can still be acquired. Language and Speech 58. 387–413.10.1177/0023830914559572Search in Google Scholar
Luick, Karl. 1914–1940. Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. Stuttgart: Bernhard Tauchnitz. Reprinted (1964). Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Lutz, Angelika. 1988. On the historical phonotactics of English. In Dieter Kastovsky & Gero Bauer (eds.), Luick revisited: Papers read at the Luick-Symposium at Schloss Liechtenstein, 15.-18.9.1985, 221–239. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Search in Google Scholar
Lutz, Angelika. 1991. Phonotaktisch gesteuerte Konsonantenveränderungen in der Geschichte des Englischen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.10.1515/9783111353876Search in Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 2014. A historical phonology of English. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.10.1515/9780748634699Search in Google Scholar
MRC Psycholinguistic Database=see Coltheart 1981. http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/school/MRCDatabase/uwa_mrc.htm (accessed May 2018).Search in Google Scholar
OED=Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/ (accessed May 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Ohala, John. 1993. The phonetics of sound change. In Charles Jones (ed.), Historical linguistics: Problems and perspectives, 237–278. London: Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Orton, Harold, Michael V. Barry, Wilfried J. Halliday, Philip M. Tilling & Martyn F. Wakelin. 1962–1971. Survey of English dialects, 4 vols (each in 3 parts). Leeds: E. J. Arnold.Search in Google Scholar
Paradis, Carole. 2006. The unnatural /C Ju/ (<Foreign /Cy/) sequence in Russian loanwords: A problem for the perceptual view. Lingua 116. 976–995.10.1016/j.lingua.2005.06.005Search in Google Scholar
Penny, Ralph. 2000. Variation and change in Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139164566Search in Google Scholar
Peperkamp, Sharon. 2005. A psycholinguistic theory of loanword adaptation. In Marc Ettlinger, Nicholas Fleisher & Mischa Park-Doob (eds.), Proceedings of the 30th meeting of the Berkeley linguistics society, 341–352. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.10.3765/bls.v30i1.919Search in Google Scholar
Ségéral, Philippe & Tobias Scheer. 2008. Positional factors in lenition and fortition. In Joaquim Brandão de Carvalho, Tobias Scheer & Philippe Ségéral (eds.), Lenition and fortition, 131–172. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110211443.1.131Search in Google Scholar
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1973. The role of surface phonetic constraints in generative phonology. Language 49. 87.10.2307/412104Search in Google Scholar
Sommerstein, Alan. 1974. On phonotactically motivated rules. Journal of Linguistics 10. 71–94.10.1017/S0022226700004011Search in Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane & Claire Timmins. 2006. ‘Tell her to shut her moof’: The role of the lexicon in TH-fronting in Glaswegian. In Graham D. Caie, Carole Hough & Irené Wotherspoon (eds.), The power of words: Essays in lexicography, lexicology and semantics. In Honour of Christian J. Kay. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Search in Google Scholar
Szigetvári, Péter. 2007. Branching onsets and syncope in English. Language Sciences 29. 408–425.10.1016/j.langsci.2006.12.015Search in Google Scholar
Wettstein, Paul. 1942. The phonology of a Berwickshire dialect. Zurich: Bienne.Search in Google Scholar
Wilson, James. 1915. Lowland Scotch as spoken in the lower Strathearn district of Perthshire. London: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Zai, Rudolf. 1942. The phonology of the Morebattle dialect (East Roxburghshire). Lucerne: Räber.Search in Google Scholar
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
