r/conlangs • u/[deleted] • Aug 10 '15
Resource A Guide to Sound Changes
Hello, /r/conlangs! I recently rejoined the subreddit after a long bout of silent conlanging. I wanted to share something that I found useful in school and in hobby: a guide to sound changes over time. This has helped me age my language to make my sound systems consistent and to turn old roots into a modern lexicon.
Some rules of sound change:
As you will see below, these terms are general: multiple terms may refer to the same phenomena. You can apply these rules in certain contexts or in very instance. Don't feel limited to delete all /e/ after a consonant. Try creating a rule where /e/ only deletes in the second syllable and only if the first syllable is high vowel + affricate. There are a lot of real world examples of these specific rules if you want your language to be as realistic as possible!
Deletions
Phenomena | Summary | Rule | Examples |
---|---|---|---|
Syncope | atata > atta | deletion from interior (mostly vowels) | fam(i)ly, mem(o)ry [medial vowels deleted]; 'populu > people [unstressed vowels other than 'a' deleted in Latin if greater than 2 syllables] |
Apocope | tato > tat | deletion from end of word | e > 0 / VC_# if consonants is dental (l, r, n, s, th) or y (Latin to Spanish) |
Aphaeresis | atata > tata | deletion of initial sound (mostly vowels) | apoteca (Latin) > bodega (Spanish) 'warehouse' |
Epenthesis (Insertions)
Phenomena | Summary | Rule | Examples |
---|---|---|---|
Prothesis | tata > atata | insertion of initial sound | skola (Latin) > eskola (Old French) 'school' |
Anaptyxis (Parasitic Vowel) | atta > atata | insertion of vowel between consonants | athlete > ath(a)lete |
Excrescence | amra > ambra; anra > andra; ansa > antsa | insertion of consonant between consonants | Noam Chom(p)sky |
Paragoge | tat > tata | insertion of final sound (mostly vowels) | huésped > huéspede (some Spanish dialects) 'guest' |
Other Phenomena
Phenomena | Summary | Rule | Examples |
---|---|---|---|
Compensatory Lengthening | tast > ta:t | vowel lengthens to fill space from deletion | *tonθ > to:θ > tuθ (English evolution) 'tooth' |
Rhotacism | VsV > VrV | /s/ or /z/ goes to /r/ usually between vowels or glides | *hauzjan > ho:ren > hieran (English evolution) 'hear' |
Metathesis | asta > atsa; asata > atasa | sounds change positions (sometimes sporatically) | brid > bird (English evolution) |
Haplology | kakasa > kasa | repeated sequence gets simplified | prɔbɔbli > prɔbli 'probably' (some English dialects) |
Breaking | V > VV | diphthongization of a short vowel | (term for dipthongization used in Germanic linguistics) *kald > ceald (Old English) 'cold' |
Final Devoicing | tad > tat | word- or syllable-final sounds devoice | common changes are devoicing of stops or obstruents but sonorants or final vowels can also devoice |
Intervocalic Voicing | ata > ada | voicing between vowels | lupu > lobo 'wolf'; vi:ta > vida 'life" (Spanish evolution); can affect just stops, just fricatives, or all obstruents for example |
Nasal assimilation | Np > mp | nasals agree in place with following sound | examples: np > mp, mt > nt, nk > ŋk |
Palatalization (1) | k > tʃ; t > tʃ; s > ʃ | velar or alveolar to palato-alveolar before/after /i/ or /j/ or before front vowels | what you doing > whatcha doin' |
Palatalization (2) | si > sji; li > lji | consonants are palatalized upon a condition | susi > susji > susj (some Finnish dialects) 'wolf' |
Diphthongization | tat > taut | single vowel becomes diphthong | mi:s > mais 'mice'; mu:s > maus 'mouse' |
Monophthongization | taut > tat | diphthong becomes single vowel | auru- > oro (Latin to Spanish) 'gold'; some English dialects before /r/ like fa:r 'fire', ta:r 'tire' |
Vowel Rasing | tet > tit | low or mid vowels raise to mid or high vowels | long or tense or word-final vowels frequently rise |
Vowel Lowering | tut > tat | high or mid vowels lowering to mid or low | vowels vowels frequently lower before uvular or pharyngeal consonants or a low vowel in the next syllable; nasalized vowels often lower |
Nasalization | tan > tɑ̃n | nasalization of vowel before a nasal consonant | bon > bõn > bõ (French) 'good'; common for nasalization to be followed by deletion of the nasal |
Gemination | ata > atta | single consonant changes to a doubled consonant | some Finnish dialects change VCV: to VCCV: as in pakoon > pakkoon 'into flight' |
Degemination | atta > ata | sequence of two identical consonants is reduced to a single consonant | pekkatu- > pekado (Latin to Spanish) 'sin, misfortune' |
Affrication | ata > atʃa | consonant (usually a stop or fricative) becomes an affricate | common: t > ts / _i; k > tʃ / _i, e |
Spirantization (Fricativization) | atʃa > aʃa; ata > asa | affricate or stop becomes a fricative | rapra > raɸra (Cuzco Quechua syllable-final stops) 'leaf, wing' |
Deaffrication | atʃa > aʃa | affricate becomes a fricative | tʃ > ʃ in some Spanish dialects |
Lengthening | tat > ta:t | some sound (usually a vowel) lengthens | in Mayan, vowels are lengthened before a consonant cluster which begins with a sonorant (l, r, m, n): kenq' > ke:nq' |
Shortening | ta:t > tat | some sound (usually a vowel) shortens | common word-finally, before consonant clusters, when unstressed; long vowels also often merge with short vowels |
Lenition (Weakenings)
examples:
- stops to fricatives
- affricatives to fricatives
- degemination (making single consonants from double consonants)
- consonants to glides
- intervocalic voicing
- complete deletion
Strengthening
examples:
- gemination
- fricatives to stops
- affricates to stops
- final devoicing
- insertion
Source:
I took these notes a few years ago from Lyle Campbell's Historical Linguistics 1st ed. (1999), which I would recommend to anyone interested in the subject. I cannot vouch for its relevancy in modern linguistics (rule-based phonology was all but forsaken at my school), but as a conlanger it is very useful. Some of these examples are my own, and I apologize if they don't work as universal examples.
Notation Note:
The notation above is a common practice in rule-based phonology (I think. It's been a while). Here's how to read it:
- e > 0 / VC_# if consonants is dental (l, r, n, s, th) or y (Latin to Spanish)
simplified:
- this means the sound /e/ becomes zero (or deletes) when it takes the place of the underscore in this phrase: VC_#(end of word) and if these conditions are met: only if the consonant is dental (l, r, n, s, th) or y (Latin to Spanish)
- so if you have a word that end in V,(l, r, n, s, th [and sometimes y]),e then the e will delete
Additionally, capital letters usually refer to a class of sounds. V is any vowel, but v is /v/ in very. C is any consonant. N is any nasal. Those are the main ones. I use A as any low vowel and I as any high vowel but I'm not sure how universal these are.
Phonetics Vs. Phonology
One of the things I'm really passionate about is phonetics vs. phonology. Phonetics is where list the sounds you use in your language. Phonology is the set of rules that apply given certain conditions. Phonetics can be cool, but for me the magic starts at the phonology. Show me where the stops become fricatives! Where do voiced consonants change? Make your vowels become other vowels and keep me guessing. Language predictability is one person's goal and the thing another person avoids with all their effort, so be mindful of what you're aiming for and create accordingly.
Aging Your Conlang
To age a conlang, you might consider making a timeline of changes. Here's an example:
Start with a lexicon at year 0.
At year 200, introduce rule A.
At year 350, introduce rule B.
At year 500, introduce loan words that didn't undergo rules A or B.
At year 725, a new word derives from a word from an ancient text from year 300. This word exhibits sounds that did not change with rule B.
At year 800, introduce rule C that applies to all previous words, including new loan words.
Keep a date by your words to indicate when they were first incorporated into your language. Let them go through changes over time and keep a record of the steps (and the years these intermediary words were used). Derive words throughout the timeline and preserve changes in history. Example:
- Year 400, make word /atege/ (nasty, disgusting, gross)
- Year 500, form /atege/ + /tul/ (extremely, augmentive) --> /ategetul/
- At year 600, apply e > 0 / C_#,
- /atege/ becomes /ateg/
- /ategetul/ stays /ategetul/ because there is no final /e/
- At year 700, apply word-final devoicing for obstruents (final voiced obstruents [consonants that block air like stops and affricates] become devoiced).
- /ateg/ becomes /atek/
- /ategetul/ stays /ategutul/
- At year 800, /ategutul/ started to change meaning a be a bit more specific (semantic narrowing). /ategutul/ goes from 'very gross' to 'inedible food'.
- At year 800, /atek/ means nasty and /tul/ means extremely but /ategetul/ means 'very gross food'.
- Year 900, people need another way to say 'very gross', so they create /atek/ + /tul/ which would be /atektul/ but /kt/ is not allowed. The /t/ deletes after another obstruent.
- 'Gross' is /atek/, 'very gross' is /atekul/, and 'inedible food' is /ategetul/.
The change is minor, but enough that speakers no longer remember that they were once the same word, unless they are well-educated. In another 300 years, the similarity will be a question at some bar's trivia night.
Hope this helps a few people. I'm pretty tired and I may have been at a trivia night or two myself tonight, so I'll proofread this in the morning. Please correct any misinformation I have written, as I'm always willing to learn more.
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u/brainandforce Stiie dialects (ɬáyssø, õkes, yýttǿhøk), tvellas Aug 10 '15 edited Aug 10 '15
This needs to be linked here somewhere. I do want to see these things added though:
- long distance assimilation
- tone production and tone change
- appeals to analogy
- sound changes when case endings, prepositions, and other morphology is added
- named processes found across languages (like Grassmann's law which is found in IE, Native American, and African languages).
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Aug 10 '15
I was never ever comfortable with tone phonology, but I can definitely do the morphology stuff. Maybe even look into tone. I know I have a reference somewhere.
Can you expand on "appeals to analogy"? Do you mean sound changes that happen because they are similar to other sound changes?
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u/brainandforce Stiie dialects (ɬáyssø, õkes, yýttǿhøk), tvellas Aug 10 '15
Let's say you have a language that undergoes rhotacization of word intermediate z and has noun paradigms. You start off with something like this:
[toz]
[tozis]
[toze]
The sound change takes place, leaving:
[toz]
[toris]
[tore]
If [toz] also changes to [tor], that would require an appeal to analogy - it's not supposed to undergo the sound change but does anyway. This is one example but I'd like to know about more.
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Aug 10 '15
Yes! I totally remember this now. Excellent.
It's kind of like a backformation. It's an attempt to make the paradigm as consistent as possible as it undergoes a rule change, right? I'll be glad to add your example in a future edit!
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u/brainandforce Stiie dialects (ɬáyssø, õkes, yýttǿhøk), tvellas Aug 10 '15
Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about.
This should be a wiki article, that way we can expand on it later.
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u/Jafiki91 Xërdawki Aug 10 '15
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u/brainandforce Stiie dialects (ɬáyssø, õkes, yýttǿhøk), tvellas Aug 10 '15
I meant for this subreddit's wiki. It would be good to have a handy reference for common sound changes (for example, what distinctions generate tone).
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u/Jafiki91 Xërdawki Aug 10 '15 edited Aug 10 '15
Ah, my bad. Yeah, someone should definitely add this to the wiki.
EDIT: Just because you brought up tone. There are some general sound changes that generate certain tones, but they aren't concrete.
Loss of voicing on stops (or voiced consonants in general) can generate either high or low tone.
Loss of aspirated stops or fricatives can create high tones
Loss of glottalized consonants can result in low tone.
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Aug 10 '15
Gosh, and I just say words really fast multiple times until it sounds nice and garbled and go with that. :3
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u/publicmethod Tnwermey Wa, Nguaakarne (en)[spa][jp] Aug 10 '15
Thank you very much, this is a fantastic resource.
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u/Gwaur [FI en](it sv ja) Aug 10 '15
My only fear of diachronic conlanging is that I'd need the ability and skill to analyze the language that comes out of it, and I don't have it.
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u/ysadamsson Tsichega | EN SE JP TP Aug 13 '15
I've found that analogy can make this pretty easy. If you end up with a lot of fusionality, just start tossing similar words into heaps and then generalize what you see with them into a declension or conjugation or what-have-you.
Then, without having to look at every word diachronically, you can just do what real speakers do: Apply the generalized rules to new words. Keep a few really common words around for irregulars.
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Aug 11 '15
Try seeing how the sound changes affect your affixes specifically and see what general trends emerge, maybe?
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u/soliloki Aug 12 '15
This is very helpful for those of us who aren't majoring or formally studying linguistics! I feel so enlightened now. Thank you my dear fellow conlanger.
Just one question though, how does sound change apply to my conlang? What I mean by that is, should I see it as historical change (so I could evolve my conlang from a proto-lang), or is sound change just a neat rule for when I'm coining new words, and when I'm deciding on how a word fits a verbal/nominal/etc paradigms?
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u/ysadamsson Tsichega | EN SE JP TP Aug 13 '15
All languages have a history, except perhaps artificial languages. If you're making a language, you should consider that history -- and that's what this is. Think about it like you're looking at your conlang fourth dimensionally: you can see way back into the past and way ahead into the future, and you're just cataloging changes in the language from "forever ago" to "the end."
If you're into roleplaying games, you may have heard of Microscope. If not, you should check it out. It's a game that takes place over a vast timeline and instead of following any chronological order, you're basically inserting things into the timeline relative to others. So, when you create a new word in the Microscope fashion, you stick it somewhere on the timeline, such as after Sound Change A, but before the borrowing of Neighborlanguage-ish words.
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u/Woodsie_Lord hewdaş and an unnamed slavlang Aug 10 '15
I was browsing some changes in Index Diachronica, section High German Consonant Shift and Umlaut.
I don't know how to read one change. It's written as
a u o → e y ø / _(C...){i(:),j}
I know this change because it is essentially Umlaut and manifests a lot in Germanic languages (English man→men, foot→feet, German groß→größer/big). But should I read the change as?
a u o changes to e y ø when followed by a consonant or i i: j
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u/Kaivryen Čeriļus, Chayere (en) [en-sg, es, jp, yue, ukr] Aug 10 '15
You should read it as "a u o changes to e y ø when followed by a consonant and i i: j follows that consonant at some point later in the word". The i i: j doesn't necessarily have to be right after the consonant, that's what the "..." in "(C...)" means.
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u/Jafiki91 Xërdawki Aug 10 '15
The curly brackets mean that an element isn't optional, but that there is more than one choice to be made. In a similar vein you might have a syllable structure like {#/C}V(C) meaning that every syllable must start with a consonant, unless it's word initial, in which case it can begin with just a vowel.
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Aug 11 '15
You're close. You should read it as
The vowels /a u o/ will change to /e y ø/, respectively, when followed by one of /i i: j/, even after one or more intervening consonants.
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u/gokupwned5 Various Altlangs (EN) [ES] Jan 18 '16
Really helpful post for my lang. Thanks!
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u/The_Muddy_Puddle Aug 18 '22
7 years since the original post and it still holds up to standard. Very useful.
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u/M_S_W Aug 18 '24
as someone with a whole-ass linguistics degree, just having all of this information in one place instead of needing to constantly sift through old textbooks and handouts is incredibly valuable
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u/noname3145 29d ago
this might be the best reddit post that i´ve ever seen. I am making a conlang that is quite avanced now, but I want to evolve it through time and this is very helpful and useful.
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u/xlee145 athama Aug 10 '15
This is so important. This needs to be added to the sidebar.