Theories of Sound Change from the Neogrammarians to Today

Presenters: Marc Pierce

T2TFE2

This workshop examines theories of sound change. It begins with the Neogrammarians (German Junggrammatiker), who held that sound changes were (a) purely phonetically conditioned and (b) exceptionless, although several other considerations could obscure this. In this section of the workshop, we will read three of the most important Neogrammarian studies of sound change: excerpts from Osthoff and Brugmann (1878) and Paul (1880/2015), as well as Bloomfield (1928). The second part of the workshop turns to structuralist approaches. Structuralism largely retained the Neogrammarian hypothesis, but reformulated it in accordance with structuralist ideas about phonology, especially regarding phonemic theory. Readings for this section will be excerpts from Sapir (1921), Bloomfield (1933), and Hockett (1958), as well as Martinet (1952). The next section of the workshop addresses generativist approaches, focusing on excerpts from King (1969), which represents early generativist ideas, McMahon (1991), which applies Lexical Phonology to sound change, and Zubritskaya (1997), an Optimality Theory approach to sound change. The fourth section of the workshop examines more finely-grained phonetic approaches; in this section, we will read Ohala (1993), which defends the idea that sound change is rooted in a pool of synchronic variation, and Yu (2020), which offers a careful and insightful survey of the issue. The last section of the workshop is on sociolinguistic approaches. The focus in this section will be on William Labov’s work, specifically Labov (1963) on sound change on Martha’s Vineyard, and Labov (1981), which draws a distinction between Neogrammarian approaches and the idea of lexical diffusion. The final paper in this section will be Kiparsky (2016), who examines Labov’s impact on the study of sound change. Prior experience in historical linguistics will be an advantage; knowledge of German would be helpful, but is not required, as all readings and discussions will be in English.

Keywords: Phonetics, Phonology, Language Change, Theoretical Frameworks

Presenters

Marc Pierce

University of Texas at Austin

Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin; specialist in historical linguistics, the history of linguistics, phonology, Germanic linguistics, language contact, and Texas German; currently finalizing a book on the history of Germanic linguistics in North America;