Sound changes in function words

[The Hanged Man]

Is that true that grammatical words can undergo sound changes different from a standard set? If so, what sound changes are common among them?

[chris_notts]

I'm not sure about sound changes, but I think it's fairly common for frequent words and constructions to be reduced in irregular ways. Very common morphemes tend to be short, and new function words and constructions which aren't are likely to be worn down by changes which aren't general.

I guess a good example in English is probably /g@UINtu/ "going to" -> /gUn@/ "gonna".

[Aurora Rossa]

I have heard that as well. Generally they say that sound changes don't care about grammatical traits. But function words often have less stress or emphasis than content words and that makes them prone to more sound changes. This yields contractions like "gonna" and ultimately makes it possible for free morphemes to evolve into inflectional affixes.

[linguoboy]

Is that true that grammatical words can undergo sound changes different from a standard set? If so, what sound changes are common among them?

In general, they're more likely to be treated like unstressed syllables, which can be of major importance in languages like English and French where a lot of changes are accent-dependent. Consider, for instance, Old English án to Mod. English a, an (when an article) or one (when a numeral). Or Vulgar Latin ille to Mod. French le (when an article or atonic pronoun) or lui (when a tonic pronoun).

[AnTeallach]

Two examples from modern English dialects:

1) The "short A split" of some parts of the eastern US produces "tensing" of /{/ to [e@] or similar before certain consonants, including /n/ and /v/. But function words, like "have" and modal "can", are immune, and retain [{]. Wikipedia has more details.

2) Most British English dialects lack the categorical flapping of intervocalic /t/ that occurs in the US. But several dialects do have lexically restricted flapping in certain common words: I posted the link to this paper about the situation in Scouse the other day in a different thread. (See section 4.2.1, and yes the encoding of the IPA symbols seems to be messed up.) In some parts of the north of England, the flapped /t/ merges with /r/.

[The Hanged Man]

Thanks for your answers. Another question I'd like to ask: How do you perform grammaticalization in your conlangs? Does anyone do it?

[Aurora Rossa]

I have been working on it to explain how Terpish develops its inflectional system. I was planning on starting with archaic roots in the proto-language which become function words. Then these cliticize and contract until they become condensed and bound morphemes. Meanwhile the original roots fall out of use, obscuring the connection.

[the duke of nuke]

I've got a couple of languages in the planning stages that start out having postpositions that later end up as fusional case suffixes.

[vohpenonomae]

I have heard that as well. Generally they say that sound changes don't care about grammatical traits.

This is true from a certain theoretical perspective: if you exclude sound changes following from leveling and reformation of words. Traditionally, these are excluded and invoked as a means or explanation of "irregular change." From leveling and reformation come many irregularities, such as sound changes that appear to be sensitive to morpheme boundaries; there are even very specific irregular changes that appear only with certain specific morphemes (the negation prefix in PIE and some descendants, the pronominal prefixes of Algonquian, etc.). I tend to uphold the traditional distinction in my own conlangs, and make choice of allmorphs the source of most irregularities; it's easier that way, and the end result is just as realistic as any other approach.

[Aurora Rossa]

This is true from a certain theoretical perspective: if you exclude sound changes following from leveling and reformation of words. Traditionally, these are excluded and invoked as a means or explanation of "irregular change." From leveling and reformation come many irregularities, such as sound changes that appear to be sensitive to morpheme boundaries;

So a sound change voicing intervocalic stops might not operate if the stop is intervocalic because of a vowel suffix after it. Since it occurs word finally otherwise, analogy could apply that voiceless state even to the suffixed one.

[bulbaquil]

Thanks for your answers. Another question I'd like to ask: How do you perform grammaticalization in your conlangs? Does anyone do it?

A priori ignoring diachronics. Yay for the cheap way!

[vohpenonomae]

This is true from a certain theoretical perspective: if you exclude sound changes following from leveling and reformation of words. Traditionally, these are excluded and invoked as a means or explanation of "irregular change." From leveling and reformation come many irregularities, such as sound changes that appear to be sensitive to morpheme boundaries;

So a sound change voicing intervocalic stops might not operate if the stop is intervocalic because of a vowel suffix after it. Since it occurs word finally otherwise, analogy could apply that voiceless state even to the suffixed one.

It depends on whether or not the intervocalic voicing rule is still applicable at the time a word is leveled or reformed; active sound changes tend to become part of the so-called "phonological rules" of a language, which are the rules one applies to underlying morphemes to produce surface forms in the "current" version of a language. Since the "current" version of any language is always in flux, the phono rules are subject to alteration; you could, e.g., find roughly contemporaneous word pairs where the voicing rule applies in one word and not in the other; the latter having been reformed or leveled after the voicing rule went away. (Oftentimes, after rules or sound changes go extinct, the allophonic variants they created are leveled out in favor or a specific allophone; but sometimes the variants remain and become distinctive in their own right. Palatalization, e.g., is extremely common cross-linguistically; but only in a few families, like Slavic, has it become contrastive, because usually it's leveled out in favor of non-palatalized forms when palatalization rules cease to function. This happened, e.g., with Proto-Algonquian *č in Cheyenne, which was in PA a palatalized variant of /t/ before /i/ or /y/; it largely merged with /t/ in Cheyenne. The same occurred, albeit differently, with PA *š, which was the PA variant of /θ/ before /i/ or /y/; Cheyenne retained š, even creating new instances of it, and then š made surrounding vowels alternate, and become /e/; so instead of leveling out the θ~š alternation in favor of the non-palatalized variant, the non-palatalized variant became the standard, and θ disappeared.)

[Astraios]

Thanks for your answers. Another question I'd like to ask: How do you perform grammaticalization in your conlangs? Does anyone do it?

I have a 'lang which I'm developing out of my very first attempt ever at conlanging - it has developed honorific prefixes on verbs, which derive from the titles "sir/madam", which were originally noun-final. As in:

Golem ha dulali.
Golem // sir // speak
Sir Golem speaks.

...from which is derived:

Golem a-glai
Golem // HON-speak
(The honourable) Golem speaks.

I'm doing a lot of this sort of thing with this particular 'lang, to disguise its origins.

[Kai_DaiGoji]

I'm not sure about sound changes, but I think it's fairly common for frequent words and constructions to be reduced in irregular ways. Very common morphemes tend to be short, and new function words and constructions which aren't are likely to be worn down by changes which aren't general.

I guess a good example in English is probably /g@UINtu/ "going to" -> /gUn@/ "gonna".

I've been fascinated by this one for a long time, because "gonna" is allowed when treating "going to" as one lexical unit, in this case a phrasal verb, but is totally not allowed when the preposition is important. I.e., "I'm gonna go to the store" = grammatical, while "I'm gonna the store" = not grammatical.

[bulbaquil]

I've been fascinated by this one for a long time, because "gonna" is allowed when treating "going to" as one lexical unit, in this case a phrasal verb, but is totally not allowed when the preposition is important. I.e., "I'm gonna go to the store" = grammatical, while "I'm gonna the store" = not grammatical.

Same thing with other similar constructions:

"I shoulda caught all 400 billion Pokemon by now!" -- okay
*"We shoulda the shipment in by next Friday" -- not okay.

[Radius Solis]

However, British English does sometimes allow the contraction of mainverbal "have" as well, though I'm not clear on the specific restrictions. But things like "I've a new cat" are allowed in at least some British dialects.

[Kai_DaiGoji]

Same thing with other similar constructions:

"I shoulda caught all 400 billion Pokemon by now!" -- okay
*"We shoulda the shipment in by next Friday" -- not okay.

I'd never thought of that one!

However, British English does sometimes allow the contraction of mainverbal "have" as well, though I'm not clear on the specific restrictions. But things like "I've a new cat" are allowed in at least some British dialects.

I've heard that, now that you point it out. But it sounds weird to my American ears.

[Cadeshadow]

However, British English does sometimes allow the contraction of mainverbal "have" as well, though I'm not clear on the specific restrictions. But things like "I've a new cat" are allowed in at least some British dialects.

I've heard that, now that you point it out. But it sounds weird to my American ears.

However, it does sound quite normal to my up-and-down the east coast American ears. I wouldn't've a cat if I were you

[äreo]

However, British English does sometimes allow the contraction of mainverbal "have" as well, though I'm not clear on the specific restrictions. But things like "I've a new cat" are allowed in at least some British dialects.

I've heard that, now that you point it out. But it sounds weird to my American ears.

However, it does sound quite normal to my up-and-down the east coast American ears. I wouldn't've a cat if I were you

Same here, sentences like "I've a new cat", even though I don't see them written as much in the States, are often used in speech, and I for one do use them in writing.

[Boşkoventi]

However, British English does sometimes allow the contraction of mainverbal "have" as well, though I'm not clear on the specific restrictions. But things like "I've a new cat" are allowed in at least some British dialects.

I've heard that, now that you point it out. But it sounds weird to my American ears.

However, it does sound quite normal to my up-and-down the east coast American ears. I wouldn't've a cat if I were you

Sounds weird to me. I'm also on the east coast, and have been "up-and-down", and inland.

Weird people are weird.

[Boşkoventi]

Thanks for your answers. Another question I'd like to ask: How do you perform grammaticalization in your conlangs? Does anyone do it?

Old Gzho has grammaticalization in two main areas: verb endings and prepositions. Personal endings on verbs are derived from pronouns (which survive in related dialects / languages), and the suffix which marks a verb as transitive is from a pronoun as well, which probably meant "it". The passive voice suffix may be a worn down combination of the transitive and intransitive suffixes, or from a word meaning "found" (e.g. "It is/was found broken" > "It was broken"). Many prepositions are derived either from locative expressions (wamiç "at the head (of)" > "on") or participles (sèk "facing" > "at, by").

[chris_notts]

However, British English does sometimes allow the contraction of mainverbal "have" as well, though I'm not clear on the specific restrictions. But things like "I've a new cat" are allowed in at least some British dialects.

It's grammatical for me, but sounds formal and slightly old fashioned. On this side of the channel at least, by far the most common way to express possession is "have got", e.g. "I've got a new cat". In my colloquial speech, I think "have" is pretty much exclusively restricted to functioning as an auxiliary, and I use "have got" whenever I actually want the possessive meaning. That's the situation I think we'll be in eventually in all registers, with "have got" pretty much completely replacing plain "have" for possession.

[Amuere]

Radius Solis wrote:
However, British English does sometimes allow the contraction of mainverbal "have" as well, though I'm not clear on the specific restrictions. But things like "I've a new cat" are allowed in at least some British dialects.


It's grammatical for me, but sounds formal and slightly old fashioned. On this side of the channel at least, by far the most common way to express possession is "have got", e.g. "I've got a new cat". In my colloquial speech, I think "have" is pretty much exclusively restricted to functioning as an auxiliary, and I use "have got" whenever I actually want the possessive meaning. That's the situation I think we'll be in eventually in all registers, with "have got" pretty much completely replacing plain "have" for possession.

In my dialect that construction is completely ungrammatical, in fact I've never heard "I've" used like that except on TV. My dialect also rarely uses "have got" for the possessive, as far as I know I nearly always use just "have"

[chris_notts]

In my dialect that construction is completely ungrammatical, in fact I've never heard "I've" used like that except on TV. My dialect also rarely uses "have got" for the possessive, as far as I know I nearly always use just "have"

Which part of the English speaking world are you in?

[Amuere]

In my dialect that construction is completely ungrammatical, in fact I've never heard "I've" used like that except on TV. My dialect also rarely uses "have got" for the possessive, as far as I know I nearly always use just "have"

Which part of the English speaking world are you in?

USA, North Carolina to be specific.