Linguistic Levels : Phonology

Changes in the sound system of a language may involve many different aspects. First, phonemes may be added to an inventory, they may become obsolete, or they may change their shape. Second, allophonic rules may emerge (e.g. "voice intersonorant fricatives"), disappear, or change. Third, phonotactic restrictions may be added (e.g. no syllable-initial Iknl sequences, so that such clusters are reduced to one sound), or change their effect (e.g. the ban on Iknl sequences may be resolved by epenthesis). Fourth, prosodic structure may change (resulting in, for instance, stress shift) and, fifth, morphophonological alternations (e.g. ablaut and umlaut) may start to play a different role or they may vanish (e.g. when morphology is regularized). This chapter will first briefly introduce the field of phonology as envisaged by structuralists and generative linguists. Section 2 discusses some changes in the consonant inventory, the allophonic variations, and the phonotactic restrictions in the history of the English language and shows that many of these changes are interrelated in the sense that a change in one component triggers an effect in another component. Section 3 expresses some ideas on the future of looking back on changes in the sound system, and Section 4 summarizes the chapter.