Open AccessSystem complexity and (im)possible sound changes
Author(s) -
Klaas Seinhorst
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
papers in historical phonology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2399-6714
DOI - 10.2218/pihph.1.2016.1701
Subject(s) - obstruent , sound change , consonant , sound (geography) , set (abstract data type) , computer science , vowel , speech recognition , linguistics , acoustics , philosophy , physics , programming language
In the acquisition of phonological patterns, learners tend to considerably reduce the complexity of their input. This learning bias may also constrain the set of possible sound changes, which might be expected to contain only those changes that do not increase the complexity of the system. However, sound change obviously involves more than just pattern learning. This paper investigates the role that inductive biases play by assessing the differences in system complexity of a small number of attested sound changes: the evolution of the obstruent and vowel inventories from Old English to Modern English, and the First Germanic Consonant Shift