Difference between revisions of "Sound law"
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| − | <p>Ever since the foundation of the comparative method in the late XIX century, a sound law has been defined as a descriptive principle that illustrates taxative diachronic phonetic change within a language (Cotticelli-Kurras 2007, 420). In other words, a given phoneme of a given language, when occurring in a specific context, will change in a predictable way. Examples in Indo-European linguistics are numerous. In Anatolian, one could mention, for instance, the outcome of initial group *h<sub>2</sub>e in the passage from Indo-European to Hittite:</p> | + | <p>Ever since the foundation of the comparative method in the late XIX century, a sound law has been defined as a descriptive principle that illustrates taxative diachronic phonetic change within a language (Cotticelli-Kurras 2007, 420). In other words, a given phoneme of a given language, when occurring in a specific context, will change in a predictable way. Examples in [[language family | Indo-European]] linguistics are numerous. In Anatolian, one could mention, for instance, the outcome of initial group *h<sub>2</sub>e in the passage from Indo-European to Hittite:</p> |
<blockquote> | <blockquote> | ||
*h<sub>2</sub>e > ha | *h<sub>2</sub>e > ha | ||
Revision as of 10:33, 20 July 2023
Contents
Translations
legge fonetica | loi de phonétique | Sprachgesetz
Article
Ever since the foundation of the comparative method in the late XIX century, a sound law has been defined as a descriptive principle that illustrates taxative diachronic phonetic change within a language (Cotticelli-Kurras 2007, 420). In other words, a given phoneme of a given language, when occurring in a specific context, will change in a predictable way. Examples in Indo-European linguistics are numerous. In Anatolian, one could mention, for instance, the outcome of initial group *h2e in the passage from Indo-European to Hittite:
- h2e > ha
which is read as follows: every initial group *h2e of Indo-European will turn into initial ha- in Hittite. The initial position represents the context that triggers the change.
In contact scenarios, a successful identification of sound changes is of significance to establish the date of borrowings, as those that undergo a given change must have happened before the change occurred; those that do not, must have occurred after the law was fully applied.
Example
An example from the Ancient Near Eastern area in which the lack of application of a sound law helps pinpoint the date of a borrowing is offered by Hurrian historical phonology. At some point protohistorically, Hurrian eliminated initial /r/. Since alphabetic Hurrian contains an Akkadian loanword, riw (<re'u "shepherd"; Richter 2012, 437), and the initial /r/ was not eliminated, we may conclude that the borrowing occurred in historical times, after the relevant sound law had already stopped affecting the Hurrian lexicon.
References
Cotticelli-Kurras, F. 2007. Lessico di linguistica, Alessanrdia. Richter, T. 2012. BIbliographisches Glossar des Hurritischen, Wiesbaden.
