Background
Given that there will be a number
of people who are interested in historical phonology in Edinburgh the
day before the Second
Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology,
we thought that we
could make use of this to hold a satellite workshop on the fringes of
the symposium devoted to the
history of the discipline. This workshop is
intended to be a relatively informal venue for
discussion of a number of issues related to the history of historical
phonology, and all the speakers in the
session were invited to take part. It is not a formal part of the symposium and
everyone is welcome to
attend.
Topic
There has long been serious work on
historical phonology (for two centuries at least). Perhaps because it
is a 'historical' discipline itself, historical phonology has always
been aware of its own origins, and practitioners are typically
interested in the ways in which it has developed over its own history,
in the reasons for those developments, and in the ways in which they
lead, or have been led by, developments in general phonological (and morphophonological) theory.
This session is intended as an opportunity to focus on strands in the
(ancient and/or recent) development of historical phonology - how did
things develop? And why?
Speakers
This is the plan for the session:- 1.30-2.30pm
- Andras Cser (Pazmany Peter Catholic University)
- Phonology and morphology in the nineteenth century: the issue of abstractness vs. empiricism
- abstract available here
- 2.30-3.30pm
- Marc Pierce (University of Texas at Austin)
- Towards a historiography of 'Morphologically Conditioned Sound Changes'
- abstract available here
- 3.30-4.00pm
- BREAK
- 4.00-5.00pm
- B. Elan Dresher (University of Toronto)
- A history of contrastive feature hierarchies in Germanic diachronic phonology
- abstract available here
Attending
It is free to attend the workshop. It is being held in a building close to where the Symposium on Historical
Phonology will be held, in the central campus of the University of
Edinburgh, but the two events are not in the same building.
This is where the workshop will be:
Andras Cser
This talk looks at the transition from the framework of the comparative and historical linguistics of the early and mid-19th century to that of the later 19th century from two interrelated aspects, both essential to this transition, which is commonly referred to as the Neogrammarian revolution. One of these aspects is how the study of sounds and sound changes on the one hand, and how morphology on the other, related to each other. The other aspect is how abstraction and fact-oriented empiricism related to each other. These questions are interesting primarily because important shifts took place in the 1870's in both respects.
Towards a Historiography of 'Morphologically Conditioned Sound Changes'
Marc Pierce
One of the more controversial ideas that emerged in historical linguistics in the 1960s and 1970s was that of "morphologically conditioned sound changes." While Neogrammarians like Paul (1920) and Structuralists like Bloomfield (1933) had argued that sound change was exclusively conditioned by phonetic/phonological factors, some generativists (e.g. Postal 1968) rejected this claim in favor of the idea that sound change could also be morphologically conditioned. In this paper, I situate this idea within the history of historical linguistics in the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on generative approaches to historical linguistics.
While the idea of "morphologically conditioned sound changes" clearly resonated with many historical linguists at the time (e.g., King 1969 and Anttila 1972 endorse the idea in their influential books, and Cathey 1972 applies it to the famously messy phenomenon of Old Norse i-umlaut), this idea was not unanimously accepted. Jasanoff (1971: 81), for instance, concedes that "in synchronic grammars there is a very real need for such rules," as in Greek, where s is deleted intervocalically except in the future and aorist of verbs, but argues that in diachronic terms they are better treated as the results of regular sound change that has been (partially) obscured by analogy. More recent work on historical linguistics has also moved away from this idea somewhat. For instance, Sihler (2000: 43) distinguishes between sound changes and analogical changes, which hints that he would reject the idea of morphologically conditioned sound changes, but states that, in the case of Greek s mentioned above, "it remains a topic of debate whether this is a 'therapeutic analogy' – that is, an innovation that restored intervocalic *s after it was lost – or instead involved a continuous adjustment that prevented the consonant from being lost in the first place." Additionally, Campbell (2013) reviews several possible examples of this type of sound change and concludes only that "[a]t this stage of our understanding, we cannot ignore any potential causal factor ... and thus cut off inquiry before we arrive at a fuller picture of how and why changes occur." (Campbell 2013: 335).
The development of the idea of morphologically conditioned sound change can be traced a number of currents in the field. Among others, it reflects (1) the increasing application of generative linguistics to historical linguistics and (2) the increasing emphasis within phonological theory on rules over representations. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that some earlier scholars had noted the possible connection between morphology and sound change. Sapir (1921: 152) had suggested that "I am inclined to believe that our present tendency to isolate phonetics and grammar as mutually irrelevant linguistic provinces is unfortunate.... After all, if speech-sounds exist merely because they are the symbolic carriers of significant concepts and groupings of concepts, why may not a strong drift or a permanent feature in the conceptual sphere exercise a furthering or a retarding influence on the phonetic drift?" Additionally, Wessén (1918) had somewhat tentatively applied the idea to Old Norse i-umlaut as well, indicating that the idea was simultaneously cutting-edge and old-fashioned.
A history of contrastive feature hierarchies in Germanic diachronic phonology
B. Elan Dresher
In this talk I will look at the origins and uses of contrastive hierarchies in Germanic diachronic phonology, with a focus on the development of West Germanic vowel systems. I will begin with a rather enigmatic remark in Richard Hogg’s A grammar of Old English (1992), and attempt to trace its provenance. We will find that the trail leads back to analyses by some prominent scholars that make use of contrastive feature hierarchies. However, these analyses often appear without context or supporting framework. I will attempt to provide the missing framework and historical context for these analyses, while showing their value for understanding the development of phonological systems. I will show that behind these apparently isolated analyses there is a substantial theoretical edifice that once held a central role in synchronic as well as diachronic phonological theory.
This is where the workshop will be:
- room 1.06 in 27 George Square - click here to find the building on a campus map
- postcode for finding the building in phones and the like: EH8 9LD
- this link here will take you to far more information that you could possibly need about the building
Abstracts
The problem of abstractness in nineteenth-century phonology and morphologyAndras Cser
This talk looks at the transition from the framework of the comparative and historical linguistics of the early and mid-19th century to that of the later 19th century from two interrelated aspects, both essential to this transition, which is commonly referred to as the Neogrammarian revolution. One of these aspects is how the study of sounds and sound changes on the one hand, and how morphology on the other, related to each other. The other aspect is how abstraction and fact-oriented empiricism related to each other. These questions are interesting primarily because important shifts took place in the 1870's in both respects.
Towards a Historiography of 'Morphologically Conditioned Sound Changes'
Marc Pierce
One of the more controversial ideas that emerged in historical linguistics in the 1960s and 1970s was that of "morphologically conditioned sound changes." While Neogrammarians like Paul (1920) and Structuralists like Bloomfield (1933) had argued that sound change was exclusively conditioned by phonetic/phonological factors, some generativists (e.g. Postal 1968) rejected this claim in favor of the idea that sound change could also be morphologically conditioned. In this paper, I situate this idea within the history of historical linguistics in the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on generative approaches to historical linguistics.
While the idea of "morphologically conditioned sound changes" clearly resonated with many historical linguists at the time (e.g., King 1969 and Anttila 1972 endorse the idea in their influential books, and Cathey 1972 applies it to the famously messy phenomenon of Old Norse i-umlaut), this idea was not unanimously accepted. Jasanoff (1971: 81), for instance, concedes that "in synchronic grammars there is a very real need for such rules," as in Greek, where s is deleted intervocalically except in the future and aorist of verbs, but argues that in diachronic terms they are better treated as the results of regular sound change that has been (partially) obscured by analogy. More recent work on historical linguistics has also moved away from this idea somewhat. For instance, Sihler (2000: 43) distinguishes between sound changes and analogical changes, which hints that he would reject the idea of morphologically conditioned sound changes, but states that, in the case of Greek s mentioned above, "it remains a topic of debate whether this is a 'therapeutic analogy' – that is, an innovation that restored intervocalic *s after it was lost – or instead involved a continuous adjustment that prevented the consonant from being lost in the first place." Additionally, Campbell (2013) reviews several possible examples of this type of sound change and concludes only that "[a]t this stage of our understanding, we cannot ignore any potential causal factor ... and thus cut off inquiry before we arrive at a fuller picture of how and why changes occur." (Campbell 2013: 335).
The development of the idea of morphologically conditioned sound change can be traced a number of currents in the field. Among others, it reflects (1) the increasing application of generative linguistics to historical linguistics and (2) the increasing emphasis within phonological theory on rules over representations. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that some earlier scholars had noted the possible connection between morphology and sound change. Sapir (1921: 152) had suggested that "I am inclined to believe that our present tendency to isolate phonetics and grammar as mutually irrelevant linguistic provinces is unfortunate.... After all, if speech-sounds exist merely because they are the symbolic carriers of significant concepts and groupings of concepts, why may not a strong drift or a permanent feature in the conceptual sphere exercise a furthering or a retarding influence on the phonetic drift?" Additionally, Wessén (1918) had somewhat tentatively applied the idea to Old Norse i-umlaut as well, indicating that the idea was simultaneously cutting-edge and old-fashioned.
A history of contrastive feature hierarchies in Germanic diachronic phonology
B. Elan Dresher
In this talk I will look at the origins and uses of contrastive hierarchies in Germanic diachronic phonology, with a focus on the development of West Germanic vowel systems. I will begin with a rather enigmatic remark in Richard Hogg’s A grammar of Old English (1992), and attempt to trace its provenance. We will find that the trail leads back to analyses by some prominent scholars that make use of contrastive feature hierarchies. However, these analyses often appear without context or supporting framework. I will attempt to provide the missing framework and historical context for these analyses, while showing their value for understanding the development of phonological systems. I will show that behind these apparently isolated analyses there is a substantial theoretical edifice that once held a central role in synchronic as well as diachronic phonological theory.