Sound change in the context of Devoicing

Language change is the process of alteration in the features of a single language, or of languages in general, over time. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify three main types of change: systematic change in the pronunciation of phonemes, or sound change; borrowing, in which new features (often, new words) enter a language or dialect as a result of influence from another language or dialect; and analogical change, in which the shape or grammatical behavior of a word is altered to more closely resemble that of another word. Research on language change generally assumes the uniformitarian principle—the presumption that language changes in the past took place according to the same general principles as language changes visible in the present.

Language change usually does not occur suddenly, but rather takes place via an extended period of variation, during which new and old linguistic features coexist. All living languages are continually undergoing change. Some commentators use derogatory labels such as "corruption" to suggest that language change constitutes a degradation in the quality of a language, especially when the change originates from human error or is a prescriptively discouraged usage. Modern linguistics rejects this concept, since from a scientific point of view such innovations cannot be judged in terms of good or bad. John Lyons notes that "any standard of evaluation applied to language-change must be based upon a recognition of the various functions a language 'is called upon' to fulfil in the society which uses it".

The Balto-Slavic languages form a branch of the Indo-European family of languages, traditionally comprising the Baltic and Slavic languages. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to a period of common development and origin.

A Proto-Balto-Slavic language is reconstructable by the comparative method, descending from Proto-Indo-European by means of well-defined sound laws, and from which modern Slavic and Baltic languages descended. One particularly innovative dialect separated from the Balto-Slavic dialect continuum and became ancestral to the Proto-Slavic language, from which all Slavic languages descended.

Old High German (OHG; German: Althochdeutsch (Ahdt., Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous West Germanic dialects that had undergone the set of consonantal changes called the Second Sound Shift.

At the start of this period, dialect areas reflected the territories of largely independent tribal kingdoms, but by 788 the conquests of Charlemagne had brought all OHG dialect areas into a single polity. The period also saw the development of a stable linguistic border between German and Gallo-Romance, later French.

In language change, analogical change occurs when one linguistic sign is changed in either form or meaning to reflect another item in the language system on the basis of analogy or perceived similarity. In contrast to regular sound change, analogy is driven by idiosyncratic cognitive factors and applies irregularly across a language system. This leads to what is known as Sturtevant's paradox: sound change is regular, but produces irregularity; analogy is irregular, but produces regularity.

The Nahuan or Aztecan languages are those languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family that have undergone a sound change, known as Whorf's law, that changed an original *t to /tɬ/ before *a. Subsequently, some Nahuan languages have changed this /tɬ/ to /l/ or back to /t/, but it can still be seen that the language went through a /tɬ/ stage. The most spoken Nahuatl variant is Huasteca Nahuatl. As a whole, Nahuatl is spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples.

Some authorities, such as the Mexican government, Ethnologue, and Glottolog, consider the varieties of modern Nahuatl to be distinct languages, because they are often mutually unintelligible, their grammars differ and their speakers have distinct ethnic identities. As of 2008, the Mexican government recognizes thirty varieties that are spoken in Mexico as languages (see the list below).

A voiced palatal approximant is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨j⟩; the equivalent symbol in the Americanist phonetic notation is ⟨y⟩. In order to not imply that the approximant is spread as the vowel [i] is, it may instead be transcribed ⟨ʝ̞⟩. When this sound occurs in the form of a palatal glide it is frequently, but not exclusively, denoted as a superscript j ⟨ʲ⟩ in IPA.

This sound is traditionally called a yod, after its name in Hebrew. This is reflected in the names of certain phonological changes, such as yod-dropping and yod-coalescence.

Middle High German (MHG; endonym: diutsch or tiutsch; New High German: Mittelhochdeutsch [ˈmɪtl̩hoːxˌdɔʏtʃ] , shortened as Mhdt. or Mhd.) is the term for the form of High German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German (OHG) into Early New High German (ENHG). High German is defined as those varieties of German which were affected by the Second Sound Shift; the Middle Low German (MLG) and Middle Dutch languages spoken to the North and North West, which did not participate in this sound change, are not part of MHG.

While there is no standard MHG, the prestige of the Hohenstaufen court gave rise in the late 12th century to a supra-regional literary language (mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache) based on Swabian, an Alemannic dialect. This historical interpretation is complicated by the tendency of modern editions of MHG texts to use normalised spellings based on this variety (usually called "Classical MHG"), which make the written language appear more consistent than it actually is in the manuscripts. Scholars are uncertain as to whether the literary language reflected a supra-regional spoken language of the courts.

As the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) broke up, its sound system diverged as well, as evidenced in various sound laws associated with the daughter Indo-European languages.Especially notable is the palatalization that produced the satem languages, along with the associated ruki sound law. Other notable changes include:

• Grimm's law and Verner's law in Proto-Germanic
• an independent change similar to Grimm's law in Armenian, dubbed the Armenian Consonant Shift
• Adjarian's law in Proto-Armenian
• loss of prevocalic *p- in Proto-Celtic
• Brugmann's law in Proto-Indo-Iranian
• Winter's law and Hirt's law in Balto-Slavic
• merging of voiced and breathy-voiced stops, and /a/ and /o/, in various "northern" languages
• Sturtevant's law
• Cowgill's laws of Germanic and Greek
• Osthoff's law
• Slavic first, second and third ("progressive") palatalization

Bartholomae's law in Indo-Iranian, and Sievers's law in Proto-Germanic and (to some extent) various other branches, may or may not have been common Indo-European features. A number of innovations, both phonological and morphological, represent areal features common to the Italic and Celtic languages; among them the development of labiovelars to labial consonants in some Italic and Celtic branches, producing "p-Celtic" and "q-Celtic" languages (likewise "p-Italic" and "q-Italic", although these terms are less used). Another grouping with many shared areal innovations comprises Greek, Indo-Iranian, and Armenian; among its common phonological innovations are Grassmann's law in Greek and Indo-Iranian, and weakening of pre-vocalic /s/ to /h/ in Greek, Iranian and Armenian.

The Anglo-Frisian languages are a proposed sub-branch of the West Germanic languages encompassing the Anglic languages (English, Scots, extinct Fingallian, and extinct Yola) as well as the Frisian languages (North Frisian, East Frisian, and West Frisian). While this relationship had considerable support historically, many modern scholars have criticized it as a valid phylogenetic grouping. Instead, they believe that the Ingvaeonic languages comprised a dialect continuum which stretched along the North Sea, finally diverging into distinct languages – Old English, Pre–Old Frisian, and Old Saxon – during the Migration Period in the 5th century. There are still proponents of an Anglo-Frisian node in the West Germanic tree, citing strong archeological and genetic evidence for the comingling of these groups. In the 1950s, Hans Kuhn argued that the two languages diverged at the Ingvaeonic level, but later "converged". He argued that this convergence explained the striking similarity of the two languages while also explaining the issues in chronology. This view has been dismissed as improbable given the geographic divide.

The Anglo-Frisian languages have been distinguished from other West Germanic languages due to several sound changes: besides the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, which is present in Low German as well, Anglo-Frisian brightening and palatalization of /k/ are for the most part unique to the modern Anglo-Frisian languages:

In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones may emerge, or they may simply be rearranged. Sound change may be an impetus for changes in the phonological structures of a language (and likewise, phonological change may sway the process of sound change). One process of phonological change is rephonemicization, in which the distribution of phonemes changes by either addition of new phonemes or a reorganization of existing phonemes. Mergers and splits are types of rephonemicization and are discussed further below.

In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development (sound change) that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum. The shift is used to distinguish High German from other continental West Germanic languages, namely Low Franconian (including standard Dutch) and Low German, which experienced no shift. The shift resulted in the affrication or spirantization of the West Germanic voiceless stop consonants /t/, /p/, and /k/, depending on position in a word. A related change, the devoicing of the voiced stopped consonants /d/, /b/ and /ɡ/, was less widespread, and only the devoicing of /d/ is found in most dialects.

There is no consensus on when the High German consonant shift occurred; it probably began between the 3rd and 5th centuries and was complete before the first written examples in Old High German, the earliest recorded stage of High German, were produced in the 8th century. There is also no consensus on where or how the shift proceeded.

The Neogrammarians (German: Junggrammatiker, pronounced [ˈjʊŋɡʁaˌmatɪkɐ] , lit. 'young grammarians') were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change.

In historical linguistics, transphonologisation (also known as rephonologisation or cheshirisation, see below) is a type of sound change whereby a phonemic contrast that used to involve a certain feature X evolves in such a way that the contrast is preserved, yet becomes associated with a different feature Y.

For example, a language contrasting two words */sat/ vs. */san/ may evolve historically so that final consonants are dropped, yet the modern language preserves the contrast through the nature of the vowel, as in a pair /sa/ vs. /sã/. Such a situation would be described by saying that a former contrast between oral and nasal consonants has been transphonologised into a contrast between oral and nasal vowels.