Abstract
This paper explores the hypothesis that morphotactically ambiguous segment sequences should be dispreferred and selected against in the evolution of languages. We define morphotactically ambiguous sequences as sequences that can occur both within morphemes and across boundaries, such as final /nd/ or /mz/ in ModE, which occur in simple forms like wind or alms and in complex ones like sinned or seems. We test the hypothesis in two diachronic corpus studies of Middle and Early Modern English word forms ending in clusters of sonorants followed by /d/ or /t/ and /s/ or /z/. These clusters became highly frequent after the loss of unstressed vowels in final syllables and were highly ambiguous when they emerged. Our data show that the ambiguity of these final clusters was indeed reduced so that the distribution of the final clusters became increasingly skewed: clusters ending in voiceless coronals became significantly clearly indicative of simple forms, while clusters ending in voiced ones came to signal inflectional complexity more reliably.
Acknowledgements
This paper was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, Grant No. P27592–G18). For valuable feedback on previous versions, we owe gratitude to the participants on a 2017 workshop on diachronic phonotactics, many of whom are also contributors to this issue. Remaining errors are of course ours.
References
Anderson, Roy & Robert May. 1991. Infectious diseases of humans. Dynamics and control. New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2007. Frequency of use and the organization of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195301571.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. & Paul J. Hopper. 2001. Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Amsterdam: Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.45Search in Google Scholar
Cumming, Geoff. 2014. The new statistics: Why and how. Psychological science 25(1). 7–29.10.1177/0956797613504966Search in Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. 1985. Morphonology: The dynamics of derivation. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Search in Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. 2003. Naturalness and morphological change. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics (Blackwell handbooks in linguistics), 461–471. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.10.1002/9780470756393.ch12Search in Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk. 2006. Proposing morphonotactics. Wiener Linguistische Gazette 73. 69–87.Search in Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U., Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk & Lina Pestal. 2010. Change and variation in morphonotactics. Folia Linguistica Historica 31. 51–68.10.1515/flih.2010.003Search in Google Scholar
Fehér, Olga, Elizabeth Wonnacott & Kenny Smith. 2016. Structural priming in artificial languages and the regularisation of unpredictable variation. Journal of Memory and Language 91. 158–180.10.1016/j.jml.2016.06.002Search in Google Scholar
Giegerich, Heinz J. 1999. Lexical strata in English: Morphological causes, phonological effects (Cambridge studies in linguistics 89). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486470Search in Google Scholar
Kaye, Jonathan. 1995. Derivations and interfaces. In Jacques Durand & Francis Katamba (eds.), Frontiers of phonology, 289–332. London & New York: Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1982a. From cyclic phonology to lexical phonology. In Harry Van Der Hulst & Norval Smith (eds.), The structure of phonological representations, 131–175. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.Search in Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1982b. Lexical phonology and morphology. In Ik-Hwan Lee (ed.), Linguistics in the morning calm, 1st edn, 3–91. Seoul: Hanshin Publ.Search in Google Scholar
Kirby, Simon, Thomas L. Griffiths & Kenny Smith. 2014. Iterated learning and the evolution of language. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 28. 108–114.10.1016/j.conb.2014.07.014Search in Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony. 1989. Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 1. 199–244.10.1017/S0954394500000168Search in Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini & Lauren Delfs. 2004. Penn-Helsinki Parsed corpus of early modern English. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/.Search in Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 2000. Penn-Helsinki Parsed corpus of middle English. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/.Search in Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1992. Phonology and morphology. In Norman Blake (ed.), Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 2: 1066–1476, 23–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CHOL9780521264754.003Search in Google Scholar
Luick, Karl. 1914–21. Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. Leipzig: Tauchnitz.Search in Google Scholar
Mayerthaler, Willi. 1981. Morphologische Natürlichkeit (Linguistische Forschungen 28). Wiesbaden: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Atnenaion.Search in Google Scholar
McCarthy, John J. & Alan Prince. 2004. Generalized alignment: Introduction and theory. In John J. McCarthy (ed.), Optimality theory in phonology, 72–76. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470756171.ch2Search in Google Scholar
McMahon, April M. 2009. Lexical phonology and the history of English (Cambridge studies in linguistics 91). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 1991. The history of final vowels in English: The sound of muting (Topics in English linguistics 4). Berlin, New York: M. de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110889512Search in Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 2009. Phonological weakness in English: From old to present-day English (Palgrave studies in language history and language change). Basingstoke, England, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1007/978-0-230-29686-2Search in Google Scholar
Pinker, Steven. 1999. Words and rules: The ingredients of language. 1st edn. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
Pinsker, Hans E. 1974. Historische Englische Grammatik. München: Hueber.Search in Google Scholar
Post, Brechtje, William D. Marslen-Wilson, Billi Randall & Lorraine K. Tyler. 2008. The processing of English regular inflections: Phonological cues to morphological structure. Cognition 109(1). 1–17.10.1016/j.cognition.2008.06.011Search in Google Scholar
Reali, Florencia & Thomas L. Griffiths. 2009. The evolution of frequency distributions: Relating regularization to inductive biases through iterated learning. Cognition 111(3). 317–328.10.1016/j.cognition.2009.02.012Search in Google Scholar
Ringe, Don. 2003. Internal reconstruction. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics (Blackwell handbooks in linguistics), 244–261. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Kenny, Amy Perfors, Olga Fehér, Anna Samara, Kate Swoboda & Elizabeth Wonnacott. 2017. Language learning, language use and the evolution of linguistic variation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 372. 1711.10.1098/rstb.2016.0051Search in Google Scholar
Solé, Ricard. 2011. Phase transitions. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Weɫna, Jerzy. 2009. The post-sonorant devocing of [d] in the past/past participle forms of weak verbs (sent, spend, etc.). In Marcin Krygier & Liliana Sikorska (eds.), Þe laurer of oure Englische tonge, 21–34. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar
Wurzel, Wolfgang U. 2001. Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit (Studia grammatica v. 21). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.10.1515/9783050080130Search in Google Scholar
Zehentner, Eva. 2012. -AND vs. -ING. Vienna: University of Vienna Master’s Thesis.Search in Google Scholar
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
