KnowraPhonological changePhonological changeA change over time in a language’s sound system, including its sounds, contrasts, or phonological rules.BriefConnectAssimilation: A sound change in which one sound becomes more like a neighboring sound. Neighboring sounds can influence each other, making assimilation a common pathway of phonological change.Phoneme: A contrastive sound unit that can distinguish words in a language. Changes can alter which sound units count as distinct phonemes.Comparative method: A procedure for reconstructing ancestral languages by comparing systematic correspondences among related languages. Regular sound correspondences let linguists infer changes in unattested ancestral languages.Chain shift: A linked series of sound changes in which shifts in one sound affect the positions of others. A sound change can trigger further changes as neighboring phonological categories reorganize.Borrowing (linguistics): The adoption of linguistic material from one language into another. Borrowing can introduce unfamiliar sounds without changing inherited words through regular sound change.Lenition: A weakening of a consonant, often involving reduced constriction or voicing changes. Consonants may weaken over time, as when stops become fricatives or disappear.Allophone: A context-dependent or freely varying realization of a phoneme that does not change word meaning. A pronunciation difference may begin as allophonic before becoming a new contrast.Proto-Indo-European: The reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its reconstructed phonology provides a baseline for tracing changes across Indo-European branches.Morphological leveling: The reduction of alternations within a paradigm by extending one form across related words or forms. Sound changes create alternations that speakers may later eliminate through leveling.Phonological change by analogy: A change in pronunciation caused by the influence of related forms rather than regular sound correspondence. It separates form-driven pronunciation changes from changes driven by phonetic conditions.Show all 26Linked from 8 pagesComparative linguisticsRelated: Regular sound changes explain why related words can look different.Spelling pronunciationNarrower topic: Once adopted by speakers, spelling-driven sound changes can become ordinary phonological change.MonophthongizationNarrower topic: It is the wider process category to which monophthongization belongs.Compensatory lengtheningNarrower topic: Compensatory lengthening is one recurrent pathway of sound-system change.BetacismNarrower topic: Betacism is one specific kind of sound-pattern change.Show all 8