Syllabus
1. Introduction: the place of HP in historical linguistics, its merits for synchronic phonetics. HP and phonological typology (diachrony vs synchrony) Reading: Honeybone introduction in Honeybone-Salmons, hale in Solé-recasens
2. Change and evolution: change in what: segments, contrasts, rules, categories, system vs context, distribution, asymmetry (systemic and distributional) as diagnostic. The source of sound change: listener vs speaker (phonetics vs phonology), role of acquisition and language contact. reading: Ohala and Bybee in Solé-Recasens, kang, Beekes chapter II
3. Types of change: segmental level: systemic change vs contextual change, lenition vs fortition, assimilation and dissimilation, changes in position, compensatory processes, blending and unpacking, syllabic level, prosody. Clines and trajectories. Reading: Luraghi Bubenik Chapter II, kümmel 2007
4. Propagation of change through space and time, regularity principle, frequency, sociolinguistic effects. Reading: Bybee in Solé-Recasens, d’arcy in honeybone-salmons
5. Data: synchrony vs diachrony. Textual evidence: writing systems, phonetics and phonology, role of script adaptation (indirect evidence for segment mapping), orthography, scribal practice and errors. Reading: Luraghi Bubenik 12-25
6. Data: language contact: systemic mapping, loanword phonology as diagnostic of donor language, superimposition of systems and approximation Reading: LaCharite
7. Data: indirect evidence - explicit native phonetics and phonology (Greece, Rome, India), anecdotal evidence Reading: 2x Allen
8. Data: indirect evidence - poetry (formal parallelism - segmental, prosodic, poetic licence and conservatism) Reading: Minkova in Honeybone-Salmons
9. Data: direct evidence: scribal practice and variation Reading: Minkova in Honeybone-Salmons
10. Data: direct evidence: internal evidence (morphonology, sandhi phenomena), problems of relative chronology and synchronicity Reading: Hock ch. 17
11. Data: direct evidence: comparative evidence (direct descent) Reading: Minkova
12. Data: direct evidence: comparative evidence (common descent) - comparative reconstruction Reading: Weiss in Bowern-Evans
13. Checking our reconstructions Reading Kümmel in Honeybone-Salmons
Annotation
Main aspects of phonological and morphological change are presented, along with current approaches to the issues. Students will be confronted with particular applications of various phonological approaches to the study of historical phonology of selected languages. Questions of reconstructability of phonological systems and phonetic and phonological processes are of particular importance.
The course is taught in English.