On Sound Change and Challenges to Regularity

Abstract

Abstract Broadly speaking, this chapter is about reconstruction by the comparative method. More precisely, it concerns the regularity of sound change, that cornerstone which underlies our ability to recover linguistic history by the comparative method. Specifically, I examine the question “Is sound change regular ?,” addressing in particular some of the more sociocultural aspects of the issue. I discuss seven topics which have at times been presented as challenges to the hypothesis that sound change is regular: sound symbolism, onomatopoeia and affective/expressive symbolism, avoidance of homophony, morphologically conditioned phonological changes, areal linguistic borrowing, language death, and questions concerning the nature of change in so-called exotic speech communities. To anticipate the conclusion, I argue that these do not, in fact, present true exceptions to the regularity of sound change, but that it is important to take these issues into account in order to attain a full understanding of sound change in particular and of linguistic change in general.