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In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (phonological change), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound.
Verlanization is applied mostly to two-syllable words and the new words that are created are typically considerably less formal than the originals, and/or take on a slightly different meaning. The process often involves considerably more changes than simple metathesis of two phonemes but this forms the basis for verlan as a linguistic phenomenon.
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. [1] 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). [1]
Lexical diffusion is the hypothesis that a sound change is an abrupt change that spreads gradually across the words in a language to which it is applicable. [1] It contrasts with the Neogrammarian view that a sound change results from phonetically-conditioned articulatory drift acting uniformly on all applicable words, which implies that sound changes are regular, with exceptions attributed to ...
Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage.
Phonemic contrast refers to a minimal phonetic difference, that is, small differences in speech sounds, that makes a difference in how the sound is perceived by listeners, and can therefore lead to different mental lexical entries for words. For example, whether a sound is voiced or unvoiced (consider /b/ and /p/ in English) matters for how a ...
Additionally, Northern California speech acts are centralizing the sound that occurs in words such as boat (/oʊ/). [2] These shifts in vowel shortening and centralization, while not entirely unique to the region of Northern California natives, does represent the most obvious changes that are occurring within the area in regards to native ...
The sound that /t/ and /d/ (in this example) change to, or the individual features that change. The slash is a shorthand notation for "in the environment where...". [5] It means that the notation to the right describes where the phonological rule is applied. The sound, or the features of the sound, that precedes the one to be changed.