Sound Change

(Part 2)

4th Meeting
Unconditioned Phonemic Condition

In South Island Maori, ŋ > k (that is, ŋ, k

> k); that is, ŋ became k everywhere,
with no limits on where, and the merger
of ŋ with former k resulted in fewer
contrastive sounds. Examples of this sort
are quite common in languages of the
world.
 Conditioned Phonemic Condition

• For example, the wellknown 'ruki' rule of

Sanskrit is a conditioned change in which
original s becomes retroflex ş after the sounds
r, u, k, and i or j
• s > ş / i, j, u, r, k
• agni ‘fire’ + -su ‘locative plural’ > agnişu
‘among the fires’
• Va̅k ‘words’ + -su > vakşu ‘among the
words’
General Kinds of Sound Change
 Assimilation
 Definition :

one sound becomes more similar to another, a

change in a sound brought about by the
influence of a neighbouring, usually adjacent,
sound.
 total – partial ; contact - distant ; regressive -
progressive
• What is total assimilation ?
• A change is total assimilation if a sound
becomes identical to another by taking on all
of its phonetic features.
• What is partial assimilation ?
• The change is partial if the assimilating sound
acquires some traits of another, but does not
become fully identical to it.
• What is regressive assimilation ?
• A regressive (anticipatory) change is one in
which the sound that undergoes the change
comes earlier in the word (nearer the
beginning, more to the left) than the sound
which causes or conditions the assimilation.
• What is progressive assimilation ?
• Progressive changes affect sounds which come
later in the word than (closer to the end than,
to the right of) the conditioning environment.
Total Contact Regressive Assimilation
Latin Italian
octo > otto
noctem > notte
factum > fatto
septem > sette
somnus > sonno
Spanish Carribean
Spanish
asta ahta atta
mismo mihmo mimmo
Total Contact Progressive Assimilation
• Proto-Indo-European to Latin
*kolnis > collis ‘hill’
 Proto-Germanic to Old English
*hulnis > hyll ‘hill’
 Finnish
kuul + -nut > kuullut ‘heard’
pur + -nut > purrut ‘bitten’
nous + -nut > noussut ‘risen’
Partial Contact Regressive Assimilation

• Proto Indo European

*swep-no > somnus
• Spanish (non-careful pronounciations of most
dialects)
s > z / voiced C.
mismo > mizmo ‘same’
desde > dezde ‘since’
The assimilation of nasals in point of articulation
to that of following stops, extremely frequent in
the world's languages, is illustrated in English by
the changes in the morpheme lin-I 'not', as in in-
possible> impossible; in-tolerant> intolerant; in-
compatible > iŋcompatible (in the last case, the
change of n to ŋ is optional for many speakers).
BORROWING
GRAMMAR GLAMOUR LOANWORD

BORROWING
 WHAT IS BORROWING ?
SOUNDS

PHONOLOGICAL RULES

GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES

SYNTACTIC PATTERNS
BORROWING
SEMANTIC ASSOCIATIONS

DISCOURSE STRATEGIES

OTHER THINGS
 BORROWING

BILINGUALISM

ENGLISH INDONESIAN

COMMUNICATION KOMUNIKASI

SOURCE LANGUAGE RECIPIENT LANGUAGE

 WHAT IS A LOANWORD ?

A lexical item which has been borrowed from

another language ; a word which originally
was not a part of the vocabulary of the
recipient language but was adopted from
some other language and made part of the
borrowing language’s vocabulary.
 Examples
• ‘pork’ is a French loan in English.
• ‘bifteck’ is an English loan in French.
• Do you think loanwords are a common
phenomenon ?
• Yes. It is an extremely common phenomenon.
• There are extensive studies of Scandinavian
and French loans in English.
• Germanic and Baltic loans in Finnish
• Basque, Germanic and Arabic loans in Spanish.
 KETCHUP ENGLISH

KETJAP DUTCH

KECAP MALAY

KOE-CHIAP / KE-SHIAP AMOY DIALECT

OF CHINESE

BRINE OF PICKLED FISH

OR SHELLFISH
CHOCOLATE ENGLISH

CHOCOLATE SPANISH

COKOLATL AZTECS LANGUAGE

A drink made from the seeds of

the cacao tree.
SUGAR ENGLISH

çuçr OLD FRENCH

e

sukkar ARABIC
Why do languages borrow from one another ?
1. Need
When speakers of a language acquire some
new item or concept from abroad, they need a
new term to go along with the new
acquisition; often a foreign name is borrowed
along with the new concept.
For example :
- ‘automobile’ : ‘avtomobilʲ’ (Russian), auto
(Finnish), bil (Swedish),
 - ‘coffee’ : ‘kofe’ (Russian), kahvi (Finnish),
Japanese (Kohii)
- ‘tobacco’ : ‘tupakka’ (Finnish), tembakau
(Indonesian), tabako (Japanese)

2. Prestige :
We like to borrow many expressions from
foreign languages because the foreign terms
for some reason are highly esteemed.
 Examples
• Pranata = • Lokakarya =
institusi konferensi
• secara kejiwaan = • Teman karib =
secara psikologis Solmet
• Pramubarang = • Linimasa =
porter Website/media sosial
• Ketenaran = • gawai =
popularitas gadget
• Pengotoran = • Daring =
polusi online
3. Negative Evaluation
Examples :
 orang yang ditakuti =
denjer (danger)
 acara bebas setelah makan =
dugem
 Laki-laki hidung belang =
casanova
 killer ; murderer who is hired or for
fanatical reason =
assassin
 How do words get borrowed ?
Borrowed words are usually remodelled to fit the
phonological and morphological structure of the
borrowing language, at least in early stages of
language contact. The traditional view of how
words get borrowed and what happens to them as
they are assimilated into the borrowing language
holds that loanwords which are introduced to the
borrowing language by bilinguals may contain
sounds which are foreign to the receiving language,
but due to phonetic interference the foreign
sounds are changed to conform to native sounds
and phonetic constraints.
1. Adaptation (Phoneme Substitution)
1. Definition : a foreign sound in borrowed
words which does not exist in the
receiving language will be
replaced by the nearest phonetic
equivalent to it in the borrowing
language.
• Examples :
1. Javanese do not have ‘f’, then facebook is
pronounced as ‘pesbuk’.
2. Balinese will automatically replace ‘t’ with
‘ʈ’. E.g. ‘manʈap’, ‘puʈih’, ‘daʈang’,
3. Finnish had no f, so intervocalic f in
loanwords was replaced by the sequence
hv, as in kahvi 'coffee' (from Swedish kaffe),
pahvi 'cardboard' (from Swedish paff) and
pihvi 'beef' (from English beef).
 2. accomodation
Definition
It means that loanwords which do not conform
to native phonological patterns are modified to
fit the phonological combinations which are
permitted in the borrowing language.

This is usually accomplished by deletion,addition

or recombination of certain sounds to fit the
structure of the borrowing language.
 Examples
• Sumbanese :
Program = pararogaramu
Dokter = ndokteru
• Sabunese does not usually have
consonant sounds in the final positions of
last syllable in its words. As a result, the
speakers tend to omit the consonant in
their pronunciation. E.g. ‘gara’, ‘ika’, ‘paha’
BORROWING
GRAMMAR GLAMOUR LOANWORD

BORROWING
 WHAT IS BORROWING ?
SOUNDS

PHONOLOGICAL RULES

GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES

SYNTACTIC PATTERNS
BORROWING
SEMANTIC ASSOCIATIONS

DISCOURSE STRATEGIES

OTHER THINGS
 BORROWING

BILINGUALISM

ENGLISH INDONESIAN

COMMUNICATION KOMUNIKASI

SOURCE LANGUAGE RECIPIENT LANGUAGE