Sound change in functional phonology (original) (raw)

Sound systems may never stop changing, not even if only internal factors are present, because there may always be a better system. Non-teleological random variation of constraint ranking defines a pressure that explains the existence of perpetually rotating cycles of sound changes. this gap to be a lexical accident in the learner's grammar, thereby allowing Indo-Europeans to freely borrow words with /b/ faithfully (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit) or to fill in the gap with a sound change (Greek: dw → b). A stronger interpretation of the same facts is that French borrowed /b/ to a larger extent than the other voiced plosives; this active de-skewing would presumably involve phonologically-determined choices between synonyms in the lexicon. Though I believe that these choices can be made in the production grammar ("choose the best candidate"), a proof of the controversial factuality of this procedure would require a large empirical investigation. Whether natural gaps, like the lacking /g/ in { p t k b d }, can also be filled, depends on the relative importance of the various factors involved, i.e. it depends on the rankings of the faithfulness, gestural, and categorization constraints (Boersma 1997b).-Emergence of new gaps. If a system obtains a phoneme at a location where it would be natural to have a gap, subsequent sound changes may create such a gap. Many of the defective stop systems /p t k b d/ used to have a /g/. A "passive" explanation would be that a learner does not hear the difference between /g/ and /k/ as well as the differences in the other pairs, and merges the two. An "active" explanation would be that speakers selectively modify their /g/ so that it becomes perceptually more distinct from /k/. In §1.2, I will show that these active modifications are actually used. The main idea to be learned from this small typology of functionally explainable sound changes, is that symmetrizing principles ("I have learnt a finite number of types of articulatory gestures and perceptual categories") are just as "functional" as those depending on the biases of the human speech and hearing apparatuses ("minimize articulatory effort and perceptual confusion"). The functional tradition (Passy 1890, Martinet 1955) has always recognized that these principles conflict with each other and that every sound system shows a balance that is the result of a struggle between these principles. The important question, however, has always been: can and should these principles be expressed directly in a grammar of the language? In Boersma (1997a), I have shown that they can be represented in a production grammar, thanks to the formal constraint-based phonology of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993). In Boersma (1997a; to appear a; 1997b,c; to appear b,c), I argue that a phonological theory based on these principles adequately describes the data of the languages of the world without the need for positing any innate features, representations, or constraints. After elaborating on the controversy (§1), I will use the remainder of this paper to propose an answer to the irritating question: Q: "if functional principles optimize sound systems by causing sound change, why do not all languages get better, and why do languages never stop changing?" The proposed answer will simply be: "because there will always be a better system".