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Article published In: Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 12:2 (2022) ► pp.167–193

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The Neogrammarian hypothesis and pandemic irregularity

Take two

 | University of Hawai’i
Published online: 3 February 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.20027.blu
Abstract
At least three types of sound change (prenasalization of obstruents, lenition of obstruents, conversion of labial consonants to the corresponding labiovelars) are widespread in the Austronesian language family as sporadic innovations. What marks these off as different from more familiar types of irregularity is their repeated occurrence across hundreds of related languages, a phenomenon that can conveniently be called “pandemic irregularity.” All attempts to find an explanation for why pandemic irregularities occur in terms of possibly unrecognized affixation, conditioning, borrowing, or unfinished processes, have proven futile. In particular, it is stressed that pandemic irregularity in sound change is fundamentally different from “lexical diffusion”, and deserves to be recognized in its own right as a process that works against the general application of the regularity hypothesis.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Neogrammarian regularity hypothesis
    • 2.1Regularity and exceptions in sound change
  • 3.The evidence for pandemic irregularity
    • 3.1Dempwolff’s “facultative nasal”
      • 3.1.1The facultative nasal as a product of affixation
      • 3.1.2The facultative nasal as a product of conditioned sound change
      • 3.1.3The facultative nasal as a product of borrowing
      • 3.1.4The facultative nasal as a sound change in progress
      • 3.1.5Doubleting
      • 3.1.6Sporadic denasalization
    • 3.2The tripartite split of obstruents in Oceanic languages
    • 3.3Convergence vs. inheritance
    • 3.4Sporadic labiovelars in Oceanic languages
  • 4.Summary and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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