Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Historical Linguistics: Online-First Articles

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

Sound changes are selected by a bias against morphotactic ambiguity

ORCiD logo with link | University of ViennaVienna
ORCiD logo with link | University of ViennaVienna
ORCiD logo with link | University of ViennaVienna
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Vienna.

Published online: 19 February 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.24034.boh
Abstract
This paper hypothesises that there is a universal cognitively and semiotically grounded preference for word-form shapes that signal the morphotactic structure of the word forms they represent. By exploring three historical changes in English, we demonstrate how such a bias might plausibly constrain the actuation and implementation of sound changes. The changes we discuss are the emergence of /z/ as the underlying form in English plural, genitive, and 3rd person present suffixes; Middle English Open Syllable Lengthening; and the emergence and stabilization of irregular past tense and participle forms ending on sonorant+/t/ clusters instead of the expected ones resulting from regular /d/-suffixation. The present study shows how a preference for morphotactically indicative (and unambiguous) word-form shapes can be detected and measured and suggests that the existence of such a preference appears to be highly plausible. We conclude by pointing to more ways in which this hypothesis can be tested and potentially corroborated.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Approaching languages as culturally evolving systems
    • 2.2Ambiguity avoidance and sound shapes as morpho(syn)tactic signals
    • 2.3Morphotactic ambiguity avoidance in phonological evolution
  • 3.Identifying the impact of morphotactic ambiguity avoidance in sound change
  • 4.The emergence of /z/ in inflectional suffixes
  • 5.Middle English Open Syllable Lengthening and its implementation
  • 6.Irregular [t] in past tense and past participle forms
    • 6.1Methods
    • 6.2Discussion of findings in ECCE
    • 6.3The special case of monosyllables
    • 6.4Findings in the EEBO
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (86)
References
Ambridge, Ben, Evan Kidd, Caroline F. Rowland & Anna L. Theakston. 2015. The Ubiquity of Fre-Quency Effects in First Language Acquisition. Journal of Child Language 42:2.239–273. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baumann, Andreas & Kamil Kaźmierski. 2016. A Dynamical-Systems Approach to the Evolution of Morphonotactic and Lexical Consonant Clusters in English and Polish. Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting 2:1.115–139. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. Assessing the Effect of Ambiguity in Compositionality Signaling on the Processing of Diphones. Language Sciences 671.14–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baumann, Andreas, Christina Prömer & Nikolaus Ritt. 2019. Wordform Shapes are Selected to be Morphotactically Indicative. Folia Linguistic Historica 53:s40–s1.129–151. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Reconstructing the Diffusion of Middle English Schwa Deletion. Italian Journal of Linguistics 31:1.191–210. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 1998. Prosodic Optimization: The Middle English Length Adjustment. English Language and Linguistics 2:2.169–197. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blevins, Juliette. 2004. Evolutionary Phonology: The Emergence of Sound Patterns. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. A Theoretical Synopsis of Evolutionary Phonology. Theoretical Linguistics 32:2.117–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Structure-Preserving Sound Change: A Look at Unstressed Vowel Syncope in Austronesian. Austronesian Historical Linguistics and Culture History: A Festschrift for Robert Blust ed. by K. Alexander Adelaar, Andrew Pawley & Robert A. Blust, 38–55. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blust, Robert A. 2007. Disyllabic Attractors and Anti-Antigemination in Austronesian Sound Change. Phonology 24:1.1–36. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Böhm, Irene. 2021. Exploring Morphonotactics. An Iterated Learning Experiment of Consonant Clusters. University of Vienna MA Thesis.
Bybee, Joan L. 1999. Usage-Based Phonology. Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics (Volume 1: General Papers) ed. by Michael Darnell, Edith A. Moravcsik, Michael Noonan, Frederick J. Newmeyer & Kathleen Wheatley, 211–242. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Celata, Chiara, Katharina Korecky-Kröll, Irene Ricci & Wolfgang U. Dressler. 2015. Phonotactic Processing and Morpheme Boundaries: Word-Final/Cst/Clusters in German. Italian Journal of Linguistics 271.185–110.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Christiansen, Morten H. & Nick Chater. 2008. Language as Shaped by the Brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31:5.489–508. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach. Harlow & New York: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dautriche, Isabelle, Kyle Mahowald, Edward Gibson & Steven T. Piantadosi. 2017. Wordform Similarity Increases with Semantic Similarity: An Analysis of 100 Languages. Cognitive Science 41:8.2149–2169. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2008–. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Available online at [URL]
. 2017. Early English Books Online Corpus (EEBO). Available online at [URL]
Divjak, Dagmar. 2019. Frequency in Language: Memory, Attention and Learning. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk. 2006. Proposing Morphonotactis. Wiener Linguistische Gazette 731.69–87.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U., Miroslava Hliničanová, Matej Ďurčo, Karlheinz Mörth & Katharina Korecky-Kröll. 2015. Phonotactic vs. Morphonotactic Obstruent Clusters in Slovak and German. Italian Journal of Linguistics 27:1.45–59.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U., Sabine Sommer-Lolei & Basilio Calderone, eds. 2018. Experimental and Acquisitional Approaches to Morphonotactics. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. 2019. Natural Morphology. Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Linguistics ed. by Mark Aronoff. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna. 2014. Explaining Phonotactics Using NAD. Language Sciences 461.6–17. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. On the Structure, Survival and Change of Consonant Clusters. Folia Linguistic Historica 53:s40–s1.107–127. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Freiberger, Eva M., Carmen Abbrederis, Franziska Luckabauer & Magdalena Stammler. 2011. Morphonotaktik in der Sprachverarbeitung: Online- und Offline-Tests mit deutschsprachigen Erwach-senen [Morphonotactics in Language Processing: Online and Offline Tests with German Speaking Adults]. Wiener Linguistische Gazette 751.33–52.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gell-Mann, Murray. 1994. Complex Adaptive Systems. Complexity: Metaphors, Models, and Reality ed. by George A. Cowan, David Pines, David E. Meltzer, 17–45. Reading: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibson, Edward, Richard Futrell, Steven T. Piantadosi, Isabelle Dautriche, Kyle Mahowald, Leon Bergen & Roger Levy. 2019. How Efficiency Shapes Human Language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 23:5.389–407. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldrick, Matthew & Meredith Larson. 2008. Phonotactic Probability Influences Speech Production. Cognition 107:3.1155–1164. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer. 2004. Causes and Consequences of Word Structure. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hay, Jessica F. & Jenny R. Saffran. 2012. Rhythmic Grouping Biases Constrain Infant Statistical Learning. Infancy 17:6.610–641. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hogg, Richard M. & Christopher B. McCully. 1987. Metrical Phonology: A Course Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Honeybone, Patrick. 2008. Lenition, Weaking and Consonantal Strength: Tracing Concepts through the History of Phonology. Lenition and Fortition (Volume 99) ed. by Joaquim Brandão de Carvalho, Tobias Scheer & Philippe Ségéral, 9–92. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hurford, James R. 2007. The Origins of Meaning: Language in the Light of Evolution. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jusczyk, Peter W., Paul Smolensky & Theresa Allocco. 2002. How English-Learning Infants Respond to Markedness and Faithfulness Constraints. Language Acquisition 10:1.31–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė, Laura. 2006. The Acquisition of Morphonotactics in Lithuanian. Wiener Linguistische Gazette 731.88–96.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Morphonotactics in L1 Acquisition of Lithuanian: TD vs. SLI. Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Ühingu Aastaraamat 111.95–109. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kelić, Maja & Wolfgang U. Dressler. 2019. The Development of Morphonotactic and Phonotactic Word–Initial Consonant Clusters in Croatian First–Language Acquisition. Suvremena Lingvistika 45:88.179–200.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kelley, Matthew C. & Benjamin V. Tucker. 2017. The Effects of Phonotactic Probability on Auditory Recognition of Pseudo-Words. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 141:5.4038. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kirby, Simon. 1999. Function, Selection, and Innateness: The Emergence of Language Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Language is an Adaptive System: The Role of Cultural Evolution in the Origins of Structure. The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution ed. by Maggie Tallerman & Kathleen Rita Gibson, 589–605. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Korecky-Kröll, Katharina, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Eva M. Freiberger, Eva Reinisch, Karlheinz Mörth & Gary Libben. 2014. Morphonotactic and Phonotactic Processing in German-Speaking Adults. Language Sciences 461.48–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini & Lauren Delfs. 2004. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (PPCEME). Available online at [URL]
Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 2000. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (PPCME). Avail-able online at [URL]
Labov, William. 1989. The Child as Linguistic Historian. Language Variation & Change 1:1.85–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi. 2008. The Dental Preterites in the History of English. The Nature of the Word: Studies in Honor of Paul Kiparsky ed. by Kristin Hanson & Sharon Inkelas, 507–526. Cambridge: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi & Elan B. Dresher. 1999. Open Syllable Lengthening in West Germanic. Language 75:4.678–719. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laing, Margaret. 2013. A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150–1325 (LAEME). Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh. Available online at [URL]
Lass, Roger. 1992. Phonology and Morphology. The Cambridge History of the English Language (Volume II: 1066–1476) ed. by Norman Blake, 23–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levshina, Natalia. 2022. Frequency, Informativity and Word Length: Insights from Typologically Diverse Corpora. Entropy 24:2.280. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Luick, Karl. 1964. Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache [Historical Grammer of the English Language]. Leipzig: Tauchnitz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mailhammer, Robert, William W. Kruger & Alexander Makiyama. 2015. Type Frequency Influences Phonological Generalizations: Eliminating Stressed Open Syllables with Short Vowels in West Germanic. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 27:3.205–237. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew T. 2007. The Evolving Lexicon. University of California PhD dissertation.
Matzinger, Theresa & Nikolaus Ritt. 2022. Phonotactically Probable Word Shapes Represent Attractors in the Cultural Evolution of Sound Patterns. Cognitive Linguistics 33:2.415–446. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 1982. The Environment for Open Syllable Lengthening in Middle English. Folia Linguistica Historica 3:1.29–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1991. The History of Final Vowels in English: The Sound of Muting. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Phonological Weakness in English: From Old to Present-Day English. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka & Michael Lefkowitz. 2021. Middle English Open Syllable Lengthening (MEOSL) or Middle English Compensatory Lengthening (MECL)? English Language and Linguistics 25:1.155–180. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. 2001. Exemplar Dynamics: Word frequency, Lenition and Contrast. Frequency Effects and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure ed. by Joan L. Bybee & Paul Hopper, 137–157. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2003. Phonetic Diversity, Statistical Learning, and Acquisition of Phonology. Language and Speech 46:2–3.115–154. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Post, Brechtje, William D. Marslen-Wilson, Billi Randall & Lorraine K. Tyler. 2008. The Processing of English Regular Inflections: Phonological Cues to Morphological Structure. Cognition 109:1.1–17. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reali, Florencia & Thomas L. Griffiths. 2009. The Evolution of Frequency Distributions: Relating Regularization to Inductive Biases through Iterated Learning. Cognition 111:3.229–234. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ringe, Don. 2003. Internal Reconstruction. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics ed. by Richard D. Janda & Brian D. Joseph, 243–261. Malden: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ritt, Nikolaus. 2004. Selfish Sounds and Linguistic Evolution. A Darwinian Approach to Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Exploring Middle English (Mor-)Phonotactics: The Case of Word-Final /nd/. Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature 161.65–89. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ritt, Nikolaus & Kamil Kaźmierski. 2016. How Rarities Like Gold Came to Exist: On Co-Evolutionary Interactions between Morphology and Lexical Phonotactics. English Language and Linguistics 20:1. 1–29. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ritt, Nikolaus, Christina Prömer & Andreas Baumann. 2017. Evolution of Consonant Clusters in English (ECCE): A Diachronic Phonotactic Database. University of Vienna. Available online at [URL]
Saffran, Jenny R., Richard N. Aslin & Elissa L. Newport. 1996. Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants. Science 274:5294.1926–1928. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Kenny. 2006. Cultural Evolution of Language. Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics ed. by Keith Brown, 315–322. 2nd ed. Oxford: Elsevier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Kenny & Elizabeth Wonnacott. 2010. Eliminating Unpredictable Variation through Iterated Learning. Cognition 116:3.444–449. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sommer-Lolei, Sabine, Katharina Korecky-Kröll & Wolfgang U. Dressler. 2018. Acquisition and Processing of (Mor)Phonotactic Patterns of German Consonant Clusters. Experimental and acquisitional approaches to Morphonotactics ed. by Wolfgang U. Dressler, Sabine Sommer-Lolei & Basilio Calderone, 77–100. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Storkel, Holly L. 2001. Learning New Words: Phonotactic Probability in Language Development. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 44:6.1321–1337. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szigetvári, Péter & Geoff Lindsey. 2013. Current British English: searchable transcriptions (CUBE). Available online at [URL]
Tamariz, Mónica. 2017. Experimental Studies on the Cultural Evolution of Language. Annual Review of Linguistics 3:1.389–407. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tamariz, Mónica & Simon Kirby. 2016. The Cultural Evolution of Language. Current Opinion in Psychology 81:37–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vitevitch, Michael S. & Faisal M. Aljasser. 2021. Phonotactics in Spoken-Word Recognition. The Handbook of Speech Perception (2nd ed.) ed. by Jennifer S. Pardo, Lynne C. Nygaard, Robert E. Remez & David B. Pisoni, 286–308. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vitevitch, Michael S. & Paul A. Luce. 1998. When Words Compete: Levels of Processing in Perception of Spoken Words. Psychological Science 9:4.325–329. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1999. Probabilistic Phonotactics and Neighborhood Activation in Spoken Word Recognition. Journal of Memory and Language 40:3.374–408. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wedel, Andrew B. 2006. Exemplar models, evolution and language change. The Linguistic Review 23:3. 247–274. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. Feedback and Regularity in the Lexicon. Phonology 24:1.147–185. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wedel, Andrew B. & Ibrahim Fatkullin. 2017. Category Competition as a Driver of Category Contrast. Journal of Language Evolution 2:1.77–93. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wełna, Jerzy. 2009. The Post-Sonorant Devocing of [d] in the Past/Past Participle Forms of Weak Verbs (Sent, Spend, etc.). Þe laurer of oure Englische tonge ed. by Marcin Krygier & Liliana Sikorska, 21–34. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wright, Richard. 2004. A Review of Perceptual Cues and Robustness. Phonetically Based Phonology ed. by Bruce Hayes, Robert Kirchner & Donca Steriade, 34–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zydorowicz, Paulina. 2007. Polish Morphonotactics in First Language Acquisition. Wiener Linguistische Gazette 741.24–44.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Consonant Clusters Across Morpheme Boundaries: Polish Morphonotactic Inventory and its Acquisition. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 46:4.565–588. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue