Irregular Sound Change due to Frequency in Latin  

Oleh:

Manczak, Witold

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language Sciences (Full Text) vol. 2 no. 1 (1980), page 62-68.
Fulltext: 02_01_Manczak.pdf (292.37KB)

Isi artikel

In addition to regular sound change and analogical development, there is a third essential factor of linguistic evolution: irregular sound change due to frequency. This factor can be presented as follows. There is a synchronic law that linguistic elements used more often are smaller in number than those which are used less often, and that a balance exists between linguistic element size and its frequency. However, the size of linguistic elements is not stable. As a result of regular sound change, word size may change considerably, as comparison of Latin words and their Indo-European etyma shows. Since word frequency is not stable either, it may happen that the balance between word size and its frequency is disturbed. If a word or a morpheme becomes too short in relation to its frequency, it is replaced by a longer one. If a linguistic element (i.e., a morpheme, word, or group of words) becomes too long, in relation to its frequency, it may be shortened. This represents irregular sound change due to frequency, as in morphemes ( * ag.eti > ag-it), words (atque > ac), and groups of words (*he hemo > nemo-).

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