Lexicalization of Sound Change and Alternating Environments

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines sound changes that occur at the boundaries between two words, setting up more than one variant for a word. What happens in such cases is interesting, because it is common for bound morphemes to have multiple variants but not so common for words to have variant forms. Based on final [s] reduction in Spanish dialects, the chapter argues that the spread of the reduced variant from pre-consonantal position (the original phonetic environment) to pre-vocalic position is the generalization of the more frequent variant—that which occurs before consonants. This chapter shows the power of the usage-based approach in explaining linguistic phenomena: the effect of frequency can explain why a word boundary so often behaves like a consonant. The reason is that word boundaries are most often followed by consonants and the more frequent variant eventually takes over. A second point is that the data show that individual words tend to resolve a large range of variation toward having a single variant.