Sound Changes in Linguistics

• Sound changes involve identifying alterations between a proto-form and its descendant (reflex).
• Analyses should be plausible and defensible when multiple changes or interpretations exist.
• Understanding types of sound change and their typical contexts are key.

Types of Sound Change

• Assimilation: A sound becomes more similar to a neighboring sound or replaces a segment.
• Dissimilation: Sounds change to make words easier to identify.
• Epenthesis: Adding a sound.
• Deletion: Removing a sound.
• Umlaut: Vowel changes.
• Metathesis: Segments move around.
• Voicing: Segments change from voiced to voiceless.
• Apocope: Deletion at the end of a word.
• Syncope: Deletion in the middle of a word.
• Degemination: Two identical letters become one (e.g., tt → t).
• Rhotacism: /z/ becomes a form of /r/.
• Deaffrication: Stops become fricatives.
• Vowel changes.
• Palatalization.

Child Language Acquisition

• Familiarity with child language acquisition, like the Wug Test, and its implications is needed.
• Naturalistic approach: Record spontaneous speech from children.
• Experimental approach: Cross-sectional studies compare different children's linguistic knowledge at a specific time.

Phonological Development in Children

• Newborns: Recognize their mother's voice within weeks.
• 1 month old: Distinguish certain speech sounds.
• 6 months: Babbling begins, indicating acquired linguistic production capabilities.
• 6-12 months: Babbling transitions into real words.
• 18 months: Children have a vocabulary of about 50 words.
• 3 years old: Vowels precede consonants, stops precede other consonants; labial sounds appear first, then alveolar, velar, alveopalatal, and interdental sounds.
• Babbling: Repetitive consonant-vowel sequences.
• Early phonetic processes: Children perceive phonemic contrasts before producing them.
• Syllable deletion: Children delete unstressed syllables to "repair" words and make them pronounceable.
• Substitution: Easier sounds replace more difficult ones.
• Assimilation: Sounds or syllables are made to agree

Semantic Change

• Broadening: A word's meaning becomes more general.
• Narrowing: A word's meaning becomes more specific.
• Amelioration: A word's meaning becomes more positive.
• Pejoration: A word's meaning becomes more negative.
• Shift: A word loses its old meaning and gains a new one.
• Metaphor: A word used metaphorically adopts the metaphorical meaning as its new meaning.

Child Morphological and Syntactic Development

• Morphological development: Acquiring word forms (tense, plural, gender).
• Free morphemes develop into bound morphemes.
• Using incorrect past tenses.
• Syntactic development: Learning to combine words into complex structures.
• Children move through stages:
  • One-word
  • Two-word
  • Three-word stages
• They then develop more complex sentences, including questions
• Word order follows SVO (subject-verb-object).
• Language milestones:
• 0-12 months: Babbling and basic sound work
• 12-18 months: First words, using single-word utterances
• 18-24 months: Combining two words
• 2-3 years: Simple sentences and questions
• 3-5 years: Increased complexity

Decline and Revitalization of Indigenous Languages

• Focus on historical and social factors and their impact on Indigenous language use rather than exact numbers.
• Decline Factors:
• Epidemics, famines, wars, and residential schools.
• Dominance of English and French
• Mass media reduces linguistic diversity
• Near-extinction/language death
• Isolates with no known relatives
• Revitalization:
• Speaking at home and passing on the language
• Strong cultural duty and heritage motivate young speakers.
• Certain languages remain healthy: Inuktiut, Innuaimun.

Explore sound changes, including assimilation, dissimilation, epenthesis, and deletion. Understand umlaut, metathesis, voicing, and other phonetic transformations. Investigate child language acquisition and familiarity with tests like the Wug Test.