Using acoustic-phonetic simulations to model historical sound change
We introduce a method for investigating sound change using audio proxies and interpolation between them. Using
this method leads us to consider the possible trajectories of attested sound changes in acoustic space and allows us to run speech
perception experiments with the interpolated sounds to examine the patterning of perceptual judgements. We discuss the
implications for understanding rate and magnitude of sound changes and present the approach as one which might fruitfully be
applied to a wide range of studies.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Method for simulating sound change
- 2.1Preliminaries
- 2.2Speech morphing
- 3.Example simulations
- 4.Using audio continua in perception studies
- 4.1Perception of Old English “breaking” of short vowels
- 4.2Perception of a prosodic change: Simulation of left-to-right accent shift in Latin
- 5.Calculating magnitudes and rates of sound changes
- 6.What may we learn from sound change simulations?
- 6.1The utility of calculating rates of change
- 6.2Falsifiability
- 7.Conclusion
- Notes
- Abbreviations
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References