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Perception and Asymmetry in the High German Consonant Shift

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2024

Elijah Peters Open the ORCID record for Elijah Peters [Opens in a new window]
Elijah Peters*
Affiliation:
Department of Germanic Studies, Indiana University, 355 Eagleson Ave, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article addresses the shift asymmetries of the High German Consonant Shift. In one part of this sound change, Pre-Old High German ⁺/p/, ⁺/t/, and ⁺/k/ shifted to the Old High German affricates [pf], [ts], and [kx], respectively. However, the voiceless stops did not shift in every dialect of Old High German. The uneven distribution of the shift is referred to in the literature as shift asymmetry. Much work by Iverson, Davis, and Salmons has attributed the asymmetry to markedness. While maintaining their overall analysis of the shift, this article shows that markedness can be dispensed with in accounting for the shift asymmetries. In accordance with Evolutionary Phonology, perceptual and phonetic data are presented which account for the asymmetries without making any reference to markedness. Since it rejects markedness in diachronic sound change, the present analysis also has broader implications for markedness diachronically and synchronically.

Keywords

Old High Germanperceptionphoneticssound changemarkedness
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 2024 , pp. 208 - 231
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© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Germanic Linguistics

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