Historical Laboratory Phonology—Investigating /p/>/f/>/h/ Changes

Abstract

This paper offers a contribution to laboratory phonology, extending experimental methods to the investigation of a cross-linguistic historical problem. The issue in question is the recurrent and unidirectional series of sound changes from /p/ > /f/ > /h/. A large sample of languages was surveyed, which revealed no evidence for direct changes from /p/ > /h/ (contrary to popular claims in the literature). Instead, an intervening /f/ stage appears mandatory. /p/ > /f/ changes are widely assumed to be articulatorily-motivated lenitions. By contrast, /f/ > /h/ changes have received little attention. The survey indicates that this change tends to be motivated in the proximity of /u/. A perceptual experiment was carried out to investigate this pattern, which shows that the change may be initiated due to the acoustic similarity of [fu] and [hu] sequences. Some implications of these findings for phonological theory are then briefly outlined.

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