Synchronic Shifts
It is also possible for chain shifts to occur synchronically, within the phonology of a language as it exists at a single point in time.
Nzebi (or Njebi), a Bantu language of Gabon, has the following chain shift, triggered morphophonologically by certain tense/aspect suffixes:
| a | → | ɛ | → | e | → | i |
| ə | → | i | ||||
| ɔ | → | o | → | u |
Examples (Guthrie 1968) follow:
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Underlying form Chain-shifted form sal "to work" sal-i → sɛli βɛɛd "to give" βɛɛd-i → βeedi bet "to carry" bet-i → biti bis "to refuse" bis-i → bisi kolən "to go down" kolən-i → kulini tɔɔd "to arrive" tɔɔd-i → toodi suɛm "to hide oneself" suɛm-i → suemi
Another example of a chain from Bedouin Hijazi Arabic involves vowel raising and deletion:
| a | → | i | → | deletion |
In nonfinal open syllables, /a/ raises to /i/ while /i/ in the same position is deleted.
Synchronic chain shifts may be circular. An example of this is Xiamen tone or Taiwanese tone sandhi:
| 53 | → | 44 | → | 22 | → | 21 | → | 53 |
The contour tones are lowered to a lower tone, and the lowest tone (21) circles back to the highest tone (53).
Synchronic chain shifts are an example of the theoretical problem of phonological opacity. Although easily accounted for in a derivational rule-based phonology, its analysis in standard parallel Optimality Theory is problematic.
Read more about this topic: Chain Shift
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