Sound Laws - The Formal Notation of Sound Change

The Formal Notation of Sound Change

See also: Phonological rule
A > B
is to be read, "A changes into (or is replaced by, is reflected as, etc.) B". It goes without saying that A belongs to an older stage of the language in question, whereas B belongs to a more recent stage. The symbol ">" can be reversed:
B < A
"(more recent) B derives from (older) A"

For example,

POc. *t > Rot. f
= "Proto-Oceanic *t is reflected as the Voiceless labiodental fricative in the Rotuman language."

The two sides of such an equation indicate start and end points only, and do not imply that there are not additional intermediate stages. The example above is actually a compressed account of a sequence of changes: *t changed first into a voiceless dental fricative (like the initial consonant of English thin), which has yielded present-day . This can be represented more fully as:

t > θ > f

Unless a change operates unconditionally (in all environments), the context in which it applies must be specified:

A > B /X__Y
= "A changes into B when preceded by X and followed by Y."

For example:

It. b > v /__, which can be simplified to just
It. b > v /V__V (where the capital V stands for any given vowel)
= "Intervocalic (inherited from Latin) became in Italian" (e.g. in caballum, dēbet > cavallo 'horse', deve 'owe (3sg.)'

A second example:

PIr. > /__
= "Preconsonantal voiceless non-continuants (i.e. voiceless stops) changed into corresponding voiceless continuants (fricatives) in Proto-Iranian" when immediately followed by a continuant consonant (i.e. resonants and fricatives). Examples: Proto-Indo-Iranian *pra 'forth' > Avestan fra, *trayas "three" (masc.nom.pl.)> Av. θrayō, *čatwāras "four" (masc.nom.pl.) > Av. čaθwārō, *pśaws "of a cow" (nom. *paśu) > Av. fšāoš (nom. pasu). Note that the fricativization does not occur before stops, so *sapta "seven" > Av. hapta. (However, in the variety of Iranian underlying Old Persian, fricativization occurs in all clusters, thus Old Persian hafta "seven".)

If the symbol "#" stands for a word boundary (initial or final), the notation "/__#" = "word-finally", and "/#__" = "word-initially". For example:

Gk. > ∅ /__#
= "Word-final stops were deleted in Greek." Which can be simplified to
Gk. P > ∅ / __#
where capital P stands for any plosive.

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