New CBB

The 'normal' rule - often repeated in introductions to historical linguistics - is that sound changes are without exceptions, that they applie all over the board. If there is a change that, for instance, deletes short unstressed /ə/, this change will take place in all words. It will not leave some words untouched.

But reality seems in some cases to be more complex that this. Even if it may be a good approximation to say that 'sound changes apply without exceptions', there seem to be some cases where this does not hold. In the history of English, there have been changes that have affected some words, but left others untouched, despite similar phonological environments:

*The foot-strut split - in which the 'short u' /ʊ/ was derounded and lowered in many words - ultimately resulting in a split in to two phonemes /ʊ/ and /ʌ/.

*The trap-bath split - in which the 'short a' /æ/ was lengthened and ultimately retracted to /ɑː/ in many words, usually before fricatives.

In both cases, there were typically some phonological environments that made the shift more likely, or that tended to prevent the change. Lowering and derounding of /ʊ/ tended not to occur after labial consonants, especially if /ʊ/ was also followed by a lateral. Lengthening and retraction of /æ/ tended to occur before fricatives, or before certain consonant clusters (-st -sk, -mple, -nce, -nt, etc.). But in both cases, there were many words that did not behave as 'expected' - thus in the affected dialects, 'putt' and 'put' don't rhyme, nor do 'math' and 'bath'.

In later times, there has been other incomplete sound changes. In some dialects, /æ/ has undergone tensing and/or lengthening, which for some speakers has led to a phonemic split between /æ/ and /æː/, or between /æ/ and /ɛ͡ə/, or something like that.

Why does sound changes, in some cases, fail to apply on some words? Do you know of any incomplete sound changes in other languages? Has anyone incorporated incomplete sound changes in their conlang/conworld history?

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constructedlanguages.net

Do you differentiate between sporadic sound changes and incomplete sound changes in anyway? Would you view the weakening of [k] to [ɣ] in mig, dig, sig (<mik, þik, sik)? What about the loss of d/ð in Standard Swedish, where it was mostly lost in common words like bröd, stad and so on, but retained in less common words due to spelling?

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Proto-Hyảlim | Bjarmish

Ón gráti sem jett barn kvéner jag syggji jett lag um deiðan...
[oʊ̯n ˈgɾaːtɪ sɛmː jɛtː baɾn ˈkʰʋɛːnɛɾ jaː ˈsʏd͡ʑːɪ jɛtː laː ʊmː ˈdɛɪ̯an]

There is also the fact that initial /θ/ in Scandinavian became /d/ and in English became /ð/ in just a handful of common words (usually [only?] pronouns) but /t/ for Scandinavian and still /θ/ for English elsewhere, unlike in Faroese, where even the pronouns got /t/ (although Faroese on the other hand had a different, odd change where some words got /h/ instead). In modern Icelandic, /θ/ and /ð/ are in rather free allophony with each other, and in casual speech, at least non-initially in a sentence, especially pronouns easily get pronounced with [ð] rather than [θ], which I suppose is comparable. German and Dutch turned /θ/ into /d/ everywhere, for pronouns and common words alike.

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

þ → d happened in pronouns and adverbs in Scandinavian.

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КЕРВЕНСКИЙ

That word-initial /θ/ became /ð/ in a few English words - mostly function words - is probably due to sandhi-effects. Since functions words are often unstressed, and occur together with other words, I guess such effects are more likely to affect these words than others. Also word final /θ/ in <with> became voiced in many dialects for the same reason.

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constructedlanguages.net

Yeah, I was expecting some other words to have fallen in there too. Då. Där.

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə