Historical phonology reading group

Discussing recent and/or important work in historical phonology

The historical phonology reading group (HPhRG) brings together a number of researchers from several areas of the university who all have interests in trying to understand phonological change. We meet every few weeks to discuss recent and/or important work in historical phonology (which we define as broadly as we like...). The group is convened by Patrick Honeybone. Feel free to get in touch if you would like to come (to be added to our mailing list).

Here is a list of our meetings:

2024-25

  • [13th December 2024, 12.10-1pm, room G32, 7 George Square. TBC]
  • [22nd November 2024, 12.10-1pm, room G32, 7 George Square. TBC]
  • 1st November 2024, 12.10-1pm, room G32, 7 George Square. Howell, Robert B. (2024) 'What do we really know about Gothic breaking? On the problem of consonantally conditioned vowel mutations in Germanic.' In: Klein, Jared S. & Artūras Ratkus (eds.) Studies in Gothic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 11th October 2024, 12.10-1pm, room G32, 7 George Square. Natvig, David Albert & Joseph C. Salmons (2021) 'Connecting structure and variation in sound change.' Cadernos de Linguística. 2:1, 1-20.

2023-24

  • 7th June 2024, 12.10-1pm, room 1.17, Dugald Stewart Building. Gardner, Matt Hunt & Rebecca Roeder (2022) 'Phonological mergers have systematic phonetic consequences: PALM, trees, and the Low Back Merger Shift.' Language Variation and Change 34, 29-52. 
  • 17th May 2024, 12.10-1pm, room 1.17, Dugald Stewart Building. Grestenberger, Laura (2024) 'Sound change and analogy, again: Brugmann’s Law and the hunt for o-grades in Indo-Iranian.' Transactions of the Philological Society 122, 79-118.
  • 15th March 2024, 11.10-12noon (note the unusual time!), room G26, 7 George Square: Kocharov, Petr & Andrey Shatskov (2021) 'Proto-Indo-European Initial *r Revisited.' Iran and the Caucasus 25, 398-419.
  • 1st March 2024, 12.10-1pm, room G26, 7 George Square: Trudgill, Peter (2018) 'I’ll git the milk time you bile the kittle do you oon’t get no tea yit no coffee more oon’t I: Phonetic erosion and grammaticalisation in East Anglian conjunction-formation.' In: Wright, Laura (ed.) 2018. Southern English Varieties Then and Now. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter.
  • 2nd February 2024, 12.10-1pm, room G26, 7 George Square: Davis, Stuart & Karen Baertsch (2006) 'The Diachronic Link between Onset Clusters and Codas.' Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 397–408.
  • 19th January 2024, 12.10-1pm, room G26, 7 George Square: Ahland, Michael (2006) 'Nasal Spreading, Rhinoglottophilia and the Genesis of a Non-Etymological Nasal Consonant in Mesmes.' Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 13–24.
  • 24th November 2023, 12.10-1pm, room G26, 7 George Square:  Stenbrenden, Gjertrud (2020) 'Coda approximants in British English: A diachronic and synchronic account.' In: Pérez Lorido, Rodrigo, Carlos Prado-Alonso & Paula Rodríguez-Puente (eds.), Of ye Olde Englisch Langage and Textes: New Perspectives on Old and Middle English Language and Literature. 109-137.
  • 10th November 2023, 12.10-1pm, room G26, 7 George Square: Nurse, Derek (1987) 'Toward a typology of diachronic phonological change in Bantu languages'. Journal of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistics Association 9: 100-22. ...AND... PAGES 20-30 of: Nurse, Derek (1999) 'Towards a historical classification of East African Bantu languages'. In: Hombert, Jean-Marie & Larry M. Hyman (eds), Bantu Historical Linguistics: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. 21-41.
  • 27th October 2023, 12.10-1pm room G26, 7 George Square: Iosad, Pavel (to appear) 'Laryngeal contrast in the Celtic languages: Variation, typology, and history.'
  • 13th October 2023, 12.10-1pm, MST_Teaching Room 02 (G.203) - Doorway 3, in the Old Medical School: Mackenzie, Ian (2022) 'The Genesis of Spanish /θ/: A Revised Model.' Languages 7, 191.

For older events, have a look at our archive:

A list of readings from previous years