History of sound change mechanization Formalized notation Two different tasks The AlteruPhono package Current status and plans What it would (hopefully) allow 3 . 1
Observation before inference But algorithms connecting French là and Hawaiian laila (“there”), while missing German da and English there, unsettle linguists (List et al., 2017) 4 . 5
of A > B / C (“A turns into B in context C”) is but a blueprint: Footnotes and comparative prose Conventions (∅, #, etc.) Ad hoc solutions (shifts, alternatives, etc.) Implicitness (e.g. coronal plosives) IPA issues (and “e” is not necessarily /e/!) 5 . 1
probabilities Database of sound changes Growing body of supporting research (Blevins 2004, Kümmel 2007, Bybee 2015, Hruschka et al. 2015) Case of Index Diachronica 6
Intended for usage also without installing Formalization of notation (database, CLTS) PEG grammar Forwards and backwards direction https://github.com/tresoldi/alteruphono 8 . 1
(“stress tests”), (B)IPA features Real data (on-going) Proto-Algonquian to Shawnee (48 rules) Conversion of Hartman’s LS (1,800 forms) Toy dataset of PIE to RP English (10 words) */kʷetwṓr/ ➞ /fɔː/ (“four”) */h₂ḱowsyónom/ ➞ /hiə/ (“hear”) 8 . 2
features (List et Chacon, 2015; Tresoldi et al., 2018) “initial /t/ becomes /n/ if there is a nasal consonant anywhere in the word” tata ➞ tata taɲa ➞ naɲa tatatataɲatata ➞ natatataɲatata 10 . 1
implementation, JSON Feature system agnostic (BIPA default) Write paper for review and feedback Bootstrapping for other projects on hold inference of sound changes from cognates catalog attenuate homoplasy from sounds as states 11
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