Pertinacity in phonology: Synchrony, diachrony, processing, modelling

A standard belief through centuries of linguistic research has been that phonological change is commonplace and pervasive.

Syntax has been claimed by some to be inert, changing only as a consequence of phonological or semantic change. This project takes an unusual and challenging view: Phonology is pertinacious, suggesting that phonological change has severe restrictions. The principle of Pertinacity (two types) states:

Pertinacity A: The output forms may look different from the donor language, but the native underlying pattern persists.
Pertinacity B: The output forms may look similar, but the underlying phonological grammar would have changed.

DISTINCTIVENESS of the proposal: As in the PI's earlier work, setting it apart from more narrowly departmentalised specialist approaches, classical theoretical and historical research will be combined with psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic experimentation, and computational modelling to shed light on central issues of linguistic change and stability, diversity and uniformity.

To examine the principle of Pertinacity, we will investigate similar phonological processes, both internal (regular phonological rules and constraints) and external (loans via language contact), across three language families (West & North Germanic and Indo-Aryan).