In linguistics, a surface filter is a type of sound change that operates not at a particular point in time but over a longer period. Surface filters normally affect any phonetic combination that is not permitted according to the language's phonetic rules and so preserve the phonotactics of that language. They are also often a source of complementary distribution between certain sets of sounds.
A trivial example of a surface filter is the replacement of sounds foreign to a language with sounds native to the language. For example, a language that has no front rounded vowels may replace such vowels with either front unrounded or back rounded vowels, whenever it borrows a word containing such a vowel. Strictly speaking, that is not a surface filter, as it is merely the way in which the phonetics of one language are matched to that of another. That example, however, still illustrates the importance of surface filters in preserving the phonological structure of words within the language. Usually, the term applies only to rules that affect both native and borrowed words.
Examples
One very common example of a surface filter is final-obstruent devoicing in which a voicedobstruent at the end of a word is automatically converted to their unvoiced counterpart. If that were a regular sound change, the devoicing would occur only at a particular point in time, and any new words that entered the language later might end in voiced obstruents. However, new words are automatically "passed through the filter" like earlier words, and their final obstruents are devoiced automatically.
That happens even if there is apocope of final vowels, with non-final obstruents becoming final. A historical example in Dutch occurs in many verbs, such as blazen ("to blow"). The original Middle Dutch first-person singular present form was blaze, but when the final -e was lost, the form did not become *blaaz (the doubled vowel is only a spelling convention), but the -z was automatically devoiced to create the modern form, blaas.
Sievers' law caused a restriction on the distribution between -j- and -ij-. The former appeared after a consonant following a short vowel, and the latter otherwise occurred. The process was automatic and affected even new words and loanwords: the Latin word puteus ("pit, well"), for example, was borrowed into Germanic as the two-syllable *putjaz. The more-faithful rendering *putijaz was not permitted since the short vowel u was followed by a single consonant t.
The Germanic spirant law affected combinations of an obstruent that was followed by -t-. Such obstruents were automatically converted into fricatives, with dentals becoming -s-, and devoiced. For example, the Latin word scriptum ("writing") was borrowed into Germanic as *skriftiz. The forbidden combination -pt- was replaced by -ft-.
Application
Surface filters are often formed as a result of sound changes that change the phonetic makeup, and certain sounds or combinations no longer occur in the language. As a consequence, speakers no longer learn to pronounce such combinations and so have difficulty with new words that violate the principles. Then, either the phonology of the language is extended to incorporate such new combinations, or the "inconvenient" combinations are automatically reconstructed into a form that conforms to the phonotactics of the language. If the reconstruction occurs systematically and becomes part of the phonology of the language, the result is a surface filter.
Such phonological rules may continue to apply for an indefinite amount of time. Final-obstruent devoicing in Dutch, for example, has been a phonological rule since Old Dutch, over 1000 years ago. The Germanic spirant law may have been formed as part of Grimm's law long before written records began, but it ceased to operate shortly after the Germanic languages began to separate, around the middle of the 1st millennium AD.
Sometimes, sound changes occur that directly violate a surface filter, which may cause it to cease operating. Sievers' law presumably lost relevance in the West Germanic languages after the operation of the West Germanic gemination since it eliminated the contrast between light and heavy syllables, at the core of the law's operation.
Related Research Articles
In phonology, an allophone is a set of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, and the aspirated form are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Thai. On the other hand, in Spanish, and are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English.
Grimm's law is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Grimm but previously remarked upon by Rasmus Rask, it establishes a set of regular correspondences between early Germanic stops and fricatives and stop consonants of certain other centum Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Phonotactics is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters and vowel sequences by means of phonotactic constraints.
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds. Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless or voiced.
Final-obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as Catalan, German, Dutch, Breton, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Turkish, and Wolof. In such languages, voiced obstruents in final position become voiceless before voiceless consonants and in pausa. The process can be written as *C[+voice] → C[-voice]/__#.
The phonology of Japanese features about 15 consonant phonemes, the cross-linguistically typical five-vowel system of, and a relatively simple phonotactic distribution of phonemes allowing few consonant clusters. It is traditionally described as having a mora as the unit of timing, with each mora taking up about the same length of time, so that the disyllabic ("Japan") may be analyzed as and dissected into four moras,, ,, and.
The Germanic spirant law, or Primärberührung, is a specific historical instance in linguistics of dissimilation that occurred as part of an exception of Grimm's law in Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of Germanic languages.
This article deals with the phonology of the standard Ukrainian language.
This article describes those aspects of the phonological history of the English language which concern consonants.
Fortition, also known as strengthening, is a consonantal change that increases the degree of stricture. It is the opposite of the more common lenition. For example, a fricative or an approximant may become a stop. Although not as typical of sound change as lenition, fortition may occur in prominent positions, such as at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable; as an effect of reducing markedness; or due to morphological leveling.
This article discusses the phonological system of the Czech language.
In phonetics, preaspiration is a period of voicelessness or aspiration preceding the closure of a voiceless obstruent, basically equivalent to an -like sound preceding the obstruent. In other words, when an obstruent is preaspirated, the glottis is opened for some time before the obstruent closure. To mark preaspiration using the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic for regular aspiration, ⟨ʰ⟩, can be placed before the preaspirated consonant. However, Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) prefer to use a simple cluster notation, e.g. ⟨hk⟩ instead of ⟨ʰk⟩.
The most thorough treatment of the Kiowa sound system is by Laurel Watkins in a generative framework. A consideration of prosodic phenomena with acoustic analysis is in Sivertsen (1956). Earlier discussions of phonemics are Trager (1960), Merrifield (1959), Wonderly et al. (1954), and Harrington (1928).
The phonology of the Zuni language as spoken in the southwestern United States is described here. Phonology is a branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds.
In phonology, voicing is a sound change where a voiceless consonant becomes voiced due to the influence of its phonological environment; shift in the opposite direction is referred to as devoicing or desonorization. Most commonly, the change is a result of sound assimilation with an adjacent sound of opposite voicing, but it can also occur word-finally or in contact with a specific vowel.
Thurneysen's law is a proposed sound law concerning the alternation of voiced and voiceless fricatives in certain affixes in Gothic. It was first posited in 1896 and published in 1898 by Rudolf Thurneysen, a comparative linguist more famous for his work on the Celtic branch of Indo-European and in particular for his Handbuch des Altirischen.
This article discusses the phonological system of standard Russian based on the Moscow dialect. For an overview of dialects in the Russian language, see Russian dialects. Most descriptions of Russian describe it as having five vowel phonemes, though there is some dispute over whether a sixth vowel,, is separate from. Russian has 34 consonants, which can be divided into two types:
This article explains the phonology of Malay and Indonesian based on the pronunciation of Standard Malay, which is the official language of Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia and Indonesian which is the official language of Indonesia and a working language in Timor Leste. Bruneian Standard Malay and Malaysian Standard Malay follow the Johor-Riau Pronunciation, while Singaporean Standard Malay and Indonesian follow the Baku Pronunciation.
This glossary gives a general overview of the various sound laws that have been formulated by linguists for the various Indo-European languages. A concise description is given for each rule; more details are given in their articles.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
