Cheshirisation

Cheshirisation, or cheshirization, is a term coined by James Matisoff to refer to a type of sound change, where a trace remains of an otherwise disappeared sound in a word.

Characterization of remnants

Before disappearing, a sound may trigger or prevent some phonetic change in its vicinity that would not otherwise have occurred. For example :

• In the English word night, the gh sound disappeared, but before or perhaps as it did so it lengthened the vowel i, so that the word is pronounced /ˈnaɪt/ "nite" rather than the /ˈnɪt/ "nit" that would otherwise be expected for a closed syllable.
• In French, a final n sound disappeared, but left its trace in the nasalization of the preceding vowel, as in vin blanc [vɛ̃ blɑ̃], from historical [vin blank]. also many etymological final consonnants s of non-final syllables have disappeared, after first altering the lenght of the preceding vowel, before finally making them short but only written with a circumflex ans altering the value of the vowel.

Although not an established scientific term, the word is used for phonological remnants such as :

• the umlaut in Germanic languages (a lost suffix i changed the plural of foot to feet and of mouse to mice);
• consonant mutation in Celtic languages (a lost vowel triggered initial consonant lenition, and a lost nasal triggered nasalisation);
• the prevention of sound change by a lost consonant in Lahu;
• floating tones, which are the remains of entire disappeared syllables;
• and the tone split of Chinese languages, where voiced consonants lowered the tone of a syllable and subsequently lost their voicing.

References

• James Matisoff, 1991, "Areal and universal dimensions of grammatization in Lahu." In Approaches to grammaticalization, Traugott & Heine, eds. John Benjamins, pp 383–453.
• Östen Dahl, 2004, The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity. John Benjamins, p. 170.
• Aleksandra Aikhenvald & Robert M. W. Dixon, 2006, Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance: problems in comparative linguistics. Oxford University Press, p. 344.
• John H. McWhorter, Defining Creole, Oxford University Press, p. 12-13.

See also

• Historical linguistics
• Nasalization
• Tonogenesis
• Floating tone