ENGL 202
Prof. G. Steinberg
Sound Changes

 Identify the sound changes that are operating in the following examples.  Don’t worry about accounting for changes in vowel sounds (other than ellipsis and intrusion), but be sure to account for every consonant change.  NOTE:  Some of the words below end with something called inflections -- grammatical endings (such as the “-ed” ending for past tense in English) that don’t really count as part of the word.  You do not have to account for the appearance or disappearance of these inflections as sound changes (since they technically aren’t sound changes but morphological changes).  We'll learn more about inflections (and morphological change) in a few weeks.

1. Latin /fragIlIs/ Þ   Old French /frεl/  =  Modern English “frail”
   
   
   
   
   

2. Latin /fragIlIs/ Þ   Modern English “fragile”

3. Latin /komputare/ Þ   French /kompüte/ = Modern English “compute” /kәmpyut/  (Note:  You needn’t account for the appearance of the /y/ here; its appearance is related to the ü sound in the French word and is therefore a matter of vowel change, for which you are not responsible.)

4. late Latin /komputare/ Þ   Old French /kunte/  =  Modern English “count”

5. Old French /posion/ Þ   Modern English “potion”

6. Old French /posion/ Þ   later French /puizon/  =  Modern English “poison”

7. late Latin /kæmεra/ Þ   Old French /čambrә/ Þ   Modern English “chamber”

8. Old French /tradision/ Þ   Modern English “tradition”

9. Old French /tradision/ Þ   later French /treson/ Þ   Modern English “treason”

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