ERC Advanced Grant · 2021
In William Shakespeare's times, 'knee' and 'knot' were pronounced with a /k/, just like German does today. But why did English and not German drop the /k/? This question is part of the actuation of sound change, recognised as one of the greatest challenges in linguistics, and which is about explaining why sound change happens, and why languages can follow such different paths of sound change. The actuation puzzle remains unsolved principally because the beginning of sound change is so gradual that it is undetectable even with modern instrumentation. Yet a breakthrough is essential for explaining why languages split and diversify. The project remedies this deficiency by determining how the…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.