Chapter 3 discusses the major diachronic processes affecting Central Chadic languages, starting with the massive deletion of reconstructed segments. It explains the historical coming about of prosodies through desegmentalisation and prosodification when coarticulatory features become floating and reassociate with other segments in the chain of segments. It describes the frequent occurrence of at times multiple consonantal metathesis. Historical sound changes are then identified and described in great detail as reflecting both ‘natural’ and contact-induced sound changes. Finally, the chapter discusses compensatory strategies for historically lost segmental material of roots.

This chapter on Romance phonology reviews several phenomena that can be qualified as typologically rare. Some of the phenomena examined are rarely documented within Romance but are relatively common in other language families, while others are hardly attested in the world’s languages but are present to some degree in Romance. Their relative frequency across languages and geographical distribution have been assessed with the help of three online databases that are publicly available: PHOIBLE, WALS, and the World Phonotactics Database. In addition, the challenges that these phenomena represent for phonological theory are also briefly considered. The topics examined in this chapter concern (i) phoneme inventories; (ii) syllable structure, with a focus on consonantal clusters; (iii) segmental processes involving glides, nasal place neutralization, lenition and fortition, and metathesis, among others; and (iv) issues at the morphology–phonology interface involving suprasegmentals.

Chapter 3 introduces the templatic approach to Proto-Central Chadic phonology by identifying an underlying root-and-pattern structure with only one vowel phoneme available: */a/. It distinguishes diachronically simple and augmented roots (the latter carrying petrified former grammatical markers) and describes the high frequency of consonant metathesis. It discusses the inventory of PCC consonants and the double origin of prosodies, i.e. labialisation prosody and palatalisation prosody, plus occurrences of combined Y- and W-prosodies in the same word. It follows up on the different diachronic sources of morphological prosodies, and it takes an extra look at the occurrence of word-final schwa in place of final */a/. The chapter concludes with observations on the integration of loan words into the specific requirements of PCC phonology.

The chapter begins with an overview of current Hausa phonology. It then provides a picture of what existed in ‘Old Hausa’ and the subsequent changes that took place, many due to regular sound laws such as Klingenheben’s Law, the Law of Codas in Reduplication, loss of word-final nasals, and the change of non-initial /r/ into /y/. Although sporadic, historical metathesis was much more common than one usually finds in diachronic change. Glottal stop and /h/ are newly introduced phonemes, resulting from the addition of onsets to vowel-initial words. The high frequency glottalized semivowel /’y/ is also a new phoneme resulting from the fusion of /?/ + /y/. Gemination was originally absent but appeared later and became common through phonological and morphological means. Vowels developed from a skewed 2-3-5 (initial-medial-final) system, with vowel length only distinctive medially, into a system with five vowels, all of which now occur long and short. Starting with two level tones, Hausa later developed Falling and Rising contours, the latter having simplified to High. The loss of vowels resulted in the existence of lexical floating tones not underlyingly attached to segments.

This chapter takes a metapoetic approach to Lucretian allusion to show that the DRN figures the phenomenon of echo as a metaphor for literary appropriation. Lucretius culminates his discussion of acoustic phenomena and hearing with the example of the echo (DRN 4.549–94). Insofar as echo is introduced as the most prominent effect in the perceptible world of the atomic reverberations that give rise to auditory aisthēsis, I argue that Lucretius' multiple allusions to earlier poetry in this passage also serve to illustrate metapoetically the process itself of hearing. The ideas inherent in this Lucretian passage find parallels in the fragmentary papyri of Philodemus.