I was recently reading a paper on the vocalic historical phonology of Hebrew, and one thing I noted was that the author of the paper went out of their way to explicate with Neo-grammarianism was Right, and how all sound changes were through either sound laws or processes such as analogy, borrowing including dialect borrowing, and contamination. In cases where these do not seem to firmly apply, supposedly the reason is Not Enough Sound Laws. They did this to make a point of how the traditional analyses of Semitic languages were Wrong, where traditionally sound change is not seen as in terms of firm sound laws and like.
This got me thinking, and some points came to my mind:
- How stressed sounds, morphemes, and words typically are can affect their sound change.
- How frequently sounds, morphemes, and words typically are used can affect their sound change.
- What environments sounds, morphemes, and words typically are used in can affect their sound change.
- What morphological and syntactic contexts sounds, morphemes, and words typically are used in can affect their sound change. (Of course, some of these cases could be chalked up to analogy.)
With these in the mind, the idea that all sound change can be chalked up to sound laws, analogy, borrowing, and contamination quickly breaks down, and the "solution" of adding more sound laws ends up creating a wide menagerie of sound laws to cover not just every sound and every environment, but every stress level, every frequency, and every morphological and syntactic context, which of course is non-viable in practice.
Any thoughts?