Unusual speech sounds can tell us how languages change
What is it about?
Bilabial trills are speech sounds made with vibrations of the lips. Most babies produce them spontaneously, but very few languages around the world use bilabial trills systematically, mostly because they are difficult to integrate into connected speech. Nevertheless, bilabial trills have not just emerged, but also persist in a group of 23 languages spoken on the island of Malekula in the Republic of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. This paper finds that the emergence and persistence of bilabial trills in Malekula languages has been supported by a number of factors, including the structure and history of these particular languages, but also social factors like attaching in-group identity to these unusual speech sounds, which are both auditorily and visually prominent.
Why is it important?
Our study demonstrates that unusual sound change can be explained by adopting a multi-faceted approach. This includes looking at factors related to the languages themselves, but also at social and historical factors, such as language contact and identity marking through linguistic features. In general, looking at the interplay of different factors can draw a better picture of the processes involved in language evolution.