Structure-preserving sound change: a look at unstressed vowel syncope in Austronesian

Over the course of the past several hundred years, advances in our understanding of sound change along with 20th century advances in phonetic science and phonological typology have given rise to a new landscape of sound patterns. A particular sound change in a particular language forms part of a population of similar sound changes with similar phonetic bases. Looking at this population, we can explore evidence for phonetic and nonphonetic factors in shaping the topography. Are particular sound changes rarer or more frequent than expected on purely phonetic grounds? And, if so, are they limited to languages or language families with particular structural features? While there has been much progress in explaining the phonetic bases of regular sound change, and simulating change in the laboratory (e.g. Ohala 1974, 1981, 1990; Guion 1998; Hardcastle and Hewitt 1999; Myers and Hanson 2005, 2007), a remaining challenge for any comprehensive theory of sound change is to identify more precisely language-specific structural pressures which may play a role, and to test hypotheses with real language data. The Austronesian language family is fertile testing ground for the interaction of phonetic and structural conditions on sound change due to its size, its well established structural features, and the numerous recurrent sound changes documented. The great majority of regular sound changes within the family have clear phonetic motivations in misperception, coarticulation, aerodynamics, and/or articulatory weakening and