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This project addresses persistant challenges in historical phonology – accurately tracking gradient sound change in historical corpora (e.g., phonemic mergers, phonological rule decay, domain narrowing, etc.).
Historical corpora pose unique challenges for phonologists, including:
distinguishing linguistic, orthographic, and/or external sources of spelling variation/change
measuring and generalising phonological behaviour across corpora
differentiating the grammatical status of historical sound patterns
Vowel harmony decay: sample PhonMatrix visualisations of 13th–14th-century Norwegian height harmony decay in pre- to -post-decay manuscripts
Using historical phonological models of Old Norwegian vocalic (morpho)phonology as a test case, this project develops novel corpus tools for automating graphophonological cross-referencing of sound–spelling patterns in lexically and morphologically tagged historical corpora
linking diverse spelling variation to unique phonological representations
measuring phonological behaviour of individual sound units distinct from their spelling variation
quantifying gradient sound changes across diverse philological material
PUBLICATIONS
Sandstedt, J. (in prep). Reconstructing the (grapho)phonological representation of Old Norse vowels.
Sandstedt, J. 2020. Vowel harmony decay in Old Norwegian. Papers in Historical Phonology 5, 11–48. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2218/pihph.5.2020.4417
Sandstedt, J. 2018. Feature specifications and contrast in vowel harmony: The orthography and phonology of Old Norwegian height harmony. University of Edinburgh PhD thesis. https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/35865/Sandstedt2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Sandstedt, J. 2017. Transparency and blocking in Old Norwegian height harmony. Transactions of the Philological Society 115(3), 395–417. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12113
*Winner of the RH Robins Prize (The Philological Society)
Karoline, K., Natassja Olsen, L., Teixidor-Toneu, I., Sandstedt, J., Kool, A., & Christiansen, L. 2023. Plant remains as sources to cultural history in Southeast Norway. In M. Ødegaard & I. Ystgaard (Eds.), Complexity and dynamics : Settlement and landscape from the Bronze Age to the Renaissance in the Nordic Countries (1700 BC–AD 1600). Sidestone Press Academics.
Kool, A., Kjesrud, K., Teixidor-Toneu, I., & Sandstedt, J. 2022. Mennesker og planter i fortid og fremtid. In O.A. Høeg's Planter og tradisjon. Kolofon Forlag AS. ISBN: 9788230021743.
Teixidor-Toneu, I., Kool, A., Greenhill, S.J., Kjesrud, K., Sandstedt, J., Manzanilla, V., & Jordan, F.M. Historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence test the phylogenetic inference of Viking-Age plant use. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 376: 20200086. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0086
PRESENTATIONS
Bye, Patrik, & J. Sandstedt. 2025. West Nordic umlaut, Old Norwegian vowel harmony, and the life cycle. Fonologi i Norden, University of Oslo, Norway.
handout
Sandstedt, J. 2021. Tracking and visualising the causes and pathways of vowel harmony decay in Old Norwegian. 12th International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics, University of Oslo, Norway.
handout
Sandstedt, J. 2019. Tracking harmony decay in Old Norwegian. 4th Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Sandstedt, J. 2019. Measuring phonological change in Old Norse manuscripts. NI-Stunde, Nordeuropa-Institut, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
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