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The Workshop on Sound Change is a meeting where researchers investigating aspects of sound change from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives are brought together to work on substantive issues in the field and share ideas and findings.
The Special theme of the WSC 5 is sound change in endangered and small speech communities. Sound change research, as in most work in phonetics and phonology, have focused on languages that have historically been dominant or where speakers are easily accessible. The dynamics of language endangerment and interaction between small groups of speakers may provide unique opportunities for sound change to take place. Small speech communities has different social factors than large communities, leading to the phonetic and cognitive influences to interact and diffuse in different ways when there are fewer agents. How sound change might originate and diffuse in speech communities of different sizes is poorly understood. Furthermore, endangered and small languages are often heavily influenced by other languages and cultures, making sound change more likely. In order to make useful models and predictions about when and how sound change will occur, we need to explore these patterns in diverse speech communities.
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