ABSTRACT
Sound changes also take place in history as a language is passed from generation to generation. These sound changes affect consonants, vowels and tones. We know this is true because ancient Chinese phonological categories have been meticulously recorded in ancient dictionaries that are almost as old as Nantong Chinese. This chapter starts with a contrast between the ancient Middle Chinese sound system and the modern Nantong Chinese sound system. It then introduces a statistical method for separating regular and irregular sound changes. It provides a set of rules that are responsible for regular evolution of Nantong Chinese consonants, vowels and tones. In particular, it discusses a special sound change known as vowel shift and compares it with the great vowel shift that took place in English. This chapter ends with an analysis of irregular sound changes, including a classification of such sound changes and the probable cause behind each class.
