ABSTRACT
Historical phonetics deals, not with the history of sounds as such—for these, being always the same, have no history—but with the history and development of sounds in a given language. Historical phonetics is thus a branch of historical philology, which fixes and tabulates the history of sounds, and the relation of one sound to another sound, throughout the history of the language concerned. Practical phonetics as a branch of descriptive philology, concerns itself with the nature and formation of sounds as it finds them in the spoken language it is dealing with. The primary concern of historical phonetics is the phonological mutation of sounds. It has also to explain alternations of related sounds as they occur in grammatical categories. Changes of sound in a given syllable or word are classed under the heading of sound mutation. There are normally three stages in the establishment of a sound change: the unconscious inception of the new form; its recognition; and its systematization.
