Lexical and sublexical effects on the maintenance of contrasts in the lexicon and the paradigm - the case of sound change from MHG to NHG

It has been established that various phonological and phonetic sources affect sound change both on a frequency level and a qualitative level. Simultaneously, drivers of sound change can be lexical and sublexical factors. Previous research, focusing on single phones, has shown that paradigmatic factors tend to influence phonetic properties of sounds, both in synchronic variation as well as diachronic sound change. In this study, we investigate how lexical and paradigmatic predictors have influenced sound change in entire words. Our variable of interest is how many phones have changed in verbs from Middle High German to New High German. We find that a word's similarity with other words, operationalized as mean phonetic distances and the number of phonological neighbors, are significant predictors of the amount of sound change in a word. In addition, we find that sound change depends on two functional references, the lexicon and the respective verbal paradigm. In conclusion, sound change affects entire words and arises arises from its relation to other words beyond direct phonological neighbors.