PhoneticChanges.jl is an automated tool to apply series of linguistic sound changes to words using IPA.

Usefull for conlanging.

PhoneticChanges uses julia, so install julia first.

Clone the repository, or download the zip file.

git clone https://github.com/Cielbird/PhoneticChanges.git

or

• Code > Download ZIP

PhoneticChanges.jl uses three .txt files to work. The input file, the changes file, and the output file.

julia PhoneticChanges.jl [inputFile] [outputFile] [changesFile]

The input file should contain each word you intend to modify on each line. Empty lines are ignored. Words should be writen in IPA.

The output file does not need to be created before calling PhoneticChanges.jl.

The changes file should contain the list of shound changes the words should go through. Whitespace and empty lines are ignored.

Each change is structured like so:

[Items to look for] > [What to replace it with]

So a simple sound change of b to v would be writen as:

b > v

To write more general and vague expressions, you can use C (for consonants) and V (cor vowels) to match groups of IPA symbols. See vowel tags and consonant tags

So to match all consonants, and replace them with ʂ:

C > ʂ

Or to replace vowels with i:

V > i

Where PhoneticChanges is really usefull is with tags. To specify certain types of consonants or vowels, add tags between two slashes (/) after a C or a V. Multiple tags can be added, seperated by commas. The tags are all the requirements a symbol must fit to be matched. Below are a list of tags available:

So C/UVUL/ will match all uvular consonants, and V/OPEN, FRONT/ will match all open fronted vowels (a and ɶ)

Using these tags, we can make much more usefull statements like:

All unvoiced consonants are lost (replaced with nothing)

C/UNVOICED/ > 

an empty right side will simply reaplace all matches with nothing, deleting them.

To reuse any symbol we match, we need to capture(save, or remember) it. To do this, we surround it with parenthases ( ).

(V)

Once we've captured a character or set of characters, we can reference that captured group with a coresponding number (in this case 1, since we only have one capture).

(V) > 1

this will not apprear to change anything, as you are replacing what you captured, with what you captured.

Here, we capture the vowels on both side of an unvoiced consonant, and reference them, leaving out the consonant. This effectively deletes all unvoiced consonants between vowels.

(V) C/UNVOICED/ (V) > 1 2

Adding tags between / after referenced groups like so: 1/VOICED/ or 3/UVUL, ROUNDED/ will modify the preceeding character to fit the tags.

This will replace all consonants preceding voiced consonants with their voiced equivilents. (d with replace t, z will replace s...)

(C) (C/VOICED/) > 1/VOICED/ 2