Phonological change in lexical phonology

The Saussurian separation of synchronic and diachronic linguistics resulted in sound change playing little part in models of phonology, which in turn had little to say about change. Lexical Phonology and Morphology provided a principled way to model change within a synchronic framework, providing insights that have been refined and incorporated into Stratal Phonology. Phonological changes follow a defined internal history, or ‘life cycle’, from their phonetic roots to lexical entries via phonological rules. As a precise theory of diachronic phonology, The Life-Cycle Model makes several testable predictions, many of which have been borne out by recent studies