Factors in sound change: A quantitative analysis of palatalization in Northern Mandarin

Abstract Factors in sound change are still a major subject of debate in the field of linguistics, with the frequency factor perhaps being the most controversial. The present article focuses on palatalization of the velars before high front vowels and glides in Northern Mandarin, because palatalization stretched for more than 100 years and can provide detailed information concerning its contour. Based on a statistical analysis of corpus data of palatalization in Northern Mandarin, the present article argues that the factor of frequency is positively associated with palatalization and the factor of frequency change is negatively associated. Morphosyntactic structure and word class are also claimed to be factors in sound change. However, neither of these two factors has emerged as significant in the current study.