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Reference.org
Lexical diffusion
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<p>Lexical diffusion is the hypothesis that a <a href="/facts/Sound_change/NU6EyI1u">sound change</a> is an abrupt change that spreads gradually across the words in a language to which it is applicable. It contrasts with the <a href="/facts/Neogrammarian/ukLnXQAl">Neogrammarian</a> view that a sound change results from phonetically-conditioned articulatory drift acting uniformly on all applicable words, which implies that sound changes are regular, with exceptions attributed to analogy and dialect borrowing. </p><p>Similar views were expressed by Romance <a href="/facts/Dialectologist/G7hAeEFR">dialectologists</a> in the late 19th century but were reformulated and renamed by William Wang and coworkers studying <a href="/facts/Varieties_of_Chinese/MNGv4yrP">varieties of Chinese</a> in the 1960s and the 1970s. <a href="/facts/William_Labov/PkB6BhwV">William Labov</a> found evidence for both processes but argued that they operate at different levels. </p>