%0 Journal Article %T Le développement phonétique irrégulier dû à la fréquence en français %A Mańczak, Witold %J Romanica Cracoviensia %V Volume 11 (2011) %R 10.4467/20843917RC.11.031.0099 %N Volume 11, Issue 1 %P 276-281 %@ 1732-8705 %D 2012 %U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/romanica-cracoviensia/article/le-developpement-phonetique-irregulier-du-a-la-frequence-en-francais %X Irregular sound change due to frequency in French Until now, irregular sound change due to frequency has been considered as something sporadic, affecting only the vocabulary, whereas the present writer believes that irregular sound change due to frequency, which concerns also reductions in morphemes, especially in inflectional ones (which are even more frequently used than words), is the third essential factor of linguistic evolution, in addition to regular sound change and analogical development. There are six arguments which can be mentioned in favour of the theory of irregular sound change due to frequency. (1) If a frequency dictionary for a given language and for a given epoch is available, we may use it, since the majority of words showing an irregular sound change due to frequency belong to the thousand words most frequently used in the given language. And so on.