Sound change:

At the level of speech production (phonetic) or at the abstract level of the phoneme
(phonemic change)

PHONETIC CHANGE

Phonetic change may be unconditioned, i.e the change occurs in every instance of a phoneme,
no matter the context. But more commonly, it is conditioned, that is, the change responds to
specific contexts (such as the /r/ sound lost before consonants or in final position, but not in
initial or before vowels)

Palatalization, velarization (fronting and moving backwards), diphthongization and

monophthongization, spiranization (changing from plosive to fricative or affricate) are
INDIVIDUAL CHANGES in sound.

More general types of sound change:

-Lenition: the general weakening of certain sounds:

Examples: voicing, spirinization, vocalization of consonants (as in dark /l/ in milk),
deletion (within this: apocope (deletion of word-final vowels), syncope (deletion of middle
vowel such as /evri/)
insertion: addition of a vowel or consonant sound (maybe linking /r/?)

The most widespread change is assimilation, that is, the change of a sound by the influence of
neighboring sounds.
Much rarer is dissimilation, a process by which two identical sounds become more different.
Compensatory lengthening happens when a short vowel sound becomes long after the loss
of a consonant in that syllable (example: Gans / goose)

PHONEMIC CHANGE
Changes in sound within the system of a specific language. For example French developed a
system of oral and nasal vowels.
English has many more fricatives than plosives, while its Indo-European parent was the
opposite.

Two main types of phonemic change:

Phonemic merger: when two sounds of different qualities merge into just one sound
(opposition of read/reed – meat/meet, converging into /i:/)
Phonemic split: when a phoneme has two distinct realizations according to the context where
they appear, we consider these allophones??)

Because phonemes form a system, a change in one phoneme can affect others, and in some
cases this can produce a chain shift (depending on the direction: push chains or drag chains
cf: GRIM’S LAW)
Also THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT, where the whole long vowel system of MidE was raised, and
the highest vowels /u:/ and /i:/ were diphthongized.