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The h-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English involving consonant clusters beginning with /h/ that have lost the /h/ in certain dialects. 1 Yew-hew merger The yew-hew merger is a process that occurs in some dialects of English that causes the cluster /hj/ to be reduced to /j/.http://students.csci.unt.edu/~kun/ch11.html It leads to pronunciations like for ''huge'' and for ''human''; ''hew'' and ''yew'' become homophonous. It is sometimes considered a type of glide cluster reduction, but is much less widespread than wh-reduction, and is generally stigmatized where it is found. Aside from accents with H-dropping , this reduction is in the United States found mainly in accents of Philadelphia and New York City ; also in Cork accents of Hiberno-English . In some dialects of English, the cluster /hj/ (phonetically has been reduced to [ç so that ''hew'' and ''yew'' differ only by the initial consonant sound i.e. and ).23 hl-cluster, hr-cluster and hn-cluster reductions The hl-cluster, '''hr-cluster''' and '''hn-cluster reductions''' are three reductions that occurred in Middle English that caused the consonant clusters /hl/, /hr/ and /hn/ to be reduced to /l/, /r/, and /n/. For example, Old English ''hlāf, hring'' and ''hnutu'' became ''loaf, ring'' and ''nut'' in Modern English. Y-CLUSTER REDUCTIONS Yod-dropping Yod-dropping is the Elision of the sound . The term comes from the Hebrew letter Yod , pronounced as . Yod-dropping before occurs in most varieties of English in the following environments:
There are accents, for example Welsh English , in which pairs like ''chews''/''choose'', ''yew''/''you'', ''threw''/''through'' are distinct: the first member of each pair has the diphthong while the second member has . Many varieties of English have extended yod dropping to the following environments, on condition that the be in the same syllable as the preceding consonant:
However, in words like ''annual'', ''menu'', ''volume'', ''Matthew'', ''continue'', etc., where there is a syllable break before the , there is no yod dropping. Yod-dropping in the above environments was formerly considered nonstandard in England, but today it is heard even among well-educated RP speakers. In General American yod-dropping is found not only in the above environments but also:
General American thus undergoes yod-dropping after all Alveolar Consonant s. Some accents of Southern American English preserve the distinction in pairs like ''loot''/''lute'' and ''do''/''dew'' by using a diphthong in words where RP has , thus , etc. Some East Anglian Accent s extend yod-dropping not only to the position after , or , but to the position after nonalveolar consonants as well, so that pairs like ''pure''/''poor'', ''beauty''/''booty'', ''mute''/''moot'', ''cute''/''coot'' are homophonous. In yod-pronouncing dialects, the spellings ''eu'', ''ew'', ''uCe'', ''ue'' and ''ui'', as in ''feud'', ''few'', ''mute'', ''cue'' and ''suit'' generally indicate /ju:/ or , while the spellings ''oo'' and ''ou'', as in ''moon'' and ''soup'' generally indicate /u:/. Yod-coalescence Related to yod-dropping is the phenomenon of yod coalescence. This is a process that occurs in almost all accents in unstressed syllables, as in ''nature'' and ''pressure'' and occurs in some accents in stressed syllables too as in ''tune'' and ''dune''. The process changes the clusters , , and into , , and respectively. OTHER INITIAL CLUSTER REDUCTIONS Rap-wrap merger The rap-wrap merger is a reduction occurring in most dialects of English that causes the initial cluster to be reduced to , making ''rap'' and ''wrap'', ''rite'' and ''write'' etc. Homophones . This reduction occurs in all dialects of present English. Old English had a constrast between and , the former characterized by lip rounding. In Middle English in most dialects, the contrast disappeared and all cases of initial came to be rounded. In England, the merger of and is first attested in the mid 15th century (spellings of ''write'' as ''rite''), but it didn't become accepted and general in "educated speech" until 1650. Not-knot merger The not-knot merger is a reduction that occurs in almost all dialects of English where the historical cluster /kn/ is reduced to /n/ making ''knot'' and ''not'' homophones. This reduction occurs in all dialects of present English , although it has not happened in all varieties of Scots .http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/peter.siemund/Articles/English%20(Variationstypologie).pdf. Quote: "ScotE is well-known for being more conservative than SBE and hence has retained many of the original features. Among these are the use of the velar fricative /x/ (cf. night, daughter, loch) the voiceless labial fricative /hw/ (cf. where, when, whine) and the retention of certain consonant clusters which are not possible in SBE: /kn/ as in knee, knock." There is a respectable list of words in Modern English that begin with ''kn'', including ''knife'', ''knave'', ''knead'', ''knee'', ''knell'', ''knight'', ''knit'', ''knock'', ''knot'', ''know'', ''knuckle'', and others. All of the ''kn'' words stem from Old English forms beginning with ''cn-'' (the orthographic change from ''c'' to ''k'', which began with the influence of Norman French spelling, is outside the scope of the current discussion), and at the time all were pronounced with an initial /k/ sound before the /n/. These words were common to the Germanic languages, most of which still pronounce the initial /k/. Thus, for example, the Old English ancestor of ''knee'' was ''cnēo'', pronounced and the cognate word in Modern German is ''Knie'', pronounced . Most dialects of English reduced the initial cluster /kn/ to /n/ relatively recently--the change seems to have taken place in educated English during the seventeenth century, meaning that Shakespeare did not have the reduction. Nome-gnome merger The nome-gnome merger is the reduction of the initial cluster /gn/ to /n/ that occurs in all dialects of present English. In Middle English , words spelt with ''gn'' like ''gnat'', ''gnostic'', ''gnome'' etc. had the cluster /gn/. FINAL CLUSTER REDUCTIONS Nonstandard final consonant cluster reduction Final consonant cluster reduction is the nonstandard reduction of final consonant clusters in English occurring in African American Vernacular English and Caribbean English . Examples are:
The plural of ''test'' and ''desk'' become ''tesses'' and ''desses'' by the same English rule that gives us plural ''messes'' from singular ''mess''.http://www.rehabmed.ualberta.ca/spa/phonology/Features.htmlhttp://www.indiana.edu/~hlw/PhonProcess/accents.htmlhttp://courses.essex.ac.uk/lg/lg449/AAVEfeatureList.htmhttp://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/ebonics/EbonicsExamples.html Plum-plumb merger The plum-plumb merger is the reduction of the final cluster /mb/ to /m/ that occurs in all dialects of present English. In early Middle English, words spelt with ''mb'' like ''plumb'', ''lamb'' etc. had the cluster /mb/. SEE ALSO
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