| English-language Vowel Changes Before Historic R |
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| splits and mergers in english phonology | |
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Non-rhotic accents often show mergers in the same positions as rhotic accents do, even though there is often no phoneme present. This results partly from mergers that occurred before the was lost, and partly from later mergers of the Centering Diphthong s and long vowels that resulted from the loss of . The American phenomenon is one of Tense-lax Neutralization , where the normal English distinction between Tense and Lax Vowel s is eliminated. Such neutralization also occurs in English before , and to a lesser extent before tautosyllabic and . In some cases, the quality of a vowel before is different from the quality of the vowel elsewhere. For example, in American English the quality of the vowel in ''more'' typically does not occur except before , and is somewhere in between the vowels of ''maw'' and ''mow''. (It is similar to the vowel of the latter word, but without the glide.) Note that a similar situation occurs in many dialects before ; the vowel of ''king'', for example, is often pronounced somewhere between those of ''kin'' and ''keen'', and may be Diphthong al. Different mergers occur in different dialects. Among United States accents, the Boston and New York accents have the least degree of pre-rhotic merging. Some have observed that Rhotic North American accents are more likely to have such merging than non-rhotic accents, but this cannot be said of rhotic British accents like Scottish English , which is firmly rhotic and yet many varieties have all the same vowel contrasts before as before any other consonant. MERGERS BEFORE INTERVOCALIC R Mary-marry-merry merger One of the best-known pre-rhotic mergers is known as the ''Mary-marry-merry merger'', which consists of the mergers before intervocalic of and with historical . This merger is quite widespread in the American West, Inland North, Midland, and in Canada (cf. Sample 1 ). A merger of ''Mary'' and ''merry'', while keeping ''marry'' distinct, is found in the South and as far north as Baltimore, Maryland , and Wilmington, Delaware ; it is also found among Anglophones in Montreal . In the Philadelphia accent the three-way contrast is preserved, but ''merry'' tends to be merged with ''Murray''; likewise ''ferry'' can be a homophone of ''furry''. See ''furry-ferry merger'' below. The three are kept distinct generally outside of North America, as well as in the Philadelphia Accent , the New York-New Jersey Accent , the Boston Accent , and the accent of Providence, Rhode Island (cf. Sample 2 ). Mirror-nearer merger Another widespread merger is that of with before intervocalic . For speakers with this merger, ''mirror'' and ''nearer'' rhyme, and the phrase ''spear it'' is homophonous with ''spirit''. This merger seems to be nearly universal in North America, with the major exception again being the northeastern United States, and perhaps conservative Southern accents. Hurry-furry merger The merger of before intervocalic with is also widespread in American English apart from the Northeast and the South of the US. Speakers with this merger pronounce ''hurry'' to rhyme with ''furry''. In accents that lack the Fern-fir-fur Merger , ''hurry'' and ''furry'' rhyme, but they rhyme because they never split in those accents to begin with. Furry-ferry merger The merger of () and () before (both neutralized with syllabic ''r'') is common in the Philadelphia Accent . This accent does not usually have the marry-merry merger. That is, "short a" () as in ''carry'' is a distinct unmerged class before . Thus, ''Kerry'' and ''curry'' are pronounced the same, but ''carry'' is distinct from this pair. Historic "short o" before intervocalic r Words that have before intervocalic in RP are treated differently in different varieties of North American English . As shown in the table below, in Canadian English , all of these are pronounced with , as in ''cord'' (and thus merge with historic prevocalic in words like ''glory''). In the local accents of New York and Philadelphia , these words are pronounced with , as in ''card'' (and thus merge with historic prevocalic in words like ''starry''). In the Boston Accent these words are pronounced with , similar to in RP. Most of the rest of the United States (marked " Gen.Am. " in the table), however, has a mixed system: while the majority of words are pronounced as in Canada, the four words in the right-hand column are typically pronounced with . Even in the Northeastern accents without the split (Boston, New York, Philadelphia), some of the words in the original short-''o'' class often show influence from other American dialects and end up with anyway. For instance, some speakers from the Northeast may, for example, pronounce ''Florida'', ''orange'', and ''horrible'' with , but ''foreign'' and ''origin'' with . Exactly which words are affected by this differs from dialect to dialect and occasionally from speaker to speaker, an example of sound change by Lexical Diffusion . MERGERS BEFORE HISTORIC CODA R Cheer-chair merger The cheer-chair merger is the merger of the Early Modern English sequences and , which is found in some accents of modern English. Some speakers in New York City and New Zealand merge them in favor of the CHEER vowel, while some speakers in East Anglia and South Carolina merge them in favor of the CHAIR vowel. Fern-fir-fur merger The fern-fir-fur merger is the merger of the Middle English vowels into when historically followed by in the Coda of the Syllable . As a result of this merger, the vowels in ''fern'', ''fir'' and ''fur'' are the same in almost all accents of English; the exceptions are Scottish English and some varieties of Hiberno-English . The vowel quality is preserved when vowel-initial suffixes are added to words that came to end in by this merger, so ''furry'' has the same vowel as ''fur'' and ''stirring'' has the same vowel as ''stir''. Otherwise the merger did not happen when the sound was intervocalic, so that ''mirror'', ''very'', and ''furrow'' still have distinct vowels. Fur-fair merger The fur-fair merger is a merger of with that occurs in some accents (for example Liverpool , Dublin , and Belfast ) that makes homophonous pairs such as ''fur''/''fair'', ''spur''/''spare'', and ''curd''/''cared''. It is possible that the merger is found in at least some varieties of African American Vernacular English . In Chingy 's song " Right Thurr ", the merger is heard at the beginning of the song, but he goes on to use standard pronunciation for the rest of the song (cf. Sample 3 ). In the absence of Phonological research in St. Louis, Missouri (Chingy's hometown), it is impossible to know whether there is a genuine phonemic merger here or not. Stir-steer merger In older varieties of (e.g. ''queer'') or a Palato-alveolar Consonant (e.g. ''cheer''), then there is no sound: , . It is thus possible that pairs like ''steer-stir'' are merged in some accents as , although this is not explicitly reported in the literature. There is evidence that African American Vernacular English speakers in Memphis, Tennessee , merge both and with , so that ''here'' and ''hair'' are both homophonous with the strong pronunciation of ''her''. Tower-tire, tower-tar and tire-tar mergers The tower-tire and tower-tar mergers are vowel mergers in some accents of Southern British English (including many types of RP , as well as the accent of Norwich ) that causes the triphthong of ''tower'' to merge either with the of ''tire'' (both surfacing as diphthongal ) or with the of ''tar''. Some speakers merge all three sounds, so that ''tower'', ''tire'', and ''tar'' are all homophonous as . The tire-tar merger, with ''tower'' kept distinct, is found in some Midland and Southern U.S. accents. Cure-fir merger In East Anglia a merger with the of ''shirt'' is common, especially after Palatal and Palatoalveolar consonants, so that ''sure'' is often pronounced ; Yod Dropping may apply as well, yielding pronunciations such as for ''pure''. Similarly in American English ''sure'' is often pronounced . Other American pronunciations showing this merger include ''pure'', ''curious'', ''bureau'', ''mural''. Pour-poor merger In Modern English dialects, the reflexes of Early Modern English and are highly susceptible to Phonemic Merger with other vowels. Words belonging to this class are most commonly spelled with ''oor'', ''our'', ''ure'', or ''eur''; examples include ''poor'', ''tour'', ''cure'', ''Europe''. Wells refers to this class as the CURE words, after the keyword of the Lexical Set to which he assigns them. In the most conservative varieties of Received Pronunciation and General American , CURE words are pronounced with RP ( before a vowel) and GenAm . But these pronunciations are being replaced by other pronunciations in many English accents. In English English it is very common to pronounce CURE words with , so that ''moor'' is often pronounced , ''tour'' , ''poor'' . A similar merger is encountered in many varieties of American English , where the pronunciations or / (depending on whether the accent is rhotic or non-rhotic) prevail. Pure-poor split The pure-poor split is a Phonemic Split that occurs in Australian and New Zealand English that causes the centring Diphthong to disappear and split into (a sequence of two separate Monophthong s) and (a long monophthong), causing ''pure'', ''cure'', and ''tour'' to rhyme with ''fewer'', and ''poor'', ''moor'' and ''sure'' to rhyme with ''for'' and ''paw''. Where the becomes and where it becomes is not very predictable. But words spelt with ''-oor'' that originally had become perhaps by influence of the words ''door'' and ''floor'' which rhyme with ''store'' in all Dialect s of English . A similar split occurs in many varieties of North American English that causes to disappear and split into and , causing ''pure'', ''cure'', and ''sure'' to rhyme with ''fir'', and ''poor'' and ''moor'' to rhyme with ''store'' and ''for''. Card-cord merger The card-cord merger is a merger of Early Modern English with , resulting in Homophony of pairs like ''card''/''cord'', ''barn''/''born'' and ''far''/''for''. The merger is found in some Caribbean English accents, in some versions of the West Country Accent in England, and in some Southern and Western U.S. accents. Areas where the merger occurs includes Central Texas , Salt Lake City , and St. Louis . Dialects with the card-cord merger don't have the Horse-hoarse Merger . The merger is disappearing in the United States , being replaced by the more common Horse-hoarse Merger that other regions have. Horse-hoarse merger The horse-hoarse merger is the Merger of the vowels and before historic , making pairs of words like ''horse/hoarse'', ''for/four'', ''war/wore'', ''or/oar'', ''corps/core'', ''morning/mourning'' etc. Homophone s. This merger occurs in most varieties of English . In accents that have the merger ''horse'' and ''hoarse'' are both pronounced , but in accents that do not have the merger ''hoarse'' is pronounced differently, usually in Rhotic and or the like in non-rhotic accents. Non-merging accents include Scottish English , Hiberno-English , the Boston Accent , Southern American English , African American Vernacular English , most varieties of Caribbean English , and Indian English . The distinction was made in traditional Received Pronunciation as represented in the first and second editions of the Oxford English Dictionary . The IPA symbols used are for ''horse'' and for ''hoarse''. In the United States, the merger is quite recent in some parts of the country. For example, Kurath and McDavid based on fieldwork performed in the 1930s, shows the contrast robustly present in the speech of Vermont , northern and western New York State, Virginia , central and southern West Virginia , and North Carolina ; but Labov, Ash, and Boberg based on telephone surveys conducted in the 1990s, shows these areas as having almost completely undergone the merger. And even in areas where the distinction is still made, the acoustic difference between the of ''horse'' and the of ''hoarse'' is rather small for many speakers. The two groups of words merged by this rule are called the before the ''or'', as in ''pork, port, Portugal, sport, afford, force, ford, forge, divorce'', as well as the past participles ''borne, sworn, torn, worn''. SEE ALSO
SOUND SAMPLES # http://www.alt-usage-english.org/mmm_bc.wav Sample of a speaker with the Mary-marry-merry merger Text: "Mary, dear, make me merry; say you'll marry me." # http://www.alt-usage-english.org/mmm_rf.wav Sample of a speaker with the three-way distinction # http://ldc.upenn.edu/myl/thurr.mp3 Text: "I like the way you do that right there (right there)/Swing your hips when you're walkin', let down your hair (let down your hair)/I like the way you do that right there (right there)/Lick your lips when you're talkin', that make me stare" NOTES |
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