| English-language Vowel Changes Before Historic L |
Shopping Changes |
Website Links For Changes |
Information AboutEnglish-language Vowel Changes Before Historic L |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ENGLISH-LANGUAGE VOWEL CHANGES BEFORE HISTORIC L | |
| australian english | |
| new zealand english | |
| american english | |
| splits and mergers in english phonology | |
|
The salary-celery merger is a conditioned merger of (as in ''bat'') and (as in ''bet'') when they occur before , thus making ''salary'' and ''celery'' .'' This merger occurs in the English spoken in New Zealand and the Australian state of Victoria . In varieties with the merger, ''salary'' and ''celery'' are both pronounced (Cox & Palethorpe, 2003). The merger is not well studied. It is referred to in various sociolinguistic publications, but usually only as a small section of the larger change undergone by vowels preceding in articles about , Victoria. Their pronunciations were compared to those of school girl groups in the towns of Temora , Junee and Wagga in New South Wales . Horsfield (2001) investigates the effects of postvocalic on the preceding vowels in New Zealand English ; her investigation, however, covers all of the New Zealand English vowels and is not specifically tailored to studying mergers and neutralizations, but rather the broader change that occurs across the vowels. She has suggested that further research involving minimal pairs like ''telly'' and ''tally'', ''celery'' and ''salary'' should be done before any firm conclusions are drawn. The merger is one of the few definite Australasian regionalisms. In the study conducted by Cox and Palethorpe, the group in Wangaratta exhibited the merge while speakers in Temora, Junee and Wagga in New South Wales did not. It is one of the very few features that New Zealand and Victoria share that the rest of Australia doesn't also share with New Zealand, and is thought by some to have begun in the 1970s in both regions . A pilot study of the merger was done, which yielded perception and production data from a few New Zealand speakers. The results of the pilot survey suggested that although the merger was not found in the speech of all participants, those who distinguished between and also accurately perceived a difference between them; those who merged and were less able to accurately perceive the distinction. The finding has been interesting to some linguists because it concurs with the recent understanding that ''losing a distinction between two sounds involves losing the ability to produce it as well as to perceive it'' (Gordon 2002). However, due to the very small number of people participating in the study the results cannot be considered convincing. The findings about the lack of perception between the distinction between and for some speakers with the merger have been interesting to some linguists, because although they can clearly hear a difference between the sounds and (in ''bat'' and ''bet''), elsewhere they can't hear the difference when they come before a sound. FILL-FEEL MERGER The fill-feel merger is a conditioned merger of the vowels and before /l/ that occurs in some dialects of , eastern Tennessee , northern Alabama , Mississippi , Louisiana (but not New Orleans ), and west-central Texas (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006: 69-73). FELL-FAIL MERGER The same two regions show a closely related merger, namely the fell-fail merger of and before that occurs in some varieties of Southern American English making ''fell'' and ''fail'' homophones.In addition to North Carolina and Texas, these mergers are found sporadically in other Southern states and in the Midwest and West.http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map7.htmlhttp://www.ling.upenn.edu/phonoatlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch9/Ch9.html FULL-FOOL MERGER The full-fool merger is a conditioned merger of and before , making pairs like ''pull''/''pool'' and ''full''/''fool'' homophones. The main concentration of the pull-pool merger is in the North Midland accent of , Estuary English and Cockney , may also have the full-fool merger in most cases, but when a suffix beginning with a vowel is appended, the distinction returns: Hence 'pull' and 'pool' are , but 'pulling' is whereas 'pooling' remains . {Link without Title} 3 Non-native observers of Australian English may mistakenly think the full-fool merger occurs there, as the vowel ''quality'' is the same: . A ''quantity'' distinction is still made, however, and the two phonemes are quite distinct to native speakers. Hence, ''full'' is pronounced and ''fool'' , so there is no merger. Interestingly, the fill-feel merger and full-fool merger are ''not'' unified in American English; they are found in different parts of the country, and very few people show both mergers.http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map6.html HULL-HOLE MERGER The hull-hole merger is a conditioned merger of and before /l/ occurring for some speakers of that might require further study. DOLL-DOLE MERGER The doll-dole merger is a conditioned merger of and before /l/ occurring for some speakers of English English with L-vocalization . As a result, ''doll'' and ''dole'' become homophones. (Wells: 317). OTHERS Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006: 73)4 mention four mergers before that may be underway in some accents of North American English , and which require more study:
SEE ALSO
REFERENCES |
|
|