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Contents
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1
Salary-celery merger
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2
Fill-feel merger
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3
Fell-fail merger
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4
Full-fool merger
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5
Hull-hole merger
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6
Doll-dole merger
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7
Others
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8
See also
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9
References
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Salary-celery merger
The salary-celery merger is a conditioned merger of
/ζ/ (as in
bat) and
/e/ (as in bet) when they occur before
/l/, thus
making salary and celery
homophones.[1][2][3]
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
/sζləri/
(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
/l/ in
articles about
l-vocalisation. Most Victorians and New Zealanders do not
exhibit l-vocalisation. The Cox and Palethorpe study tested just
one group of Victorian speakers: 13 fifteen year-old girls from
a Catholic girls school in
Wangaratta, 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
/l/ 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[citation
needed].
A pilot study was 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
/ζl/ and
/el/ also
accurately perceived a difference between them; those who merged
/ζl/ and
/el/ 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
/ζl/ and
/el/ for
some speakers with the merger have been interesting to some
linguists, because although they can clearly hear a difference
between the sounds
/ζ/ and
/e/ (in
bat and bet), elsewhere they can't hear the
difference when they come before a
/l/ sound.
Fill-feel merger
The areas marked in red are where the fill-feel
merger is most consistently present in the local
accent. Map based on Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006:
71).
[4]
The fill-feel merger is a conditioned merger of the
vowels /ɪ/
and /iː/
before /l/ that occurs in some dialects of
American English. The merged vowel is usually closer to
[ɪ] than
[iː]. The
heaviest concentration of the merger is found in
Southern American English: in
North Carolina, 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
/ɛ/ and
/eɪ/
before /l/
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.[5][6]
Full-fool merger
The full-fool merger is a conditioned merger of
/ʊ/ and
/uː/
before /l/,
making pairs like pull/pool and full/fool
homophones. The main concentration of the pull-pool merger is in
the North Midland accent of
American English, particularly in
Pittsburgh English. The merger is less consistently present
in eastern Pennsylvania and southern
Indiana.[7]
Accents with /l/-vocalisation, such as
New Zealand English,
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
/pʊo/, but
'pulling' is
/pʊlɪŋ/ whereas 'pooling' remains
/puːlɪŋ/.[1][8]
Non-native observers of
Australian English may mistakenly think the full-fool merger
occurs there, as the vowel quality is the same:
[ʊ]. A
quantity distinction is still made, however, and the two
phonemes are quite distinct to native speakers. Hence, full
is pronounced
[fʊl] and fool
[fʊːl], 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.[9]
Hull-hole merger
The hull-hole merger is a conditioned merger of
/ʌ/ and
/oʊ/
before /l/ occurring for some speakers of
English English with
l-vocalization. As a result, "hull" and "hole" are
homophones. The merger is also mentioned by Labov, Ash, and
Boberg (2006: 73) as a merger before /l/ in
North American English that might require further study.
Doll-dole merger
The doll-dole merger is a conditioned merger of
/ɒ/ and
/əʊ/
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)[10]
mention four mergers before
/l/ that
may be underway in some accents of
North American English, and which require more study:
- /ʊl/
and /ol/
(bull vs bowl)
- /ʌl/
and /ɔl/
(hull vs hall)
- /ʊl/
and /ʌl/
(bull vs hull)
- /ʌl/
and /ol/
(hull vs hole)
See also
-
Phonological history of the English language
-
Phonological history of English vowels
-
English-language vowel changes before historic r
References
- ^
Cox, F., and
Palethorpe, S. (2001). "The Changing Face of Australian
Vowels", in Blair, D.B. and Collins, P (eds): Varieties
of English Around the World: English in Australia. John
Benjamins Publishing, Amsterdam, 1744.
- ^
Cox, F. M. and Palethorpe,
S. (2003). "The
border effect: Vowel differences across the NSWVictorian
Border". Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the
Australian Linguistic Society: 114.
Note: online version is
PDF.
- ^
Palethorpe, S. and Cox, F. M. (2003)
Vowel Modification in Pre-lateral Environments. Poster
presented at the International Seminar on Speech Production,
December 2003, Sydney. Note: online version is
PDF.
- ^
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map4.html
- ^
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map7.html
- ^
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phonoatlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch9/Ch9.html
- ^
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map5.html
- ^
Wells, John C. (1982).
Accents of English.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-22919-7 (vol. 1),
ISBN 0-521-24224-X (vol. 2),
ISBN 0-521-24225-8 (vol. 3).
- ^
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map6.html
- ^
Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg (2006).
The Atlas of North American English. Berlin:
Mouton-de Gruyter.
ISBN 3-11-016746-8.
Categories:
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Splits and mergers in English phonology
