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Darwin-L Message Log 7:88 (March 1994)
Academic Discussion on the History and Theory of the Historical Sciences
This is one message from the Archives of Darwin-L (1993–1997), a professional discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.
Note: Additional publications on evolution and the historical sciences by the Darwin-L list owner are available on SSRN.
<7:88>From delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu Mon Mar 28 19:29:14 1994 Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 16:48:44 -0800 (PST) From: Scott C DeLancey <delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu> Subject: Re: phone change vs phoneme change To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu On Thu, 24 Mar 1994, Anton Sherwood wrote: > Margaret Winters brings up an interesting point that I hadn't > thought of: when and why does a quantitative change in how a > phoneme is expressed become a qualitative or structural change > in the number of phonemes distinguished? > > Do two phonemes merge when the younger generation can no longer > tell them apart? Most likely they merge when an older generation stops bothering to distinguish them. Viz. the impending (or accomplished) merger of the dental fricatives (the <th> sounds) with /t/ and /d/ in various English dialects (e.g. some varieties of Irish and Eastern US English). The brake on this process is the awareness in the communities where this is happening/has happened of a prestige dialect in which they're still distinguished--but that brake's not always present. Lacking it, the only brake will be the disapproval of the previous generation--one reason why where sound change has been studied in progress (particularly by Labov) it tends to be adolescents leading the process. Scott DeLancey delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403
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