The early influence of phonology on a phonetic change

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19 Scopus citations

Abstract

The conventional wisdom regarding the diachronic process whereby phonetic phenomena become phonologized appears to be the ‘error accumulation’ model, so called by Baker, Archangeli, and Mielke (2011). Under this model, biases in the phonetic context result in production or perception errors, which are misapprehended by listeners as target productions, and over time accumulate into new target productions. In this article, I explore the predictions of the hypocorrection model for one phonetic change (prevoiceless /ay/-raising) in detail. I argue that properties of the phonetic context underpredict and mischaracterize the contextual conditioning on this phonetic change. Rather, it appears that categorical, phonological conditioning is present from the very onset of this change.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)376-410
Number of pages35
JournalLanguage
Volume92
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2016

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Linguistic Society of America. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Canadian raising
  • Hypocorrection
  • Phonetic change
  • Phonologization
  • Sociolinguistics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Linguistics and Language

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