Фонологическая история английских гласных открытой спины

Фонология из открытых задних гласных в английском языке претерпела изменения как в целом , так и с региональными вариациями, через Старый и среднеанглийские до настоящего времени . Звуки слышали в современном английском языке значительно под влиянием сдвига Great гласного , а также более недавние события , такие как раскладушка пойманной слияния .

Обзор [ править ]

Старый и среднеанглийский [ править ]

В древнеанглийской системе гласных гласные в открытой области спины были неокругленными: / ɑ /, / ɑː / . Были также закругленные гласные средней высоты: / o /, / oː / . В соответствующих вариантах написания была ⟨a⟩ и ⟨o⟩, с различиями длинами обычно не помеченными; в современных изданиях древнеанглийских текстов долгие гласные часто пишутся ⟨ā⟩, ⟨ō⟩.

По мере того, как древнеанглийская (OE) система превратилась в систему среднеанглийского (ME), краткая гласная OE / ɑ / слилась с передней / /, чтобы стать более центральным ME / a / . Между тем, долгая гласная / / была округлена и возведена в степень ME / ME / . OE короткое / o / осталось относительно неизменным, став коротким гласным ME, рассматриваемым как / o / или / ɔ / , в то время как OE долгое / oː / превратилось в ME / oː / (гласная выше / ɔː / ). Возможны и альтернативные варианты развития событий; подробности см. в исторических соответствиях гласных в английском языке .

Позже, удлинение открытого слога ME привело к тому, что краткая гласная / o / в открытых слогах обычно заменялась на / ɔː / . Остальные экземпляры краткой гласной / о / также имели тенденцию становиться ниже. Следовательно, в позднем среднем английском языке (около 1400 г.) присутствовали следующие гласные открытой спины, различающиеся по длине: ^[1]

• / ɔ / , пишется ⟨o⟩, как в слове собака , бог
• / ɔː / , часто пишется ⟨oa⟩ или ⟨o⟩ перед согласным + гласным или некоторыми парами согласных, например, лодка , целое , старое

Изменения XVI века [ править ]

К 1600 году произошли следующие изменения:

• Долгий гласный / ɔː / из лодки был поднят в / м / в результате сдвига Great гласного . До non-prevocalic / r / подъема не было, поэтому больше было / mɔːr / .
• Дифтонг / au̯ /, встречающийся в таких словах, как причина , закон , все , соль , псалом , половина , изменение , комната , танец, превратился в монофтонг с открытой спиной / ɔː / или / ɑː / .
• В это время короткий / ɔ / ин для собак был понижен до / ɒ /

Таким образом, было два монофтонга с открытой спиной:

• / ɒ / как в лот
• / ɔː / или / ɑː / как в причине и (до / r / ) в более

и один дифтонг с открытой спиной:

• / ɔu̯ / как в низком

Изменения 17 века [ править ]

К 1700 году произошли следующие дальнейшие события:

• Дифтонг / ɔu̯ / из души был повышен до / Ou / , а затем monophthongized к / о / , сливаясь с лодкой (см схождения буксировочного слияния ). До / r / это изменение было позже отменено путем слияния хриплых слов, за исключением некоторых разновидностей, как в настоящее время наблюдается в ирландском английском , шотландском английском и афроамериканском народном английском .
• Short / wa / был убран и округлен до / wɒ / . Сдвиг был подавлен до велярного согласного , как и в шарлатане , говоре , WAG , воск , а также был подавлен в плавали (The нерегулярного прошедшего время от купания ). Изменение / wa / на / wɒ / не произошло в среднеольстерском английском .
• / ɒ / начал принимать участие в удлинении и повышении до непревокального глухого фрикативного звука. Это привело к появлению таких слов, как бульон , стоимость и отключение, с / ɒː / вместо / ɒ / , и стало началом разделения LOT – CLOTH (см. Ниже).
• В таких словах, как change и Chamber , произношение / ɔː / постепенно заменялось в стандартном языке вариантом с / eː / , производным от среднеанглийского / aː / . Это объясняет современное произношение этих слов с / eɪ / .
• However, when /ɔː/ preceded /f/, as in laugh, and half, /ɔː/ was shifted to /æ/ instead, derived from Middle English /a/.
• An unrounded back vowel /ɑː/ developed, found in certain classes of words that had previously had /a/, like start, father and palm.

That left the standard form of the language with three open back vowels:

• /ɒ/ in lot and want.
• /ɔː/ in more, cause, and corn.
• /ɒː/ in cloth and cost.
• /ɑː/ in start, father and palm.

Later changes[edit]

From the 18th century on, the following changes have occurred:

• The three-way distinction between /ɒ/, /ɒː/, and /ɔː/ was simplified in one of two ways:
  • In General American and old-fashioned RP, /ɒː/ was raised to /ɔː/, merging with the vowel in THOUGHT (the cloth-thought merger).
  • In many accents of England, the lengthening of the CLOTH set was undone, restoring the short pronunciation /ɒ/. This became standard RP by the mid-20th century.
• In General American, the lot vowel has become unrounded and merged into /ɑ/ (the father–bother merger).

This leaves RP with three back vowels:

• /ɒ/ in lot, want, cloth, and cost.
• /ɔː/ in more, cause, and corn.
• /ɑː/ in start, father, and palm.

and General American with two:

• /ɑ/ in lot, want, start, father, and palm.
• /ɔ/ in more, cause, corn, cloth and cost.

Unrounded LOT[edit]

In a few varieties of English, the vowel in lot is unrounded, pronounced toward [ɑ]. This is found in the following dialects:

• Irish English
• Much of the Caribbean
• Norwich
• The West Country and the West Midlands of England
• Most of North American English
  • Excluding Boston and Western Pennsylvania accents, in which it is typically raised toward /ɔ/, merging with the vowel in thought.

Linguists disagree as to whether the unrounding of the lot vowel occurred independently in North America (probably occurring around the end of the 17th century) or was imported from certain types of speech current in Britain at that time.^{[citation needed]}

In such accents, lot typically is pronounced as [lɑt],^[2] therefore being kept distinct from the vowel in palm, pronounced [pɑːm] or [paːm]. However, the major exception to this is North American English, where the vowel is lengthened to merge with the vowel in palm, as described below. This merger is called the LOT–PALM merger or more commonly the father–bother merger. (See further below.)

Father–bother merger[edit]

The father–bother merger is unrounded lot taken a step further. On top of being unrounded, the length distinction between the vowel in lot and bother and the vowel in palm and father is lost, so that the two groups merge.

Examples of possible homophones resulting from the merger include Khan and con (/kɑn/) as well as Saab and sob (/sɑb/).^[3]

Out of North American dialects that have unrounded lot, the only notable exception to the merger is New York City English, where the opposition with the [ɑ]-type vowel is somewhat tenuous.^[4][5]

While the accents in northeastern New England, such as the Boston accent, also remain unmerged, lot remains rounded and merges instead with cloth and thought, though the outcome of that is still a longish free vowel that is heard as thought by British speakers.^[4][5]

LOT–CLOTH split[edit]

The LOT–CLOTH split is the result of a late 17th-century sound change that lengthened /ɒ/ to [ɒː] before voiceless fricatives, and also before /n/ in the word gone. It was ultimately raised and merged with /ɔː/ of words like thought, although in some accents that vowel is actually open [ɒː]. The sound change is most consistent in the last syllable of a word, and much less so elsewhere (see below). Some words that entered the language later, especially when used more in writing than speech, are exempt from the lengthening, e.g. joss and Goth with the short vowel. Similar changes took place in words with ⟨a⟩; see trap–bath split and /æ/-tensing.

The cot–caught merger, discussed below, has removed the distinction in some dialects.

As a result of the lengthening and raising, in the above-mentioned accents cross rhymes with sauce, and soft and cloth also have the vowel /ɔː/. Accents affected by this change include American English and, originally, RP, although today words of this group almost always have short /ɒ/ in RP. The split still exists in some older RP speakers, including Queen Elizabeth II.

The lengthening and raising generally happened before the fricatives /f/, /θ/ and /s/. In American English the raising was extended to the environment before /ŋ/ and /ɡ/, and in a few words before /k/ as well, giving pronunciations like /lɔŋ/ for long, /dɔɡ/ for dog and /ˈtʃɔklət/ for chocolate.

In the varieties of American English that have the lot–cloth split, the lot vowel is usually symbolized as /ɑ/, often called the "short o" (although from a phonological standpoint it is not a "short" vowel), and the cloth vowel as /ɔ/, often called the "open o". The actual pronunciation of these vowels may vary somewhat from the symbol used to denote them; e.g. /ɔ/ is often pronounced closer to an open back rounded vowel [ɒ], and /ɑ/ is sometimes fronted to an open central vowel [ä]. Some words vary as to which vowel they have. For example, words that end in -og like frog, hog, fog, log, bog etc. have /ɑ/ rather than /ɔ/ in some accents.

There are also significant complexities in the pronunciation of written o occurring before one of the triggering phonemes /f θ s ŋ ɡ/ in a non-final syllable. However, the use of the open o as opposed to the short o is largely predictable. Just like with /æ/-tensing and the trap–bath split, there seems to be an open-syllable constraint. Namely, the change did not affect words with /ɑ/ in open syllables unless they were closely derived from words with /ɑ/ in close syllables. Hence /ɔ/ occurs in crossing, crosser, crosses because it occurs in cross; likewise in longing, longer, longest because it occurs in long. However, possible, jostle, impostor, profit, Gothic, bongo, Congo, and boggle all have /ɑ/. However, there are still exceptions in words like Boston and foster.^{[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]} A further list of words is mentioned in the table below:

Some words may vary depending on the speaker like (coffee, offer, donkey, soggy, boondoggle, etc. with either /ɑ/ or /ɔ/).^{[citation needed]} Meanwhile, other words vary by region. For example, in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. dialect, most famously spoken in metropolitan Philadelphia and Baltimore, the single word on has the same vowel as dawn (in the mid-Atlantic, this is [ɔə~oə]), but not the same vowel as don etc. ([ɑ~ä]). Labov et al. regard this phenomenon as occurring not just in the Mid-Atlantic region, but in all regions south of a geographic boundary that they identify as the ON line, which is significant because it distinguishes most varieties of Northern American English (in which on and Don are closer rhymes) from most varieties of Midland and Southern American English (in which on and dawn are closer rhymes).^[15]

Cot–caught merger[edit]

The cot–caught merger (also known as the low back merger or the LOT–THOUGHT merger) is a phonemic merger occurring in many English accents, where the vowel sound in words like cot, nod, and stock (the LOT vowel), has merged with that of caught, gnawed, and stalk (the THOUGHT vowel). For example, with the merger, cot and caught become perfect homophones.

Other changes[edit]

THOUGHT split[edit]

In some London accents of English, the vowel in words such as thought, force, and north, which merged earlier on in these varieties of English, undergoes a conditional split based on syllable structure: closed syllables have a higher vowel quality such as [oː] (possibly even [oʊ] in broad Cockney varieties), and open syllables have a lower vowel quality [ɔ̝ː] or a centering diphthong [ɔə].

Originally-open syllables with an inflectional suffix (such as bored) retain the lower vowel quality, creating minimal pairs such as bored [bɔəd] vs. board [boːd].^[16]

In broad Geordie, some THOUGHT words (roughly, those spelled with a, as in walk and talk) have [aː] (which phonetically is the long counterpart of TRAP /a/) instead of the standard [ɔː]. Those are the traditional dialect forms which are being replaced with the standard [ɔː]. [aː] is therefore not necessarily a distinct phoneme in the vowel system of Geordie, also because it occurs as an allophone of /a/ before voiced consonants.^[17]

THOUGHT–GOAT merger[edit]

The THOUGHT–GOAT merger is a merger of the English vowels /ɔː/ and /oː/ (with the latter vowel corresponding to /əʊ/ in RP). It occurs in certain non-rhotic varieties of British English, such as Bradford English and Geordie (particularly among females).^[18][19] It has also been reported as a possibility in some Northern Welsh accents.^[20]

It is more accurately called the THOUGHT–GOAT–NORTH–FORCE merger.

Distribution of /ɑː/[edit]

The distribution of the vowel transcribed with ⟨ɑː⟩ in broad IPA varies greatly among dialects. It corresponds to /æ/, /ɒ/, /ɔː/ and (when not prevocalic within the same word) /ɑːr/ and even /ɔːr/ in other dialects:

• In non-rhotic dialects spoken outside of North America, /ɑː/ corresponds mostly to /ɑːr/ in General American and so is most often spelled ⟨ar⟩. In dialects with the trap–bath split (such as Received Pronunciation, New Zealand English and South African English), it also corresponds to GA /æ/, which means that it can also be spelled ⟨a⟩ before voiceless fricatives. In those dialects, /ɒ/ and /ɔː/ are separate phonemes.
• In native words, /ɑː/ in most non-rhotic speech of North America corresponds to both /ɑːr/ in GA (RP /ɑː/) and /ɒ/ in RP, as those dialects feature the father–bother merger.
• In GA (which also features the father–bother merger), /ɑː/ mostly corresponds to /ɒ/ in RP.
• Many speakers in the US and most speakers in Canada use /ɑː/ not only for RP /ɒ/ but also for /ɔː/. Those dialects have the cot–caught merger in addition to the father-bother merger (though a tiny minority of speakers lack the latter merger, like Scottish English).
• In loanwords, the open central unrounded vowel [ä] in the source language is regularly approximated with /ɑː/ in North America and /æ/ in RP. However, in the case of mid back rounded vowels spelled ⟨o⟩, the usual North American approximation is /oʊ/, not /ɑː/ (in RP, it can be either /əʊ/ or /ɒ/). However, when the vowel is both stressed and word-final, the only possibilities in RP are /ɑː/ in the first case and /əʊ/ in the latter case, mirroring GA.

In many Scottish dialects, there is just one unrounded open vowel /a/ that has two allophones. Those dialects usually do not differentiate /ɒ/ from /ɔː/ and use [ɔ] for both.

For the sake of simplicity, instances of an unrounded LOT vowel (phonetically [ɑ]) that do not merge with PALM/START are excluded from the table below. For this reason, the traditional Norfolk dialect is included but the contemporary one, nor the Cardiff dialect, are not.

Fronted /oʊ/[edit]

In many dialects of English, the vowel /oʊ/ has undergone fronting. The exact phonetic value varies. Dialects with the fronted /oʊ/ include Received Pronunciation; Southern, Midland, and Mid-Atlantic American English; and Australian English. This fronting does not generally occur before /l/, a relatively retracted consonant.

Table[edit]

See also[edit]

• Phonological history of the English language
• Phonological history of English vowels

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Barber, Charles Laurence (1997). Early modern English (second ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-0835-4.
• Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology, and Sound Change: a Multimedia Reference Tool. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016746-8.
• Ostalski, Przemysław (2009). "Back Vowels in British and American English" (PDF). Przedsiębiorczość I Zarządzanie. 5 (4): 105–118. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
• Watt, Dominic; Allen, William (2003). "Tyneside English". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 33 (2): 267–271. doi:10.1017/S0025100303001397.
• Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Volume 1: An Introduction (pp. i–xx, 1–278), Volume 2: The British Isles (pp. i–xx, 279–466), Volume 3: Beyond the British Isles (pp. i–xx, 467–674). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-52129719-2 , 0-52128540-2 , 0-52128541-0 .