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Weak Lips? A Possible Merger of /i:/ and /y:/ in Gothenburg

  • Johan Gross and Julia Forsberg
From the journal Phonetica

Abstract

Background/Aims: This study investigates a possible merger in the early stages between /i:/ and /y:/ among young speakers in Gothenburg, Sweden. Methods: (1) A large-scale online perception experiment testing listeners’ abilities to identify the two vowels and (2) acoustic analysis of 705 vowels from 19 speakers. Results: The perception study shows that listeners classify the horizontally centralized /y:/ as /i:/, both in isolated vowel items and in items containing the full word. This indicates that /y:/ is moving into the perceptual space of /i:/. Listeners also classify the unmerged /y:/ as /i:/ when listening to [y:] in isolation, indicating that lip rounding is a perceptually weak feature, for this centralized vowel, in this variety. The acoustic analysis shows that /i:/ tends to be produced as [ɨ:], and that there is no acoustic difference between /i:/ and /y:/ in measurements correlated with the first two formants, i.e. lip rounding is the most important distinctive feature. Conclusion: Results point in the direction of an incipient vowel merger, following a merger-by-approximation model. These results indicate a lack of perceptual strength of an articulatory feature in the disappearing phoneme, namely lip rounding, and the consequent perceptual similarities between the horizontally centralized [ɨ:] and /y:/.


verified



*Johan Gross, Division of Educational Science and Languages, University West, Gustava Melins gata 2, SE–461 32 Trollhättan (Sweden), E-Mail johan.gross@hv.se

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  1. 1

    This initial analysis contained examples of all of the long vowel tokens in Swedish (apart from /e:/ and /o:/): /i: y: ʉ: ɛ: ø: ɑ: u:/, plus the pre-rhotic allophones [æ: œ:]. 5,184 vowels were analysed, and the analysis is presented in more detail in Gross (2018).

  2. 2

    The results from the listener test regarding the distractors have not been analysed.

  3. 3

    Lip rounding has some effect on the first two formants and thereby on PC1 and PC2. We cannot be 100% sure that the lip rounding does not affect /y:/ to alter its acoustic appearance.

  4. 4

    “Velar pinch” is a term used to describe the rise of F2 and fall of F3 immediately before and after velar plosives.

  5. 5

    See Tables 1 and 2 for explanations of bracketing.

  6. 6

    (iɨ) was more likely to be classified as <e> than the other categories, and (yy) was more likely to be classified as <u> than the other categories.

  7. 7

    One anonymous reviewer suggested giving more prominence to the sequentiality of the merging process: while we do not have the diachronic data or previous research to support this, it is not unlikely that the centralization is a prerequisite to the merger. Hopefully, this can be answered through further diachronic studies.

Received: 2018-01-15
Accepted: 2019-02-19
Published Online: 2019-05-02
Published in Print: 2020-07-01

© 2019 S. Karger AG, Basel

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