The reversal of the BÄREN-BEEREN merger in Austrian Standard German

Abstract

In language change, a reversal of a merger is generally considered to be impossible, since after two sounds have become fully merged, they are no longer distinct, so no phonetic or phonological cues exist that could reverse this process. This article investigates such an 'impossible' merger reversal: the split of the Bären vowel (orthographically represented by <ä> or <äh>) and the Beeren vowel (orthographically represented by <e>, <ee> or <eh> in Austrian Standard German. We investigated a corpus of spoken data, measured the acoustic properties of the vowels, and determined the degree of the merger (by computing Pillai scores) for younger and older speakers. It turns out that the two sounds were formerly merged, but currently a split can be observed as an ongoing process. This paper argues that language contact with Standard German as it is spoken in Germany motivates the ongoing reversal. Since the Bären vowel is also subject to substantial variation in German Standard German, in order to get the split right, Austrian speakers are likely to invoke orthographical knowledge. We will consider the mental representations of this sound, including the graphemic representations from an Exemplar-theoretical viewpoint. Reversal of a MergerIn a merger, two different sounds converge on a single sound. It is usually assumed that a merger, if completed, cannot be reversed for the logical reason that after merging no phonetic or phonological cues exist that can serve as a means for reversal. Even in dialect contact, in which dialect M has the merger and dialect S has the split, M speakers will not learn the split, for they are not able to perceive the categorical distinction; if speakers try to reverse a merger, they will not get it

Variation in the lexical distribution and implementation of phonetically similar phonemes in Catalan

“…Factors included in the multivariate analysis were vowel type (high mid or low mid), consonantal context (dental or labial), syllable structure (CV or CVC), and syllable count (2 or 3). Given this range of variables, a high Pillai score (with an accompanying small p-value) indicates a significant distance, or lack of merger, between the two vowel types; a small or insignificant Pillai score suggests a merger (Amengual & Chamorro, 2015;Sloos, 2013). We also determined the extent to which Pillai scores correlate with BLP scores using Pearson's product-moment correlation tests.…”

One rule, two frequency effects

“…This is also relevant for the BÄREN vowel. For example, the BÄREN vowel used to be distinctive from the BEEREN vowel but is currently undergoing merger in Swiss Standard German; on the other hand, the BÄREN vowel was merged with the BEEREN vowel Austrian Standard German and is currently undergoing reversal (Sloos 2013b(Sloos , 2018. The BÄREN vowel in Germany shows a distinction that is often stylistic: the BÄREN vowel is low in highly formal speech and merged with the BEEREN vowel elsewhere.…”

“…I illustrate the minigrammar of speakers who distinguish the BÄREN vowel from the BEEREN vowel, and who adopt pre-r vowel lowering for the BÄREN vowel but not for the BEEREN vowel. 3 Although the BÄREN vowel and the BEEREN vowel have merged to a great extent, language users are able to tell the difference in the lexical sets, by the distinction that exist in certain dialects or in highly formal speech (Mangold 1994), in spelling (Sloos 2013b), or by morphological relations, such as an underlying /aː/ in the base. I adopt the markedness constraint *ɛː, as in (3).…”

The role of early experience and continued language use in bilingual speech production: A study of Galician and Spanish mid vowels by Galician-Spanish bilinguals

“…To this end, we followed Amengual's (2016) and Amengual & Chamorro's (2015) approach and calculated Pillai scores from each participant. Pillai scores are a measure for degree of merger, and have been used widely to examine vowel contrasts (Hay, Warren & Drager, 2006;Sloos, 2013). They are generated as part of a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and reveal the extent to which one variance can be predicted by another.…”