LINGUIST List 22.4495

Thu Nov 10 2011

Qs: Seeking recent phonemic neutralizations

Editor for this issue: Zac Smith <zaclinguistlist.org>

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        1.     Andrew Wedel , Seeking recent phonemic neutralizations

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Message 1: Seeking recent phonemic neutralizations
Date: 10-Nov-2011
From: Andrew Wedel <wedelu.arizona.edu>
Subject: Seeking recent phonemic neutralizations
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We are collecting a database of diachronically recent phonemicneutralizations (mergers or deletions) in languages for which thereexist reasonably good corpora and associated word-lists. Theneutralizations can be context-sensitive or context-free, but for ourpurposes, the neutralization needs to be complete in some dialect ofthe language. The corpus needs to have a phonemic transcription (orthe orthography needs to be shallow enough that we can reconstructone); it needs to encode the pre-neutralization state of the languageeither in the phonemic transcription or the orthography; and it needs toreflect (other than the neutralization) the phonemic system of thedialect in which the neutralization has taken place. As an example, forthe LOT~THOUGHT and PIN~PEN mergers that have taken place invarieties of American English, we can use an American Englishphonemic transcription of the English portion of the CELEX database.To see a regularly updated list of the neutralizations and associatedcorpora that we currently have, please point your browser to

http://tinyurl.com/8y7pgpe

We currently have neutralizations in English, German, Dutch, French,Slovak, Korean and Hong Kong Cantonese. If you have anysuggestions for additions to this list, please contact Andy Wedel atwedelu.arizona.edu

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics                             Phonetics                             Phonology

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Page Updated: 10-Nov-2011