/u/: merger vs. split

[Mark Davies]

Sorry for what is probably an overly-basic and overly-discussed question -- this isn't really my area of specialization.

There has been a merger of sorts with /u/ in American English, so whereas "dew" (fronted /u/) and "do" (central/back) were pronounced differently before, they are now the same for most speakers (I know they are for me). Hence similar cases like "Tuesday" -- in which the vowels was more fronted before in some dialects: /tüzde/ -- but the vowel has now moved farther back -- /tuzde/ (sorry, no IPA fonts here).

On the other hand, one of the features of "Valley Girl speech" is the fronting of /u/: /muv/ > /müv/ "move"
(see http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=ATC&showDate=23-Feb-2004&segNum=19&NPRMediaPref=WM).

It seems like these two shifts -- if they are in fact happening as I've tried to describe them -- are going in opposite directions -- the first leading to a merger of sorts, the second leading to a split of some kind.

My question is, are they related in any way? Seems like they're not -- either chronologically or in terms of dialects and social groups. But I told the students in my Historical Linguistics class that I'd check on this.

Thanks in advance,

Mark D.

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Mark Davies
Professor of (Corpus) Linguistics
Brigham Young University
(phone) 801-422-9168 / (fax) 801-422-0906
Web: davies-linguistics.byu.edu

** Corpus design and use // Linguistic databases **
** Historical linguistics // Language variation **
** English, Spanish, and Portuguese **
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