Reversal of merger

[Roger Wright]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------

Re: Reversal of Merger;
Isn't this a bit of a non-problem? All changes take a long time to
complete; that is, it is rare for an old feature to disappear quickly
after a new feature comes in, and there is no real need for the old
feature to disappear at all; in all changes there is a long time when
both the old and the new are around, and both intelligible. So the
"reversal" is merely the decision not to adopt the new variant as the
usual one after all, but keep instead the old variant, which is still
there in the speech-community. It isn't even archaism, just a choice
between competing variants; speakers don't know which is the older and
which is the newer, of course, and if they are usually more likely to
choose the newer and thereby institute the "change" (if indeed they feel
a need to choose either, rather than just keeping both) that is merely
because the reasons, whatever they were, for having a new alternative at
all are likely to be still there at a later time too. (I can give
examples if asked.)
        If we can just accept the validity of the basic sociolinguistic
observation that variation is normal, natural, inevitable, desirable and
even necessary, particularly but not only while there is a sound
change in progress, then most of this problem just disappears; it just
means that (unsurprisingly) the merger wasn't yet universal, so the old
feature was still around in some places, people and styles, universally
intelligible and available, but necessarily only in the words that had
changed that way and not in those that hadn't.
        (There could, of course, be a further development; since changes
involve a stage of competing alternatives, the result could even be that
some older forms, that happen to have had the feature all along that
was "new" in the case of those words that have changed, might eventually
change to include the feature that was found to begin with in  those
words that initiated the change. That seems straightforward enough to
the sociolinguists, I suppose, but not only to them; as Zonneveld said
[A Formal Theory of Exceptions in Generative Phonology, Lisse, 1978],
every sound change may in practice be competing against its exact
opposite.)
                                                RW


On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Larry Trask wrote:

>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Bh.Krishnamurti wrote:
>
>> Recent postings on the above theme have not shown a genuine case of
>> reversal of merger.
>
>> 1. Most mergers create homonyms. In other words two or more words
>> which contrast in a pair of phonemes will become homophonous when
>> one of the phonemes merges with the other through sound change.
>> After this event, no subsequent sound change will ever retrieve the
>> two distinct words by recreating the lost contrast. If there are
>> attested instances which appear to restore the lost contrast, that
>> can happen through borrowing from an older or a different dialect
>> which was not affected by the sound change in question.
>
>[snip of Telugu example]
>
>> The question is: Is there any language in which mergers which
>> created homonyms were undone by a subsequent sound change.  Henry
>> Hoenigswald in his posting of Nov 27 clarified that in the
>> neogrammarian framework, 'there is no room for reversal of merger by
>> 'sound-change'..
>
>Yes, in the Neogrammarian framework this is so.  The irreversibility of
>mergers by sound change has been widely accepted for generations; it was
>formalized by Paul Garde in 1961, and Labov has dubbed it `Garde's
>principle' -- perhaps unfortunately, since `Garde's principle' was
>already in use for something quite different.
>
>However, none of the proposals in my provisional list contradicts this
>principle, since none of them proposes that a merger has been reversed
>merely by sound change.  Every one of them concludes, for the particular
>case(s) for which it was proposed, either that no merger ever occurred
>or that a merger occurred and was then reversed by some means other than
>sound change.
>
>> 'there was either no merger, or there is more than one line of
>> descent'. Here lines of descent refer to different lines of
>> transmission, either inheritance or borrowing.
>
>Yes; agreed, at least for most cases that have been discussed.  But some
>of the proposals in my list explicitly conclude either that no merger
>occurred or that a merger was reversed by the influence of a different
>line of descent.
>
>> 2. Reference has been made to the variability between merged and
>> unmerged entities in the aftermath of a sound change. In all cases
>> of lexical diffusion of a sound change, this happens normally. In
>> certain Gondi dialects word initial s becomes h, and later h becomes
>> 0. As we go through the affected lexical items, this two-step sound
>> change is attested as s,s/h,h, h/0,0, in different words, in
>> different social groups and in different areas. The variable items
>> attest to the fact that the sound change is in progress. In the
>> Southern dialects only 0 forms occur with the change totally
>> accomplished and completely regular. This problem is treated in
>> detail in a paper of mine which is published in *Language Variation
>> and Change* 10:2.193-220. But please note a there is no case of
>> reversal of a merger, i.e. s/h goes later to h and not to s,
>> similarly, h/0 goest to 0 and not to h.
>
>>>From this I cannot tell what instance of a potential merger is being
>examined.  However, if there is a variable sound change of, say, /s/ to
>/h/, then surely there remains the possibility that the variation will
>eventually be resolved in favor of the original /s/, and that the
>variant in /h/ will disappear.  Indeed, I believe I have seen some such
>cases reported in the literature, though I can't name one with certainty
>off the top of my head -- but see the Australian case below.
>
>And, if the variable change of /s/ to /h/ threatens a merger with a
>pre-existing /h/, then I see no reason why the original /s/ - /h/
>contrast should not be restored in this manner -- even if that's not
>what happened in Gondi.
>
>A possibly relevant case here is the change of /h/ to zero in English.
>This has been pervasive in England for centuries, and it has gone to
>completion in most vernacular accents, which no longer contrast /h/
>even variably with zero.  This merger of /h/ with zero is continuing to
>spread in vernacular speech: for example, it has now reached areas of
>East Anglia which formerly retained a phoneme /h/.  But it has not
>become general in England, since prestige varieties continue to retain
>many (not all) earlier instances of /h/, and hence we have a separate
>line of descent to consider.
>
>In Australia, though, things are different.  There is evidence that the
>merger of /h/ with zero was widespread in 19th-century Australia.
>However, no doubt as a consequence of the influence of more prestigious
>varieties which had not undergone the merger, that merger has now been
>completely reversed in Australian English: today all Australian
>varieties exhibit a robust contrast between /h/ and zero.
>
>> 3. Phoneme-like units in expressives, in my view, do not belong to
>> the normal phonlogical system of a language.
>
>That depends.  In some ancestral form of Basque, it is clear, the six
>palatal and palato-alveolar consonants (hereafter `palatal' consonants)
>never occurred in ordinary lexical items at all, but only in expressive
>variants of these, or in expressive formations generally.  At this
>stage, it was true that the six consonants stood somewhat outside the
>ordinary phonological system.  But then things changed.
>
>For one thing, phonemes identical in phonetic nature to some of these
>six occurred in some neighboring Romance languages, where they were
>ordinary phonemes with no special value.  Some Romance words containing
>these segments were borrowed into Basque complete with their palatal
>segments.  The resulting loan words therefore contained the expressive
>segments without possessing any expressive value.  And, at this stage,
>it was perhaps no longer possible to maintain that the palatal segments
>in Basque still lay outside the ordinary phonological system, since they
>occurred in everyday words of non-expressive nature.  At the same time,
>of course, the six segments still retained their expressive value in
>native words.
>
>Still later, in Michelena's account, the historical /j/ merged with the
>expressive segment [esh], notated <x>, thereby producing a state of
>affairs in which some instances of <x> were expressive while others were
>not.  At this point, I think, it was hardly possible to maintain that
>the consonant <x> still lay outside the ordinary phonological system,
>even though some instances of it still retained expressive value.
>
>Finally, please note that in none of my postings (apart from my
>endorsement of Michelena's account of the Basque case) have I been
>trying to argue that mergers either can or cannot be reversed by any
>means at all.  My only purpose is to compile a list of the accounts of
>*apparent* reversals of merger which have been reported in the
>literature, whether or not these accounts posit any genuine reversal of
>merger.
>
>By the way, I now have a seventh proposal, thanks to Laura Wright.
>Simplifying somewhat, she suggests that a case of apparent merger may in
>fact represent no merger at all in speech, but merely a failure of the
>imperfect orthography to distinguish two phonemes which remained
>distinct in speech.
>
>Larry Trask
>COGS
>University of Sussex
>Brighton BN1 9QH
>UK
>
>larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
>