Merger, reversal of merger, and phonetic imitation

old_uid12001
titleMerger, reversal of merger, and phonetic imitation
start_date2016/07/11
schedule14h
onlineno
detailsOrganiser: Laurent Prévot
summaryIn the study of sound change and variation, merger of two phonetic   categories is widely-observed and well documented; on the contrary,   the reversal of a merger, i.e. two merged categories becoming distinct   again, is much less studied and often considered to be impossible. In   this talk, I will go through (1) a recent study on a vowel merger reversal in Shanghainese (Wu, Sinitic) that is attributed to language contact with Mandarin Chinese, and (2) some work-in-progress on merger reversal in spontaneous phonetic imitation. In the course of this talk, I will also introduce some basic features of the sound systems of Chinese languages.
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