Phonemic differentiation

Phonemic differentiation is the phenomenon of a phoneme in a language splitting into two phonemes over time, a process known as a phonemic split. The opposite of a phonemic split is a phonemic merger, in which two phonemes become one over time.

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These splits and mergers may be complete or conditioned, that is limited to certain phonemic contexts. In the former case, all minimal pairs for the two phonemes in a splitting accent will be homophones in a merging accent; in the latter case, only some pairs will be homophones. For example, the father-bother merger completely merges and , whereas the pin-pen merger merges and only before or (for example pit and pet remain distinct).

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Sometimes a phonemic merger causes a certain phoneme to become a restricted phoneme. For example, the fill-feel merger causes to become a restricted phoneme that cannot occur before , although the contrast between and is maintained elsewhere, as in beat vs. bit .

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It is sometimes difficult to determine whether a split or a merger has happened in cases where one dialect has two phonemes corresponding to a single phoneme in another dialect; diachronic research is usually required to determine which dialect is the conservative and which is the innovative. It is also important to note that while some splits and mergers are considered to be part of standard languages, others are not considered standard and may be stigmatized. For example, the fleece merger is considered to be standard, but the line-loin merger is usually stigmatized. In descriptive linguistics, however, the question of which splits and mergers are prestigious and which are stigmatized is irrelevant.

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Occasionally, speakers of one accent may believe the speakers of another accent to have undergone a merger, when in fact there has been a chain shift. For example, an American may hear an Irish person use pronunciations like for born, for form, and for cord and incorrectly conclude that Hiberno-English has undergone the card-cord merger. In fact, there is no merger in Hiberno-English: the words barn, farm, and card are pronounced .

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When phonemic changes occur differently in the standard language and in dialects, the dialect pronunciation is often stigmatized. This can result in hypercorrection, when the dialect speakers attempt to imitate the standard language, but overshoot, as with the foot-strut split, where failing to make the split is stigmatized in Northern England, and speakers of non-splitting accents often try to introduce it into their speech, sometimes resulting in hypercorrections such as pronouncing pudding .

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Phoneme: In oral language, a phoneme is the theoretical basic unit of sound that can be used to distinguish words or morphemes; in sign language, it is a similarly basic unit of hand shape, motion, position, or facial expression. (Formerly termed chereme.) That is, changing a phoneme in a word produces eithe...

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Minimal pair: In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have a distinct meaning. They are used to demonstrate that two phones constitute two separate phonemes in the language....