Searching for homophony avoidance in English coronal stop deletion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20399733 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Aaron J Dinkin (0000-0002-2097-4019, San Diego State University, corresponding author), Meredith Tamminga (0000-0001-7374-2206, University of Pennsylvania) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Phonology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0952-6757 • E-ISSN: 1469-8188 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0952675724000216 |
| OpenAlex | W4407042135 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
It is well-known that English variable word-final coronal stop deletion (CSD) is less likely to occur when the final coronal stop instantiates the inflectional suffix -ed . It is sometimes hypothesised that the reason for this effect is to avoid the homophony between past and present tenses that would result from the suffix -ed being deleted. This reasoning suggests another hypothesis: that CSD should also be disfavoured when it would create homophony between two distinct lexical items, such as bald and ball . In this squib, we test that hypothesis on data from a corpus of Philadelphia English. We find no evidence that probability of CSD is affected by homophony avoidance between lexical items. This weakens the case that homophony avoidance is at play in disfavouring CSD in the -ed case, and may have implications for the theory of homophony avoidance in phonology in general
Business · Coronal plane · Linguistics · Blind Source Separation Techniques · Computer Science · Coronary Artery Anomalies · Employee Welfare and Language Studies · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology · Anatomy
Moving beyond Kučera and Francis
Welcome to the Tidyverse
Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4
The goals of linguistic theory
Homophony avoidance in the grammar
Inhibited sound change
Td -deletion in British English
New and old puzzles in the morphological conditioning of coronal stop deletion
Explanation in variable phonology
| Highly cited | No |
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