2022/03/01 by Matt Hunt Gardner, Rebecca Roeder · 1 voice · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Phonetics and Phonology Research #Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies
paper · doi:10.1017/s0954394522000059
openalex publication_date 2022/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Abstract This paper provides a unified phonologically motivated explanation for the movement of trap , dress , and kit following the low-back merger in North American English (i.e., the Canadian Shift, California Shift, Low Back Merger Shift, Third Shift, etc.). The explanation puts forth that the three-way merger of lot , palm , and thought results in the loss of the [+Front] feature specification for trap , opening the door for dispersion focalization to pull trap toward the low central region of the vowel space. Analogy then prompts all other [−Peripheral] vowels, including strut and foot , to centralize. Crucial to this explanation is that the low-back merger includes palm , not just lot and thought . Evidence for this requirement is presented in a phonetic analysis of older speakers from conservative Victoria, British Columbia. The explanation presented here reconciles an earlier proposal (Roeder & Gardner, 2013) with Fruehwald's (2017) observation that parallel movement requires a shared feature specification.