TY - JOUR
T1 - Variable stem-final fricative voicing in American English plurals
T2 - Different pa[~ θ]s of change
AU - MacKenzie, Laurel
PY - 2018/7/1
Y1 - 2018/7/1
N2 - This paper investigates analogical leveling in a small set of English nouns that have irregular plural forms. In these nouns, all of which end in a voiceless fricative, the fricative standardly voices in the plural (e.g., wolf-wol[v]es, path-pas, house-hou[z]es). Using audio data from three large spoken corpora of American English, I demonstrate that this stem-final fricative voicing is variable and conditioned by a number of factors, most notably the identity of the stem-final fricative-with/f/-final lexemes (e.g., wolf),/θ/-final lexemes (e.g., path), and the/s/-final lexeme house all patterning differently in apparent time- A nd the frequency of a lexeme in its plural form. I argue that the way these two factors affect the variation is reminiscent of the patterns seen in children's first language acquisition errors, providing a potential source for the variation and underscoring the importance of considering morphophonological factors when accounting for patterns of change.
AB - This paper investigates analogical leveling in a small set of English nouns that have irregular plural forms. In these nouns, all of which end in a voiceless fricative, the fricative standardly voices in the plural (e.g., wolf-wol[v]es, path-pas, house-hou[z]es). Using audio data from three large spoken corpora of American English, I demonstrate that this stem-final fricative voicing is variable and conditioned by a number of factors, most notably the identity of the stem-final fricative-with/f/-final lexemes (e.g., wolf),/θ/-final lexemes (e.g., path), and the/s/-final lexeme house all patterning differently in apparent time- A nd the frequency of a lexeme in its plural form. I argue that the way these two factors affect the variation is reminiscent of the patterns seen in children's first language acquisition errors, providing a potential source for the variation and underscoring the importance of considering morphophonological factors when accounting for patterns of change.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0954394518000091
DO - 10.1017/S0954394518000091
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85055528652
SN - 0954-3945
VL - 30
SP - 147
EP - 174
JO - Language Variation and Change
JF - Language Variation and Change
IS - 2
ER -