L-vocalization
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Sound change and alternation |
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Fortition |
Dissimilation |
L-vocalization, in
.Types
There are two types of l-vocalization:
- A labiovelar approximant, velar approximant, or back vowel: [ɫ] > [w] or [ɰ] > [u] or [ɯ]
- A front vowel or palatal approximant: [l] > [j] > [i]
West Germanic languages
Examples of L-vocalization can be found in many West Germanic languages, including English, Scots, Dutch, and some German dialects.
Early Modern English
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L-vocalization has occurred, since Early Modern English, in certain -al- and -ol- sequences before coronal or velar consonants, or at the end of a word or morpheme. In those sequences, /al/ became /awl/ and diphthonged to /ɑul/, while /ɔl/ became /ɔwl/ and diphthonged to /ɔul/.[1]
At the end of a word or morpheme, it produced all, ball, call, control, droll, extol, fall, gall, hall, knoll, mall, pall, poll, roll, scroll, small, squall, stall, stroll, swollen, tall, thrall, toll, troll and wall. The word shall did not follow this trend, and remains /ˈʃæl/ today.
Before coronal consonants, it produced Alderney, alter, bald, balderdash, bold, cold, false, falter, fold, gold, halt, hold, malt, molten, mould/mold, old, palsy, salt, shoulder (earlier sholder), smolder, told, wald, Walter and wold (in the sense of "tract of land"). As with shall, the word shalt did not follow the trend and remains /ˈʃælt/ today.
Before /k/, it produced balk, caulk/calk, chalk, Dundalk, falcon, folk, Polk, stalk, talk, walk and yolk.
Words like fault and vault did not undergo L-vocalization but rather L-restoration. They had previously been L-vocalized independently in Old French and lacked the /l/ in Middle English but had it restored by Early Modern English. The word falcon existed simultaneously as homonyms fauco(u)n and falcon in Middle English. The word moult/molt never originally had /l/ to begin with and instead derived from Middle English mout and related etymologically to mutate; the /l/ joined the word intrusively.
L-vocalization established a pattern that would influence the
However, certain words of more recent origin or coining do not exhibit the change and retain short vowels, including Al, alcohol, bal, Cal, calcium, doll, gal, Hal, mal-, Moll, pal, Poll, Sal, talc, and Val.
While in most circumstances L-vocalization stopped there, it continued in -alk and -olk words, with the /l/ disappearing entirely in most accents (with the notable exception of Hiberno-English). The change caused /ɑulk/ to become /ɑuk/, and /ɔulk/ to become /ɔuk/. Even outside Ireland, some of these words have more than one pronunciation that retains the /l/ sound, especially in American English where spelling pronunciations caused partial or full reversal of L-vocalization in a handful of cases:
- caulk/calk can be /ˈkɔːlk/ or /ˈkɔːk/.
- falcon can be /ˈfælkən/, /ˈfɔːlkən/ or /ˈfɔːkən/.
- yolk can be /ˈjoʊlk/ or /ˈjoʊk/; yoke as /ˈjoʊk/ is only conditionally homophonous.
The Great Vowel Shift changed L-vocalized diphthongs to their present pronunciations, with /ɑu/ becoming the monophthong /ɔː/, and /ɔu/ raising to /ou/.
The loss of /l/ in words spelt with -alf, -alm, -alve and -olm did not involve L-vocalization in the same sense, but rather the elision of the consonant and usually the compensatory lengthening of the vowel.
Modern English
More extensive L-vocalization is a notable feature of certain dialects of
For some speakers of the
In Cockney, Estuary English, New Zealand English and Australian English, l-vocalization can be accompanied by
Graham Shorrocks noted extensive L-vocalisation in the dialect of
In the accent of Bristol, syllabic /l/ can be vocalized to /o/, resulting in pronunciations like /ˈbɒto/ (for bottle). By hypercorrection, however, some words originally ending in /o/ were given an /l/: the original name of Bristol was Bristow, but this has been altered by hypercorrection to Bristol.[9] In Plymouth L-vocalisation is also found, but without turning into the Bristol L afterwards.
African-American English dialects may have L-vocalization as well. However, in these dialects, it may be omitted altogether: fool becomes [fuː]. Some English speakers from San Francisco, particularly those of Asian ancestry, also vocalize or omit /l/.[10]
German
In colloquial varieties of modern standard German, including the northern Missingsch, there is a moderate tendency to vocalise coda /l/ into /ɪ̯/, especially in casual speech. This is most commonly found before /ç/ in words like welche ("which") or solche ("such"), which merges with Seuche ("disease"). To a lesser degree, the same may also occur before other dorsal and labial consonants.
A similar but far more regular development exists in many dialects of
In most varieties of the
This type of vocalization of /l/, such as [sɑwts] for Salz, is recently spreading into many Western Swiss German dialects, centred around Emmental.
Middle Scots
In early 15th century Middle Scots /al/ (except, usually, intervocalically and before /d/), /ol/ and often /ul/ changed to /au/, /ou/ and /uː/. For example, all changed to aw, colt to cowt, ful to fou (full) and the rare exception hald to haud (hold).
Middle Dutch
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In early Middle Dutch, /ul/, /ol/ and /al/ merged and vocalised to /ou/ before a dental consonant (/d/ or /t/):
- oud "old" < ald
- hout "wood" < holt
- Wouter, a name < Walter
The combination /yl/, which was derived from /ol/ or /ul/ through umlaut, was not affected by the change, which resulted in alternations that still survive in modern Dutch:
- goud "gold", but gulden "golden"
- schout "sheriff", but schuld "guilt, debt"
- zouden "would" < zolden, past tense of zullen "to will, shall"
- houden "to hold", past tense hield
- wouden "wanted" < wolden, past tense of willen "to want"
Analogy has caused it to be restored in some cases, however:
- wilden reformed next to older wouden
- gelden "to apply", past tense golden, earlier gouden
Modern Dutch
Many speakers of the northern accents of Dutch realize /l/ in the syllable coda as a strongly pharyngealized vowel [ɤ̯ˤ].[11]
Romance languages
French
In pre-Modern French, [l] vocalized to [u] in certain positions:
- between a vowel and a consonant, as in Vulgar Latin caldu(m) "warm, hot" > Old French chaud /tʃaut/
- after a vowel at the end of a word, as in Vulgar Latin bellu(m) > Old French bel > Old French beau /be̯au̯/ "beautiful" (masculine singular; compare the feminine belle /bɛlə/, in which the l occurred between vowels and did not vocalize)
By another sound change, diphthongs resulting from L-vocalization were simplified to monophthongs:
- Modern French chaud [ʃo]
- Modern French beau [bo] (belle [bɛl])
Italo-Romance languages
In early Italian, /l/ vocalized between a preceding consonant and a following vowel to /j/: Latin florem > Italian fiore, Latin clavem > Italian chiave.
Neapolitan shows a pattern similar to French, as [l] is vocalized, especially after [a]. For example, vulgar Latin altu > àutə; alter > àutə; calza > cauzétta (with diminutive suffix). In many areas the vocalized [l] has evolved further into a syllabic [v], thus àvətə, cavəzetta.
Ibero-Romance languages
West Iberian languages such as Spanish and Portuguese had similar changes to those of French, but they were less common: Latin alter became autro and later otro (Spanish) or outro (Portuguese), while caldus remained caldo, and there were also some less regular shifts, like vultur to buitre (Spanish) or abutre (Portuguese).
In
Slavic languages
South Slavic languages
In Standard
In Slovene, historical coda /l/ is still spelled as l but almost always pronounced as [w].
In Bulgarian, young people often pronounce the L of the standard language as [w], especially in an informal context. For example, pronunciations that could be transcribed as [ˈmawko] occur instead of standard [ˈmalko] or [ˈmaɫko] ('a little').
Polish and Sorbian
In Polish and Sorbian languages, almost all historical /ɫ/ have become /w/, even in word-initial and inter-vocalic positions. For example, mały ("small" in both Polish and Sorbian) is pronounced by most speakers as [ˈmawɨ] (compare Russian малый [ˈmalɨj]). The [w] pronunciation, called wałczenie in Polish, dates back to the 16th century, first appearing among the lower classes. It was considered an uncultured accent until the mid-20th century, when the stigma gradually began to fade. As of the 21st century, [ɫ] is still used by some speakers of eastern Polish dialects, especially in Belarus and Lithuania, as well as in Polish-Czech and Polish-Slovak contact dialects in southern Poland.[12]
Ukrainian and Belarusian
In
Uralic languages
Proto-Uralic *l was vocalized to *j in several positions in the
- In Hungarian, former palatal lateral *ʎ (still written by a separate grapheme ly) has become a semivowel /j/.
- A similar phenomenon exists in Swedish, where initial */lj/ (written by lj) has also became /j/.
- Most Zyrian dialects of Komi vocalize syllable-final /l/ in various ways, which may result in [v], [u], or vowel length.
- Veps also vocalizes original syllable-final *l to /u/.
See also
References
- Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. 2006. The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016746-8.
- ^ Jesperson, Otto (1954). A Modern English Grammar vol. 1. London: Bradford & Dickens. pp. 289–297.
- ^ KM Petyt, Dialect & Accent in Industrial West Yorkshire, John Benjamins Publishing Company, page 219
- ISBN 978-0080359434
- ISBN 978-3110175325.
- ISBN 978-0521297196
- S2CID 146349564.
- ISBN 978-0-582-38182-7
- ISBN 3-631-34661-1. (based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sheffield, 1981)
- ^ Harper, Douglas. "Bristol". Online Etymology Dictionary.
- ^ L Hall-Lew and R L Starr, Beyond the 2nd generation: English use among Chinese Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area, English Today: The International Review of the English Language, vol. 26, issue 3, pp. 12-19. [1]
- ISBN 9004103406
- ^ Leksykon terminów i pojęć dialektologicznych : Wałczenie
External links
- Transcribing Estuary English, by J. C. Wells - discusses the phonetics of l-vocalization in Estuary English and Cockney.