While examples have been clearly attested in the literature, the reversal of a merger is an
uncommon occurrence that apparently contradicts principles underlying sound change …

Sound change in the form of plosive mergers has been reported for a variety of languages
and is the result of a reduction of phonetic distance between two (or more) sounds. The …

This paper shows (a) how the concept of the linguistic market can be operationalized as an
index to enable its inclusion as a factor in variationist analysis and (b) how this index helps …

The significance of the phonological neighborhood on lexical processing has been
documented by decades of studies in the field, and it has become clear that the …

In Austrian Standard German (ASG), the vowels in the words Beeren and Bären are usually
regarded to be merged. Some acoustic studies on ASG also suggest a merger between the …

The low-mid unrounded front vowel/ɛː/in German (as in Bären) has been subject to
change since Old High German. It slowly merged with the high-mid unrounded front …