L-vocalization, in linguistics, is a process by which a lateral approximant sound such as , or, perhaps more often, velarized , is replaced by a vowel or a semivowel.
Types
There are two types of
l-vocalization:
-
A labiovelar approximant, velar approximant, or back vowel: > or > or
-
A front vowel or palatal approximant: > >
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
L-vocalization has occurred, since Early Modern English, in certain
-al- and
-ol- sequences before coronal or
velar consonant , or at the end of a word or morpheme. In those sequences, became and
to , while became and diphthonged to .
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 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, , Walter and wold (in the sense of "tract of land"). As with shall, the word shalt did not follow the trend and remains today.
Before , it produced balk, Balkans, 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 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 to begin with and instead derived from Middle English mout and related etymologically to mutate; the joined the word intrusively.
L-vocalization established a pattern that would influence the spelling pronunciations of some relatively more recent loanwords like Balt, Malta, polder, waltz and Yalta. It also influenced English spelling reform efforts, explaining the American English mold and molt as opposed to the traditional mould and moult.
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 disappearing entirely in most accents (with the notable exception of Hiberno-English). The change caused to become , and to become . Even outside Ireland, some of these words have more than one pronunciation that retains the 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 or .
-
falcon can be , or .
-
yolk can be or ; yoke as is only conditionally homophone.
The Great Vowel Shift changed L-vocalized diphthongs to their present pronunciations, with becoming the monophthong , and raising to .
The loss of 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
English language, including
Cockney,
Estuary English, New York English, New Zealand English, Pittsburgh English, Philadelphia English and Australian English, in which an sound occurring at the end of a word (but usually not when the next word begins with a vowel and is pronounced without a pause) or before a consonant is pronounced as some sort of close back vocoid: , or . The resulting sound may not always be rounded. The precise phonetic quality varies. It can be heard occasionally in the dialect of the English
East Midlands, where words ending in -old can be pronounced . K. M. Petyt (1985) noted this feature in the traditional dialect of
West Yorkshire but said it has died out.
[KM Petyt, Dialect & Accent in Industrial West Yorkshire, John Benjamins Publishing Company, page 219] However, in recent decades, l-vocalization has been spreading outwards from London and the southeast;
[Asher, R.E., Simpson, J.M.Y. (1993). The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Pergamon. p. 4043. ][Kortmann, Bernd et al. (2004). A Handbook of Varieties of English. Mouton de Gruyter. p. 196. .] John C. Wells argued that it is probable that it will become the standard pronunciation in England over the next one hundred years,
[Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge University Press. p. 259. ] which Petyt criticised in a book review.
For some speakers of the General American accent, before (sometimes also before ) may be pronounced as .
In Cockney, Estuary English, New Zealand English and Australian English, l-vocalization can be accompanied by phonemic mergers of vowels before the vocalized , so that real, reel and rill, which are distinct in most dialects of English, are homophones as .
Graham Shorrocks noted extensive L-vocalisation in the dialect of Bolton, Greater Manchester, and commented, "many, perhaps, associate such a quality more with Southern dialects, than with Lancashire/Greater Manchester."[ (based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sheffield, 1981)]
In the accent of Bristol, syllabic can be vocalized to , resulting in pronunciations like (for bottle). By hypercorrection, however, some words originally ending in were given an : the original name of Bristol was Bristow, but this has been altered by hypercorrection to Bristol.
African-American English dialects may have L-vocalization as well. However, in these dialects, it may be omitted altogether: fool becomes . Some English speakers from San Francisco, particularly those of Asian ancestry, also vocalize or omit .[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]]
German
In colloquial varieties of modern
standard German, including the northern Missingsch, there is a moderate tendency to vocalise coda into , especially in casual speech. This is most commonly found before in words like
("which") or ("such"), which merges with
("disease"). To a lesser degree, the same may also occur before other
dorsal consonant and
labial consonant.
A similar but far more regular development exists in many dialects of Austro-Bavarian, including Munich and Vienna. Here, etymological in the coda is vocalised into i or y in all cases.
For example, Standard German viel ("much") corresponds to vui in Munich, vey in parts of the Southeast, vii North, West and East of Salzburg throughout the state of Salzburg, into Bavaria and into Upper Austria,
In most varieties of the Bernese German dialect of Swiss German, historical in coda position has become and historical (only occurring intervocalically) has become , whereas intervocalic persists. The absence of vocalization was one of the distinctive features of the now-uncommon upper-class variety. It is still missing from dialects spoken in the Bernese Highlands and, historically, in the Schwarzenburg area. For example, the Bernese German name of the city of Biel is pronounced .
This type of vocalization of , such as for Salz, is recently spreading into many Western Swiss German dialects, centred around Emmental.
Middle Scots
In early 15th century
Middle Scots (except, usually, intervocalically and before ), and often changed to , and . For example, all changed to aw, colt to cowt, ful to fou (full) and the rare exception hald to haud (hold).
Middle Dutch
In early Middle Dutch, , and merged and vocalised to before a dental consonant ( or ):
-
schouder "shoulder" < schulder
-
oud "old" < ald
-
hout "wood" < holt
-
Wouter, a name < Walter
The combination , which was derived from or 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"
Ablaut variations of the same root also caused alternations, with some forms preserving the and others losing it:
-
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 in the syllable coda as a strongly pharyngealized vowel .
L-vocalization increased significantly from 1957, especially among women and people from Holland and Utrecht areas.
In some dialects, instead of vocalization, it is more common to pronounce a clearer ə (a Svarabhakti vocal) after a vowel followed by a l or r: melk (milk) becomes mel·ək.
Romance languages
French
In pre-Modern French, vocalized to in certain positions:
-
between a vowel and a consonant, as in Vulgar Latin caldu(m) "warm, hot" > Old French chaud
-
after a vowel at the end of a word, as in Vulgar Latin bellu(m) > Old French bel > Old French beau "beautiful" (masculine singular; compare the feminine belle , 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
-
Modern French beau (belle )
Italo-Romance languages
In early
Italian language, vocalized between a preceding consonant and a following vowel to : Latin florem > Italian fiore, Latin clavem > Italian chiave.
Neapolitan shows a pattern similar to French, as is vocalized, especially after . For example, vulgar Latin altu > àutə; alter > àutə; calza > cauzétta (with diminutive suffix). In many areas the vocalized has evolved further into a syllabic , thus àvətə, cavəzetta.
Ibero-Romance languages
West Iberian languages such as
Spanish language 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 Portuguese, historical ( in the syllable coda) has become for most Brazilian dialects, and it is common in rural communities of Alto Minho and Madeira. For those dialects, the words mau (adjective, "bad") and mal (adverb, "poorly", "badly") are homophones and both pronounced as ~, while standard European Portuguese prescribes . The pair is distinguished only by the antonyms (bom ~ and bem ).
Slavic languages
South Slavic languages
In Standard Serbo-Croatian, historical
in coda position has become and is now so spelled at all times in
Serbian language and most often in Croatian. For example, the native name of
Belgrade is Be
ograd (Croatia also has a town of Bi
ograd). However, in some final positions and in nouns only, Croatian keeps the by analogy with other forms: stol, vol, sol vs. Serbian sto, vo, so (meaning "table", "ox" and "salt" respectively). This does not apply to adjectives (topao) or past participles of verbs (stigao), which are the same in Standard Croatian as in Standard Serbian.
In Slovene language, historical coda is still spelled as l but almost always pronounced as .
In Bulgarian, the phoneme is pronounced as a labio-velar approximant in all positions in certain urban dialects, particularly among young people. For example, words such as italic=yes are pronounced . This feature is also associated with certain traditional dialects, mostly around Pernik, though it is thought that it evolved independently in the rest of the country. Still, it is more widespread in western dialects.
Polish and Sorbian
In
Polish language and Sorbian languages, almost all historical have become , even in word-initial and inter-vocalic positions. For example, mały ("small" in both Polish and Sorbian) is pronounced by most speakers as (compare
Russian language малый ). The 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, is still used by some speakers of eastern Polish dialects, especially in
Belarus and
Lithuania, as well as in Polish-Czech and Polish-Slovak
Language contact in southern Poland.
[ Leksykon terminów i pojęć dialektologicznych : Wałczenie]
Ukrainian and Belarusian
In Ukrainian and Belarusian, in the
syllable coda, historical has become (written in Ukrainian and in Belarusian, now commonly analyzed as coda allophone of –). For example, the Ukrainian and Belarusian word for "wolf" is вовк and воўк as opposed to
Russian language вoлк . The same happens in the past tense of verbs: Russian дал , Ukrainian дав , Belarusian даў "gave". The is kept at the end of nouns (Russian and Belarusian стoл , Ukrainian стіл "table") and before suffixes (before historical in the word middle): Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian палка "stick".
Uralic languages
Proto-Uralic *l was vocalized to *j in several positions in the Proto-Samoyed language. Several modern Uralic languages also exhibit l-vocalization:
-
In Hungarian, former palatal lateral (still written by a separate grapheme Hungarian ly]]) has become a semivowel .
-
A similar phenomenon exists in Swedish language, where initial */lj/ (written by lj) has also became /j/ (this does not apply to Swedish spoken in Finland).
-
Most Zyrian dialects of Komi vocalize syllable-final in various ways, which may result in , , or vowel length.
-
Veps language also vocalizes original syllable-final *l to .
See also
-
Ł–l merger
-
Regional accents of English
-
Ł
-
Lambdacism
-
Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. 2006. The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. .
External links
