Tracing the (re-)emergence of /h/ and /j/ onsets through 350 years of books: Mergers and merger reversals at the interface of phonetics and phonology

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates the (re-)emergence of onset consonants in English loans from French, Latin and Greek, spelt with initial <u> (> /juː/; e.g. union, use), initial <eu> (> /juː/; e.g. eulogy, euphemism), or initial <h> (e.g. habit, homogeneous). It analyses Google Books data, exploiting the occurrence of the article allomorph a (rather than an) as a diagnostic of consonantal realisation. The analysis yields a fine-grained description of the (re-)emergence of consonantal onsets. It shows that their emergence has been a gradual process and has not reached completion yet. On a theoretical level, the paper discusses the interaction between categorical phonological processing and fine-grained phonetic distinctions in an exemplar-based framework. It also sheds light on the question of (near-)mergers and their potential reversibility.