| dc.description.abstract | Multiple factors have been argued to have caused, reinforced, or contributed to the phonemicization of the fricative voicing contrast in English; factors such as the influx of French loanwords, apocope and degemination. Nevertheless, these factors alone do not appear to fully explain phonemicization and our understanding of their impact is limited. The present study addresses two hypotheses regarding the prerequisite for the phonemicization of the voiced fricatives: the hypothesis that dialect contact led to familiarity with initial voiced fricatives in the area without initial fricative voicing, aiding the acceptance of initial voiced fricatives in French loanwords (Lass, 1992, p. 59), and the hypothesis that the fricatives already had distinct phonological representations in Old English, with the influx of French loanwords, apocope, and degemination merely imposing an unpredictable distribution (Honeybone & Iosad, 2013). An analysis of the spelling of the labiodental fricative in early Middle English indicates that initial fricative voicing occurred in the South and the South West Midlands in accordance with previous analyses of orthography (see Fisiak, 1984 for an overview). However, several spellings likely indicating voicing were found in texts of the East Midlands, which might indicate spread of voiced initial fricatives via dialect contact. French loanwords with the voiced labiodental fricative were found in texts localised in different parts of the country and primarily in later texts. It is argued that while the dialect contact hypothesis may not be rejected and dialect contact likely played a role in phonemicization, the theory that phonologization preceded phonemicization offers a more parsimonious explanation. | |
