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영어

Regional Traits of the Low Back Merger in Modern American English: On the basis of Actuation & Implementation Factors Choong-Yon Park (Gachon University) The purpose of this study is to find out regional traits of the low back merger that loses phonetic contrast between the vowels /ɑ/ as in cot and /ɔ/ as in caught in Modern American English, on the basis of actuation and implementation factors. The actuation factors responsible for triggering the merger /ɒ/ may be discussed in terms of internal and external factors. In some regions the merger could not be attributed to either of the two mechanisms proposed in the traditional literature that represents phonetically gradual approximation and lexically gradual transfer, since it shows its own way of progress, merger-by-expansion. An analysis of demographic and linguistic data from eastern Pennsylvania reveals that the result of the merger is a new phoneme with the combined phonetic range of the two phonemes that merged rather than a vowel intermediate between them in quality. On the basis of the observations, a mechanism of merger called "merger-by-expansion" is defined as the lexical constraints on the distribution of two phonemes /ɔ:/ and /ɑ:/ disappear as a result of contact with people who do not observe them, and a new phoneme /ɒ:/ occur. Merger-by-approximation requires no external trigger and proceeds below the level of consciousness. The agents of the merger are native speakers, and the suspension of phonemic contrast is the result of gradual phonetic change which may be occurred by approximation of the two phonemes to be merged. The actuation and diffusion of the low back merger in Kentucky and Cincinnati shows the internal factors such as near-merger in actuation and merger-by-approximation in implication.