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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2006

William Labov
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Maciej Baranowski
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania

Abstract

This account deals with a stage of chain shifting in North American English in which the usual tendency to preserve margins of security does not seem to apply. Two vowels follow a collision course with a high degree of overlap. The question then arises as to whether a small difference in vowel length can effectively preserve a phonemic distinction.This paper was first given at NWAV 33, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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References

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