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The Dolgopolsky list is a word list compiled by Aharon Dolgopolsky in 1964 based on a study of 140 languages from across Eurasia. [1] It lists the 15 lexical items that he found have the most semantic stability, i.e. the 15 words least likely to be replaced.
As a result of this merger the words rabbit and abbot rhyme. The kit split is a split of EME /ɪ/ found in South African English, where kit [kɪt] and bit [bət] do not rhyme. The pin–pen merger is a conditional phonemic merger of /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ before the nasal consonants [m], [n] and [ŋ].
A split in phonology is where a once identical phoneme diverges in different instances. A merger is the opposite: where two (or more) phonemes merge and become indistinguishable. In English, this happens most often with vowels, although not exclusively. See phonemic differentiation for more information.
The name FOOT – STRUT split refers to the lexical sets introduced by Wells (1982) and identifies the vowel phonemes in the words. From a historical point of view, however, the name is inappropriate because the word foot did not have short /ʊ/ when the split happened, but it underwent shortening only later.
The goat split is a process that has affected London dialects, Australian English, and Estuary English. [35] [36] In the first phase of the split, the diphthong of goat /əʊ/ developed an allophone [ɒʊ] before "dark" (nonprevocalic) /l/. Thus goal no longer had the same vowel as goat ([ɡɒʊɫ] vs. [ɡəʊʔ]). [35]
This affects words such as lamb and plumb, as well as derived forms with suffixes, such as lambs, lambing, plumbed, plumber. By analogy with words like these, certain other words ending in /m/, which had no historical /b/ sound, had a silent letter b added to their spelling by way of hypercorrection. Such words include limb and crumb. [35]
The LOT–CLOTH split is the result of a late 17th-century sound change that lengthened /ɒ/ to [ɒː] before voiceless fricatives, and also before /n/ in the words gone and sometimes on. It was ultimately raised and merged with /ɔː/ of words like thought , although in some accents that vowel is actually open [ɒː] .
The TRAP – BATH split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in Southern England English (including Received Pronunciation), Australian English, New Zealand English, Indian English, South African English and to a lesser extent in some Welsh English as well as older Northeastern New England English by which the Early Modern English phoneme /æ/ was lengthened in certain environments and ...