L-vocalization

''L''-vocalization, in linguistics, is a process by which a lateral approximant sound such as , or, perhaps more often, velarized , is replaced by a vowel or a semivowel.

Types

There are two types of ''l''-vocalization:
* A labiovelar approximant, velar approximant, or back vowel: > or > or
* A front vowel or palatal approximant: > >

West Germanic languages

Examples of L-vocalization can be found in many West Germanic languages, including English, Scots, Dutch, and some German dialects.

Early Modern English

L-vocalization has occurred, since Early Modern English, in certain ''-al-'' and ''-ol-'' sequences before coronal or velar consonants, or at the end of a word or morpheme. In those sequences, became and diphthonged to , while became and diphthonged to .

At the end of a word or morpheme, it produced ''all'', ''ball'', ''call'', ''control'', ''droll'', ''extol'', ''fall'', ''gall'', ''hall'', ''knoll'', ''mall'', ''pall'', ''poll'', ''roll'', ''scroll'', ''small'', ''squall'', ''stall'', ''stroll'', ''swollen'', ''tall'', ''thrall'', ''toll'', ''troll'' and ''wall''. The word ''shall'' did not follow this trend, and remains today.

Before coronal consonants, it produced '' Alderney'', ''alter'', ''bald'', ''balderdash'', ''bold'', ''cold'', ''false'', ''falter'', ''fold'', ''gold'', ''halt'', ''hold'', ''malt'', ''molten'', ''mould/mold'', ''old'', ''palsy'', ''salt'', ''shoulder'' (earlier ''sholder''), ''smolder'', ''told'', '' wald'', ''Walter'' and ''wold'' (in the sense of "tract of land"). As with ''shall'', the word ''shalt'' did not follow the trend and remains today.

Before , it produced ''balk'', ''caulk/calk'', ''chalk'', ''Dundalk'', ''falcon'', ''folk'', ''Polk'', ''stalk'', ''talk'', ''walk'' and ''yolk''.

Words like ''fault'' and ''vault'' did not undergo L-vocalization but rather L-restoration. They had previously been L-vocalized independently in Old French and lacked the in Middle English but had it restored by Early Modern English. The word ''falcon'' existed simultaneously as homonyms ''fauco(u)n'' and ''falcon'' in Middle English. The word ''moult/molt'' never originally had to begin with and instead derived from Middle English ''mout'' and related etymologically to ''mutate''; the joined the word intrusively.

L-vocalization established a pattern that would influence the spelling pronunciations of some relatively more recent loanwords like ''Balt'', ''Malta'', ''polder'', ''waltz'' and '' Yalta''. It also influenced English spelling reform efforts, explaining the American English ''mold'' and ''molt'' as opposed to the traditional ''mould'' and ''moult''.

However, certain words of more recent origin or coining do not exhibit the change and retain short vowels, including ''Al'', ''alcohol'', ''bal'', ''Cal'', ''calcium'', ''doll'', ''gal'', ''Hal'', ''mal-'', ''Moll'', ''pal'', ''Poll'', ''Sal'', ''talc'', and ''Val''.

While in most circumstances L-vocalization stopped there, it continued in ''-alk'' and ''-olk'' words, with the disappearing entirely in most accents (with the notable exception of Hiberno-English). The change caused to become , and to become . Even outside Ireland, some of these words have more than one pronunciation that retains the sound, especially in American English where spelling pronunciations caused partial or full reversal of L-vocalization in a handful of cases:
* ''caulk/calk'' can be or .
* ''falcon'' can be , or .
* ''yolk'' can be or ; ''yoke'' as is only conditionally homophonous.

The Great Vowel Shift changed L-vocalized diphthongs to their present pronunciations, with becoming the monophthong , and raising to .

The loss of in words spelt with ''-alf'', ''-alm'', ''-alve'' and ''-olm'' did not involve L-vocalization in the same sense, but rather the elision of the consonant and usually the compensatory lengthening of the vowel.

Modern English

More extensive L-vocalization is a notable feature of certain dialects of English, including Cockney, Estuary English, New York English, New Zealand English, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia English and Australian English, in which an sound occurring at the end of a word (but usually not when the next word begins with a vowel and is pronounced without a pause) or before a consonant is pronounced as some sort of close back vocoid: , or . The resulting sound may not always be rounded. The precise phonetic quality varies. It can be heard occasionally in the dialect of the English East Midlands, where words ending in -old can be pronounced . K. M. Petyt (1985) noted this feature in the traditional dialect of West Yorkshire but said it has died out. However, in recent decades, l-vocalization has been spreading outwards from London and the southeast; John C. Wells argued that it is probable that it will become the standard pronunciation in England over the next one hundred years, which Petyt criticised in a book review.

For some speakers of the General American accent, before (sometimes also before ) may be pronounced as .

In Cockney, Estuary English, New Zealand English and Australian English, l-vocalization can be accompanied by phonemic mergers of vowels before the vocalized , so that ''real'', ''reel'' and ''rill'', which are distinct in most dialects of English, are homophones as .

Graham Shorrocks noted extensive L-vocalisation in the dialect of Bolton, Greater Manchester, and commented, "many, perhaps, associate such a quality more with Southern dialects, than with Lancashire/Greater Manchester."

In the accent of Bristol, syllabic can be vocalized to , resulting in pronunciations like (for ''bottle''). By hypercorrection, however, some words originally ending in were given an : the original name of Bristol was ''Bristow'', but this has been altered by hypercorrection to ''Bristol''. In Plymouth L-vocalisation is also found, but without turning into the Bristol L afterwards.

African-American English dialects may have L-vocalization as well. However, in these dialects, it may be omitted altogether: fool becomes . Some English speakers from San Francisco, particularly those of Asian ancestry, also vocalize or omit .

German

In colloquial varieties of modern standard German, including the northern Missingsch, there is a moderate tendency to vocalise coda into , especially in casual speech. This is most commonly found before in words like ''welche'' ("which") or '' solche'' ("such"), which merges with '' Seuche'' ("disease"). To a lesser degree, the same may also occur before other dorsal and labial consonants.

A similar but far more regular development exists in many dialects of Austro-Bavarian, including Munich and Vienna. Here, etymological in the coda is vocalised into or in all cases.
For example, Standard German ("much") corresponds to in Bavarian and in Viennese.

In most varieties of the Bernese dialect of Swiss German, historical in coda position has become and historical (only occurring intervocalically) has become , whereas intervocalic persists. The absence of vocalization was one of the distinctive features of the now-uncommon upper-class variety. It is still missing from dialects spoken in the Bernese Highlands and, historically, in the Schwarzenburg area. For example, the Bernese German name of the city of Biel is pronounced .

This type of vocalization of , such as for ''Salz'', is recently spreading into many Western Swiss German dialects, centred around Emmental.

Middle Scots

In early 15th century Middle Scots (except, usually, intervocalically and before ), and often changed to , and . For example, changed to , to , to (full) and the rare exception to (hold).

Middle Dutch

In early Middle Dutch, , and merged and vocalised to before a dental consonant ( or ):
* "old" <
* "wood" <
* , a name <
The combination , which was derived from or through umlaut, was not affected by the change, which resulted in alternations that still survive in modern Dutch:
* "gold", but "golden"
* "sheriff", but "guilt, debt"
* "would" < , past tense of "to will, shall"
Ablaut variations of the same root also caused alternations, with some forms preserving the and others losing it:
* "to hold", past tense
* "wanted" < ''wolden'', past tense of "to want"
Analogy has caused it to be restored in some cases, however:
* reformed next to older
* "to apply", past tense , earlier ''gouden''

Modern Dutch

Many speakers of the northern accents of Dutch realize in the syllable coda as a strongly pharyngealized vowel .

Romance languages

French

In pre-Modern French, vocalized to in certain positions:
*between a vowel and a consonant, as in Vulgar Latin "warm, hot" > Old French
*after a vowel at the end of a word, as in Vulgar Latin > Old French > Old French "beautiful" (masculine singular; compare the feminine , in which the occurred between vowels and did not vocalize)

By another sound change, diphthongs resulting from L-vocalization were simplified to monophthongs:
*Modern French
*Modern French ( )

Italo-Romance languages

In early Italian, vocalized between a preceding consonant and a following vowel to : Latin > Italian , Latin > Italian .

Neapolitan shows a pattern similar to French, as is vocalized, especially after . For example, vulgar Latin > ; > ; > (with diminutive suffix). In many areas the vocalized has evolved further into a syllabic , thus , .

Ibero-Romance languages

West Iberian languages such as Spanish and Portuguese had similar changes to those of French, but they were less common: Latin became ''autro'' and later (Spanish) or (Portuguese), while remained , and there were also some less regular shifts, like to (Spanish) or (Portuguese).

In Portuguese, historical ( in the syllable coda) has become for most Brazilian dialects, and it is common in rural communities of Alto Minho and Madeira. For those dialects, the words (adjective, "bad") and (adverb, "poorly", "badly") are homophones and both pronounced as ~, while standard European Portuguese prescribes . The pair is distinguished only by the antonyms ( ~ and ~).

Slavic languages

South Slavic languages

In Standard Serbo-Croatian, historical ''in coda position'' has become and is now so spelled at all times in Serbian and most often in Croatian. For example, the native name of Belgrade is (Croatia also has a town of ). However, in some final positions and in nouns only, Croatian keeps the by analogy with other forms: , , vs. Serbian , , (meaning "table", "ox" and "salt" respectively). This does not apply to adjectives () or past participles of verbs (), which are the same in Standard Croatian as in Standard Serbian.

In Slovene, historical coda is still spelled as but almost always pronounced as .

In Bulgarian, young people often pronounce the L of the standard language as , especially in an informal context. For example, pronunciations that could be transcribed as occur instead of standard or ('a little').

Polish and Sorbian

In Polish and Sorbian languages, almost all historical have become , even in word-initial and inter-vocalic positions. For example, ("small" in both Polish and Sorbian) is pronounced by most speakers as (compare Russian ). The pronunciation, called '' wałczenie'' in Polish, dates back to the 16th century, first appearing among the lower classes. It was considered an uncultured accent until the mid-20th century, when the stigma gradually began to fade. As of the 21st century, is still used by some speakers of eastern Polish dialects, especially in Belarus and Lithuania, as well as in Polish-Czech and Polish-Slovak contact dialects in southern Poland.Leksykon terminów i pojęć dialektologicznych : Wałczenie
/ref>

Ukrainian and Belarusian

In Ukrainian and Belarusian, in the syllable coda, historical has become (written in Ukrainian and in Belarusian, now commonly analyzed as coda allophone of –). For example, the Ukrainian and Belarusian word for "wolf" is and as opposed to Russian . The same happens in the past tense of verbs: Russian , Ukrainian , Belarusian "gave". The is kept at the end of nouns (Russian and Belarusian , Ukrainian "table") and before suffixes (before historical in the word middle): Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian "stick".

Uralic languages

Proto-Uralic *l was vocalized to *j in several positions in the Proto-Samoyed language. Several modern Uralic languages also exhibit l-vocalization:
* In Hungarian, former palatal lateral (still written by a separate grapheme ) has become a semivowel .
* Most Zyrian dialects of Komi vocalize syllable-final in various ways, which may result in , , or vowel length.
* Veps also vocalizes original syllable-final *l to .

See also

* Ł–l merger
* Regional accents of English
* Ł
* Elmer Fudd
* Tweety

References

*Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. 2006. ''The Atlas of North American English''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. .

External links

Transcribing Estuary English, by J. C. Wells
- discusses the phonetics of l-vocalization in Estuary English and Cockney.

{{DEFAULTSORT:L-Vocalization
English phonology
Dialects of English
Splits and mergers in English phonology
American English