Abstract
The low-mid unrounded front vowel /ɛː/ in German (as in Bären) has been subject to change since Old High German. It slowly merged with the high-mid unrounded front vowel /eː/, but a reversal seems to have emerged recently. This paper investigates both historical and current change of the Bären vowel. Historical change is investigated through literature-based research; current change is examined through corpus-based research. This paper takes the approach of studying both grammatical context and frequency of use. The two major insights of this study are (i) that the BÄREN vowel has been subject to change for a long time and is still variable, and (ii) that frequency effects interact with grammar in an unexpected way. This interaction shows us how to proceed with hybrid grammar-lexicon modelling and I advocate a combined model of Optimality Theory and Exemplar Theory to account for this type of grammar-frequency interactions.
Highlights
The low-mid unrounded front vowel /ɛ/ in German occurs as an underlying form in words such as Bär ‘bear’ or Ähre ‘ear of corn’, or as the result of umlaut
Some sources mention a clear distinction between the BÄREN and BEEREN vowels; others mention that these sounds were merged
The BÄREN and BEEREN vowels were not even fully merged at the beginning of the 20th century when Viëtor (1909) predicted that the merger would be completed by the end of the 20th century — a prediction that was not borne out, as we will see in the remainder of this article
Summary
The low-mid unrounded front vowel /ɛ/ in German ( the BÄREN vowel) occurs as an underlying form in words such as Bär ‘bear’ or Ähre ‘ear of corn’, or as the result of umlaut. After Old High German, a long period of gradual merger of the BÄREN and BEEREN vowels set in. Tritschler (1913) collected original observations from the 18th century about the pronunciation of the BÄREN vowel. This includes examples is which is pronounced as [e] and the reverse case, where is pronounced as [ɛ]. Regional variation may play a role in the variety of observations (see section 2) All this means that the gradual merger of the BÄREN and BEEREN vowels spanned centuries and was far from complete in the 18th century. The BÄREN and BEEREN vowels were not even fully merged at the beginning of the 20th century when Viëtor (1909) predicted that the merger would be completed by the end of the 20th century — a prediction that was not borne out, as we will see in the remainder of this article
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