Merger Avoidance and Lexical Reconstruction

Abstract

This paper offers a model of the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) within Optimality Theory (OT) providing a discussion of how language change can be dealt with in OT. The paper addresses the question of language change in general and of chain shifts specifically. We propose that language change can be formalized as taking place in three stages: an inert stage depicting a specific ranking of universal constraints; a second stage where at least one constraint has been re-ranked; and a final stage, where the next generation of speakers reanalyzes the output so as to obtain a more harmonic relation with the input. The paper aims at providing a theoretical model of language change and is not meant to be a philological contribution to the studies on the GVS. As a consequence, the data set used for the OT analysis has been simplified, abstracting away from phonetic and dialectal differences. The advantage of the present analysis consists in motivating the GVS changes by means of a combination of established lengthening phenomena and markedness considerations involving the instability of long mid lax vowels (Miglio 1999). This motivates what we believe to be a “push-chain” effect and does not rely exclusively on phonetic diphthongization followed by reinterpretation, as previous pull-chain hypotheses did. Moreover, our analysis is consistent with the typological predictions made by the factorial ranking of well-motivated constraints (Morén 1999). According to our analysis, the GVS change is couched in a theory of acquisition and is not merely an arbitrary/abstract adult grammar change.