The dynamics of near-merger in accommodation

This paper presents data on the near-merger of low back vowels in American English, and shows that neither classical OT nor the variable rule framework correctly predicts the phonetic properties of this near-merger. Both types of analyses fail for the same reason: each can only describe categorical facts of variation. A new account of the near-merger facts is presented within the framework of nonlinear dynamics. In this model, constraints are modeled as competing attractors in an attractor landscape; this formulation allows us to model the grammar’s interaction with context and account for the gradient variable phenomenon of near-merger.