2026-06-29T01:34:10Zhttps://docta.ucm.es/rest/oai/request

oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/1022662025-03-18T12:02:57Zcom_20.500.14352_14col_20.500.14352_15

00925njm 22002777a 4500 dc Molina García, Álvaro author 2023 ABSTRACT: The near-merger hypothesis has served to explain many situations where other explanations have not sufficed, including mainly those where apparently completed mergers have been reversed. However, the situation in the city of Malaga (Spain) calls for a critical review of the main pitfalls of this hypothesis and for a sociolinguistic reorganisation of sound change to allow for near-demergers. The present work focusses on the reversal of the coronal fricative /θ/ and /s/ merger (CASA ‘house’ = CAZA ‘hunting’) that has been widely observed in Malaga. Acoustic-perceptual analysis of the realisations of 54 speakers reveals that a completed phonological merger can, in fact, revert and that acoustic cues do not necessarily indicate a near-merger. 2300-9969 10.1515/opli-2022-0249 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/102266 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opli-2022-0249/html https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/opli/html https://www.degruyter.com/ https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0249 The pitfalls of near-mergers: a sociophonetic approach to near-demergers in the Malaga /θ/ vs /s/ split