Phonemic merger is a loss of distinction between phonemes. Occasionally, the term reduction refers to phonemic merger. It is not to be confused with the meaning of the word "reduction" in phonetics, such as vowel reduction, but phonetic changes may contribute to phonemic mergers.
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If a phoneme moves in acoustic space, but its neighbors do not move in a chain shift, a phonemic merger may occur. In that case, a single phoneme results where an earlier stage of the language had two phonemes (that is also called phonetic neutralization). A well known example of a phonemic merger in American English is the cot–caught merger by which the vowel phonemes and (illustrated by the words cot and caught respectively) have merged into a single phoneme in some accents.
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The term yeísmo comes from the Spanish name of the letter (ye"La "i griega" se llamará "ye"" Cuba Debate. 2010-11-05. Retrieved 25 November 2010.). Now, over 90% of Spanish dialects exhibit this phonemic merger. Similar mergers exist in other languages, such as French, Italian, Hungarian, Catalan, Basque, Portuguese or Galician, with different social considerations.
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The symbol stands for a voiceless sibilant like the s of English sick, while represents a voiceless interdental fricative like the th of English think. In some cases where the phonemic merger would render words homophonic in Latin America, one member of the pair is frequently replaced by a synonym or derived form—e.g. caza replaced by , or ('to boil'), homophonic with ('to sew'), replaced by . For more on seseo, see González-Bueno.
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Documents from as early as the 15th century show occasional evidence of sporadic confusion between the phoneme (generally spelled ⟨y⟩) and the palatal lateral (spelled ⟨ll⟩). The distinction is maintained in spelling, but in most dialects of Modern Spanish, the two have merged into the same, non-lateral palatal sound. Thus, for example, most Spanish-speakers have the same pronunciation for haya (from the verb haber) as for halla (from hallar). The phonemic merger is called yeísmo, based on one name for the letter ⟨y⟩.
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Early Modern Spanish (also called classical Spanish or Golden Age Spanish, especially in literary contexts) is the variant of Spanish used between the end of the fifteenth century and the end of the seventeenth century, marked by a series of phonological and grammatical changes that transformed Old Spanish into Modern Spanish. Notable changes from Old Spanish to Early Modern Spanish include: (1) a readjustment of the sibilants (including their devoicing and changes in their place of articulation), (2) the phonemic merger known as yeísmo, (3) the rise of new second-person pronouns, (4) the emergence of the "se lo" construction for the sequence of third-person indirect and direct object pronouns, and (5) new restrictions on the order of clitic pronouns. Early Modern Spanish corresponds to the period of Spanish colonization of the Americas, and thus it forms the historical basis of all varieties of New World Spanish. Meanwhile, Judaeo-Spanish preserves some archaisms of Old Spanish that disappeared from the rest of the variants, such as the presence of voiced sibilants and the maintenance of the phonemes and .
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"Belgian-American Research Collection" , University of Wisconsin and Quantity-to-Quality Contrast Shift and Phonemic Merger in Wisconsin Walloon High Front Vowels by Kelly Biers and Ellen Osterhaus, Selected Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA 9), ed. Kelly Biers and Joshua R. Brown, 11-19. Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Out of a total of 11,828 households, 58.10% were married couples living together, 6.50% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.40% were non-families. 28.10% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.70% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and the average family size was 2.84. For every 100 females there were 97.10 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.50 males. In the county, the population was spread out, with 22.10% under the age of 18 (a decrease from 25.9% being under the age of 18 in the 1990 censusTable 1.
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