Exemplar Dynamics and Sound Merger in Language

We develop a model of phonological contrast in natural language. Specifically, the model describes the maintenance of contrast between different words in a language, and the elimination of such contrast when sounds in the words merge. An example of such a contrast is that provided by the two vowel sounds i and e, which distinguish pairs of words such as pin and pen in most dialects of English. We model language users’ knowledge of the pronunciation of a word as consisting of collections of labeled exemplars stored in memory. Each exemplar is a detailed memory of a particular utterance of the word in question. In our model an exemplar is represented by one or two phonetic variables along with a weight indicating how strong the memory of the utterance is. Starting from an exemplar-level model we derive integro-differential equations for the evolution of exemplar density fields in phonetic space. Using these latter equations we investigate under what conditions two sounds merge, thus eliminating the contrast. Our main conclusion is that for the preservation of phonological contrast, it is necessary that anomalous utterances of a given word are discarded, and not merely stored in memory as an exemplar of another word.