Is English simplifying its phonology? Or are there examples of new linguistic distinctions being created?

Question

One example of a linguistic distinction being lost in English is the merger of the th merging into f in the British accent (Telegraph Article). Another example of the th sound being lost is in the Irish accent.

I am also familiar with Spanish in which the b/v sounds, ll/y sounds and the c/z/s sounds have merged in many accents. The clearest evidence of this are homophones which are spelt differently but are pronounced the same.

Is the tendency of languages to simplify their phonology?

Can you provide examples of new phonetic distinctions being created in English?

Answer 1

Mergers of formerly distinct sounds that are spelled differently are easier to notice than splits of sounds. There are examples of splits that are introducing new contrasts into English phonology.

One phoneme prone to splitting in a few regional accents is the front low vowel /æ/. It is usually analyzed phonologically as a "short" or "lax" low vowel. But for some speakers, there are a few minimal pairs or near-minimal pairs between words with short/lax [æ] and words with a lengthened variant [æː] or "tense" variant [eə]. For more information, look up "bad-lad split".

At the level of whole languages, "phonological complexity" is not a simple concept because phonologies are not directly observable. One analysis might have half as many phonemes as another, depending on whether certain sounds are analyzed as sequences or phonological units. New phonological units are often historically derived from older sequences, and the transition from a sequence to a phoneme can be hard to identify. E.g. in French, "nasal vowel" phonemes historically derive in most cases from a sequence of vowel + nasal consonant, and in certain respects they can be argued to behave like such sequences even in the phonology of modern French. In American English, "rhotic vowels" as in car, chair, core, cheer are conventionally analyzed as sequences ending in the consonant /r/, but they could instead be analyzed as unitary vowel phonemes, like diphthongs.

So in many cases, the development of a new phonological distinction is not clear until centuries have passed. Some examples of distinctions in modern English that we know developed from sounds that were not distinct in an earlier language/stage of the language: /k/ vs. /tʃ/, /f/ vs. /v/, /θ/ vs. /ð/, /s/ vs. /z/, the three-way split between /ʌ/, /ʊ/, and /uː/.

Answer 2

Some researchers argue that Canadian raising leads to a phonemic split.

Canadian raising occurs in Canada and areas in the northern U.S. In Canadian raising, the diphthongs [aɪ] and [aʊ] are replaced with [ʌɪ] and [ʌʊ] respectively before voiceless consonants in most words but not all words.

A pair that cleanly illustrates Canadian raising is

• ride [ɹaɪd] (no raising)
• write [ɹʌɪt] (with raising)

In a lot of North America, /t/ and /d/ are merged at the beginning of unstressed syllables, so in some accents, rider and writer are distinguished by their diphthong and not by their consonants.

• rider [ɹaɪɾɚ] (no raising)
• writer [ɹʌɪɾɚ] (with raising)

There are a lot of exceptional words, so that "spider" rhymes with "writer" but not "rider".

The Wikipedia page says that this pair has been observed in some places:

• idol (no raising)
• idle (with raising)

I don't recognize that one. Wikipedia doesn't give the exact pronunciation. When I first wrote this post, I said it's a minimum pair, but I don't know if speakers who distinguish the first sound in these two words do something different with the syllable boundary or in the second syllable.

My unprofessional opinion is that I distinguish this surname and this verb

• Hyde [haɪd] (no raising)
• hide [hʌɪd] (with raising)

I never pinned down exactly what I do with "hide" the noun. I think I vary in that one.