One of the most recognizable traits of American speech in the South and Southwest is the so-called “pin/pen merger,” a shorthand phrase meant to designate the non-distinction of the front vowels /i/ and /e/ before the nasal consonants /m, n, ŋ/. The vowel that appears in this position is identified with the realization of the high front vowel in pin, whim, and sing. Speakers who have this trait do not distinguish between the pronunciation not only of minimal pairs like pin and pen or fin and fen but of any word that has a front vowel before a nasal consonant (whatever the spelling), so that one hears m[ɪ]mber for Standard American English m[ɛ]mber, m[ɪ]ntality for SAE m[ɛ]ntality, etc.
People who have this trait need not be speaking in an identifiable dialect. In fact, it may be the only remnant of a regionalism in what is otherwise SAE speech. For instance, just this morning I heard three announcers/reporters on NPR (Renée Montagne, Deborah Byrd, Richard Harris) who display this trait but are otherwise speakers of the standard.
Thus, despite the constant migration of people from place to place over their lifetimes, the impact of education and the media typically results in an American standard that is largely free of dialectal or regional traits––with the prominent exception of this one, which is properly to be labeled a NEUTRALIZATION. A neutralization is the reduction (G Aufhebung) of an opposition to one of its two terms. Technically, one speaks here of the realization of an opposition in a position of neutralization (= context). Typically, an opposition that is neutralized in a certain context is realized as (identified with) one of its two terms––to the exclusion of the other, but also of any third term: tertium non datur (there is no third term).
Despite the familiarity of the “pin/pen merger” to linguists as a fact of dialect geography, its status and attendant meaning specifically as a neutralization have not become part of language lore. Neutralizations throughout grammar (i.e. not only in phonology) have an interesting sign function. In positions of neutralization it is normal for the realization of the opposition to be identified with the unmarked (generic) term. Thus, for instance, when the sex of the referent is immaterial one finds words of the unmarked masculine gender referring to both sexes (“Man is an animal.”). In the case of the two front vowels in question, /ɪ/ as a high vowel is unmarked vis-à-vis the marked non-high /ɛ/ in the opposition high/non-high. Hence this phonological case conforms in sign function to the general principle that it is the unmarked member of the opposition that appears as the representative of the opposition in a position of neutralization.
In language, the sign function of neutralization is unitary––whatever the concrete realization depending on context, to which it is uniformly sensitive. Neutralization is a fundamental means by which both users (initially, qua learners) and analysts––unconsciously in the first case, consciously in the second––are provided with the material evidence that linguistic variation is not haphazard but structurally coherent, where coherence is measured by the systematic, patterned cooccurrence of units and contexts in tandem.
MICHAEL SHAPIRO
The plural is marked vis-a-vis the singular, but in English the second-person pronoun “you” is always treated as plural, not singular, for the purpose of conjugating verbs. Do you have any speculations about the meaning of or reason for this exception to the general rule?
The situation in English obtains also in other European languages (like Russian or French, for instance) and is a relatively late development in these languages.The explanation may lie in the plastic relation between real and grammatical number. Cf. the British English preference for using the plural verb form in referring to singular collectives like sports teams (“Manchester United are playing today in London,” where the collective is construed as countable individuals. In Russian or French, the plural is reserved for polite/formal reference, whereas in English the thou/you distinction has been neutralized, and it is predictably the marked form of the plural that has replaced the unmarked singular in the history of English, not the other way around. Ultimately, in terms of markedness theory, this development may be explained as a case of markedness dominance, where the marked stylistic context (polite speech) determines the value of the term embedded in it. Similarly, to answer your question more directly, the use of the plural pronoun and its corresponding plural verb form––despite the reference to a singular subject––may also be a case of markedness dominance, where singular reference is assimilated to plural grammatical form, yielding the situation we have in English, etc.