Phonological History of English High Front Vowels/mitt-meet Merger

Famous quotes containing the words history, english, high, front and/or vowels:

    The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.
    Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)

    Where dwells the religion? Tell me first where dwells electricity, or motion, or thought or gesture. They do not dwell or stay at all. Electricity cannot be made fast, mortared up and ended, like London Monument, or the Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep it fixed, as the English do with their things, forevermore; it is passing, glancing, gesticular; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a secret which perplexes them, and puts them out.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    As I walked on the glacis I heard the sound of a bagpipe from the soldiers’ dwellings in the rock, and was further soothed and affected by the sight of a soldier’s cat walking up a cleated plank in a high loophole designed for mus-catry, as serene as Wisdom herself, and with a gracefully waving motion of her tail, as if her ways were ways of pleasantness and all her paths were peace.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    In front of that sinner of a husband,
    she rattled off
    only those words
    that her pack of vile-tongued girlfriends
    taught her
    as fast as she could,
    and after,
    began to behave
    at the Love-god’s beck and call.
    It’s indescribable,
    this natural, charming
    path of love,
    paved with the gems
    of inexperience.
    Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.)

    As no one can tell what was the Roman pronunciation, each nation makes the Latin conform, for the most part, to the rules of its own language; so that with us of the vowels only A has a peculiar sound.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)