Becker (2019) argues that the LBMS is a structural change. It is initiated by the phonetic movement of BOT, but does not require completion of the Low Back Merger.

We ought distinguish structural changes from phonetic drift. A structural change is one in which the system of contrasts in the language changes. A non-structural change is when the phonetic implementation of a contrast changes without a change in the contrast itself. It's not clear that this is what Becker (2019) means by the term "structural".

Related to LowBackVowelJournalSubmission

• Why look at more than F1 F2
• Why are additional dimensions important for understanding diachronic change?
• All vowel analyses require a vowel model---i.e. an operationalization of the acoustic space that lends itself to statistical analysis
  • Representign vowels as points in F1-F2 space is a robust vowel model but insufficient for questions of merger
• What is a merger?

What's the argument I want to make?

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