Variation and Change of /e/ in Seoul Korean in comparison with the short /ᴂ/ raising in Middle Atlantic States English

Front vowel /e/ is variably raised to [i] in Seoul Korean. Sociolinguistic fieldwork reveals that only a handful of lexical items are subject to this change with varying degrees. 1 propose that the previous merger of /e/ and /r/ is the most plausible conditioning factor which funcitions as a constraint of homophony avoidance and triggers a chain shift. Moreover, grammatical categorization and frequency of lexical items, and even some analogical process to other dialects (in which /e/>/i/ change is complete) augmentatively render this change a look of “diffusion type". This is parallel to the case found in the tensing of English front vowel / æ/ in the Middle Atlantic States of America