Word.ws English Dictionary

chain shifts

chain shifts is the plural of chain shift.

Meaning of chain shift

Noun

chain shift (plural chain shifts)

  1. A phonological modification of a vowel system or sometimes consonant system in which a change in a particular vowel or consonant causes other adjacent vowels or consonants to also change in order to avoid phonemic mergers.
    • Many non-Antipodeans cannot readily distinguish Australian and New Zealand English, because the phonologies basically overlap with the exception of an upwards chain shift in the front vowels.2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 10

Questions about chain shifts

What is chain shifts the plural of?
Chain shifts is the plural of chain shift.

Words near chain shifts in the dictionary

  1. chain reactions
  2. chain rule
  3. chain saw
  4. chain saws
  5. chain shift
  6. chain shifts
  7. chain shot
  8. chain shots
  9. chain sickle
  10. chain sickles
  11. chain silicate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chain shifts (page history and authors); chain shift (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “chain shifts.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chain_shifts. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.