Hierarchical Interaction of Phonological and Morphological Factors Governing English /ŋg/ Simplification: Based on the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary Corpus

This study quantitatively investigates the hierarchical interaction of phonological and morphological factors governing /g/ deletion in English /ŋg/ sequences. Utilizing a carefully refined dataset of 2,254 items from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, this research employs a conditional inference tree model to visualize how these variables interact. The results reveal that the phonotactic property of the following segment acts as the primary determining factor: /g/ is categorically deleted before obstruents, nasals, or word boundaries, regardless of morphology. Only when a following vowel, liquid, or glide permits resyllabification do morphological categories come into effect. In these phonologically transparent environments, the refined data demonstrates an exceptionless 100% simplification rate for inflectional and Class II derivational affixes. This contrasts sharply with the consistent /g/ preservation observed in Class I derivation, comparatives, and monomorphemic contexts. Furthermore, the quantitative distribution of the lexicon indicates that /g/ preservation is not a broadly productive rule, but rather restricted to a small subset of high-frequency words (e.g., longer, stronger) and peripheral proper nouns. Ultimately, this study empirically validates traditional morphophonological principles through large-scale data while shedding new light on their limited synchronic productivity.