Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T08:57:56.192Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acoustic evidence for a push-chain shift in the Intermediate Period of New Zealand English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2006

Christian Langstrof
Christian Langstrof
Affiliation:
University of Canterbury
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study provides the results of an acoustic analysis of the short front vowels in the speech of New Zealanders born between the 1890s and the 1930s. It will be shown that it is in this period in which the system of short front vowels undergoes a typological change, whereby a system of three short front vowels develops into one of two front vowels ( ) and one central vowel ( ). It will be further shown that these processes are interrelated and can justifiably be called a “chain-shift.” In addition, it will be demonstrated that centralization of postdates the raising of the other vowels, and that rates of centralization are dependent on consonantal environment.I would like to thank the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) as well as the University of Canterbury for funding the research that is discussed here. I would also like to thank Dr. Jen Hay, Professor Lyle Campbell, Dr. Margaret Maclagan, Professor Peter Trudgill, and Professor Elizabeth Gordon for their support and their insightful comments on my work. I am also indebted to Elizabeth Gordon for allowing access to the ONZE (Origins of New Zealand English) data. The intermediate period archive data was collected by Rosemary Goodyear, Lesley Evans, and members of the ONZE team. The work done by members of the ONZE Project in preparing the data, making transcripts, and obtaining background information is also acknowledged.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , July 2006 , pp. 141 - 164
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Batterham, Margaret. (1995). Some front vowel variables in New Zealand English. Doctoral dissertation, La Trobe University, Melbourne.
Bauer, Laurie. (1979). The second great vowel shift. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 9(2):57–66.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. (1986). Notes on New Zealand English phonetics and phonology. English World-Wide 7:225–258.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. (1992). The second great vowel shift revisited. English World-Wide 13(2):253–268.Google Scholar
Bernard, John R. (1970). Toward the acoustic specification of Australian English. Zeitschrift fuer Phonetik und Kommunikationswissenschaft 23:113–128.Google Scholar
Breiman, Leo, Friedman, J., Olshen, R., & Stone, C. (1984). Classification and regression trees. New York: Chapman & Hall.
Cleveland, William S. (1979). Robust locally weighted regression and smoothing scatterplots. Journal of the American Statistical Association 74:829–836.Google Scholar
Disner, Sandra F. (1980). Evaluation of vowel normalisation procedures. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 67:253–261.Google Scholar
Gordon, Elizabeth, Campbell, L., Hay, J., Maclagan, M., Sudbury, A., & Trudgill, P. (2004). New Zealand English: Its origin and evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gordon, Matthew J. (2001). Small-town values, big city vowels: A study of the Northern Cities Shift in Michigan. Durham: Duke University Press.
Gordon, Matthew J. (2002). Investigating chain shift and mergers. In J. K. Chambers et al. (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harrington, Jonathan, & Cassidy, Steve. (1999). Techniques in speech acoustics. Boston: Kluwer.
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change. vol I: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Labov, William. (2001). Principles of linguistic change. vol 2: Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lass, Roger. (1987). The shape of English: Structure and history. London: Dent.
Lobanov, B. (1971). Classification of Russian vowels spoken by different speakers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 49:606–608.Google Scholar
Maclagan, Margaret. (1982). An acoustic study of New Zealand English vowels. The New Zealand Speech Therapists' Journal 12:34–42.Google Scholar
Mendoza-Denton, Norma, Hay, J., & Jannedy, S. (2003). Probabilistic sociolinguistics: Beyond variable rules. In R. Bod, J. Hay, & S. Jannedy (eds.), Probabilistic linguistics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stevens, Kenneth, & House, A. (1963). Perturbation of vowel articulations by consonantal context: An acoustical study. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 6:111–128.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1986). Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell.
Trudgill, Peter. (2004). New-dialect formation: The inevitability of colonial Englishes. New York: Oxford University Press.
Trudgill, Peter, Gordon, E., & Lewis, G. (1998). New dialect formation and southern hemisphere English: The New Zealand short front vowels. Journal of Sociolinguistics 2:35–51.Google Scholar
Watson, Catherine, Maclagan, M., & Harrington, J. (2000). Acoustic evidence for vowel change in New Zealand English. Language Variation and Change 12:51–68.Google Scholar
Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wright, J. T. (1986). The behaviour of nasalised vowels in the perceptual vowel space. In J. J. Ohala & J. J. Jaeger (eds.), Experimental phonology. New York: Academic Press.