Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-06T07:52:00.716Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Patterns of late rising in New Zealand English: Intonational variation or intonational change?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2005

Paul Warren
Paul Warren
Affiliation:
Victoria University of Wellington
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A combination of observational and experimental data from recent research into the intonation of New Zealand English highlights generational differences in rising intonation patterns. As well as a general increase in the incidence of rising intonation in statement utterances, the data reveal a shift from late rises in mid-age speakers to earlier rise onsets in younger speakers. These differences are discussed in the context of the intonational phonology of New Zealand English and in terms of the functional need for a distinction between question and statement rises.The author would like to thank participants at the 2003 UK Language Variation and Change conference for comments on an oral presentation of the data discussed in this article, and the Royal Society of New Zealand for financial support under Marsden grant VUW604. Special thanks go to Bob Ladd for insightful observations on an earlier version of this article.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , July 2005 , pp. 209 - 230
Copyright
© 2005 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

Ainsworth, Helen. (1994). The emergence of the High Rising Terminal contour in the speech of New Zealand children. Te Reo 37:3–20.Google Scholar
Allan, Keith. (1984). The component functions of the high rise terminal contour in Australian declarative sentences. Australian Journal of Linguistics 4(1):19–32.Google Scholar
Benton, Richard. (1966). Research into the English language difficulties of Maori school children 1963–1964. Wellington: Maori Education Foundation.
Boersma, Paul, & Weenink, David. (2003). Praat—doing phonetics by computer (Version 4.0.51). http://www.praat.org.
Britain, David. (1992). Linguistic change in intonation: The use of HR terminals in New Zealand English. Language Variation and Change 4:77–104.Google Scholar
Britain, David, & Newman, John. (1992). High rising terminals in New Zealand English. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22:1–11.Google Scholar
Ching, Marvin. (1982). The question intonation in assertions. American Speech 57:95–107.Google Scholar
Cruttenden, Alan. (1995). Rises in English. In J. Windsor-Lewis (ed.), Studies in general and English phonetics: Essays in honour of Professor J. D. O'Connor. London: Routledge. 155–173.
de Pijper, Jan R. (1983). Modelling British English intonation: An analysis by resynthesis of British English intonation. The Hague: Mouton.
Dineen, Anne. (1992). High rise tones and Australian English intonation: A descriptive problem. In T. Dutton, M. Ross, & D. Tryon (eds.), The language game: Papers in memory of Donald C. Laycock. Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Australian National University. 115–124.
Fletcher, Janet, Grabe, Esther, & Warren, Paul. (2005). Intonational variation in four dialects of English: The high rising tone. In S.-A. Jun (ed.), Prosodic typology: The phonology of intonation and phrasing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 390–409.
Fletcher, Janet, & Harrington, Jonathan. (2001). High-rising terminals and fall-rise tunes in Australian English. Phonetica 58:215–229.Google Scholar
Grabe, Esther. (1998). Comparative intonational phonology: English and German. Doctoral dissertation, published as MPI Series in Psycholinguistics, 7, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen.
Grabe, Esther, Post, Brechtje, & Nolan, Francis. (2001). The IViE Corpus. Retrieved September 30, 2003, from http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~esther/ivyweb.
Grice, Martine, Ladd, D. Robert, & Arvaniti, Amalia. (2000). On the place of phrase accents in intonational phonology. Phonology 17:143–185.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. (1983). A semantic analysis of the nuclear tones of English. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Guy, Gregory, Horvath, Barbara, Vonwiller, Julia, Daisley, Elaine, & Rogers, Inge. (1986). An intonational change in progress in Australian English. Language in Society 15(1):22–52.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory, & Vonwiller, Julia. (1984). The meaning of an intonation in Australian English. Australian Journal of Linguistics 4(1):1–17.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory, & Vonwiller, Julia. (1989). The high rising tone in Australian English. In P. B. D. Collins (ed.), Australian English: The language of a new society. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. 21–34.
Halliday, Michael. (1970). A course in spoken English: Intonation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Holmes, Janet. (1997). Setting new standards: Sound changes and gender in New Zealand English. English World-Wide 18(1):107–142.Google Scholar
Horvath, Barbara. (1985). Variation in Australian English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
James, Eric, Mahut, Christopher, & Latkiewicz, George. (1989). The investigation of an apparently new intonation pattern in Toronto English. Information Communication (Speech and Voice Society and Phonetics Laboratory, University of Toronto) 10:11–17.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. (1980). The structure of intonational meaning: Evidence from English. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ladd, D. Robert. (1996). Intonational phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lickley, Robin J., Schepman, Astrid, & Ladd, D. Robert. (forthcoming). Alignment of ‘Phrase Accent’ lows in Dutch falling–rising questions: Theoretical and methodological implications. Submitted to Language and Speech.
Lieberman, Philip, & Michaels, Sheldon. (1972). Some aspects of fundamental frequency and envelope amplitude as related to the emotional content of speech. In D. Bolinger (ed.), Intonation. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 235–249.
Low, Ee Ling. (1998). Prosodic prominence in Singapore English. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge, Cambridge.
McGregor, R. (1980). The social distribution of an Australian English intonation contour. Working Papers of the Speech and Language Research Centre (School of English and Linguistics, Macquarie University) 2:1–26.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam. (1991). Grounding and overcoming obstacles: The positive politeness motivations of High Rise Terminals. Unpublished manuscript, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
O'Connor, J. D., & Arnold, G. F. (1973). Intonation of colloquial English. London: Longman.
Osser, Henry A. (1964). A ‘distinctive features’ analysis of the vocal communication of emotion. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University.
Paddock, Harold. (1981). A dialect survey of Carbonear, Newfoundland. Urbana. IL: American Dialect Society.
Pierrehumbert, Janet. (1980). The phonology and phonetics of English intonation. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Pierrehumbert, Janet, & Hirschberg, Julia. (1990). The meaning of intonation contours in the interpretation of discourse. In M. Pollack & P. Cohen (eds.), Plans and intentions in communication and discourse. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 160–197.
Rait, Amy. (1997). The use of HRTs in British English. Unpublished undergraduate dissertation, University of York, York, UK.
Rodenburg, Patsy. (1996, March 19). Quoted in an article entitled ‘Soap opera Australian-speak raises the tone’. The Times (London), p. 1.
Shobbrook, Katherine, & House, Jill. (2003). High Rising Tones in Southern British English. In M. J. Solé, D. Recasens, & J. Romero (eds.), 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Barcelona: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. 1273–1276.
Steele, Patti. (1996). A discourse approach to the function of Australian high rising tone in narrative. Unpublished B.A. (Honours) dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra.
Sudbury, Andrea. (2000). Variation and change in Falkland Island English. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, University of Essex, Colchester.
Sudbury, Andrea. (2001). Falkland Islands English: A southern hemisphere variety? English World-Wide 22(1):55–80.Google Scholar
Uldall, Elizabeth. (1972). Dimensions of meaning in intonation. In D. Bolinger (ed.), Intonation. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 250–259.
Vermillion, Patricia. (2003). The ups and downs of Kiwis: An experiment investigating tonal cues used to identify NZE intonation. Wellington Working Papers in Linguistics 15:17–30.Google Scholar
Warren, Paul. (2002a) New Zealand Spoken English Database, 2002, from http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/nzsed.
Warren, Paul. (2002b). NZSED: Building and using a speech database for New Zealand English. New Zealand English Journal 16:53–58.Google Scholar
Warren, Paul, & Britain, David. (2000). Intonation and prosody in New Zealand English. In A. Bell & K. Kuiper (eds.), New Zealand English. Wellington: Victoria University Press. 146–172.
Warren, Paul, & Daly, Nicola. (2005). Characterizing New Zealand English intonation: Broad and narrow analysis. In A. Bell, R. Harlow, & D. Starks (eds.), Languages of New Zealand. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
Watt, David L. E. (1994). The phonology and semology of intonation in English: An instrumental and systemic perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zwartz, Joel. (2002). Lateness of rise as a factor in listener interpretation of HRTs. Unpublished Honours paper, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
Zwartz, Joel, & Warren, Paul. (2003). This is a statement? Lateness of rise as a factor in listener interpretation of HRTs. Wellington Working Papers in Linguistics 15:51–62.Google Scholar