Internal push or external pull?

Transcription

1 Internal push or external pull? Real-time variation and change in the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Glasgow TAMARA RATHCKE & JANE STUART-SMITH UNIVERSITY OF KENT & UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW

2 The Vowel Length Rule The SVLR describes quasi-phonemic timing alternations in /i u ai/: long vowels before /ð, v, z, ʒ/ + /r/ + # e.g. breathe, beer, bee, bees short vowels elsewhere e.g. bream, beef, bead, beak Minimal pairs: crude vs. crewed brood vs. brewed Aitken 1981; Scobbie, Hewlett & Turk 1999; Scobbie & Stuart-Smith 2008

3 The Voicing Effect Timing alternations in Anglo-English are known as the Voicing Effect: long allophones before voiced consonants e.g. bead, beam, seal short allophones before voiceless consonants e.g. beat, beak, seat No minimal pairs! omonomorphemic V-C diphones House & Fairbanks 1953; Keating 1985c

4 Comparison of timing constraints / [+voice; +fricative] breathe, cheese, sieve (long) [-voice] beat, geek, feast (short) [+voice; +sonorant] bream, mean, seal (short/long) but beer (long) [+voice, -continuant] bead, league, feed (short/long) 1 constraint: voicing 3 constraints: voicing, manner, place for sonorants only

5 Documented changes in the SVLR Dialect contact: SVLR Voicing Canadian Raising: [ai ~ əɪ] and [au ~ əʊ], constrained by [± voice] Quality variation of the SVLR system combined with the constraints of Anglo-English ( reallocation ) Voicing Effect: Language acquisition in children of Scottish and Anglo-English parents in Edinburgh Younger Scottish speakers on the border between Scotland and England Hewlett, Scobbie & Turk 1999; Llamas et al 2010; Trudgill 1986; Watt & Ingham 2000

6 How about Glaswegian? Less everyday contact to Anglo-English

7 Changes in quantity languages Vowel timing is quasi-phonemic in Scottish English. What if it behaves like a quantity language? Phonemic durational contrasts are known to interact with prosodic timing long vowel short vowel accent accent finality finality oprosody > quantity: quantity neutralisation in phrase-final positions oquantity > prosody: marginal prosodic timing effects due to the high functional load of duration for phonology Myers and Hansen 2007; Nakai 2013; Remijsen & Gilley 2008; White & Mády 2008

8 Hypothesis-1, DCH: Dialect-Contact Hypothesis IF o the SVLR is eroding o due to dialect contact THEN increase in the VE first visible in /a/ first visible in high-contact speakers

9 Hypothesis-2, PTH: Prosodic Timing Hypothesis IF o the SVLR is eroding o due to durational ceiling effects THEN prosodic timing and SVLR interact less SVLR in phrase-final, accented words

10 Fine phonetic variation and sound change: A real-time study of Glaswegian Oct 2011-Sept 2014

11 Sample for this paper Decade of recording Old Middle-aged Young s 4 m (sociolinguistic interview), 70M 4 m (sociolinguistic interview), 70Y 1980s 1990s 2000s 4 m (free conversation), 00M 4 m (free conversation), 00Y The speakers were coded as high or low contact with Anglo-English o based on questionnaire data o inferred from the interview/conversation o overall, 5 out of 12 speakers were high-contact Sources (with thanks): Ronald Macaulay; Glasgow Media Project

12 Preparation of the data (1) All prominent tokens of o/i ʉ/ (SVLR expected) o/a/ (SVLR not expected) (not in words before /r/) N = 1520 Segmented and labelled in EMU o consonantal environment (SVLR, VE) o following boundary (morpheme, word, phrase, none)

13 Preparation of the data (2) Prosodic timing factors: ophrasal position (medial, final) ophrasal prominence (metrical stress, pitch accent) low level timing factors (covariates): lexical frequency; number of syllables in word; number of segments per syllable

14 Data analysis Linear mixed effects models were fitted in R (3.1.0) speaker normalization through random intercept of speaker estimates (not raw means) reported from best-fit models Two sets of models: /i ʉ/, i.e. SVLR vowels only /a/, i.e. non-svlr vowel

15 Results (1): /a/-only models Is there evidence for the Voicing Effect in /a/? i.e. grab, man, calm, fancy > trap, map, catch, lassie No effect of following consonant voicing, neither on its own or in an interaction with dialect contact Factor χ 2 df p Prominence Phrasal position Number of segments in the target syllable Number of syllables in the target word

16 Results (2): /i u/-only models Is there evidence for the Voicing Effect in /i u/ in highcontact speakers? Yes? Factor/interaction χ 2 df p VE*vowel*contact to Anglo-English

17 VE*vowel*contact to Anglo-English Long: bead; beam; soon vs. Short: beat; beep; soup Unspecified: bee#s; moo#s; two#; three#

18 Results (3): /i u/-only models Is there evidence for a prosodically induced change in the SVLR? Yes Factor/interaction χ 2 df p SVLR*speaker group*phrasal position

19 SVLR*group*phrasal position As predicted by the PTH: SVLR-long vowels got shorter in phrase-final positions over time

20 Results (4): /i u/-only models Is there evidence for an interaction of the SVLR with the prosodic timing? Yes? Factor/interaction χ 2 df p SVLR*prominence*phrasal position

21 SVLR*prominence*phrasal position

22 Discussion SVLR is alive and kicking in Glaswegian /i ʉ / Little support for DCH: no Voicing Effect in any of the vowels no interaction of the Voicing Effect with the dialect contact Support for PTH: SVLR does interact with prosodic timing Lenition/attenuation of the durational contrast in phrasemedial unaccented positions A durational ceiling effect in phrase-final position gives rise to a change (70M vs. 70Y, 00M, 00Y) Beckman et al. 1992; Myers and Hansen 2007; Nakai 2013

23 Why are 70M speakers different? Year/age group 00M 00Y 70M 70Y Decade of birth 1930s 1950s 1980s WW II urban regeneration

24 Thank you! On the tail of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Glasgow. Language and Speech.