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Effects of synchronous speech task on length and prosody in interdialectal nonprestige varieties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2007

Máire Ní Chiosáin
Affiliation:
University College Dublin

Abstract

Studies of accommodation between different dialects have to a greater or lesser extent focused on languages with a spoken standard or a socially prestigious dialect. Irish (Gaelic) has no spoken standard, nor can any of the three major spoken dialects be considered more socially prestigious than the others. This article reports on a pilot study that explores cross-dialect speaker interaction in a task-oriented context focusing primarily on prosodically induced effects on prominence and duration. Although accommodation was not found on a large scale in the synchronous speech task involved, interaction among various pairs of speakers raised interesting questions, both linguistic (e.g., what level of linguistic detail is perceptually relevant) and methodological (e.g., how best to study linguistic interaction between speakers from noncontiguous dialect areas when there is no standard dialect).I would like to thank Fred Cummins whose work on synchronic speech inspired the present study and who assisted in the recording. I would also like to thank Jaye Padgett, Lillis Ó Laoire, Diarmuid Ó Sé, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier version.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

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