Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T13:39:52.319Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phonological convergence in dialect contact: Evidence from citation forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Paul Kerswill
Paul Kerswill
Affiliation:
The University of Reading
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article addresses the question: In dialect contact, is there a difference in degree of convergence at different phonological levels? Data are taken from three experimental studies on British English. The first, a comparison of alveolar assimilation and l-vocalization, tests the hypothesis that the phonologization of connected speech processes involves increasing phonetic discreteness. The second provides evidence of the phonological restructuring of final /1/ in speakers who consistenly vocalize it and who, hypercorrectly, occasionally use “clear” /1/. This anomalous behavior, which may be due to underlying phonological differences, is explained in terms of a clash between nonstandard and standard speech. The third experiment looks at the “clarification” of /1/ before vowels in environments such as peel it, as well as the glottaling of /t/. Data are collected from the speech of two teenagers, native to Reading. It is argued that the phonetically subtle differences between them are due to quite different underlying processes. These data are interpreted in light of Labov's speech community model; it seems necessary to differentiate between levels of analysis and to explain convergence in terms of salience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , July 1995 , pp. 195 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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

Bell, Allan. (1984). Language style as audience deisgn. Language in Society 13:145–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang, & Wodak, Ruth. (1982). Sociophonological methods in the study of sociolinguistic variation in Viennese German. Language in Society 11:339–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Viv. (1993). The grammar of southern British English. In Milroy, J. & Milroy, L. (eds.), Real English: The grammar of English dialects in the British Isles. London: Longman. 214–242.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory. (1980). Variation in the group and individual: The case of final stop deletion. In Labov, W. (ed.), Locating language in time and space. New York: Academic. 1–35.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory & Boyd, Sally. (1990). The development of a morphological class. Language Variation and Change 2:1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardcastle, William, Jones, Wilf, Knight, Colin, Trudgeon, Anne, & Calder, Gary. (1989). New developments in electropalatography: State-of-the-art report. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 3:1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, John. (1990). Derived phonological contrasts. In Ramsaran, S. (ed.), Studies in the pronunciation of English: A commemorative volume in honour of A. C. Gimson. London: Routledge, 87–105.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E. (1985). A sociophonetic study of connected speech processes in Cambridge English: An outline and some results. In Nolan, Francis J. (ed.), Cambridge Papers in Phonetics and Experimental Linguistics 4, Department of Linguistics, Cambridge University. 1–39.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E. (1993). Rural dialect speakers in an urban speech community: The role of dialect contact in defining a sociolinguistic concept. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 3:33–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E. (1994a). Babel in Buckinghamshire? Pre-school children acquiring accent features in the New Town of Milton Keynes. In Melchers, G. & Johannesson, N.-L. (eds.), Nonstandard varieties of language. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. 64–83.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E. (1994b). Dialects converging: Rural speech in urban Norway. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E. (1995). Children, adolescents and language change. In Kerswill, P., Ingham, R., Huang, Y., & Shockey, L. (eds.), Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 2:201–222.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E., & Williams, Ann. (1992). Some principles of dialect contact: Evidence from the new town of Milton Keynes. In Philippaki-Warburton, I. & Ingham, R. (eds.), Working Papers 1992. 68–90.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E. & Williams, Ann. (1994). A new dialect in a new city: Children's and adults' speech in Milton Keynes. Final report submitted to the Economic and Social Research Council, 07, 1994. Ref. R000232376.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E., & Wright, Susan. (1990). On the limits of auditory transcription: A sociophonetic perspective. Language Variation and Change 2:255–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1989). Exact description of the speech community: Short a in Philadelphia. In Fasold, R. & Schiffrin, D. (eds.), Language change and variation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 1–57.Google Scholar
Labov, William & Kerswill, Paul. (1993). Rural dialect speakers in an urban speech community: The role of dialect contact in defining a sociolinguistic concept. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 3:33–56.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Björn. (1990). Explaining phonetic variation: A sketch of the H&H theory. In Hardcastle, W. J. & Marchal, A. (eds.), Speech production and speech modelling. Amsterdam: Kluwer. 403–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nolan, Francis J. (1989). The descriptive role of segment: Evidence from assimilation. In Ladd, D. R. & Docherty, G. (eds.), Papers in laboratory phonology II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nolan, Francis J. & Kerswill, Paul E. (1990). The description of connected speech processes. In Ramsaran, S. (ed.), Studies in the pronunciation of English: A commemorative volume in honour of A. C. Gimson. London: Routledge. 295–316.Google Scholar
Nolan, Francis J., Kerswill, Paul E., & Wright, Susan. (1991). The interaction of sociophonetic features and connected speech processes. Final report submitted to the Economic and Social Research Council. Ref. R000231056.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. (1989). The role children in linguistic change. In Breivk, L. E. & Jahr, E. H. (eds.), Language change: Contributions to the study of its causes. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 199–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, David, & Labov, William. (1979). On the uses of variable rules. Language in Society 8:189–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shockey, L. (ed.). (1995). Work in progress 8, The University of Reading, Speech Research Laboratory, Department of Linguistic Science.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1974). The social differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1986). Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English (3 vols.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Susan. (1989). The effects of style and speaking rate on /1/-vocalisation in local Cambridge English. York Papers in Linguistics 13:355–365.Google Scholar