/ɐlC/-/ɔlC/ Sound change in Australian English: Preliminary res[ɔ]lts (original) (raw)
Related papers
An acoustic comparison of Australian and New Zealand English vowel change
Proceedings of the 10th Australian International …, 2004
This paper presents an acoustic description of changes occurring in the front lax vowels of Australian English (AE) over a forty year period. It contrasts these to the changes in the equivalent NZE vowels over the same time period. Results suggest that during this period, AE and NZE front lax vowels have been diverging from previously similar productions, with a greater shift apparent in NZE vowels than in AE vowels.
The /el/-/æl/ Sound Change in Australian English: A Preliminary Perception Experiment
Y. Treis and R. de Busser (eds) Selected Papers from the 2009 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society , 2010
The /el/-/ael/ sound change in Australian English involves the loss of contrast between prelateral /e/ and /ae/ for some speakers, so that both vowels are realised as [ae]. In Australia, this sound change is popularly and frequently identified as being typical of only speakers from Melbourne and Victoria. However, aside from a small number of production studies, very little research has been carried out into the phenomenon. In this paper, we report on three preliminary perception experiments to determine how Australian English listeners respond to /el/ and /ael/ tokens. Listeners were 386 highschool students and their teachers, with 89% classified as Victorian listeners (from Melbourne and Victoria) and 11% non-Victorian (from elsewhere in Australia). Across all experiments, Victorian listeners consistently performed worse than non-Victorian listeners when presented with /el/-/ael/ stimuli, and also reported more difficulty with all tasks. As well as discussing patterns in listener responses, we address reasons that the /el/-/ael/ sound change may be regionally defined. We conclude with a discussion of how this preliminary perceptual investigation, along with previous production work, accords with Ohala's (1993) model of why sound changes occur.
Australian English pronunciation into the 21st century
Australian English is traditionally considered to be the form of English spoken by people who are born in Australia or who immigrate at an early age and whose peer network consists of Australian English speakers . Such a simple definition implies that Australian English is a single form, which all native-born Australians will attain and exhibit. This paper will review segmental aspects of Australian English pronunciation today and discuss the inadequacies of the traditional definition. In addition, some current theoretical issues will be highlighted and suggestions will be made about the creation of a new model for conceptualising Australian English in the 21st century.
The /el/-/æl/ merger in Australian English: Acoustic and articulatory insights
2019
This paper investigates a merger-in-progress of /e//æ/ in prelateral contexts for speakers of Australian English in Victoria. Twelve participants (7F, 5M) were recorded producing a wordlist resulting in acoustic and concurrent articulatory data via stabilised mid-sagittal ultrasound tongue imaging. Focusing on a subset of the data comprising short front vowels /ɪ, e, æ/ in /hVt/ and /hVl/ contexts, findings show that there are robust acoustic differences between /e/ and /æ/ preceding /t/, as anticipated. However, individual differences emerge for /e/ and /æ/ preceding /l/, with highly gradient production patterns across the speakers, ranging from speakers who exhibit merger behaviour to those who maintain categorical distinctions. The evidence for merging behaviour across speakers is similar, but does not map directly, across both the acoustic and articulatory data, and illustrates the value of incorporating a range of data types in investigating a merger-in-progress.
2010
The /el/-/ael/ sound change in Australian English involves the loss of contrast between prelateral /e/ and /ae/ for some speakers, so that both vowels are realised as [ae]. In Australia, this sound change is popularly and frequently identified as being typical of only speakers from Melbourne and Victoria. However, aside from a small number of production studies, very little research has been carried out into the phenomenon. In this paper, we report on three preliminary perception experiments to determine how Australian English listeners respond to /el/ and /ael/ tokens. Listeners were 386 highschool students and their teachers, with 89% classified as Victorian listeners (from Melbourne and Victoria) and 11% non-Victorian (from elsewhere in Australia). Across all experiments, Victorian listeners consistently performed worse than non-Victorian listeners when presented with /el/-/ael/ stimuli, and also reported more difficulty with all tasks. As well as discussing patterns in listener responses, we address reasons that the /el/-/ael/ sound change may be regionally defined. We conclude with a discussion of how this preliminary perceptual investigation, along with previous production work, accords with Ohala's (1993) model of why sound changes occur.
The /el-/ael/ merger in Australian English: Acoustic and articulatory insights
Proceedings of the International Congress for the Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, 2019
This paper investigates a merger-in-progress of /e/-/ae/ in prelateral contexts for speakers of Australian English in Victoria. Twelve participants (7F, 5M) were recorded producing a wordlist resulting in acoustic and concurrent articulatory data via stabilised mid-sagittal ultrasound tongue imaging. Focusing on a subset of the data comprising short front vowels /ɪ, e, ae/ in /hVt/ and /hVl/ contexts, findings show that there are robust acoustic differences between /e/ and /ae/ preceding /t/, as anticipated. However, individual differences emerge for /e/ and /ae/ preceding /l/, with highly gradient production patterns across the speakers, ranging from speakers who exhibit merger behaviour to those who maintain categorical distinctions. The evidence for merging behaviour across speakers is similar, but does not map directly, across both the acoustic and articulatory data, and illustrates the value of incorporating a range of data types in investigating a merger-in-progress.
Initiation, progression, and conditioning of the short-front vowel shift in Australia
2019
This paper investigates the initiation, progression, and conditioning of the short-front vowel shift in Australian English as observed in a sociolinguistic corpus capturing 40 years in real time (from the 1970s to today). Acoustic analyses of over 10,000 tokens reveal that the lowering and retraction of KIT, DRESS and TRAP was preceded by movement in BATH. This suggests that the short-front vowel shift was structurally triggered by BATH moving away from a canonical low position and providing room for TRAP retraction, mirroring the triggering event for similar shifts in other English dialects. We also find that while pre-obstruent TRAP lowers over time, pre-nasal TRAP maintains a high position, resulting in a split-nasal system. Additionally, variance in vowel categories appears to decrease as changes crystalise, suggesting that greater within-category variability is a precursor to vocalic movement. These findings bear on the short-front vowel shift as a worldwide phenomenon in English.
The vowels of Australian Aboriginal English
Basilectal varieties of Australian Aboriginal English (AAE), which are heavily influenced by the indigenous substrate, may have a very restricted set of vowels compared to Standard Australian English (SAE). A comparison of the vowels of a small group of acrolectal AAE speakers with those of the standard accent suggests that even in varieties with the same set of phonemes as SAE, speakers are using a somewhat smaller phonetic vowel space. The lower boundaries of the AAE and indigenous language spaces are very similar and, whereas the SAE vowel space represents an expansion in all directions compared with the indigenous space, the AAE space represents an expansion in an 'upward' (lower F1) direction only. Within their respective spaces, the relative positions of the monophthongs are quite similar in SAE and AAE. Diphthong trajectories are also similar, except that some have shorter trajectories (more centralised second targets) in AAE. Most of the differences there are can be ...
The consonant systems of Australian Aboriginal languages, whilst not particularly large, are very 'long and thin' -i.e. they have unusually few contrasts in the traditional vertical dimension on the IPA chart (manner of articulation), an unusually large number in the horizontal dimension (place of articulation) and no voicing contrast. Whilst three or four manner features may be sufficient, some 8 or 9 place features are needed for a theoretically adequate analysis. Our articulatory and acoustic studies show that many of the prosodic contrasts (stress, focus…) are realised in the durational and spectral characteristics of the coda consonants rather than of the vowels. Furthermore there seems to be a very strong imperative to preserve place of articulation distinctions. In connected speech Australian languages are resistant to some anticipatory processes common in other languages, such as assimilation of nasality and of place of articulation, leading to the enhancement of the left edge of consonants. Our acoustic measurements confirm that, in contradistinction to English, the stability of VC combinations is on a par with that of CV combinations.The paper discusses the interplay between the unusual feature configurations of these languages, their phonotactics and the phonetic realisations of these contrasts. It would appear that natural classes can be defined more satisfactorily in terms of articulatory features rather than acoustic features.
Almost universally, diachronic sound patterns of languages reveal evidence of both regular and irregular sound changes, yet an exception may be the languages of Australia. Here we discuss a long-observed and striking characteristic of diachronic sound patterns in Australian languages, namely the scarcity of evidence they present for regular sound change. Since the regularity assumption is fundamental to the comparative method, Australian languages pose an interesting challenge for linguistic theory. We examine the situation from two different angles. We identify potential explanations for the lack of evidence of regular sound change, reasoning from the nature of synchronic Australian phonologies; and we emphasise how this unusual characteristic of Australian languages may demand new methods of evaluating evidence for diachronic relatedness and new thinking about the nature of intergenerational transmission. We refer the reader also to Bowern (this volume) for additional viewpoints f...