On the Tail of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Glasgow

One of the most famous sound features of Scottish English is the short/long timing alternation of /i u ai/vowels, which depends on the morpho-phonemic environment, and is known of as the Scottish Vowel Length Rule (SVLR). These alternations make the status of vowel quantity in Scottish English (quasi-)phonemic but are also susceptible to change, particularly in situations of intense sustained dialect contact with Anglo-English. Does the SVLR change in Glasgow where dialect contact at the community level is comparably low? The present study sets out to tackle this question, and tests two hypotheses involving (1) external influences due to dialect-contact and (2) internal, prosodically-induced factors of sound change. Durational analyses of /i u a/ were conducted on a corpus of spontaneous Glaswegian speech from the 1970s and 2000s, and four speaker groups were compared, two of middle-aged men, and two of adolescent boys. Our hypothesis that the development of the SVLR over time may be internally constrained and interact with prosody was largely confirmed. We observed weakening effects in its implementation which were localised in phrase-medial unaccented positions in all speaker groups, and in phrase-final positions in the speakers born after the Second World War. But unlike some other varieties of Scottish or Northern English which show weakening of the Rule under a prolonged contact with Anglo-English, dialect contact seems to be having less impact on the durational patterns in Glaswegian vernacular, probably because of the overall reduced potential for a regular, everyday contact in the West given the different demographies

Variation and change in the vowel system of Tyneside English

PhD ThesisThis thesis presents a variationist account of phonological variation and change in the vowel system of Tyneside English. The distributions of the phonetic exponents of five vowel variables are assessed with respect to the social variables sex, age and social class. Using a corpus of conversational and word-list material, for which 32 speakers of Tyneside English were recorded, between 30 and 40 tokens per speaker of the variables (i), (u), (e), (o) and (3) were transcribed impressionistically and subclassified by following phonological context. The results of this analysis are significant on several counts. First, the speakers sampled appear to differentiate themselves within the speech community through the variable use of certain socially marked phonetic variants, which can be correlated with the sex, age and class variables. Secondly, the speakers style shift to a greater or lesser degree according to combinations of the three social factors, such that surface variability is reduced as a function of increased formality. Third, the overall pattern among the sample population seems to be one of increasing uniformity or convergence: it is speculated that social mobility among upper working- and lower-middle class groups may lead to accent levelling, whereby local speech forms are supplanted by supra-local or innovative intermediate ones. That is, the patterns observed here may be indicative of change in progress. Last, a comparison of the results for the (phonologically) paired variables (i u) and (e o) shows a strong tendency for Tyneside speakers to use these 'symmetrically', in that choice of variant in one variable predicts choice of variant in the other. It is suggested that the symmetry in the system is exploited by Tyneside speakers for the purposes of indicating social affiliation and identity, and is in this sense an extra sociolinguistic resource upon which speakers can draw. In addition, the variants of (3) are discussed with reference to the reported merger of this variable with (a); it is suggested that the apparent 'unmerging' of these two classes is unproblematic from a structural point of view, as the putative (3)—(o) merger appears never to have been completed.UK Economic and Social Research Council (award number R00429524350

Estimating the Relative Sociolinguistic Salience of Segmental Variables in a Dialect Boundary Zone

One way of evaluating the salience of a linguistic feature is by assessing the extent to which listeners associate the feature with a social category such as a particular socioeconomic class, gender, or nationality. Such ‘top–down’ associations will inevitably differ somewhat from listener to listener, as a linguistic feature – the pronunciation of a vowel or consonant, for instance – can evoke multiple social category associations, depending upon the dialect in which the feature is embedded and the context in which it is heard. In a given speech community it is reasonable to expect, as a consequence of the salience of the linguistic form in question, a certain level of intersubjective agreement on social category associations. Two metrics we can use to quantify the salience of a linguistic feature are (a) the speed with which the association is made, and (b) the degree to which members of a speech community appear to share the association. Through the use of a new technique, designed as an adaptation of the Implicit Association Test, this paper examines levels of agreement among 40 informants from the Scottish/English border region with respect to the associations they make between four key phonetic variables and the social categories of ‘Scotland’ and ‘England.’ Our findings reveal that the participants exhibit differential agreement patterns across the set of phonetic variables, and that listeners’ responses vary in line with whether participants are members of the Scottish or the English listener groups. These results demonstrate the importance of community-level agreement with respect to the associations that listeners make between social categories and linguistic forms, and as a means of ranking the forms’ relative salience

Non-normative preaspirated voiceless fricatives in Scottish English: Phonetic and phonological characteristics

This series consists of unpublished working- papers. They are not final versions and may be superseded by publication in journal or book form, which should be cited in preference. All rights remain with the author(s) at this stage, and circulation of a work in progress in this series does not prejudice its later publication. Comments to authors are welcome.Preaspiration is usually associated with stops rather than fricatives, both at phonological and phonetic levels of description. This study reports the occurrence of phonetic (nonnormative)preaspiration of voiceless fricatives in Scottish Standard English (SSE)spoken in the Central Belt of Scotland. We classify it as non-normative because it is variably present in different speakers, but the distribution is nevertheless understandable on phonetic grounds. The paper analyses the phonetic distribution of preaspiration and its functions in SSE. Preaspiration is shown to occur more frequently after open vowels and phrase-finally. Sociophonetic conditioning by speaker's sex is not found to be relevant. Functional analysis shows that preaspiration (reflected in the amount of noise in mid/high spectralfrequencies) is a systematic correlate of phonological fricative /voice/ contrast phrase finally. In this context, it appears to be even stronger predictor of /voice/ than such traditionally-considered correlates as voicing offset and segmental duration. The results show that abstract non-neutralised /voice/ is phonetically multidimensional such that fricative preaspiration can maintain the contrast in the contexts where phonetic voicing is demoted. The extent and functioning of preaspiration in SSE suggests that it is a varietyspecific optional characteristic resulting from a learned dissociation of lingual and laryngeal stricture gestures in voiceless fricatives.caslpub154pu

Sociophonetic Variation, Orientation and Topic in County Durham

This thesis presents a sociophonetic study of four villages in County Durham which have not previously been explored in sociolinguistic literature. As well as examining socially-conditioned phonological variation across the villages, the study analyses the linguistic relationship between the research site and two larger localities with their own urban varieties of English, which are situated at either side of the research area: the city of Sunderland to the north and the Teesside conurbation to the south. The study examines phonological variability in the linguistic production of a socially-homogeneous group of thirty-two speakers, split equally across the four villages and stratified by emically-defined age groups. More than 6500 tokens of the MOUTH, FACE, GOAT and START variables (following Wells’ 1982 method of classifying sets of vowels) are analysed from recorded sociolinguistic interviews with informants. The findings are compared to previous sociolinguistic investigations of other varieties of North East English in terms of the levelling of variants local to the area. The established methodological comparison of read speech and conversational styles is complemented by detailed investigation of the conversational topic in which the production occurs, and its effect on phonological variation. An Identity Questionnaire (pioneered by Llamas 2001) explores identity construction in County Durham and how this is shaped by local speech patterns. This is achieved by surveying speakers’ individual attitudes and perceptions about their local area and accents. The correlation of this language ideology data and speakers’ actual linguistic performance allows the study to assess the role orientation plays in variant usage. While some variables (GOAT and MOUTH) demonstrate change in the direction of levelled variants, highly local forms are favoured in individual villages in terms of the FACE and START vowels which only pattern with geographical areas below the regional level (younger speakers close to Teesside overwhelmingly use the local START form found in Teesside; younger speakers further north retain the local FACE variant found in Tyneside and Sunderland). However, speakers across all locations produce a higher proportion of local variants in the highly local conversational topic of coal mining

On the natural history of preaspirated stops

This dissertation makes two contributions, one empirical, the other theoretical. Empirically, the dissertation deepens our understanding of the lifecycle and behavior of the preaspirated stop, an extremely rare phonological feature. I show that in most confirmed cases, preaspirated stops develop from earlier voiceless geminate stops, less commonly from nasal-voiceless stop clusters. When decaying, preaspirated stops typically develop into unaspirated voiceless stops, or undergo buccalization to become preaffricated. More rarely, decaying preaspirated stops may trigger tonogenesis, or undergo spirantization or nasalization. Phonologically, preaspirated stops usually function as positionally conditioned allophones of underlying aspirated voiceless stops contrasting with voiceless unaspirated stops. The dissertation tests three theoretical frameworks. First, the State-Process model claims that the synchronic distribution of linguistic features offers insight into their rates of innovation and transmission. Conventionally, the rarity of preaspirated stops is attributed to a presumed low rate of transmission: they are rare because they are hard to hear. However, the geographic and genetic distribution of preaspirated stops fit the State-Process model's prototype of an infrequently innovated but robustly transmitted linguistic feature. Further, I show experimentally that preaspirated stops are no more difficult to distinguish from unaspirated stops than are much more abundant postaspirated stops. Second, the dissertation tests the success of two models, one cognitive, the other phonetic/diachronic, at accounting for two place-based asymmetries in Scottish Gaelic preaspiration. Whereas a conventional Optimality-Theoretic analysis of these asymmetries overgenerates, an analysis modified via Steriade's P-map Hypothesis resolves this overgeneration. The P-map analysis depends on congruent perceptual scales, which the perception experiment (above) confirms: participants' confusion rates closely match the place-based asymmetries observed in Gaelic. The competing innocent misperception model depends on the presence of phonetic precursors to produce an ambiguous phonological signal, which listeners may interpret differently than intended by the speaker, leading to an alteration in a segment's underlying form. A series of production experiments identifies potential precursors, but also reveals between-speaker variation more compatible with the P-map account than innocent misperception, again lending support to Steriade's hypothesis

Manx English: a phonological investigation into levelling and diffusion from across the water

This study aims to locate the Isle of Man within the sociolinguistic field of language variation and change. Stigmatised features of speech on island communities are often cited as examples to discuss accent levelling (the loss of traditional features), in addition, the research into geographical diffusion (the inclusion of features from outside) on islands demonstrates the extent of spread that certain features reach. However, there are also certain resistance strategies and barriers islanders can put up. The English spoken on the Isle of Man (referred to as Manx English) has had little coverage within the investigation of linguistic issues. Both apparent- and real-time analysis methods are presented within this thesis. Previous phonological analysis from two separate studies (SED in 1950s/1960s and Recording Mann in 1999) were used to compare to the original corpus created for this thesis. Different generations of families were also analysed for synchronic changes in dialect features. Recordings were obtained through sociolinguistic interviews and were analysed auditorily and acoustically. The overarching aims of the research are to assess the influence of accent features from outside the community,investigate features, which may have been lost over time, and to discuss the social and linguistic factors, which determine the acceptance or resistance of some features. Findings vary from feature to feature. This thesis discovered that there are elements of traditional Manx English that are upheld (vowel lenghtening). The GOAT vowel is showing interesting variation from young to old speakers depending on influences (Liverpool for younger speakers,traditional Manx English forms for older) and the incoming tide of the glottal stop is reaching the Island’s shores. This thesis investigates the mechanisms of change and finds both internal and external factors affect the production of English on the Isle of Man

A Sociolinguistic Survey of (t,d) deletion, (t) glottaling, and their intersection in East Anglian English

This thesis examines two well-studied phonological features - (t,d) deletion and (t) glottaling – in East Anglian English by maintaining the structuralist roots of the variationist paradigm (e.g. Wolfram 1993; Patrick 1999). It also investigates, for the first time, the covariation between the two linguistic variables by exploring the intersection of (t) deletion and (t) glottaling in word-final consonant clusters (e.g. different). (t,d) deletion has been largely investigated in US English dialects, yet it has received comparatively little attention in the UK. (t) glottaling has been widely examined as a change in progress in England (including Norwich, Trudgill, 1974, 1988) and Scotland, yet little research on this variable has been carried out in Ipswich (Straw & Patrick, 2007) or Colchester. Data was gathered in three East Anglian speech communities: Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich, where 36 participants, equally distributed, have been recorded by means of sociolinguistic interviews, reading passages and word lists. Mixed-effects Rbrul regression analysis was carried out. (t,d) results are in line with previous US studies showing that (t,d) absence is primarily conditioned by linguistic factors and its profile is that of a stable variable. A more fine-grained analysis is suggested for the following phonological environment. For (t) glottaling, this thesis also proposes a closer inspection of the following phonological environment. The preceding phonological context - little explored in previous studies - plays a notable role. While word-final /t/ glottaling has completed its social change and is spreading in phonological space even in environments where it used to be blocked, word-medial /t/ is both phonetically and socially conditioned. The covariation between (t) glottaling and (t) deletion shows that the transition glottaling → deletion, in the lenition scale, is in feeding order and is mostly linguistically driven. In this analysis, women exhibit a higher use of glottal variants, whereas males promote deletion – the last stage of the lenition scale