Social integration and dialect divergence in coastal Palestine

The history of Palestine has caused communities to be displaced and relocated, entailing that speech communities have been dismantled and created anew. The coastal cities of Jaffa and Gaza exemplify this reality. This study analyzes speakers from Jaffa, some of whom remained there and others residing in Gaza as refugees. Through an examination of three variables, (ʕ), (AH), and (Q), we shed light on the effects of dialect contact while highlighting the link between dialect contact and identity formation and maintenance. All three variables are found to be in varied states of change as a result of contact with other varieties of Arabic, as well as with Modern Hebrew. We conclude that (Q), through its high social salience, works to create and maintain a sense of community identity for Jaffan refugees in Gaza at a time when the speech of the larger Jaffa community is undergoing substantial linguistic change

An acoustic phonetic analysis of African American English: A comparative study of two dialects

In this thesis, I contribute acoustic phonetic data and analysis to the study of African American English (AAE). For this research, I collected speech samples of self-identified AAE speakers and speakers of a dominant coexisting dialect, the Northern Cities Shift (NCS). I analyze these samples to determine if vowel quality and vowel duration are consistently and predictably varied between the two dialects. Labov\u27s Chain Shift Principles are used as the context for the results. In my analysis, I find that both vowel quality and duration are different between AAE and NCS in ways previously undocumented in the linguistic literature. The quality analysis relies on evidence from the vowel [ æ ]. I find that AAE shares a distinct quality feature of NCS, raised [ æ ], despite the fact that this feature is said not to be present in AAE. This vowel functions as the pivot point for the chain shift in the NCS data but does not cause a vowel shift in AAE data analyzed in this thesis. In the analysis of vowel length, I rely on data from the front tense/lax vowel pairs, [ i ; ] and [ e ; ] in both dialects. ɪ ɛ I find that vowel length is consistently longer in AAE than in NCS. Additionally, I find that in NCS, the tense/lax pairs maintain a difference in length in which the tense vowels are longer than the lax vowels. In AAE, I find that the tense vowels are shorter than the lax vowels. I conclude that the length differences found in these data sets indicate that Labov\u27s feature [ +/- peripheral ] is not a feature of the AAE front tense/lax vowel pairs, [ i ; ɪ ] and [ e ; ɛ ] and that this prevents a vowel shift in AAE that should occur in response to the presence of the raised [ æ ]. ii

Standard accented Turkish speakers’ perception of Kurdish accented speakers: The factors behind the evaluations

This study investigates the attitudes of standard accented Turkish speakers towards non-standard Kurdish accented speakers of Turkish. Given the fact that there are strict language policies in Turkey, this paper analyzes the effect of such standard language ideologies on listener attitudes using a mixed-methods design. The study included 50 Turkish participants with ages ranging from 19 to 51. Participants completed a survey with 21 questions and could volunteer to also participate in an interview. The survey asked about biographical data, evaluations of various speakers and ratings of accents of Turkish. Using a matched guise technique in the survey, a Kurdish accented speaker was recorded both in standard and non-standard accented Turkish. To explore possible differences based on age, survey responses were divided into groups with young adults (under 30) and adults. For qualitative data, 13 respondents were interviewed to explore their language ideologies. The results show that the Kurdish accented speaker received the lowest scores among all the speakers in the survey and were perceived negatively in all categories such as pleasantness, correctness and educatedness When the standard accent was attained by the same speaker, the ratings increased. The attainment of the standard accent also effected the identification of the speaker as respondents identified the Kurdish speaker as “Kurdish” when they heard the non-standard and “Turkish” when they heard the standard accent. During the interviews, One nation-one language ideologies which was promoted in the country and the standard language ideologies have been observed

Salience and social meaning in speech production and perception

Research has shown that phonetic features can index social meaning, yet less is known about whether this phenomenon occurs in the same way in speech production and speech perception. In particular, one of the factors that most seems to affect variables’ capacity for social meaning-making is the notion of salience. This thesis addresses the question of how phonetic variation points to social meaning in speech production and perception and what role salience plays in influencing this process. I investigate these issues using a sociophonetic study of two phonetic variables currently undergoing change in the South of England – /t/-glottalling and GOOSE-fronting – as produced and perceived by adolescents at a state school and a private school in Hampshire, UK. While the former is reported to be highly salient with strong socio-indexical relations, the latter is said not to be very salient and to lack associations with speakers’ social characteristics. The production results show that /t/-glottalling displays macro-sociological variation in the community, while GOOSE-fronting varies between peer groups within the private school. Both features can be used to index stances in interaction, but this effect is much stronger for /t/-glottalling. In perception, listeners were easily able to notice glottal /t/ in auditory stimuli and consistently associated it with a set of related social meanings, yet this was not the case for fronted GOOSE. The findings have implications for our understanding of how the social meanings of phonetic variables are produced and perceived by the same individuals, especially in the contexts of adolescent peer groups at school and social stratification between different types of school. I argue that researchers employing the construct of salience in sociolinguistics should acknowledge the limitations and different dimensions of the concept and operationalise these in their study design

Pitch and voice quality: acoustic evidence for tone in lower Koyukon

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2019This thesis addresses the acoustic realization of tone in the Lower dialect of the Koyukon language. The Lower dialect is the only one of the three Koyukon dialects attested to have tone. Its exact nature, however, remains unclear. This study seeks to corroborate previous attestations of low tone in Lower Koyukon by providing acoustic evidence of its realization. Therefore, there are three primary objectives: a) to determine how tone is produced in Lower Koyukon with respect to pitch; b) to examine any interactions between tone and potential pitch-altering phenomena; and c) to determine the realization of creaky phonation during tone production, if such exists. All of the data for this study was gathered from a single consultant, a fluent Lower Koyukon speaker. Three elicitation strategies were employed. First, a game of bingo was developed from a list of words predicted to carry a tonal syllable. Second, the consultant was asked to teach the researcher how to pronounce a series of short phrases and sentences that contained a word with a tonal syllable. Finally, the researcher selected a story written in Koyukon for the consultant to read aloud. During the analytical process, each word predicted to carry tone was compared to both a control set of non-tonal words and a set of words that may or may not carry tone. The only statistically significant difference was that the set of tokens predicted to carry tone had higher measures of creak than the control set. As creaky voice is inherently linked to tone production, this finding supports previous attestations of tone. However, both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed for this study, and several examples are cited which show both that there is a significant pitch change on syllables predicted to carry tone. Moreover, it appears that that this pitch rises. The implications of this study are therefore that tone is present in modern Lower Koyukon, and that this tone may by high, rather than low, as has been previously claimed

Creating a new town koine : children and language change in Milton Keynes.

Koineization – the development of a new, mixed variety following dialect contact – has well-documented outcomes. However, there have been few studies of the phenomenon actually in progress. This article describes the development of a new variety in the English New Town of Milton Keynes, designated in 1967. The article is structured around eight “principles” that relate the process of koineization to its outcomes. Recordings were made of 48 Milton Keynes-born children in three age groups (4, 8, and 12), the principal caregiver of each child, and several elderly locally born residents. Quantitative analysis of ten phonetic variables suggests that substantial but not complete focusing occurs in the child generation. The lack of linguistic continuity in the New Town is demonstrated, and the time scale of koineization there is discussed. Finally, it is shown that demography and the social-network characteristics of individuals are crucial to the outcomes of koineization

The influence of long-term exposure to dialect variation on representation specificity and word learning in toddlers.

Until very recently language development research classified the language learner as belonging to one of two discrete groups – monolingual or bilingual. This thesis explores the hypothesis that this is an insufficient description of language input and that there are sub-groups within the monolingual category based on the phonological variability of their exposure that could be considered akin to that of bilingual toddlers. For some monolingual toddlers, classified as monodialectal, their language exposure is generally consistent, because both of their parents speak the dialect of the local area. Yet for other toddlers, classified as multidialectal, the language environment is more variable, because at least one of their parents speaks with a dialect that differs from the local area. It is considered that by testing this group of multidialectal toddlers it will be possible to explore the effect of variability on language development and how increased variability in the bilingual linguistic environment might be influencing aspects of language development. This thesis approaches the influence of variability from three areas of interest: phonetic specificity of familiar words using a mispronunciation paradigm (Experiments 1 and 2), target recognition of naturally occurring pronunciation alternatives (Experiments 3 and 4) and use of the Mutual Exclusivity strategy in novel word learning (Experiment 5). Results show that there are differences between the two dialect groups (monodialectal and multidialectal) in a mispronunciation detection task but that toddlers perform similarly with naturally occurring pronunciation alternatives and in their application of the Mutual Exclusivity strategy. This programme of work highlights that there is an influence of linguistic variability on aspects of language development, justifying the parallel between bilingualism and multidialectalism

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