11. A tale of two diphthongs in an indigenous minority language: Yami of Taiwan
-
Victoria Rau
Abstract
This study investigates the phonological variation and sound change in the Yami diphthongs (ay) and (aw) (e.g., mangay ~ mangey ‘go’, araw ~ arow ‘day, sun’), a Philippine language spoken on Orchid Island, 60 kilometers southeast of Taiwan. Previous studies (Rau & Chang 2006; Rau & Dong 2006) found that the two diphthongs were undergoing vowel raising on the island with an isogloss separating the more progressive northeast from the more conservative southwest. However, social factors were not discussed, and thus no interpretation of the vowel raising was provided.
The present study examined both linguistic and social factors accounting for vowel raising, with a goal of interpreting the indexical meanings of sound change in the two diphthongs on the island. The data were 20 narratives taken from a Yami corpus (http://yamiproject.cs.pu.edu.tw/yami), 10 narratives from Dong & Rau (1999, 2000), and word list elicitation collected in 1995. Our results from VARBRUL analyses confirmed that vowel raising is a geographical feature and that the rates of change have formed a clear isogloss separating the northeast from the southwest varieties. However, vowel raising of (ay) has progressed slightly faster than that of (aw). The preceding segments of (ay) and (aw) favoring raising are mainly determined by the feature of [continuant]. For both diphthongs, [+continuant] favors raising whereas [–continuant] disfavors it. There was stylistic variation with more raising in narrative style than in word list reading. Vowel raising was preferred by males; however, young females seem to have surpassed young males in adopting this feature in narrative style, a phenomenon corresponding to the social mobility of women. Perhaps vowel raising has ceased to be a gender marker and shifted to an ethnic identity marker.
Abstract
This study investigates the phonological variation and sound change in the Yami diphthongs (ay) and (aw) (e.g., mangay ~ mangey ‘go’, araw ~ arow ‘day, sun’), a Philippine language spoken on Orchid Island, 60 kilometers southeast of Taiwan. Previous studies (Rau & Chang 2006; Rau & Dong 2006) found that the two diphthongs were undergoing vowel raising on the island with an isogloss separating the more progressive northeast from the more conservative southwest. However, social factors were not discussed, and thus no interpretation of the vowel raising was provided.
The present study examined both linguistic and social factors accounting for vowel raising, with a goal of interpreting the indexical meanings of sound change in the two diphthongs on the island. The data were 20 narratives taken from a Yami corpus (http://yamiproject.cs.pu.edu.tw/yami), 10 narratives from Dong & Rau (1999, 2000), and word list elicitation collected in 1995. Our results from VARBRUL analyses confirmed that vowel raising is a geographical feature and that the rates of change have formed a clear isogloss separating the northeast from the southwest varieties. However, vowel raising of (ay) has progressed slightly faster than that of (aw). The preceding segments of (ay) and (aw) favoring raising are mainly determined by the feature of [continuant]. For both diphthongs, [+continuant] favors raising whereas [–continuant] disfavors it. There was stylistic variation with more raising in narrative style than in word list reading. Vowel raising was preferred by males; however, young females seem to have surpassed young males in adopting this feature in narrative style, a phenomenon corresponding to the social mobility of women. Perhaps vowel raising has ceased to be a gender marker and shifted to an ethnic identity marker.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
-
Introduction
- The lure of a distant horizon: Variation in indigenous minority languages 1
-
Part I. Variation in phonetics and phonology
- 1. The phonetic and phonological effects of obsolescence in Northern Paiute 23
- 2. Diglossia and monosyllabization in Eastern Cham: A sociolinguistic study 47
- 3. Affricates in Lleidatà: A sociophonetic case study 77
- 4. Sociolinguistic stratification and new dialect formation in a Canadian aboriginal community: Not so different after all? 109
- 5. The changing sound of the Māori language 129
- 6. Toward a study of language variation and change in Jonaz Chichimeco 153
- 7. A sociolinguistic sketch of vowel shifts in Kaqchikel: ATR-RTR parameters and redundancy markedness of syllabic nuclei in an Eastern Mayan language 173
- 8. Phonological features of attrition: The shift from Catalan to Spanish in Alicante 211
- 9. Sociophonetic variation in urban Ewe 229
- 10. Phonological variation in a Peruvian Quechua speech community 245
- 11. A tale of two diphthongs in an indigenous minority language: Yami of Taiwan 259
- 12. Phonological markedness, regional identity, and sex in Mayan: The fricativization of intervocalic /l/ 281
- 13. The pronunciation of /r/ in Frisian: A comparative study with Dutch and Town Frisian 299
-
Part II. Variation in syntax, morphology, and morphophonology
- 14. Language shift among the Mansi 321
- 15. Fine-grained morphophonological variation in Scottish Gaelic: Evidence from the Linguistic Survey of Scotland 347
- 16. Animacy in Bislama? Using quantitative methods to evaluate transfer of a substrate feature 369
- 17. The challenges of less commonly studied languages: Writing a sociogrammar of Faetar 397
- 18. Language variation and change in a North Australian indigenous community 419
- 19. Ethnicity, bilingualism and variable clitic marking in Bishnupriya Manipuri 441
- 20. Clan as a sociolinguistic variable: Three approaches to Sui clans 463
- 21. Language loss in spatial semantics: Dene Sųłiné 485
- Index 517
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
-
Introduction
- The lure of a distant horizon: Variation in indigenous minority languages 1
-
Part I. Variation in phonetics and phonology
- 1. The phonetic and phonological effects of obsolescence in Northern Paiute 23
- 2. Diglossia and monosyllabization in Eastern Cham: A sociolinguistic study 47
- 3. Affricates in Lleidatà: A sociophonetic case study 77
- 4. Sociolinguistic stratification and new dialect formation in a Canadian aboriginal community: Not so different after all? 109
- 5. The changing sound of the Māori language 129
- 6. Toward a study of language variation and change in Jonaz Chichimeco 153
- 7. A sociolinguistic sketch of vowel shifts in Kaqchikel: ATR-RTR parameters and redundancy markedness of syllabic nuclei in an Eastern Mayan language 173
- 8. Phonological features of attrition: The shift from Catalan to Spanish in Alicante 211
- 9. Sociophonetic variation in urban Ewe 229
- 10. Phonological variation in a Peruvian Quechua speech community 245
- 11. A tale of two diphthongs in an indigenous minority language: Yami of Taiwan 259
- 12. Phonological markedness, regional identity, and sex in Mayan: The fricativization of intervocalic /l/ 281
- 13. The pronunciation of /r/ in Frisian: A comparative study with Dutch and Town Frisian 299
-
Part II. Variation in syntax, morphology, and morphophonology
- 14. Language shift among the Mansi 321
- 15. Fine-grained morphophonological variation in Scottish Gaelic: Evidence from the Linguistic Survey of Scotland 347
- 16. Animacy in Bislama? Using quantitative methods to evaluate transfer of a substrate feature 369
- 17. The challenges of less commonly studied languages: Writing a sociogrammar of Faetar 397
- 18. Language variation and change in a North Australian indigenous community 419
- 19. Ethnicity, bilingualism and variable clitic marking in Bishnupriya Manipuri 441
- 20. Clan as a sociolinguistic variable: Three approaches to Sui clans 463
- 21. Language loss in spatial semantics: Dene Sųłiné 485
- Index 517
