Fifty years of monophthong and diphthong shifts in Mainstream Australian English
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Felicity Cox
Abstract
In this chapter we report on a diachronic acoustic analysis of Mainstream Australian English (MAusE) monophthongs and diphthongs, produced by young female speakers from Sydney. We examined the first and second formant frequencies for 11 monophthongs extracted from read speech data from the 1960s, 1990s, and 2010s. Focusing on patterns of relationships between the monophthongs at each of three historical time points, we highlight possible chain and parallel shifts. This analysis revealed a set of changes suggesting anticlockwise rotation of the system of monophthongs, resulting in a reduction of the four-way height contrast observed in the 1960s to a three-way height system in the later time periods. We also examined four selected diphthongs using generalised additive mixed models (GAMMs) to compare characteristics of the first and second formant trajectories between the 1960s and 2010s datasets. For each of the diphthongs, there were significant nonlinear differences over the 50-year time span, illuminating aspects of vowel change that may remain hidden without explicit analysis of dynamicity. Overall, the results suggest a close connection between monophthongs and diphthongs during vowel change showing parallel shifts and highlighting the need for continued research into connections across vocalic subsystems.
Abstract
In this chapter we report on a diachronic acoustic analysis of Mainstream Australian English (MAusE) monophthongs and diphthongs, produced by young female speakers from Sydney. We examined the first and second formant frequencies for 11 monophthongs extracted from read speech data from the 1960s, 1990s, and 2010s. Focusing on patterns of relationships between the monophthongs at each of three historical time points, we highlight possible chain and parallel shifts. This analysis revealed a set of changes suggesting anticlockwise rotation of the system of monophthongs, resulting in a reduction of the four-way height contrast observed in the 1960s to a three-way height system in the later time periods. We also examined four selected diphthongs using generalised additive mixed models (GAMMs) to compare characteristics of the first and second formant trajectories between the 1960s and 2010s datasets. For each of the diphthongs, there were significant nonlinear differences over the 50-year time span, illuminating aspects of vowel change that may remain hidden without explicit analysis of dynamicity. Overall, the results suggest a close connection between monophthongs and diphthongs during vowel change showing parallel shifts and highlighting the need for continued research into connections across vocalic subsystems.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- On the nature of speech dynamics: approaches to studying synchronic variation and diachronic change 1
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Part 1: Empirical perspectives on diachronic change
- Fifty years of monophthong and diphthong shifts in Mainstream Australian English 17
- Coarticulation guides sound change: an acoustic-phonetic study of real-time change in word-initial /l/ over four decades of Glaswegian 49
- The impact of automated phonetic alignment and formant tracking workflows on sound change measurement 89
- One place, two speech communities: differing responses to sound change in Mainstream and Aboriginal Australian English in a small rural town 117
- Prosodic change in 100 years: the fall of the rise-fall in an Albanian variety 145
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Part 2: Factors conditioning synchronic variation
- Control of larynx height in vowel production revisited: a real-time MRI study 175
- Sheila’s roses (are in the paddick): reduced vowels in Australian English 207
- The future of the queen: how to pronounce “König✶innen” ‘gender-neutrally’ in German 245
- Synchronic variation and diachronic change: mora-counting and syllable-counting dialects in Japanese 273
- Reconstructing the timeline of a consonantal change in a German dialect: evidence from agent-based modeling 307
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Part 3: Theoretical approaches at the interface between synchronic variation and diachronic change
- On (mis)aligned innovative perception and production norms 343
- Phonological patterns and dependency relations may arise from aerodynamic factors 369
- Actuation without production bias 395
- Understanding the role of broadcast media in sound change 425
- Connecting prosody and duality of patterning in diachrony, typology, phylogeny, and ontogeny 453
- Index 483
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- On the nature of speech dynamics: approaches to studying synchronic variation and diachronic change 1
-
Part 1: Empirical perspectives on diachronic change
- Fifty years of monophthong and diphthong shifts in Mainstream Australian English 17
- Coarticulation guides sound change: an acoustic-phonetic study of real-time change in word-initial /l/ over four decades of Glaswegian 49
- The impact of automated phonetic alignment and formant tracking workflows on sound change measurement 89
- One place, two speech communities: differing responses to sound change in Mainstream and Aboriginal Australian English in a small rural town 117
- Prosodic change in 100 years: the fall of the rise-fall in an Albanian variety 145
-
Part 2: Factors conditioning synchronic variation
- Control of larynx height in vowel production revisited: a real-time MRI study 175
- Sheila’s roses (are in the paddick): reduced vowels in Australian English 207
- The future of the queen: how to pronounce “König✶innen” ‘gender-neutrally’ in German 245
- Synchronic variation and diachronic change: mora-counting and syllable-counting dialects in Japanese 273
- Reconstructing the timeline of a consonantal change in a German dialect: evidence from agent-based modeling 307
-
Part 3: Theoretical approaches at the interface between synchronic variation and diachronic change
- On (mis)aligned innovative perception and production norms 343
- Phonological patterns and dependency relations may arise from aerodynamic factors 369
- Actuation without production bias 395
- Understanding the role of broadcast media in sound change 425
- Connecting prosody and duality of patterning in diachrony, typology, phylogeny, and ontogeny 453
- Index 483
