Situating speakers in change: a methodology for quantifying degree and direction of change over the lifespan
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Elena Sheard
Abstract
Observations of late adopters catching up with early adopters of language change in a community indicate a potential connection between an individual’s earlier linguistic behaviour and their real-time response to language change. This article provides a means of empirically testing whether such a connection exists, for a given change, by introducing a methodology for obtaining measurements of individuals’ position relative to the change at an earlier time point (a “Cohort Index”) and the direction and extent to which they change over time (a “Difference Index”). Trend and panel data from Australians of Greek and Italian background is used to illustrate both indices for F1 and F2 measurements of fleece, a vowel that has undergone change in Australian English in recent decades. Individuals’ positions in the change for fleece as teenagers are revealed to significantly correlate with the direction and extent to which they have moved in the vowel space over a forty-year period. Specifically, speakers who were originally behind in the change for their generational and ethnic cohort have moved in the direction of change over time more than those who were already ahead. The analysis therefore lays the foundation for the Cohort and Difference Indices to be applied elsewhere.
Funding source: ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
Award Identifier / Grant number: CE140100041
Funding source: Department of Education, Australian Government
Award Identifier / Grant number: Australian Research Training Program Stipend
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the leads of the SSDS and SydS, Barbara Horvath and Catherine Travis, for making this work possible. Thank you to the Sydney Speaks Project Managers, Katrina Hayes and Cale Johnstone, and all the research assistants who contributed to the project. I am indebted to the community research assistants who conducted the 2019 SSLC interviews, Benjamin Purser, Emilia Kriketos, and Samantha Poulos, and to postdoctoral fellows James Grama and Simon Gonzalez for developing the processing pipelines for the vowel data. Thank you to my supervisory panel, Catherine Travis, James Grama, Ksenia Gnevsheva, and Suzanne Wagner, who oversaw the dissertation on which this manuscript is based. I also thank the reviewers for their time and feedback.
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