Journal Issue: Selected Papers from NWAV 38
Volume
Number
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Date Published
11/06/2010
Journal Volume
Description
Keywords
Collection
20 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 10 of 20
Publication The Effect of Dialect Features on the Perception of “Correctness” in English-Word Voting Patterns on Forvo.com(2010-01-01) Grieser, JessicaForvo.com is a user-driven online dictionary of word and short phrase pronunciations, where in-dividuals may record pronunciations and rate those of others on their “correctness.” Launched in January 2008, it archives over 585,000 pronunciations in 241 languages as of May 2010. This paper examines the ratings of pronunciations from speakers in the United States, England, and Australia to determine the factors most responsible for high- and low-scoring English pronuncia-tions. Niedzielski (1999) found that perceived speaker locale affected naïve listener perception of phonetic variables. This paper examines two variables which, in combination with listeners’ per-ception of speaker locale, affect the “correctness” rating of English pronunciations on Forvo: the perception of hypercorrection as evidenced by the realization of intervocalic /t/, and the link be-tween perceived speaker locale and topic of the word being pronounced. Released intervocalic /t/ is a well-documented feature of British and Australian English (Wardhaugh 1999, Wolfram and Fasold 1974, Bayard et al. 2001). Within the sample of 187 pronunciations used for this data, only released-/t/ pronunciations by British and Australian speakers received average scores in the high range (greater than 4.0 on a 5-point scale), suggesting that Forvo voters consider released /t/ a hypercorrect feature when from a US English speaker. Voters also show a strong preference for dialect features to match the topic of the word or phrase being pronounced. Listeners prefer hear-ing US locations or personalities pronounced by a US speaker and vice versa, as evidenced by the lack of any high-scoring pronunciations of words by speakers whose dialect locale did not match the topic of the pronounced word. Both of these patterns suggest that naïve listeners attend extensively to dialect when making judgments about the overall correctness of features in even single-word pronunciations.Publication “It’s Not That Big (Of) a Deal”: The Sociolinguistic Conditioning of Inverted Degree Phrases in Washington, DC(2010-01-01) Nylund, Anastasia; Seals, CorinneThis paper examines the significance of participant assigned acceptability ratings for the post-adjectival degree construction ADJ (of/0) NP. The majority of studies in sociolinguistic variation have investigated phonological variables, such as alveolarization of (ing) and reduction or deletion of (t/d). Studies on syntactic variation often examine multiple realizations of a variable or the distribution of several variables. However, we base our study on Rickford et al.’s (1995) finding that syntactic variables can also be successfully isolated. In the present study, we describe a current change in progress involving a previously unstudied syntactic variable: post-adjectival (of) in degree constructions such as “It’s not that big (of) a deal.” We analyzed 3,600 tokens collected from 150 participants in the Washington, DC, area, and found significance in participant age, participant ethnicity, and the linguistic conditioning of the phrase, all affecting the acceptability rating given to the construction. Most notably, we found that acceptability of (of) is negatively correlated with age. The younger participants showed a strong preference for constructions with (of), whereas older informants overall preferred (0) constructions. Our findings suggest that this feature is part of an ongoing change in progress in Washington, DC.Publication Linguistic Variation and Change in Atlanta, Georgia(2010-01-01) Prichard, HilaryIn spite of its unique position as a fast-growing urban metropolis in the heart of the South, little research has been conducted to uncover the effects of Atlanta’s rapid growth on the speech of its native population. This paper reports on variation and change in the speech of Atlanta, Georgia, which has occurred as a result of this growth, focusing on the current state of the Southern Shift. The evidence presented is limited to key vowel features, especially /ay/-monophthongization and the front chain shift. Drawing on regional data found in past projects (e.g., Labov et al. 2006, Montgomery and Nunnally 2008, Feagin 2003, Thomas 2001) and utilizing a variety of sociolinguistic methods, this paper analyzes a data set in which both apparent-time changes and variation can be observed. In order to more fully capture Atlantan speech, two different types of interview are presented. The first is a rapid and anonymous interview of 59 speakers which focuses on the pronunciation of /ay/ before voiced consonants. These interviews show black speakers to have a significantly higher rate of /ay/-monophthongization than white speakers, and that overall rates of /ay/- monophthongization vary between different neighborhoods. The second type consists of a longer conversation-style interview followed by a reading passage, for which data from five white native Atlantans is presented. Acoustic analysis of these interviews shows that the older speakers use more features associated with the Southern Shift than the younger speakers, but that none of the speakers exhibit a fully-shifted vowel system.Publication The Gradient Nature of S-Lenition in Caleño Spanish(2010-01-01) File-Muriel, Richard J.; Brown, Earl K.Previous studies of s-weakening in Spanish have relied almost exclusively on the impressionistic coding of /s/. Not only is auditory transcription invariably influenced by the transcriber’s background, but temporal and gradient acoustic details about the sound are concealed when tokens are represented symbolically. The present study examines the production of /s/ by eight females from Cali, Colombia during informal sociolinguistic interviews. We propose a metric for quantifying s-realization by employing three scalar dependent variables: s-duration, centroid, and voicelessness. The results of linear regressions indicate that the dependent variables are significantly conditioned by local speaking rate, lexical frequency, stress, word position, and the preceding and following phonological contexts. This study sheds light on how each independent variable impacts s-realization acoustically. For example, as local speaking rate increases, duration, centroid, and voicelessness decrease, indicative of lenition. We discuss the advantages of opting for instrumental measurements over symbolic representation.Publication Using Acoustic Trajectory Information in Studies of Merger(2010-01-01) Scanlon, Michael; Wassink, Alicia BeckfordThis study investigates the utility of examining acoustic trajectory information indicative of gliding in the case of mergers or near-mergers. It presents a sociophonetic analysis of conversational speech from one African American Seattle native, who perceives the pin and pen classes as merged. The study finds no difference (“merger”) between the speaker’s pin and pen classes by F1 or F2 at vowel midpoint. However, phonemic vowel distinctions are preserved in Euclidean distance and duration, and the vowel classes are more distinct pre-nasally than in non-pre-nasal contexts. A regression of the researcher’s perception of distance on vowel class corroborates this pattern. Lastly, multidimensional calculation of overlap using SOAM (Wassink 2006) for a small sample of data from 12 Seattle speakers suggests Seattle African Americans differentiate pin from pen somewhat by the amount of glide, while Seattle Whites do not.Publication Stop Signs: The Intersection of Interdental Fricatives and Identity in Newfoundland(2010-01-01) Childs, Becky; De Decker, Paul; Deal, Rachel; Kendall, Tyler; Thorburn, Jennifer; Williamson, Maia; Van Herk, GerardInvestigating local linguistic norms to discover larger patterns of language behaviour has been standard practice in sociolinguistic study. Looking closely at socially salient variables reveals patterns that problematize accepted trajectories of variation as traditional and newly emerging sociolinguistic identities interact. This paper integrates findings from multiple complementary projects to describe the forces influencing the stopping of interdental fricatives (dis ting for this thing), a highly salient marker of Newfoundland English, in and around St. John’s, the province’s major city. In urbanizing communities multivariate analysis reveals variation patterns typical of dialect erosion: older men maintain traditional norms while younger women move toward the standard, especially in linguistically salient contexts. In the same communities, a timing-based approach finds that young women seem to be agentively inserting stopped forms, suggesting that they have adopted a system with fricatives as the default choice. When we contrast urban and rural communities and affiliations, we find a more complex pattern: style shifting is greatest among urban males and rural females. We posit that these seemingly divergent patterns result from efforts by speakers to position themselves within the local social landscape during a period of rapid social change.Publication An Eleméntàry Linguistic Definition of Upstate New York(2010-01-01) Dinkin, Aaron J.; Evanini, KeelanThis paper examines a hitherto undiscussed dialectological feature of Upstate New York: the pronunciation of words like elementary (documentary, complimentary, etc.) as eleméntàry, with secondary stress on the penultimate syllable. We report the results of three studies examining the geographic distribution of this feature. In the first study, data from 119 sociolinguistic interviews in communities in eastern New York establish the widespread usage of the feature in this region. In the second study, data from 59 sociolinguistic interviews in far western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania show that the geographic extent of the feature hews very close to the New York–Pennsylvania state line in that region. The third study is a rapid and anonymous telephone survey of the lexical item elementary including 188 towns across the entire state of New York and nearby parts of adjacent states. This study finds that the stressed-penultimate pattern is nearly confined to Upstate New York, bleeding only into the Northern Tier of counties in Pennsylvania and a few towns in southwestern Vermont. In addition to providing empirical evidence for the geographic extent of this dialectolgical feature, this study analyzes the relationship between the distribution of the -méntàry pronunciation and other isoglosses that serve as boundaries between major dialect regions in the area. The analysis shows that the geographic extent of the -méntàry pronunciation does not always pattern closely with dialect regions defined by phonological criteria; rather, it coincides more closely with the cultural boundary delimiting the region of Upstate New York. We argue that this type of linguistic boundary is caused primarily by communication patterns (as opposed to constraints internal to the linguistic system), and that it is more likely to be observed in variants involving analogical change, such as the -méntàry pronunciation.Publication On the Role of Social Factors in the Loss of Phonemic Distinctions(2010-01-01) Baranowski, MaciejThe paper tests the generalization of the curvilinear hypothesis and the tendency of females to lead linguistic change in vocalic mergers on the basis of two mergers currently in progress in Charleston, SC: the low-back merger and the pin-pen merger. It is based on minimal-pair tests and on the acoustic analysis of the speech of 90 speakers, aged 8-90, representing the entire socio-economic spectrum of the city. While the low-back merger is a change from below showing a female advantage and a curvilinear effect of social class, the pin-pen merger shows a decreasing monotonic relationship with social class and no female lead. The difference is argued to be due to the two mergers being at different levels of conscious awareness in the community.Publication A Real-time Study of Future Temporal Reference in Spoken Ontarian French(2010-01-01) Grimm, D. RickIn this paper I examine the use of future temporal reference in real-time in the majority French community of Hawkesbury, Ontario, Canada. The corpora, established in 1978 and 2005, contain sociolinguistic interviews of Francophone adolescents 15 to 18 years of age enrolled in French-medium schools. At issue in this research is the variation between the periphrastic and inflected future forms. Over the 28-year time span, the periphrastic future has assumed new prestige in this variety, now the preferred variant of the middle class. Moreover, this form has made significant gains into negative contexts, the formerly privileged and nearly exclusive site of the inflected future. In light of this unprecedented behavior, the question remains as to what will become of the inflected future. I discuss here a number of important signs discovered in the real-time data for Hawkesbury that lend further support for the waning force of the inflected future in Laurentian varieties of spoken French.Publication Do Speech Evaluation Scales in a Speaker Evaluation Experiment Trigger Conscious or Unconscious Attitudes?(2010-01-01) Grondelaers, Stefan; van Hout, RoelandThis paper challenges the exclusive reliance on speaker personality traits in experimental language attitude research. The most explicitly articulated motivation for this restriction is Kristiansen’s (2009) contention that the use of scales pertaining to the investigated varieties themselves could make listener-judges aware of the research purpose, as a result of which their attitudes would be consciously offered, shallow perceptions instead of deeper conceptualizations. On the basis of a free response experiment (in which respondents were invited to explicitly articulate their attitudes towards labelled varieties of Netherlandic Dutch), we demonstrate first that language attitudes are made up of speaker personality traits, but also, and unmistakably, of speech-related perceptions of the investigated varieties. A follow-up experiment (with scaled responses to unlabelled speech stimuli) confirms that the inclusion of speech traits in a speaker evaluation experiment does not affect the nature and structure of the attitudes observed. Building on these data, we argue against the idea that specific attitude measurement techniques should correlate with specific attitude consciousness levels, and we make a plea for a multi-modal approach to language attitudes.