View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UC Research Repository Vowel Change in New Zealand English – Patterns and Implications A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the University of Canterbury by Christian Langstrof University of Canterbury 2006 To Katie Drager, a true hero! Pierdo el tiempo pensando en lo esencial que a veces dejo pasar Héroes del Silencio Acknowledgements None of the work this thesis is based upon would have been possible without the generous financial support from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and the University of Canterbury, who both granted me scholarship covering the fees as well as living expenses during the entirety of my project. As far as academic support is concerned, I am indebted to Jen Hay for her relentless support and her continued encouragement as my primary supervisor throughout the project. In addition, I would like to thank all the people at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Canterbury for providing a helpful and stimulating atmosphere during my stay here. I would especially like to thank Lyle Campbell for his wholehearted support during the application procedure, which greatly influenced my decision to come to UoC in the first place. The intermediate archive data was collected by Rosemary Goodyear, Lesley Evans, and members of the ONZE team. The work done by members of the ONZE project in preparing the data, making transcripts, and obtaining background information is also acknowledged. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their support in all things personal as well as financial over many years! Christian Langstrof Table of contents 1 Introduction 2 2 Methodology 19 2.1 Introduction 19 2.2 The speakers 19 2.3 The variables 21 2.4 Acoustic analysis 22 2.5 Normalisation 24 2.5.1 Why normalise? 24 2.5.2 A selection of formerly proposed normalisation procedures 29 2.5.3 Normalising intermediate speakers 31 2.5.4 Discussion 50 2.5.6 Conclusion 62 3 The Short Front Vowels – KIT/DRESS/TRAP 63 3.1 Introduction 63 3.2 Background 63 3.2.1 Etymological considerations 63 3.2.2 The SFVs in related varieties 65 3.2.4 The SFV shift in New Zealand English 66 3.3 Results – Overall patterns 71 3.3.1 Evidence for a push-chain scenario 78 3.3.2 The ‘split system’ in the early male sample 80 3.3.3 Discussion – Means and allophones 81 3.3.4 Factor analysis 85 3.3.5 Correlations between vowels for individual speakers 97 3.4 Lexical Frequency 102 3.4.1 Factor analysis 102 3.5 Discussion – SFVs in F1/F2 space 106 3.6 Vowel Duration 107 3.6.1 Background – Vowel duration in English 108 3.6.2 Vowel duration in the intermediate period 110 3.6.2.1 Vowels in Monosyllables 112 3.6.2.2 Vowels in Polysyllables 113 3.6.3 Factor analysis 115 3.6.4 Discussion – Vowel duration 120 3.7 Conclusion – The NZE Front Vowel Shift 126 4 The Front Centring Diphthongs – NEAR/SQUARE 128 4.1 Introduction 128 4.2 Background – Historical origins 128 4.3 Mechanisms of phonemic mergers 131 4.4 NEAR/SQUARE in the intermediate period – Static properties 133 4.4.1 General patterns 133 4.4.2 Factor analysis 142 4.5 Discussion – Nucleus position 147 4.6 Dynamic properties 148 4.7 Stress 152 4.8 Merger by approximation, transfer, or expansion? 154 4.9 Lexical frequency 162 4.10 Durational properties 165 4.11 Conclusion 169 5 What is a FCD nucleus? – On the (non)-correspondence 171 between the nuclei of the front centring diphthongs and their monophthongal counterparts 5.1 Introduction 171 5.2 Quality – Formant frequency averages and shapes of 174 distributions 5.3 Duration revisited 183 5.4 Conclusion 186 6 Broad A in intermediate NZE 188 6.1 Introduction 188 6.2 Background 188 6.3 The START vowel in early NZE 192 6.4 Formant frequency distribution of the START vowel in the 193 intermediate period 6.5 Merger by transfer? 199 6.6 Vowel duration 206 6.7 Lexical diffusion and the role of proper nouns 208 6.8 Conclusion 212 7 The short front vowels – An exception to directionality 214 in chain shifts? 7.1 Introduction 214 7.2 Vowel types and subsystems 215 7.3 Change within and across subsystems 228 7.4 Front vowels on tracks 240 7.5 Conclusion 244 8 Chain shifts in multidimensional vowel spaces – An 246 evolutionary approach 8.1 Introduction 246 8.2 A mechanistic model of vowel shifts 246 8.3 Vowel shifts in multi-dimensional vowel spaces 257 8.4 Are vowel spaces segmented? 262 8.5 Conclusions, caveats and outlooks 273 9 A phonological afterthought - Vowel change as 277 optimisation: Why the NZE front vowel shift is not a good example 9.1 Introduction 277 9.2 Optimisation in phonological systems 277 9.2.1 What is optimal? 277 9.2.2 Hawkins’ analysis of NZE vowels 279 9.2.3 General problems with the concepts of ‘optimality’ in 280 vowel systems 9.2.4 Problems with the concept of ‘optimality’ specific to NZE 281 short front vowels 9.3 Discussion/Conclusion 286 10 Conclusion 288 References 295 Figures 2.1 Average raw frequency values of F1 against F2 of two speakers from the Intermediate Archive 2.2 Token scatter of DRESS and TRAP in the speech of 9 late Intermediate speakers 2.3 CART representations of pooled F1 data 2.4 CART representations of normalised formant frequency data in DRESS 2.5 CART representations of pooled F2 data 3.1 A schematic representation of the New Zealand English SFV shift 3.2 A schematic representation of the NZE front vowel shift 3.3 Two potential scenarios of a push-chain relationship between two vowels 3.4 F1/F2 averages of KIT, DRESS and TRAP 3.5 Mean frequency values of the first two formants of the lexical sets of KIT, DRESS and TRAP as well as their contextual variants 3.6 F1/F2 overlap in the speech of an individual speaker from the early male sample 3.7 Two possible scenarios for the NZE front vowel shift in the top two heights 3.8 (a) CART analysis of pooled F1 measurements of all three SFVs 3.8 (b) CART analysis of all KIT F1 measurements 3.8 (c) CART analysis of all DRESS F1 measurements 3.8 (d) CART analysis of all TRAP F1 measurements 3.9 (a) CART analysis of pooled F2 measurements 3.9 (b) CART analysis of all KIT F2 measurements 3.9 (c) CART analysis of all DRESS F2 measurements 3.9 (d) CART analysis of all TRAP F2 measurements 3.10 Individual mean values in those dimensions that are assumed to be interrelated 3.11 Individual mean values of DRESS F1 and KIT F2 before alveolar consonants 3.12 Individual mean values of formant frequency and year of birth 3.13 CART analysis of KIT F2 measurements including the independent variables lemma frequency (logged) and word frequency 3.14 Average durations of KIT, DRESS and TRAP before voiced and voiceless stops 3.15 Classification and Regression Tree of pooled duration measurements along the independent variables F1/F2/age/vowel/voice/syllable 3.16 Classification and Regression Tree analysis of duration measurements broken down into the three SFVs 3.17 Differential degrees of overlap between the lexical sets of KIT and DRESS in the speech of an early male speaker 3.18 F1/F2/duration plots of KIT, DRESS and TRAP in the early male and late female sample 4.1 Front vowel formant frequency averages in the Intermediate sample 4.2 Front vowel formant frequency averages in the Intermediate sample, broken down into age and speaker sex 4.3 Mean formant frequency and SD in six groups of Intermediate speakers 4.4 CART representations of major predictors of pooled NEAR/SQUARE data in the Intermediate sample 4.5 CART representations of formant frequency data from the early male and the late female group 4.6 Lowess line scatterplot smoother models of NEAR and SQUARE trajectories in the speech of 6 groups of speakers from the Intermediate Archive 4.7 Hypothetical token distributions of two vowels undergoing merger 4.8 Token distributions of pooled F1 data from the Intermediate sample 4.9 Token distributions of NEAR/SQUARE in the early male and the late female sample 4.10 Formant frequency plotted against lexical frequency in the Intermediate sample 4.11 Formant frequency plotted against lexical frequency for NEAR in the Intermediate sample 4.12 Classification and regression tree analysis of duration in centring diphthongs along the variables F1/F2/age/syllable/voice 4.13 NEAR/SQUARE distributions of 4 late female speakers 5.1 Formant frequency averages of FLEECE – NEAR – SQUARE – DRESS – KIT 5.2 Individual mean F1 values of DRESS and SQUARE 5.3 Two potential scenarios of DRESS and SQUARE raising under increasing correlation over time 5.4 Formant frequency values of NEAR and FLEECE in the early and late sample 5.5 F1/F2 plot of all tokens of NEAR, FLEECE and KIT in the early male sample 5.6 Average time-normalised formant frequency trajectories of NEAR and SQUARE in the Intermediate sample 5.7 Proportion-through-trajectory measure, schematised 6.1 Formant frequency plots of DANCE/ BATH against TRAP/START averages 6.2 Classification and regression tree analysis of pooled F2 data on the independent variables Manner of articulation of the following sound/Speaker Sex/Age 6.3 Classification and regression tree analysis of pooled F1 data on the independent variables Manner of articulation of the following sound/Speaker Sex/Age 6.4 Formant frequency plots of DANCE/BATH against TRAP/START averages of the early male and late female sample 6.5 Histogram representations potential of broad A words 6.6 Histogram representations of BATH 6.7 Histogram representations of DANCE 6.8 Formant frequency position of the lexical item ‘dance’ vs.