University of Ghent Faculty of Arts and Philosophy 2013 - 2014 The close front vowels of Northern Standard Dutch, Southern Standard Dutch and Afrikaans A descriptive, comparative and methodological inquiry Master thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Advanced Studies in Linguistics: Linguistics in a Comparative Perspective Mathijs Debaene Supervisor: prof. dr. Jacques Van Keymeulen Co-supervisor: prof. dr. Ellen Simon Acknowledgements “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” As much as I love Douglas Adams, I am quite relieved, to say the least, that this particular quote of his only applied to the first submission date for my Master’s thesis, and that the second deadline did not even begin to dare peer its ominous face at hopelessness’ horizon. I must admit that I may have made an error of judgment, and that I gravely underestimated the man-hours needed to manually compile and statistically process a data set the size of a baby rhinoceros like the one used in the present study. This confession being made, a number of people deserve a proper ‘shout-out’ for their contribution to this Master’s thesis, without whom it would have been impossible – or at least extremely difficult – to have successfully completed this endeavor. First and foremost, shout-out to my primary supervisor, professor Jacques Van Keymeulen, who can claim credit for pitching the idea of comparing Afrikaans with Northern and Southern varieties of Dutch. I duly appreciate the great degree of freedom (no statistical pun intended) with which you have let me conduct my research. Perhaps this is not the study that you initially had in mind when first talking to me about the subject, but I sincerely hope that you can still value the final result. Shout-out to my long-time supervisor and now co-supervisor professor Ellen Simon as well, without whose theoretical insights in phonetics and practical tips regarding audio recordings, formant measurements and data processing the present study would have looked much bleaker and less solid. Furthermore, shout-out to my mother and father; their tough love was very welcome, their occasional ‘call to arms’ much needed, and, most of all, their relentless support more than heart-warming; shout-out to my brother too – I keep the long nights filled with shenanigans in a little heart-shaped necklace in the part of my brain used for memory storage; shout-out, finally, to Nick, Arno and Anneleen as well. The people inhabiting the present paragraph have helped me to keep going when times got tough, to use a cliché in which a truth deeper than many may suspect nevertheless lays hidden. Table of contents 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 5 2 Previous research ............................................................................................................... 8 2.1 Dutch and Afrikaans: acoustic vowel research ................................................................... 9 2.1.1 NSD and SSD ................................................................................................................... 9 2.1.3 NSD and SSD contrasted ................................................................................................. 13 2.1.3 Afrikaans ...................................................................................................................... 14 2.2 Dutch and Afrikaans: phonetic comparisons ................................................................... 17 2.3 Phonetic vowel roundedness and derounding research .................................................. 20 2.3.1 Roundedness and derounding in Dutch and Afrikaans ..................................................... 20 2.3.2 Methodological approaches to roundedness and derounding ........................................... 22 3 Vowels in contrast ............................................................................................................26 3.1 Northern Standard Dutch ................................................................................................. 26 3.1.1 /i - y/ ........................................................................................................................... 26 3.1.2 /ɪ - ʏ/ and /ə/ ............................................................................................................... 27 3.2 Southern Standard Dutch ................................................................................................. 28 3.2.1 /i - y/ ........................................................................................................................... 28 3.2.2 /ɪ - ʏ/ and /ə/ ............................................................................................................... 28 3.2.3 /e - ø/ ........................................................................................................................... 29 3.3 Afrikaans ........................................................................................................................... 29 3.3.1 /i - y/ ........................................................................................................................... 29 3.3.2 /ɪ - ʏ/ and /ə/ ............................................................................................................... 30 3.3.3 /e - ø/ ........................................................................................................................... 30 3 4 Experiment ........................................................................................................................32 4.1 Aims................................................................................................................................... 32 4.2 Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 33 4.2.1 Design of the data set .................................................................................................... 33 4.2.4 Coding and analysis ....................................................................................................... 35 4.3 Hypotheses ........................................................................................................................ 37 4.3.1 /i – y/ ........................................................................................................................... 37 4.3.2 /ɪ - ʏ/ and /ə/ ............................................................................................................... 38 4.3.3 /e - ø/ ........................................................................................................................... 39 5 Results and discussion ......................................................................................................40 5.1 Vowel contrasts ................................................................................................................ 40 5.1.1 /i - y/ ........................................................................................................................... 40 5.1.2 /ɪ - ʏ/ and /ə/ ............................................................................................................... 46 5.1.3 /e - ø/ ........................................................................................................................... 51 5.2 Comparison with Adank, van Hout & Smits (2004) .......................................................... 57 6 Conclusions and implications ..........................................................................................63 7 References .........................................................................................................................66 4 1 Introduction Studies that have investigated acoustic vowel features (such as spectral quality and duration) by means of acoustic measurements have long been scarce for Dutch and Afrikaans. It is not until recently that the study of the production and perception of these acoustic features in both languages has gained considerable attention; notable studies include, among others, Adank, van Hout & Smits (2004) and Verhoeven & Van Bael (2002a&b) for Northern and/or Southern Standard Dutch (henceforth NSD and SSD, respectively), and Wissing (2011b) for Afrikaans. However, a study that compares the two European standard varieties spoken in the pluricentric Dutch language area1 to standard Afrikaans with respect to acoustic vowel features is yet to be conducted. The present study aims to fill this research gap, and focuses specifically on the aspect of roundedness in the rounded-unrounded close to close-mid near-front to front vowel contrasts /i - y/, /ɪ - ʏ - ə/and /e - ø/2. It is for these vowels that Wissing (2011b) studies the occurrence of derounding in Afrikaans. The current study hopes to present a more elaborate picture by including the SSD and NSD varieties and by working with a larger data set. A first aim then is a descriptive one, for which an account of roundedness of the relevant vowels for each language (variety) is presented3. In Dutch, for instance, roundedness has not yet been acoustically assessed. 1 With NSD being the standard variety spoken in the Netherlands, and SSD the standard variety spoken in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. 2 Following the phonetic studies by Verhoeven & Van Bael (2002a&b) and Adank, van Hout &