A SYNCHRONIC SOCIOPHONETIC STUDY OF MONOPHTHONGS IN TRINIDADIAN ENGLISH Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philologischen Fakultät der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg-im-Breisgau vorgelegt von Glenda Alicia Elsie Leung aus Port-of-Spain, Trinidad und Tobago SS 2012 Erster Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Mair Zweiter Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Peter Auer Vorsitzender des Promotionausschusses der Gemeinsamen Kommission der Philologischen, Philosophischen und Wirtschafts- und Verhaltenswissenschaftlichen Fakultät: Prof. Dr. Hans-Helmuth Gander Datum der Disputation: 01.03.2013 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 15 2. A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN TRINIDAD ............. 17 2.1 OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................... 17 2.2 LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN TRINIDAD .......................................................................................... 17 2.2.1 Overview of Trinidad and Tobago’s colonial past .......................................................... 17 2.2.2 Trinidad’s linguistic milieu ............................................................................................. 18 2.3 THE CREOLE CONTINUUM AND TERMINOLOGY ........................................................................ 20 3. LITERATURE REVIEW & RESEARCH FOCUS ................................................................ 22 3.1 OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................... 22 3.2 VOWEL MERGERS AND CREOLE TYPOLOGY ............................................................................. 22 3.3 VOWEL STUDIES IN TRINIDADIAN ENGLISH ............................................................................. 23 3.3.1 The merger of [+high] vowels: /i, ɪ/ → /i/ and /ʊ, u/ → /u/ ............................................ 23 3.3.2 The merger of [+low] vowels: /a, ɑ/→ /a/ and /a, ə/→/a/ .............................................. 24 3.3.3 Mergers among [-high] vowels: /ʌ, ɒ, ɔ, ɛ/ → /ɒ/ ........................................................... 26 3.4 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF VOWELS IN TRINIDADIAN ENGLISH ............................................ 29 3.4.1 Overview of sociolinguistic findings ............................................................................... 31 3.4.2 Variation in formal interview .......................................................................................... 32 3.4.3 Variation in peer-group interactions .............................................................................. 32 3.4.4 Hypercorrection .............................................................................................................. 33 3.5 FOCUS OF THE STUDY ............................................................................................................... 35 4. METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................................... 39 4.1 OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................... 39 4.2 DATA COLLECTION SITES: DIEGO MARTIN AND SANGRE GRANDE ......................................... 39 4.2.1 Subject recruitment ......................................................................................................... 40 4.2.2 Sample design .................................................................................................................. 40 4.3 LINGUISTIC TASKS.................................................................................................................... 42 4.4 PHONOLOGICAL VARIABLES .................................................................................................... 42 4.5 DATA HANDLING ...................................................................................................................... 43 4.5.1 Analysis procedures ........................................................................................................ 44 4.5.2 Vowel normalisation ....................................................................................................... 45 4.5.3 Coding independent variables ......................................................................................... 45 4.5.4 Occupational prestige survey .......................................................................................... 47 4.6 STATISTICAL PROCEDURES ...................................................................................................... 47 4.7 VOWEL PERCEPTION SURVEY ................................................................................................... 47 5. VOWEL PERCEPTION SURVEY .......................................................................................... 48 5.1 INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 48 5.2 METHOD IN MERGER EVALUATION SURVEY ............................................................................ 49 5.3 OVERVIEW OF RESULTS ............................................................................................................ 52 5.3.1 Descriptive statistics ....................................................................................................... 52 5.3.2 Inferential statistics ......................................................................................................... 52 5.4 DISCUSSION OF [+LOW] VOWEL MERGER EVALUATION........................................................... 53 5.4.1 Traditional acrolectal pattern ......................................................................................... 56 5.4.2 Emergent acrolectal pattern............................................................................................ 58 5.4.3 BATH-TRAP merger-by-approximation ............................................................................. 60 5.4.4 Canonically creole pattern .............................................................................................. 60 5.5 SUMMARY OF [+LOW] VOWEL FINDINGS ................................................................................. 61 5.6 DISCUSSION OF [-HIGH] VOWEL MERGER EVALUATION ........................................................... 61 3 5.6.1 STRUT-LOT ....................................................................................................................... 63 5.6.2 CLOTH-THOUGHT ............................................................................................................. 65 5.6.3 NURSE-LOT ....................................................................................................................... 68 5.7 SUMMARY OF [-HIGH] VOWEL FINDINGS .................................................................................. 69 5.8 CHAPTER SUMMARY ................................................................................................................ 70 6. ANALYSIS OF [+LOW] VOWELS ......................................................................................... 71 6.1 INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 71 6.2 METHODOLOGY OF MICRO-LEVEL ANALYSIS OF [+LOW] VOWELS .......................................... 71 6.3 OVERVIEW OF PILLAI SCORES .................................................................................................. 73 6.3.1 Acrolectal patterns .......................................................................................................... 74 6.3.2 Creole patterns ................................................................................................................ 76 6.3.3 Mixed patterns ................................................................................................................. 80 6.3.4 Exceptional cases ............................................................................................................ 82 6.4 MACRO-LEVEL ANALYSIS OF [+LOW] VOWELS ........................................................................ 83 6.5 METHODOLOGY OF MODEL BUILDING ..................................................................................... 83 6.5.1 Reference levels within the models .................................................................................. 84 6.5.2 Presentation of results ..................................................................................................... 85 6.6 MIXED EFFECTS REGRESSION ON NORMALISED FORMANT VALUES FOR + LOW VOWEL SETS . 85 6.6.1 TRAP F1 ........................................................................................................................... 85 6.6.2 BATH F2 ........................................................................................................................... 86 6.6.3 START F2 .......................................................................................................................... 89 6.7 ASSESSING OVERLAP ................................................................................................................ 90 6.7.1 BATH-TRAP Pillai ............................................................................................................. 90 6.7.2 START-TRAP Pillai