Convergence and Divergence in Obsolescence: On Sound Change in Southeastern Pomo

Abstract

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2007) Convergence and Divergence in Obsolescence On Sound Change in Southeastern Pomo Charles B. Chang University of California, Berkeley Previous research on language attrition has distinguished between internally and externally motivated change and between convergent and divergent change, with most literature focusing on speech communities that have undergone either one or the other type of change. In this paper, I argue that these types of change may coexist within the same community or even the same speaker with the result that the obsolescing language becomes simultaneously more similar to and more different from the contact language. The results of a cross-generational acoustic study of Southeastern Pomo (Northern Hokan, Pomoan) indicate that in the domain of phonetics and phonology, the speech of the last fluent generation has converged with English in some ways and diverged from it in other ways. Keywords: language contact, obsolescence, sound change, convergence, divergence, transfer, approximation Introduction The study of language attrition has generally focused on characterizing how and why changes come about in an obsolescing language vis-a-vis earlier, more robust stages of the language. On the one hand, change may occur as a result of external influence from a dominant language in the community; on the other hand, change may arise due to language-internal dynamics having nothing to do with the dominant language. When change is externally motivated by the influence of a dominant language, the obsolescing language may come to approximate features of the dominant language; conversely, external influence may cause salient features of the obsolescing language not found in the dominant language to be enhanced, thus further differentiating the obsolescing language from the dominant language. In other words, externally motivated change may result in either convergence with or divergence from the dominant language. In a similar way, internally motivated change, by virtue of its independence from the influence of an outside language, introduces features into the obsolescing language that may happen to converge with the dominant language or to diverge from it. Whether or