Phonetic and lexical influences on changes across the lifespan

Abstract

The study considers longitudinal studies over several decades within the same individual in order to determine whether phonetic sound change takes place initially in more frequent words. The focus of the analysis was on the vowels of the Christmas Broadcasts by Queen Elisabeth II over several decades and in Alistair Cooke's Letter from America broadcasts. For the first of these, a re-analysis of the phonetic lowering of the vowel in the lexical set TRAP and of tensing of final lax vowel in HAPPY showed no effect of lexical frequency on sound change. The focus of analysis in the second was during a period in which the speaker was shown to acquire General American characteristics after emigrating to the United States from Britain, but then in later life to revert over a 5–10 year period back toward characteristics of British English Received Pronunciation. This reversion is shown to take place at a faster rate in lexically frequent words. While the evidence overall for lexically gradual changes is equivocal, the changes in both speakers are most appropriately modeled as a leveling due to variation in dialect contact: increasingly with middle class speakers for the Queen; decreasingly with American English speakers for Cooke.