The Trini Sing-Song: Sociophonetic variation in Trinidadian English prosody and differences to other varieties.

Philipp Meer,Robert Fuchs

doi:10.1177/0023830921998404

Abstract

The current study provides a phonetic perspective on the questions of whether a high degree of variability in pitch may be considered a characteristic, endonormative feature of Trinidadian English (TrinE) at the level of speech production and contribute to what is popularly described as 'sing-song' prosody. Based on read and spontaneous data from 111 speakers, we analyze pitch level, range, and dynamism in TrinE in comparison to Southern Standard British (BrE) and Educated Indian English (IndE) and investigate sociophonetic variation in TrinE prosody with a view to these global F0 parameters. Our findings suggest that a large pitch range could potentially be considered an endonormative feature of TrinE that distinguishes it from other varieties (BrE and IndE), at least in spontaneous speech. More importantly, however, it is shown that a high degree of pitch variation in terms of range and dynamism is not as much characteristic of TrinE as a whole as it is of female Trinidadian speakers. An important finding of this study is that pitch variation patterns are not homogenous in TrinE, but systematically sociolinguistically conditioned across gender, age, and ethnic groups, and rural and urban speakers. The findings thus reveal that there is a considerable degree of systematic local differentiation in TrinE prosody. On a more general level, the findings may be taken to indicate that endonormative tendencies and sociolinguistic differentiation in TrinE prosody are interlinked.

Highlights

The last two decades have seen a growing body of research concerned with prosodic variation across many of the varieties of English spoken around the world (e.g., Deterding, 2001; R. Fuchs, 2016; Gut, 2005; Low, Grabe, & Nolan, 2000)
Bonferroni-corrected pairwise comparisons of the estimated means show that Trinidadian English (TrinE) has a significantly lower average pitch level than Indian English (IndE) in both read (159 Hz vs. 186 Hz, p < .001) and spontaneous speech (154 Hz vs. 180 Hz, p < .001)
The distributions of the data parallel these central tendencies but show an additional trend: several Trinidadian speakers have very wide pitch ranges (> 9 st) in both speaking styles, in spontaneous speech, while this number is substantially lower for speakers of IndE and especially British English (BrE)

Summary

Introduction

The last two decades have seen a growing body of research concerned with prosodic variation across many of the varieties of English spoken around the world (e.g., Deterding, 2001; R. Fuchs, 2016; Gut, 2005; Low, Grabe, & Nolan, 2000). Evolutionary models of postcolonial Englishes, including Schneider’s (2007) influential Dynamic Model, generally assume that—in later stages of their evolution, typically (well) after the establishment of political independence—speakers of these varieties frequently rely on endocentric linguistic norms: at the level of language use, speakers increasingly adopt and produce local forms of English even in formal contexts, such that the emerging New English variety is “recognizably distinct” from the former (British) colonial standard in a number of respects (Schneider, 2007: 50–51). Very recent advances in World Englishes modeling (Buschfeld, 2020; Meer & Deuber, 2020; Schröder & Zähres, 2020), show that these norm stabilization processes can be multidimensional in that they involve other global and local linguistic influences and co-occur with processes of differentiation

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion