Young Speakers Research Articles

L-Vocalisation in London English

Linguists argued that the Cockney dialect, in London, is expected to be replaced by Multicultural London English in the years to come. However, this does not imply that Cockney is dead, as recent research revealed that it just moved to Essex. This paper aims at examining whether (l) vocalisation, a common feature of Cockney, is still present in the London district of Bermondsey. Ten working-class English speakers, stratified by age and sex, have been recorded by means of sociolinguistic interviews. The results, discussed both quantitively and qualitatively, show that: (a) (l) vocalisation is present in all age cohorts, with young speakers favouring the non-standard feature; (b) preceding long vowels trigger (l) vocalisation.

L-Vocalisation in London English

Linguists argued that the Cockney dialect, in London, is expected to be replaced by Multicultural London English in the years to come. However, this does not imply that Cockney is dead, as recent research revealed that it just moved to Essex. This paper aims at examining whether (l) vocalisation, a common feature of Cockney, is still present in the London district of Bermondsey. Ten working-class English speakers, stratified by age and sex, have been recorded by means of sociolinguistic interviews. The results, discussed both quantitively and qualitatively, show that: (a) (l) vocalisation is present in all age cohorts, with young speakers favouring the non-standard feature; (b) preceding long vowels trigger (l) vocalisation.

The Emergence of Tab in Najdi Arabic

This study empirically investigates functional and social variation in the use of TAYYIB (‘okay, well, right’) in light of grammaticalisation. Thirty naturally occurring conversations of 60 Najdi Arabic speakers were recorded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The analysis demonstrates that TAYYIB has two realisations: full Tayyib [tˁajjib] and reduced Tab [tˁab]. Drawing on the conversation analytic approach within a variationist framework, TAYYIB was used to perform multiple discourse-pragmatic functions: interpersonal, textual and interpersonal–textual. The statistical analysis reveals that variant choice is significantly conditioned by the pragmatic functions. While Tayyib is employed to perform all three functions, Tab is only used for textual and interpersonal–textual meanings. As for social factors, Tab is significantly more likely to be used by younger speakers than adults and also more likely to be used by females than males. This can be interpreted as an indication of ongoing change driven by young people, primarily females, towards the greater use of the innovative Tab. Given the evidence of linguistic change in Tab including semantic bleaching, pragmatic strengthening and phonological reduction, the study suggests that Tab has undergone advanced grammaticalisation.

You Ain’t from Here, Are You? Subregional Variation and Identification among Young Appalachians

This article examines a three-way subregional distinction between Northern, Middle, and Southern Appalachia based on younger respondents’ self-reported use of traditional lexical, phonological, and syntactic features of Appalachian English (AppE). As a result of recent social changes that have led to less isolation in Appalachia, it considers subregional differences in AppE use between young urban and rural speakers as well as subregional differences between Appalachian identity and use of AppE. Understanding how young speakers across Appalachia are adapting and integrating traditional or mainstream features provides a lens for broader examination of the ways in which speakers of vernacular dialects negotiate the choice between competing dialect norms.

Sociophonetic Variation in Vowel Categorization of Australian English.

This study involves a perceptual categorization task for Australian English, designed to investigate regional and social variation in category boundaries between close-front vowel contrasts. Data are from four locations in southeast Australia. A total of 81 listeners from two listener groups took part: (a) so-called mainstream Australian English listeners from all four locations, and (b) L1 Aboriginal English listeners from one of the locations. Listeners heard front vowels /ɪ e æ/ arranged in 7-step continua presented at random. Varied phonetic contexts were analyzed, with a focus on coda /l/ because of a well-known prelateral merger of /e æ/ through mid-vowel lowering (e.g., celery-salary) reported to occur in some communities in this part of Australia. The results indicate that regional variation in Australian English is evident in perception. In particular, merging of /el/-/æl/ is shown to occur in the southernmost regions analyzed, but rarely in the northern regions of the geographical area under investigation. Aside from regional variation observed, age was also a factor in how participants responded to the task: older speakers had more merger than younger speakers in many locations, which is a new finding-previously, the merger was thought to be increasing in frequency over time, yet here we see this in only one location. Aboriginal English listeners also responded differently when compared with mainstream Australian English listeners. By analyzing the perception results across a variety of regional locations, with data from two different Australian social groups in the same location, this study adds a new dimension to our understanding of regional and social variations in Australian English.

Prelateral vowel change in Australian English pool-pull trajectories

Australian English (AusE) pre-/l/ /ʉ:/ is retracted when coarticulated with coda /l/, leading to vowel change through acoustic contrast reduction between /ʉ:-ʊ/ (pool-pull). Younger speakers show smaller contrast in /ʉ:l- ʊl/ targets than older speakers. As vowel trajectories are less well understood, we tested changes in the F2 trajectory. 200 tokens of /ʉ:, ʊ/ in the /hVd, pVl/ contexts (who’d-hood, pool-pull), produced by eight younger (ages = 20–29) and nine older (ages = 54–80) female AusE speakers, were extracted from the audio corpus AusTalk. Formant trajectories in pre-/d/ vowels and /Vl/ rimes were extracted automatically, corrected manually, and time-normalized (0–1). F2 trajectory was fitted with a Generalized Additive Mixed Model using fixed factors Vowel, Coda, and Age (treatment-coded, comparing /ʉ:/ to /ʊ/, /l/ to /d/, younger to older) with Speaker as random intercept with smooths for Vowel and Coda. Both age groups maintained significant vowel contrast in the pre-/d/ context in the entire vowel trajectory. In the /l/-context, older speakers showed a significant F2 difference throughout the rime trajectory, while younger speakers did not. Durational differences may be maintained, as duration contrast was not analysed due to time normalization. Our findings are consistent with an AusE pool-pull merger.

Near-merger of /s: ʃ/ in Veneto Italian: A preliminary cross-generational acoustic investigation

Italian contrasts /s:/ and /ʃ/. Although in standard Italian (SI) the two phonemes have distinct places of articulation (laminal denti-alveolar and laminal post-alveolar, respectively), early descriptions of the Italian spoken in the Veneto (VI) report a near-merger due to the absence of /ʃ/ in the regional substratum dialect (Canepari 1984). Accordingly, /s:/ is retracted and aplicalized, and /ʃ/ is advanced and in some cases also apicalized in VI. To investigate this phenomenon, an acoustic and statistical analysis of spectral Center of Gravity (COG), known to increase with more advanced constriction location for coronals, is conducted on 192 /s:/ and /ʃ/ tokens produced by six VI speakers (three males and three females) of varying ages (34 to 68) producing eight repetitions of /ˈkassa kasˈsata ˈlaʃa laˈʃata/ ‘case, cassata cake, he/she/it leaves, left’ within carrier sentences. Results show that, regardless of sex, the two older speakers (50 and 68) but not the four younger speakers (34 to 44) produce statistically similar COG values for the two consonants, indicating similar constriction locations. This preliminary study suggests that the near-merger may be produced by older speakers but not younger speakers today, in an ongoing process of standardization of Italian pronunciation across regional varieties.

Strategies of Indefiniteness Marking in Central Sicilian—Evidence from the Dialect of Delia

This paper is meant as a contribution to the research project on variation and optionality in the determiner system in Italo-Romance, with novel data from the Sicilian dialect of Delia. The study is based on fieldwork interviews and the construction of a small corpus of 850 observations by 24 native speakers of Deliano (mean age: 36.37; age range: 19–72). The participants were asked to (i) describe in Deliano a 3 min videotape of an Italian speaking woman during her shopping session at a supermarket and (ii) talk about their own shopping routines in Deliano. These activities were designed mainly to detect the following strategies to express indefiniteness: (i) ART, i.e., a definite article with an indefinite interpretation; (ii) ZERO, a zero determiner for bare nouns; (iii) DI+ART, the so-called “partitive article”; (iv) pseudo-partitives such as ‘a bit of’; (v) the grammaticalised cardinal ‘two’; and (vi) the grammaticalised cardinal ‘four’. The data confirm (i) the preference for ZERO in negative episodic sentences in the past; (ii) the general lack of bare DI and DI+ART, and of certo ‘certain’ used as an indefinite; (iii) the use of different specialised forms of pseudo-partitive ‘a bit of’ in older speakers of Deliano; (iv) the neutralisation of this pseudo-partitive specialisation and the consequent emergence of some true optionality in younger speakers.

The development of phonological patterns in an urban dialect contact setting: Evidence from Seoul Korean

Abstract: This study investigates the linguistic outcome of migration-induced dialect contact in contemporary urban settings by tracking the development of the variable deletion of /w/ in Seoul Korean. The results from apparent-time and real-time analyses reveal that the rate of postconsonantal /w/-deletion, which previously had been rising, has begun to fall. In addition, the strong effect of the preceding consonant on this deletion has weakened significantly. Meanwhile, the rate of non-postconsonantal /w/-deletion has continued to rise, and, for younger speakers, non-postconsonantal /w/-deletion now patterns similarly with postconsonantal /w/-deletion. I argue that the dilution of the original pattern of the deletion rule is the result of the interplay between linguistic diffusion induced by a massive influx of migrants into Seoul and phonological restructuring by subsequent generations.

Corpus-pragmatic perspectives on the contemporary weakening of fuck: The case of teenage British English conversation

This study examines the pragmatic functions of fuck among British English teenagers in casual conversation in two youth language corpora from the 1990s and 2010s. It applies a corpus-pragmatics approach to explore how the ongoing weakening of the taboo strength of fuck in the perception of young speakers is realised in usage data. The major functions observed involve a predominance of idiomatic, emphatic and emotionally expressive functions. Conversely, usage associated with potentially abusive functions, including literal reference to sexual intercourse, is infrequent. Our observations are interpreted in the context of delexicalization and related long-term diachronic processes, whereby contemporary usage of fuck among teenagers is characterised in terms of semi-delexicalized, pragmatically strengthened usage with weakened taboo status. The article also evaluates the interpretation of idiomatic usage from a functional perspective, and contributes to methodological considerations of the use of spoken corpora for pragmatic research.

Ageing of grammatical advance planning in spoken sentence production: an eye movement study.

This study used an image-description paradigm with concurrent eye movement recordings to investigate differences of grammatical advance planning between young and older speakers in spoken sentence production. Participants were asked to produce sentences with simple or complex initial phrase structures (IPS) in Experiment 1 while producing individual words in Experiment 2. Young and older speakers showed comparable speaking latencies in sentence production task, whereas older speakers showed longer latencies than young speakers in word production task. Eye movement data showed that compared with young speakers, older speakers had higher fixation percentage on object 1, lower percentage of gaze shift from object 1to2, and lower fixation percentage on object 2 in simple IPS sentences, while they showed similar fixation percentage on object 1, similar percentage of gaze shift from object 1to2, and lower fixation percentage on object 2 in complex IPS sentences, indicating a decline of grammatical encoding scope presenting on eye movement patterns. Meanwhile, speech analysis showed that older speakers presented longer utterance duration, slower speech rate, and longer and more frequently occurred pauses in articulation, indicating a decline of speech articulation in older speakers. Thus, our study suggests that older speakers experience an ageing effect in the sentences with complex initial phrases due to limited cognitive resources.

Present perfect and preterit variation in the Spanish of Lima and Mexico city: findings from a corpus analysis

Abstract In many languages, the present perfect has grammaticalized, gradually displacing the preterit. Within Spanish, this has been documented with the grammaticalization of the present perfect in Peninsular Spanish. To examine this possibility in two Latin American varieties, this study examined present perfect/preterit variation of 36 speakers from Lima and Mexico City from the PRESEEA corpus. While Lima Spanish presented overall more present perfect than Mexico City Spanish, a similar internal constraint hierarchy is predictive of present perfect use in both speech communities. However, Lima Spanish demonstrated a change in progress toward an expansion of the preterit among younger speakers with the indeterminate temporal reference as locus of change. The findings suggest that present perfect grammaticalization may not always be the most common cross-linguistic pathway but rather is subject to source constraints, which may lead to another pathway in which the preterit expands at the expense of the present perfect.

Syllable‐final /s/ as an index of language, gender, and ethnicity in a contact variety of Mexican Spanish

AbstractThis study of syllable‐final /s/ reduction in a 55‐speaker corpus of Spanish in Juchitán, México, a contact variety, uses both language contact and social processes to explain its results. Contact with the indigenous Isthmus Zapotec language leads to decreased rates of syllable‐final /s/ retention, creating a locally salient n+1‐order index between “Zapotecness” and /s/ reduction that influences the indexical field for syllable‐final /s/ reduction. Zapotec identity is associated with tradition and femininity. Therefore, in this new indexical field, syllable‐final /s/ reduction comes to directly index Zapotec language dominance and indirectly index both femininity and tradition. This leads feminine and elderly speakers to reduce /s/ more frequently than “less feminine” and young speakers, even though the opposite pattern is usually found in other varieties. The results show, therefore, that language contact can influence the indexical field typically linked to socially meaningful variation and thereby cause unexpected patterns of variation to emerge.

Tongue Shape Complexity in Children With and Without Speech Sound Disorders.

This study investigates the hypothesis that younger speakers and speakers with more severe speech sound disorders are more likely to use simpler (undifferentiated) tongue gestures due to difficulties with, or immaturity of, lingual motor control. The hypothesis is tested using cross-sectional secondary data analysis of synchronous audio and high-speed ultrasound recordings from children with idiopathic speech sound disorders (n = 30, aged 5;0-12;11 [years;months]) and typically developing children (n = 29, aged 5;8-12;10), producing /a/, /t/, /ɹ/, /l/, /s/, and /ʃ/ in an intervocalic /aCa/ environment. Tongue shape complexity is measured using NINFL (Number of INFLections) and modified curvature index (MCI) from splines fitted to ultrasound images at the point of maximal lingual gesture. Age, perceived accuracy, and consonant are used as predictors. The results suggest that as age increases, children with speech sound disorders have lower MCI compared to typically developing children. Increase in age also led to decrease of MCI for the typically developing group. In the group of children with speech sound disorders, perceptually incorrect /ɹ/ productions have lower MCI than correct productions, relative to /a/. There is some evidence of systematic tongue shape complexity differences between typically developing children and children with speech sound disorders when accounting for increase in age. Among children with speech sound disorders, increase in age and perceptually incorrect consonant realizations are associated with decreasing tongue shape complexity.

Age categorization and stereotyping at work

AbstractAge stereotyping at the workplace can lead to discrimination. We investigated stereotype influence on recall. In the who‐said‐what paradigm participants studied older and younger speakers making stereotypical and counterstereotypical statements about their work, followed by memory tests for the statements and speakers. Statements were more likely attributed to a speaker from the same age category than the other age category, replicating earlier findings. Stereotypicality had no effect on statement recognition but participants were more likely to guess a stereotypical speaker even though speakers made equal numbers of stereotypical and counterstereotypical statements (Experiments 1 and 3). When speakers made more counterstereotypical statements (Experiment 2) this bias was reduced but less so than the actual proportion of stereotypical statements warranted. Speaker judgments were also influenced by prior stereotypes. We conclude that participants used prior stereotypes to supplement recall from memory. Measures to reduce stereotypes should include procedures to improve memory accuracy.

The change in breathy voice after tone split: A production study of Suzhou Wu Chinese

In some languages, breathy voice plays a pivotal role in tone split. After tone split, breathy voice can undergo further changes. Suzhou Wu Chinese used to have a voicing contrast in initial obstruents, which has transphonologized to a tone contrast and resulted in a two-way tone split, with breathy voice in the low register tones. This study investigates the change in breathy voice after the tone split in Suzhou Wu with apparent-time data from speakers from three age groups. Simultaneous audio and electroglottographic recordings were collected. Principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis conducted on the acoustic measurements indicate that breathy voice is used less by younger speakers. Generalized Additive Mixed Models were conducted to reveal the changes in breathy voice during the time course of the vowel with regard to different low register tones. It is also found that T2 and T8 are undergoing a decrease in breathy voice with tone changes, but breathy voice is decreasing without tone change in T6. Younger female speakers are ahead of younger male speakers in the decrease in breathy voice. This paper provides a valuable investigation of the change in breathy voice after tone split and contributes to our understanding of the development of phonation types.

Arabic morpheme per utterance: a morphological measure of child language development in spoken Arabic

ABSTRACT Given the rich bound morphology of Spoken Arabic, an attempt was made here to construct a developmental measure corresponding to the mean length utterance (MLU) in English and to morpheme-per-utterance (MPU) in Hebrew. The adaptation to Arabic resulted in a new measurement termed Arabic-MPU, that was experimentally tested on a sample of 98 typically developing (TD) Arabic-speaking preschoolers aged 2;6 to 5;0. We report here on the internal consistency of Arabic-MPU against different types of elicitation procedures, and its external validity. We show that the new tool is developmentally sensitive and hence can be utilized for the assessment of the language growth in Spoken Arabic. This new tool should contribute to further research and development of measures for language assessment. In addition, it can be used for language screening in preschoolers for the purpose of identifying young speakers of Arabic who exhibit delays in early language development.

Gemination variation in three varieties of regional Italian

Consonant gemination in Italian is phonologically distinctive, being acoustically realized with consonant closure duration and duration of the preceding vowel as primary cues. Southern varieties of Italian have been claimed to geminate more than Northern varieties. The purpose of these study is to analyze variation in gemination in two Northern varieties of Italian (Veneto Italian and Friuli-Venezia Giulia Italian) and Neapolitan Italian, spoken in the South. Moreover, generational variation will be analyzed for Venetian speakers. The study involved 40 speakers: 10 young speakers per region and 10 older speakers from Veneto. The speakers read aloud bisyllabic Italian words with voiceless stop geminates or singletons. Results show that there is no significant difference in gemination between younger (VY) and older Venetians (VO). This is surprising, as VO are more proficient in Venetian, a non-geminating language. Moreover, while VY and Friulian (F) speakers geminate similarly, a significant difference was found with how Neapolitan (N) speakers geminate, but not on whether N speakers geminate more than VY and F speakers. In fact, while VO and F geminate by lengthening the consonant closure more than shortening the preceding vowel, N speakers appear to shorten the preceding vowel much more than lengthening the consonant closure.

The dynamics of bilingualism in language shift ecologies

AbstractA large percentage of the world’s languages – anywhere from 50 to 90% – are currently spoken in what we call shift ecologies, situations of unstable bi- or multilingualism where speakers, and in particular younger speakers, do not use their ancestral language but rather speak the majority language. The present paper addresses several interrelated questions with regard to the linguistic effects of bilingualism in such shift ecologies. These language ecologies are dynamic: language choices and preferences change, as do speakers’ proficiency levels. One result is multiple kinds of variation in these endangered language communities. Understanding change and shift requires a methodology for establishing a baseline; descriptive grammars rarely provide information about usage and multilingual language practices. An additional confounder is a range of linguistic variation:regional(dialectal);generational(language-internal change without contact or shift);contact-based(contact with or without shift); andproficiency-based(variation which develops as a result of differing levels of input and usage). Widespread, ongoing language shift today provides opportunities to examine the linguistic changes exhibited by shifting speakers, that is, to zero in on language change and loss in process, rather than as an end product.

Placing /aw/ Retraction in the Retreat from the Southern Vowel Shift in Raleigh, North Carolina

This study focuses on changes over apparent time in the /aw/ vowel class (e.g., mouth) in Raleigh, a city in North Carolina whose speakers have undergone vocalic changes away from the Southern Vowel Shift in response to extensive in-migration from the northern United States. Although Southerners have conventionally fronted /aw/ nuclei along with other speakers in the Southeastern super-region, some researchers have noted a trend of /aw/ nucleus retraction among younger speakers in urban areas, such as Philadelphia and Kansas City. I examine how the acoustics of /aw/ production have shifted generationally in Raleigh, with a particular focus on nucleus retraction and glide height. The analysis suggests that concurrent phonologically-driven and socially-driven forces may be acting upon this vowel class in the speech of white Raleigh residents.