Australian English Sound Change - Speech Resource Pages ...

Shape Shift: Australian English
Sound Change
Felicity Cox
Australian Linguistic Society
Applied Linguistic Association of
Australia
8 th July 2006

• Australian English
• Vowels
Aims
• Phonetic motivation for change
• Techniques for measuring sound change
• Vowel changes have occurred over the
past 100 years?
• Current questions

Australian English
spoken by those
• born and raised in Australia or
• who immigrate at an early age and primarily
interact with an AusE speaking peer group.
the standard variety of English spoken in this
country and is a salient marker of national
identity.
not the only English variety of native-born.

Varieties of English used by native-
born Australians
Standard Australian English (SAusE)
Aboriginal English
Various ethno-cultural Australian English
dialects.
e.g. Lebanese Australian English
“Alan took a ham sandwich to school”

Some examples of Australian English speakers
Elderly Tasmanian, born 1880 recorded 1965
“Tin kettlin’ oh ho ho dear oh dear..”
15 year-old girl from Wangaratta recorded 2002
“Helen picked a good spot near the water and spent the
morning surfing and relaxing in the sun”
20 year-old man from Sydney recorded 2005
“The plane flew down low over the runway then increased
speed and circled the airfield a second time.”
20 year-old man from Sydney recorded 2004
“Helen picked a good spot near the water and spent the morning
surfing and relaxing in the sun”
35? year old man from Sydney recorded 1964
“The varieties of Australian English…”

National Approach
• We do not have a current comprehensive
picture of regional and social variation in
Australia.
• A large scale national approach is
required.

SOCIOPHONETIC VARIATION
Suprasegmental
Segmental
Systemic
Phonotactic
Lexical
Realisational
Sub-segmental

Height
Monophthongs
Fronting
Pete boot
pit
put
port
pet
pert
pat
pot
putt
part

Height
Diphthongs
beer
bear
Fronting
bough
bay
boy
bow
by

Creating Vowel Space Plots
• Vowel space plots can be achieved by two
different means
– Impressionistically
– Acoustically
The value of such plots is that they
illustrate relationships between the vowels
in the space.

Acoustic Analysis
• Extracts information about physical aspects of
speech.
• Use formant frequency information (low
frequency areas of high energy concentration
resulting from vocal tract resonance).
• F1 and F2 - high correlations with the vowel
parameters height and fronting.
• Formant data can be extracted from
spectrograms.

Spectrogram
/ælǝn tʊk ǝ h æ m sæmwɪtʃ tǝ skʉ:l/
“Alan took a ham sandwich to school”

Vowel Space

Formant Ellipse Plot

Schematic Diphthong Trajectory

Diphthongs

Vowel Variation - Traditional Ideas
• The traditional description of SAusE restricts
vowel variation to the 6 vowel phonemes that
occur in the words “hay, he, high, hoe, how,
who”
“Beat, boot, say, so, high, how”
• These are considered the “broadness markers”
• Are young people today still using these vowel
variations?

Broadness
There are questions about the validity of
retaining the broadness labels to describe
SAusE variation today because
1. they are evaluative
2. the broadness continuum defined by
these vowels has contracted
3. new variation is present which may
define speaker groups more
successfully

Accent Change
• Evidence for accent change is obvious when listening to
old films or newsreels or listening to older compared to
young people.
“…and then by rail, by road and by air, supplies were rushed
to the threatened areas”
“Oh well I think I’ll get along to the baker’s and get a loaf of
bread. I don’t know what meat to get. I’ll have to get
somethink”
• A comprehensive examination of sound change is
multidisciplinary involving sociolinguistics, phonetics /
phonology, social and political history.

Models of Sound Change
• Models of sound change distinguish
between :
• socially motivated change
• phonetically motivated change
Social and phonetic processes interact in a
complex manner

Social Motivation
• socially motivated change:
– external to the linguistic system
– the result of the changing social
structure within and between social
groups (Labov, 2001).

Sociolinguistic Research
• The large body of sociolinguistic research
over the past 40 years has shown that
social diversity and change can result in
fluctuations in the linguistic variation
present in the speech community
(teleology of purpose)
• Such linguistic diversity may provide the
impetus for sound change. (e.g. Labov, 2001)

Phonetic Motivation
• Phonetically motivated change:
– internal to the linguistic system
– the result of balancing two opposing forces
• economy of speech gesture
(hypoarticulation)
• sufficient separation (hyerarticulation)
2001)
(Lindblom, 1990; de Boer, 200, Redford et al

Hyperarticulation/Hypoarticulati
on
• Hypoarticulation
– speaker induced – the result of embracing
connected speech processes
“oh, go home, my home in the country ‘n’ uh work
‘n’ go riding, go rabbitin’, shooting ‘n’ that.”
Hyperarticulation
– listener induced clarity – the result of
repressing connected speech processes
“I should be doing the homework now instead of
reading Anna Karenin”

Principles Governing Speech
Sounds
• Sound systems are governed by the
principle of sufficient separation which
ensures that economy of effort doesn’t
hijack the perceptibility of utterances.
• There is a delicate balance between these
two opposing forces creating a system that
is self regulating.

Functional Change
• When the movement of one sound threatens intelligibility,
internal changes can occur within the system to preserve
important contrasts.
• This may result in the phenomena known as drag- and
push-chains where sounds can “push” and “pull” each other
in order to maintain equilibrium within the system (Labov,
1994).
• This can have major consequences for the vowel system.
(teleology of function)
• Labov (1994) has proposed a set of principles that predict
vowel movement through space

Merger
• If the system does not adjust to change, contrasts may
be lost.
e.g. NZE “near-square” merger
(Hay, Warren and Drager, in press)
• Conditional merger has occurred for some speakers of
SAusE in prelateral environments. e.g.
/æ-e/ (Cox and Palethorpe, 2004)
/ʊ-ʉː/ and /əʉ-ɔ/ (Palethorpe and Cox, 2004).
• Merger and chain shift are consequences of the same
process

eI/-/æI/ Merger
Victoria NSW
Speaker 08 Speaker 68
“hell” “hell”
“Hal” “Hal”
Speaker 04 Speaker 40
“hell” “hell”
“Hal” “Hal”

Conditional Mergers
Non merging Merging
“pool” “who’ll”
“pull” “hooll”
dole
doll

Synchronic and Diachronic
Variation
• Synchronic variability and diachronic change are
closely related (Weinreich et al, 1968).
• The direction of change should be apparent
through synchronic variation.

Measuring Sound Change
• real time:
– trend analyses:
examination of speakers from different periods in
history
– panel analysis:
longitudinal examination of the same speakers
• apparent time:
– analysis of different age groups (Bailey, 2001)

Age as a Variable
• Possible age related effects
– accent stabilises after some critical age?
– age grading? (age related changes that may repeat
in successive generations)
– adult change? (Harrington et al study of QEII)
• Reality
– is probably a combination of all three
– there is a gradual increase in the difference between
an individual and the community with age.

Recent and Historical Change
• Recent evolution – second half 20 th century:
-illustrates: spatial rotation
complementary shift
• Historical Analysis –Australian Ancestors Project
(Cox and Palethorpe)
-illustrates: the intermediate period of
Australian English accent history
- vowel characteristics
- consonantal characteristics

Recent SAusE Change
• lowering of /æ/as in “bat”
• fronting of /ʉː/as in “boot”
• changed orientation of /əʉ/ as in “boat”
These changes have been observed
through trend analysis and apparent time
analysis
(e.g. Cox, 1999; Cox and Palethorpe, 2001)

Trend Analysis -1960’s and 1990’s
• Bernard’s data recorded in 1960s (25
males) compared with Cox data recorded
in 1990s (60 males).
• 15 year-olds from Sydney
• General Australian English accent.
• Citation form /hVd/ data.

1960’s Monophthong Space

1990’s Monophthong Space

Monophthong change 1960s-
1990s
1960s -
1990s -
rotational shift

Monophthong change 1960s-
1990s
1960s -
1990s -

æ/ as in “had”
• Southern Hemisphere Englishes have a raised
“short front” series of vowels relative to RP.
“hid”, “head”, had”
• In NZE the raising progression has continued
whereas in AusE a reversal of the progression
has begun.
• Research shows that /æ/ has continued to lower
over the past 40 years and we are now
beginning to see changes to surrounding
vowels.

Lowering of /æ/
The lowering of /æ/ has made available
space for the descent of /e/ (via pull chain
shift) further moving AusE away from
NZE.
Progressive
Conservative
“head” “had” “hud”

Current AusE Space

F1
1200 800 400
Shape shift
ANDOSL RURAL
3500 2000 500
F2
F1
1200 800 400
3500 2000 500
F2

Diphthongs 1960s and 1990s

Diphthong Change /ɑe/ “hide”
“hide”
1960s -
1990s -

Diphthong Change /əʉ/ “hode”
“hode”
1960s -
1990s -

1960’s data

1990’s data

1960’s and 1990’s data

Rotational shift

Maintenance of relationships
• This complementary or chain shift is a direct
result of the requirement of sufficient separation
• As change progresses throughout the
community there will be instances where
confusions may arise.
• e.g. “Tony vs Tiny”, “loan/line”
“boat” or “bait”

əʉ/as in “hoe”
• This vowel has undergone substantial
change over the past 40 years.
• Mitchell and Delbridge identified an
allophone present only in Adelaide which
has now become quite widespread in
Australia.
“New Guinea and Borneo”
“Where the overflow goes”

Australian Ancestors’ Project
• Aim is to trace the development of the Australian
English accent from inception through to the
present day.
• The first stage is to examine old recordings of
people born in the 19 th century.
• This will help us to ascertain historical aspects of
the accent and also explore some unresolved
issues about sound change.

Mr Mortimer b.1893 Drake NSW – miner
“Oh I don’ know whether Paddy might’ve been workin’ there
when he was a young fella.”
Mr Nixon b.1884 Wagga Wagga NSW –
rouseabout
“They tried to do away with North Wagga ‘ere a few years
ago.”
Mr Miller b.1885 Spring Bay TAS - able seaman
“They put a notice in the paper not to be taken as it was
poison.”
Mr Hill b.1880 Campbell Town TAS –
unknown
“A drop of wine on and ha ha drop of beer ha and there was
cakes and one thing or another you know”
Mr Bennett b.1880 Dubbo NSW – shearer
“Anyhow Jimmy put his head round the ironbark tree like this

Database so far
12 men and 5 women born in the late 19 th
century (recorded between 1962 and 1975)
All from rural working class backgrounds
All from Tasmania and NSW
Interview style speech

Assumption
• Our assumption is that the speech of the elderly
people reflects aspects of an earlier time in
accent history.
• Miss Morrison (b. 1889, Rylston NSW) tells the
story of scaling a barbed wire fence in long
dress to escape a bull while out walking with
the school inspector.

Data
The acoustic structure of the vowels in continuous
speech was analysed using standard procedures
established at SHLRC (Harrington et al., 2000).
Vowels selected for analysis had sentence stress.
Vowel targets were hand labelled according to criteria
described in Harrington et al., 1997.
A selection of 4 speakers will be used for illustration.

Modern Data
1960s Data
b. 1880
b. 1885
b. 1884
b. 1893

Modern Data
1960s Data
b. 1880
b. 1885
b. 1884
b. 1893

Modern Data
1960s Data
b. 1880
b. 1885
b. 1884
b. 1893

Modern Data
1960s Data
mother
b. 1880
b. 1885
father garden
b. 1884
b. 1893

Vowel Shift
• Late 19 th century
– separated /ɐ,ɐː/, /iː,ɪ/, low /e/, low /ɔ/
– slightly raised /æ/, central /ʉː/
•20 th century
– raising of /short front series, raising of /ɔ/
• Present
– short front raising reversal, /ʉː/ fronting, /ɔ/
raising
• Future - ?? short front lowering, /ɐ,ɐː/retraction

1930s Movie

Ancestors’ Stories
• vowel changes
– spatial – e.g. short front series
----------------------------------------------------------
– diphthongal effects
– allophonic - fronted /u/ before /l/, /əʉ/ before /l/,
non-raised nasal /æ/
• consonantal differences –
– some evidence of flapped /r/
– clear post vocalic /l/?
– rhoticity?

Some Theoretical Questions
Regularity controversy: Regular sound
change vs lexical diffusion
Does word frequency affect the spread of
change?
What sociopolitical events does sound
change parallel?
What is the relationship between gender and
change?

Summary
• Australian English shape shift illustrates
–chain shifts in monophthongs and diphthongs
–monophthong and diphthong interdependence
–that shifts do not always follow predictable
patterns of movement related to peripherality
and tenseness

• Historical Data
Summary
– shows an earlier phase in AusE history which
helps us to trace development
– shows that short front raising occurred
throughout the 20thC and its not clear what
precipitated this shift.
– will allow us to test some of the assumptions
made by exemplar theory with respect to the
regularity controversy and word frequency.

Future Work
• Examine a larger number of speakers with
regard to regional and sociodemographic
characteristics
• Examine whether remnants of rhoticity are
present
• Explore allophonic vowel and consonant
features

Acknowledgements
• Sallyanne Palethorpe - my collaborator on the
Australian Ancestors’ Project
• The Australian Ancestors’ Project has been
funded by two Macquarie University research
grants
• Kimiko Tsukada for segmenting and labelling the
ancestors’ data
• Relatives who allowed us to study their
ancestor’s voices

Thank you