New contrast acquisition: methodological issues and theoretical implications

Abstract

This article presents data on the acquisition of the low back vowel contrast by native speakers of Canadian English who have moved as adults to the New York City region, examining how these speakers who natively possess a single low back vowel category have acquired the low back vowel distinction of the new ambient dialect. The speakers show remarkable first dialect stability with respect to their low back vowel system, even after many years of new dialect exposure: in minimal pair contexts, nearly all of the speakers continue to produce and perceive a single vowel category. However, in word list and conversational contexts, the majority of speakers exhibit a small but significant phonetic difference between words like cot and caught, reflecting the separation of these word classes in the new dialect to which they are exposed; moreover, the realization of these words shows frequency effects consistent with a lexically gradual divergence of the two vowels. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theories of phonological representation and change, as well as their methodological implications for the study of mergers- and splits-in-progress.

Second Dialect Acquisition: A Sociophonetic Perspective

“…Other studies more explicitly emphasize the role of social meaning, discussing how the use of both D1 and D2 features can be affected by speaker identity, attitude, and topic. Nycz (, ) analyzed Canadian Raising in pre‐voiceless (aw) and the structure of the low back vowel system in seventeen Canadians who moved as adults to New York City and nearby towns in New Jersey. The majority of speakers exhibited phonetically and lexically gradient change towards the D2 low back vowel system, producing a small but statistically significant distinction between words like cot and caught .…”

“…When the mapping is not one‐to‐one – when one dialect makes a contrast that the other does not – patterns of SDA in both directions can shed light on the ways that speakers produce and perceive contrasts, merge existing categories, or split others (e.g. Nycz , Johnson and Nycz ). More generally, SDA work potentially speaks to many issues of interest in (socio)phonetics and phonology, such as the relationship between change in production and change in perception (Evans and Iverson , Ziliak ), the mechanisms and representations that underlie change (Bigham , Nycz 2013), and social/attitudinal factors that affect language use (Foreman , Walker ).…”

Phonetic transfer in language contact: Evidence for equivalence classification in the mid-vowels of Occitan–French bilinguals

“…Following Nycz (2013), the 'mixed model regression' technique was used in the present study: for each vowel pair analysed, and for each speaker, a mixed-effects regression analysis was undertaken in the R environment using the Rbrul text-based interface (Johnson 2008). The models were constructed as follows:…”

Generations, lifespans, and the zeitgeist

“…Individuals who have moved from one speech community to another have been found Generations, Lifespans and the Zeitgeist 6 to acquire second dialect features to some extent (Chambers 1992;Sankoff 2004;Nycz 2013).…”