Sound change in an urban setting: Category instability of the palatal fricative in Berlin

Abstract

Abstract:The differential categorization of identical stimuli depending on the presence of a prime is described as a perceptual divergence effect. We examined whether native listeners of the Berlin vernacular of German categorized identical acoustic stimuli differently in the explicit context of the names of two different districts of Berlin, assuming that listeners infer social information and linguistic stereotypes based on the names of these neighborhoods (Kreuzberg vs. Zehlendorf). All listeners categorized natural acoustic stimuli with synthetic fricatives synthesized along a continuum ranging from /ç/ to /ʃ/ as either Fichte /fɪçtə/ ('spruce') or fischte /fɪʃtə/ (1st person sg. 'to fish'). This variable was chosen because many young multiethnic speakers of Berlin German pronounce /ç/ as [ ʃ ] or [ɕ], and this alternation is highly associated with speakers with a migrant background from Kreuzberg. Data were gathered in a forced-choice identification task, and, for a subset of the participants, reaction times (RTs) were also gathered. Results indicate a differential categorization pattern depending on (1) the copresented information, i.e., Kreuzberg, Zehlendorf, or none (control), and (2) the age of the listeners, with older listeners being more affected by the co-presented information. While older listeners categorized significantly more /ʃ/ sounds in the context of Kreuzberg than in the control or Zehlendorf condition, younger listeners rated most /ʃ/ sounds in the control condition (no added information). Results are interpreted in terms of a potential sound change in progress: the loss of the phoneme contrast between /ç/ and /ʃ/.

The Social Meaning of Contextualized Sibilant Alternations in Berlin German

“…The younger multi-ethnic German listeners (YMU) all were high-school students from Wedding, a multi-ethnic district of Berlin, and stated that they were German language dominant but also often had rudimentary skills in a language other than German. Their German showed several features of the Kiezdeutsch variety such as the /ç/- /ʃ/ alternation ( Dirim and Auer, 2004 ; Jannedy and Weirich, 2014 ), which is neither stigmatized nor recognized amongst them. Younger mono-ethnic German listeners (YMO) were beginning first semester students at Berlin universities who were either born and raised in Berlin or lived there for a significant amount of time of their life.…”

“…The degree of convergence has been found to be used to decrease or increase social distance ( Giles, 1973 ; Giles et al, 1973 ; Bourhis and Giles, 1977 ). A speaker’s perceived femininity or masculinity plays a role in perception ( Johnson et al, 1999 ) as does a hearer’s age ( Jannedy and Weirich, 2014 ) or where the hearer believes the speaker is from Niedzielski (1999) , Hay and Drager (2010) , Jannedy and Weirich (2014) .…”

“…Work on language stereotypes, attitudes ( Johnson et al, 1999 ; Niedzielski, 1999 ; Hay and Drager, 2010 ; Jannedy and Weirich, 2014 ), and person perception ( Scherer, 1972 ; Schirmer, 2019 ) has shown that it is possible to put speakers in mind-sets in which to perceive speech. We will exploit this finding for our study, too by making listeners believe that a voice they hear either belongs to a French speaker learning German or a German speaker of Turkish decent, both groups for which stereotypes exist in dominant German language ideology ( Plewnia and Rothe, 2009 ; Jannedy and Weirich, 2014 ; Jannedy et al, 2019 ). While German spoken with a French accent supposedly is the most favored foreign accent by Germans and generally evokes positive ratings ( Plewnia and Rothe, 2009 ), German spoken with features believed to be of multi-ethnic origin, i.e., Arabic or Turkish seems to polarize or evoke negative stereotypes ( Wiese, 2015 ).…”

“…Our own work ( Jannedy and Weirich, 2014 ) on the [ç] – [ɕ] alternation in the urban context of Berlin revealed an age-graded listener bias in the categorization of stimuli taken from a 14-step acoustic continuum ranging from /ç/ to /ʃ/ (where [ɕ] is located along the continuum) when co-presented with the name of a Berlin neighborhood ( Kreuzberg ) known for its multi-ethnic and multi-lingual population. In this classic categorical perception task, older (mean age: 50.7) and middle (mean age: 30.2) aged listeners were biased in their responses toward the non-canonical pronunciation variant [ɕ] in the context of the prime Kreuzberg (the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Berlin district), whereas younger (mean age: 22.7) listeners seemed to have been free of or have undone this bias by selecting fewer [ɕ] tokens in this condition compared to a control condition where no additional information was presented.…”

Acoustic Correlates of Parental Role and Gender Identity in the Speech of Expecting Parents

“…In addition to speakers expressing their social identity [3], listeners also interpret speech based on who they think the speaker is (e.g. regarding the speakers assumed age, gender or ethnicity) [4,5]. Thus, speech conveys much more than the linguistic message, also comprising rich information about the speaker which then has to be interpreted by the listener.…”