When is a change not a change? A case study on the dialect origins of New Zealand English

Abstract

A B S T R A C TIn studying language change, variationists are, naturally perhaps, more interested in the new, innovative form than in the old conservative one, and because of the actuation problem, investigations of changes in progress very rarely are able to shed light on the change in its very earliest stages. In this article, I suggest that we should perhaps pay more attention than we have at present to the origins of the change (in addition to its route and destination) and the nature of the conservative form if we are to chart ongoing changes in an accurate way. Here, I highlight an example of a feature of New Zealand English (NZE) (realizations of the MOUTH diphthong with front mid-open onsets) that has, until recently, been assumed to have resulted from a change of the Southern Shift-kind-a raising and fronting to [εʊ∼ε Ə ]-but which, as I demonstrate using contemporary and past dialectological, as well as sociodemographic evidence, did not undergo this change in this way. Indeed, the supposedly conservative [aʊ] form has barely been used at all as a conversational vernacular variant in NZE. I argue here that the present-day NZE realization is far more likely to be the outcome of a process of dialect leveling operating on the mixture of forms brought to New Zealand by British and Irish migrants in the 19th century. The moral of the story is that if we think we observe a change in progress from A to B, we need to provide evidence not just of the existence of B, but also of the prior existence of A.

Reversing “drift”: Innovation and diffusion in the London diphthong system

“…If we take Wells's (1982) account at face value, the shift is easy to see as a reversal of Diphthong Shift: the change observed reverses the development that we assume happened in the past. However, we argue, with Britain (2005), that the trajectory of change might not have encompassed a stage with an open-mid onset. Instead, the change seems to us to have been as follows:…”

“…However, this may not give a true picture of the development: we do not know if London English ever passed through this stage. For example, we have evidence from Britain (2005) (assuming these are the later forms) was fronting, not raising. Britain (2001Britain ( , 2005 argued that shifted variants of MOUTH and PRICE were certainly already present in the speech of the majority of the British settlers in New Zealand, and the development there of diphthong-shifted vowels was not a raising from open to open-mid front realizations (such as [ɛ ˕ ə ˔ ]), but more a leveling process, in this case dialect contact, where the open-mid front realization won because it was the "dominant, majority and innovative form" (Britain, 2005:171) in the community.…”

“…Mechanisms are, again, innovation (coinciding in this case with a source), mutual accommodation following long-term dialect contact, one-sided convergence with other speaker groups who may or may not be in contact with the speakers, and divergence from such groups. Subsumed under mechanisms are two geographical factors: geographical (directional) diffusion (Britain, 2002;Kerswill, 2003) and mutual leveling (Kerswill, 2003), by which speakers in a geographically delimited high-contact area have the opportunity to accommodate to each other, most obviously in a new town such as Milton Keynes (Kerswill & Williams, 2000). Motivations vary from place to place and time to time, but many can be subsumed under identity (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).…”

New‐Dialect Formation in Canada: Evidence from the English Modal Auxiliaries by Stefan Dollinger

“…This difference makes it difficult to compare early CanE and early NZE. In contrast with other accounts of new‐dialect formation (Trudgill 2004: 37–82; see also Britain 2008), Dollinger does not attempt to trace patterns in CanE to those in the British input varieties, a shortcoming he acknowledges. Such a comparison would help to distinguish dialect mixture from independent innovation.…”

Learning the game: playing by the rules, playing with the rules

“…Innovation and change are used interchangeably here when some commentators (e.g., Britain, 2008) distinguish between them in terms of their transitory and permanent impact respectively on the language. Innovation and change are used interchangeably here when some commentators (e.g., Britain, 2008) distinguish between them in terms of their transitory and permanent impact respectively on the language.…”