Cross-generational sound change in American English

美式英语跨代语音变化

基本信息

批准号：
7643818
负责人：
EWA JACEWICZ
金额：
$ 33.18万
依托单位：
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2005
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2005-07-01 至 2012-06-30
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research examines regional dialect variation and sound change over time. The specific aims are to propose one explanation of why vowels change over generations and to advance our knowledge of variation in speech. A hypothesis is tested that vowel changes result, in part, from prosodic organization of speech. Accordingly, prosodic prominence will affect in predictable ways different vowel shifts currently underway in three regional varieties of American English found in Central Ohio, Southern Wisconsin, and Western North Carolina. The subject pool will consist of three generations of speakers who have lived in the same general area most of their lives. These will be children aged 8-11 years, their parents/caretakers aged 25-40 years, and their grandparents (or other members of this older generation) aged 55-75 years. Both production and perception experiments will be conducted that examine how prosodic prominence influences the acoustics of selected vowels and the extent to which listeners in a particular dialect (and from a particular generation) are sensitive to the acoustic changes induced by those systematic prosodic variations. The selected acoustic variables will measure the relationship between the formant pattern, magnitude and rate of formant frequency change and the degree of prosodic prominence (high, intermediate, and low). According to our hypothesis, the role of high prosodic prominence will be that of leading the vowel shift in a predictable direction. Detailed knowledge about the nature of normal and systematic variation in a given dialect is necessary for the development of clinical instruments for the fair and accurate assessment of both speech language and hearing disorders in various regions (and cultures) of the United States. The studies proposed here will contribute directly to development of these instruments. As regional varieties of English continue to diverge, this dimension must be incorporated into work on speech intelligibility, recognition, and synthesis.

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议的研究检查了区域方言变化和声音随时间变化。具体的目的是提出一个解释，即元音为何在几代人中发生变化，并提高我们对语音变化的了解。检验了一个假设，即副话组织的元音变化部分变化结果。因此，在俄亥俄州中部，威斯康星州南部和北卡罗来纳州西部的三种区域性变种中，韵律的突出将以可预测的方式影响不同的元音变化。该主题池将由三代人组成，他们一生中大部分时间都生活在同一一般地区。这些将是8-11岁的儿童，他们的父母/看护人25-40岁，他们的祖父母（或年龄较大的其他成员）55-75岁。将进行生产和感知实验，以研究韵律突出性如何影响选定元音的声学以及特定方言（以及特定一代）中听众在多大程度上对这些系统性韵律变化引起的声学变化敏感。所选的声学变量将衡量共振剂模式，强度频率变化的幅度和速率与韵律突出程度（高，中级和低）之间的关系。根据我们的假设，高韵律突出的作用将是在可预测的方向上领导元音转变。对于给定方言中正常和系统变化的性质的详细知识对于开发临床工具的发展是必要的，以便对美国各个地区（和文化）的语音语言和听力障碍进行公平，准确的评估。这里提出的研究将直接为这些工具的开发做出贡献。随着英语区域品种继续分歧，必须将此维度纳入语音清晰度，识别和综合方面的工作。