22.766, Diss: Lang Acq/Phonology/Socioling: Nycz: 'Second Dialect ...'

[linguist at LINGUISTLIST.ORG]

LINGUIST List: Vol-22-766. Tue Feb 15 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.766, Diss: Lang Acq/Phonology/Socioling: Nycz: 'Second Dialect ...'

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews: Veronika Drake, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Monica Macaulay, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Eric Raimy, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Joseph Salmons, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
       <reviews at linguistlist.org> 

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, 
and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Mfon Udoinyang <mfon at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  

To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm.

===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 15-Feb-2011
From: Jennifer Nycz [jennifer.nycz at york.ac.uk]
Subject: Second Dialect Acquisition: Implications for theories of phonological representation
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:05:55
From: Jennifer Nycz [jennifer.nycz at york.ac.uk]
Subject: Second Dialect Acquisition: Implications for theories of phonological representation

E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=22-766.html&submissionid=4497095&topicid=14&msgnumber=1
  


Institution: New York University 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2010 

Author: Jennifer Nycz

Dissertation Title: Second Dialect Acquisition: Implications for theories of
phonological representation 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
                     Phonology
                     Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Dissertation Director(s):
Gregory R. Guy

Dissertation Abstract:

How do speakers who move to a new dialect region acquire features of the
new dialect? Social factors surely affect this process; for example, the
degree to which a speaker wishes to align with the new community will
modulate how features associated with that community are acquired. However,
linguistic factors - the form of phonological representations, their
malleability, and the processes that manipulate them to yield surface forms
- must also constrain the types of variation and change available to the
individual speaker. This dissertation sets out the predictions made by
generative phonology and usage-based phonology regarding how such change
should occur, and uses second dialect acquisition data to test these
predictions.

The study draws its data from sociolinguistic interviews with mobile adults
who acquired their native dialect of English in Canada and later moved to
the New York City region. It focuses on the linguistic and social factors
affecting acquisition of two phonological variables which differ across
these two regions: the cot/caught distinction and height of (aw) in
Canadian Raising environments. A sociophonetic analysis of these variables
was undertaken to determine whether each speaker has acquired New York-like
realizations of these vowels, and whether this acquisition seemed to be
occurring on a lexically and phonetically gradual basis. The relationship
between these features across speakers was also examined.

Several findings emerge from this study. Most of the speakers in the sample
have acquired a cot/caught distinction after years spent in the New York
region, but maintain a raised (aw) nucleus, especially in salient lexical
items such as 'about'; however, both features show evidence of
phonetically and lexically gradual shift as predicted by usage- based
theory. A positive correlation was found between degree of cot/caught
distinction and degree of Canadian Raising: those speakers with the
greatest distance between 'cot' and 'caught' words are also those who
exhibit the most raised (aw) diphthongs.  I argue that these findings
support a model in which phonological representations are both phonetically
rich and linked to social labels, and propose the addition of a new
parameter to the model which accounts for the correlation between the two
features. 




-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-22-766	
----------------------------------------------------------