TY - JOUR
T1 - Acoustic evidence for vowel change in New Zealand English
AU - Watson, Catherine I.
AU - Maclagan, Margaret
AU - Harrington, Jonathan
PY - 2000
Y1 - 2000
N2 - This study provides acoustic evidence that in the last 50 years New Zealand English (NZE) has undergone a substantial vowel shift. Two sets of data are studied: the Otago corpus, recorded in 1995, and the Mobile Unit corpus, recorded in 1948. Both corpora have male and female speakers. The corpora were labeled, accented vowels were extracted, and formant values were calculated. The results of the formant analysis from the two corpora are contrasted. We provide evidence that in NZE /i/ has centralized, /e/ and /æ/ have raised, and the diphthongs /iƏ/ and /eƏ/ have merged. We argue that /i/ changed in quality not only because of crowding in the front vowel space, but also because it would be less likely misperceived as an unaccented vowel (i.e., as Ə).
AB - This study provides acoustic evidence that in the last 50 years New Zealand English (NZE) has undergone a substantial vowel shift. Two sets of data are studied: the Otago corpus, recorded in 1995, and the Mobile Unit corpus, recorded in 1948. Both corpora have male and female speakers. The corpora were labeled, accented vowels were extracted, and formant values were calculated. The results of the formant analysis from the two corpora are contrasted. We provide evidence that in NZE /i/ has centralized, /e/ and /æ/ have raised, and the diphthongs /iƏ/ and /eƏ/ have merged. We argue that /i/ changed in quality not only because of crowding in the front vowel space, but also because it would be less likely misperceived as an unaccented vowel (i.e., as Ə).
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85007940217&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/s0954394500121039
DO - 10.1017/s0954394500121039
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85007940217
SN - 0954-3945
VL - 12
SP - 51
EP - 68
JO - Language Variation and Change
JF - Language Variation and Change
IS - 1
ER -