/u/-FRONTING AND AGENT-BASED MODELING: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF SOUND CHANGE

Authored by Jonathan Harrington, Florian Schiel

Date Published: 2017

DOI: 10.1353/lan.2017.0019

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: No platforms listed

Model Documentation: Other Narrative

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

This study is concerned with whether an asymmetric phonetic overlap between speaker groups contributes to the directional spread of sound change. An acoustic analysis of speakers of Southern British English showed that younger speakers' fronted /u/ was probabilistically closer to that of older speakers' retracted /u/ distributions than the other way around. Agent-based modeling based on the same data showed an asymmetric shift of older toward younger speakers' fronted /u/. The general conclusion is that sound change is likely to be propagated when a phonetic bias within an individual is further magnified by a difference between speaker groups that is in the same direction.{*

Tags

Agent-based modeling imitation language change transmission Sound change Vowels Speech dynamics New-dialect formation New-zealand english Vertical-bar Phonetic imitation Speech-perception Coarticulation Pronunciation