Cross-generational sound change in American English

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议的研究考察了地区方言的变化和声音随时间的变化。具体的目的是提出一种解释为什么元音会在几代人之间发生变化，并提高我们对语音变化的认识。有一种假设得到了验证，即元音的变化部分是由语言的韵律组织造成的。因此，韵律突出将以可预测的方式影响目前在俄亥俄州中部、威斯康辛州南部和北卡罗莱纳西部三个美国英语区域变体中正在进行的不同元音移位。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个地区。这些人将是8-11岁的儿童，他们的父母/看护人年龄在25-40岁之间，他们的祖父母（或这一代的其他成员）年龄在55-75岁之间。生产和感知实验都将进行，以研究韵律突出如何影响选定元音的声学效果，以及特定方言（和特定一代）的听众对这些系统韵律变化引起的声学变化的敏感程度。所选的声学变量将测量共振峰模式、共振峰频率变化的幅度和速率与韵律突出程度（高、中、低）之间的关系。根据我们的假设，高韵律突出的作用将是引导元音向可预测的方向移动。详细了解特定方言的正常和系统变化的本质，对于开发临床仪器以公平准确地评估美国不同地区（和文化）的语言和听力障碍是必要的。这里提出的研究将直接有助于这些工具的发展。由于英语的区域变体不断分化，这一维度必须纳入语音可理解性、识别和综合的工作中。

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.