Cross-generational sound change in American English

描述(申请者提供)：这项拟议的研究考察了地区方言的变化和语音随时间的变化。其具体目的是对元音随世代变化的原因提出一种解释，并增进我们对语音变异的了解。检验了一种假设，即元音变化部分是由语音的韵律组织引起的。因此，韵律突显将以可预见的方式影响目前在俄亥俄州中部、威斯康星州南部和北卡罗来纳州西部发现的三种地区性美式英语中正在进行的元音转换。主题池将由三代演讲者组成，他们大部分时间都住在同一个地区。他们是8-11岁的儿童，25-40岁的父母/照顾者，以及55-75岁的祖父母(或其他老一辈人)。我们将进行发音和知觉实验，考察韵律突显如何影响选定元音的声学，以及特定方言(和特定世代)的听者对这些系统性韵律变化所引起的声学变化的敏感程度。选择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，高韵律突显的作用将是引导元音朝着可预测的方向转移。对特定方言的正常和系统变异的性质的详细了解对于开发临床工具以公平和准确地评估美国不同地区(和文化)的言语和听力障碍是必要的。这里提出的研究将直接有助于这些文书的发展。由于英语的地区性差异继续存在，这一维度必须纳入到语音可理解性、识别和合成方面的工作中。

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.