Cross-generational sound change in American English

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议的研究检查随着时间的推移，地区方言的变化和声音的变化。具体的目的是提出一个解释，为什么元音的变化在几代人之间，并推进我们的知识变化的讲话。一个假设是测试，元音变化的结果，在一定程度上，从语音韵律组织。因此，韵律突出将以可预测的方式影响目前正在进行的不同元音转换，这三种元音转换存在于美国英语的三个区域变体中，这些变体位于俄亥俄州中部、威斯康星州南部和北卡罗来纳州西部。主题库将由三代发言人组成，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、25-40岁的父母/照顾者和55-75岁的祖父母（或这一代的其他成员）。生产和感知实验将进行研究韵律突出如何影响选定的元音的声学和程度，在特定的方言（和从特定的一代）的听众是敏感的声学变化引起的系统韵律变化。所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度（高、中和低）之间的关系。根据我们的假设，高韵律突出的作用是引导元音向可预测的方向移动。详细了解在一个给定的方言的正常和系统的变化的性质是必要的临床仪器的发展，在美国的不同地区（和文化）的语言和听力障碍的公平和准确的评估。这里提出的研究将直接有助于这些文书的发展。由于英语的区域变体继续分化，这方面的工作必须纳入语音清晰度，识别和合成。

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.