Southern Shift?: tracking diphthongs in the recent histories of non-standard varieties of English.

Southern Shift？：跟踪非标准英语变体的近期历史中的双元音。

• 批准号: AH/E003079/1
• 负责人: David BRITAIN
• 金额: $ 2.57万
• 依托单位: University of Essex
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2007 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FE003079%2F1
• 关键词: Southern; Shift; tracking; diphthongs; recent

During this Research Leave, I aim to complete a project examining a co-ordinated set of changes that have affected several vowels in many accents of English. This 'chain shift' is known as 'Southern Shift' because the changes are claimed to have affected the accents of the Southern US, Southern England and the Southern Hemisphere Englishes of New Zealand (NZ) and Australia. These accents have a number of pronunciation similarities, most notably the vowels in words such as MOUTH (/au/) and PRICE (/ai/) (which have first elements pronounced at the front of the mouth for /au/ and back for /ai/), and these similarities led researchers to suggest that in all of these places these vowels moved in similar ways, having followed similar routes to get to their present-day pronunciations. Evidence of the route of this change through time was, however, only provided for American English. Since 1998 I have been examining historical and contemporary sources to discover whether they support this proposed route of Southern Shift for southern British accents and those of the Southern Hemisphere Englishes. They may have similar pronunciations to the southern US for these vowels, but did they get there by the same route? I propose to write an article on Southern Shift outside the US, suggesting the vowels changed via a different route to that proposed for the US, and examining the consequences of this different route for contemporary theories of vowel change.The project began by looking at NZ and found that throughout the 150 years that English has been spoken there, /ai/ and /au/ had largely remained unchanged, so examining the history of NZ English itself didn't get us any nearer to explaining the route by which the vowels had changed. I therefore then looked at the dialects spoken in those areas of the British Isles from which migrants had left to go to NZ in the 19th century. This showed that many areas of southern England (the predominant source of migrants to NZ) already had the changed vowel, but other areas had a traditional vowel with a central starting point. Crucially, those vowels which would have given support to the proposed Southern Shift route for this vowel change were absent. Evidence suggested that in southern England the change had followed a different route and that this change was taken to NZ by 19th century migrants. This NZ research is now complete and published, but it led me to ask further questions about two other Southern Hemisphere accents, those of Australia and the Falklands. There has been less research on the history of Australian English than on NZ and what has been carried out has largely focussed on the roles of Cockney and Irish English in the formation of this dialect. I spent 3 months in Australia in 2000 examining the demographic origins of the convicts and settlers to Australia and the subsequent history of this dialect. Like NZ, southern English migrants dominated the early Australian Anglophone population. During the leave, I propose to write an article on the history of the Australian English vowels that are supposedly affected by Southern Shift as well as other dialect features that demonstrate the 'southern English' dominance of input forms to this accent. I hope to present this work at a conference in Cyprus in June 2007. Falkland Island English shows some similarities with the other Southern Hemisphere varieties but, with respect to the Southern Shift vowels, it is quite different from them (with the exception of the sound /au/). I propose to write an article on the vowels in Falkland Island English which have (supposedly) undergone Southern Shift in other accents, showing their very different histories in this South Atlantic accent. This research will be of appeal to those interested in language variation and change and in the history of English and its dialects, and will expose some commonly held myths about how varieties of English outside England have developed.

在这次研究假期间，我的目标是完成一个项目，检查一组协调一致的变化，这些变化影响了英语中许多口音的几个元音。这种“连锁性变化”被称为“南部变化”，因为据说这种变化影响了美国南部、英格兰南部以及新西兰和澳大利亚的南半球英语的口音。这些口音有许多发音上的相似之处，其中最明显的元音是像Main(/au/)和Price(/ai/)这样的单词中的元音(它们的第一个发音在嘴巴的前部，后面的发音是/ai/)，这些相似之处导致研究人员认为，在所有这些地方，这些元音都是以相似的方式移动的，都遵循了相似的发音路线，才有了今天的发音。然而，只有美式英语才能提供这种变化路径的证据。自1998年以来，我一直在研究历史和当代资料，以发现他们是否支持英国南部口音和南半球英语口音的南方转移路线。这些元音的发音可能与美国南部相似，但他们是通过同样的路线到达那里的吗？我建议写一篇关于美国以外的南方转移的文章，建议元音通过一种不同于为美国提出的途径发生变化，并研究这种不同途径对当代元音变化理论的影响。该项目从考察新西兰开始，发现在那里使用英语的150年里，/ai/和/au/基本上没有变化，所以考察新西兰英语本身的历史并没有让我们更进一步地解释元音变化的途径。因此，我随后研究了19世纪移民离开不列颠群岛前往新西兰的那些地区所说的方言。这表明英格兰南部的许多地区(新西兰移民的主要来源地)已经改变了元音，但其他地区的元音有一个中心起点的传统元音。关键的是，那些本可以支持提议的南移路线以改变元音的元音没有出现。有证据表明，在英格兰南部，这种变化遵循了一条不同的路线，这种变化是由19世纪的移民带到新西兰的。新西兰的这项研究现在已经完成并发表了，但它让我对另外两种南半球口音--澳大利亚口音和福克兰群岛口音--提出了进一步的问题。与新西兰相比，对澳大利亚英语历史的研究较少，主要集中在考克尼英语和爱尔兰英语在该方言形成过程中的作用。2000年，我在澳大利亚花了3个月的时间研究澳大利亚罪犯和定居者的人口统计来源，以及后来这种方言的历史。和新西兰一样，英国南部移民在澳大利亚早期以英语为母语的人口中占主导地位。在休假期间，我建议写一篇关于澳大利亚英语元音的历史的文章，这些元音被认为是受南移影响的，以及其他方言特征，证明了这种口音的输入形式在南部英语中占主导地位。我希望在2007年6月在塞浦路斯举行的一次会议上介绍这项工作。福克兰群岛英语与其他南半球英语变体有一些相似之处，但在南移元音方面，它与它们有很大的不同(除了发音/au/)。我建议写一篇关于福克兰群岛英语的元音的文章，这些元音(据推测)已经经历了其他口音的南移，展示了它们在这种南大西洋口音中非常不同的历史。这项研究将对那些对语言变异和变化感兴趣的人以及英语及其方言的历史感兴趣，并将揭示一些关于英语变体在英格兰以外是如何发展的普遍存在的神话。