Second Dialect Acquisition and Stylistic Variation in Mobile Speakers

人们搬到新的地区后如何改变他们的口音？移动的人通常会获得一些，但不是全部，一个新的地区的方言特征，这个项目将调查的发展，社会和语言因素，确定发生什么样的变化，以及如何在移动的扬声器改变他们的口音功能，以实现社会目标的谈话。这项研究将帮助我们了解单词和语音是如何在大脑中呈现的，以及语言在生命周期中的灵活性。这项研究是迄今为止最大的第二方言习得研究，其结果将有几个实际应用。了解口音在一生中的变化和变化对于改进语言和方言教学法以及语音识别和语音生成技术至关重要。了解移动的说话者可能如何改变他们的口音可以帮助法医和情报调查，包括说话者分析或判断可能的声音伪装的真实性。最后，提高人们对语言差异的认识，以及每个人如何使用这种差异进行交流，是消除基于语言的偏见和歧视的关键。研究人员将采访80名以英语为母语的人：40名加拿大多伦多人，他们成年后搬到纽约市，40名纽约市人，他们成年后搬到多伦多。两个发言者样本将按性别、到达新地区的年龄和在新地区居住的年数进行分层。每一位移动的演讲者将与一位移民当前城市的终身居民朋友一起沿着参加活动，包括对话式采访和一系列阅读和判断任务。活动将被录音，使研究人员能够比较自发和阅读的讲话，以及与不同的主题和表达的态度相关的讲话。四个元音变量区分这两个城市将使用适当的语音和统计方法进行分析。这种分析的结果将被用来评估现有的索赔，并产生新的假设流动性引起的方言变化，并确定如何变化的模式反映了社会和态度的讲话内容。

How do people change their accents after moving to new regions? Mobile people typically acquire some, but not all, of a new region's dialect features; this project will investigate the developmental, social, and linguistic factors determining what kinds of changes occur, and the ways in which mobile speakers vary their use of accent features to achieve social goals in conversation. This research will help us understand how words and speech sounds are represented in the mind as well as the flexibility of language over the lifespan.The results of this project, the largest study of second dialect acquisition to date, will have several practical applications. Understanding how accents vary and change over a lifetime is crucial for improving language- and dialect-teaching pedagogy as well as speech-recognition and speech-generating technologies. Knowing how mobile speakers are likely to change their accents can aid forensic and intelligence investigations involving speaker profiling or judging authenticity in cases of possible voice disguise. Finally, improved awareness of how speech varies and how this variation is used by everyone to communicate is key to stemming language-based prejudice and discrimination.The researcher will interview eighty native speakers of English: forty natives of Toronto, Canada, who relocated as adults to New York City, and forty natives of New York City who relocated as adults to Toronto. Both speaker samples will be stratified by gender, age of arrival in their new region, and number of years living in the new region. Each mobile speaker will participate in activities along with a friend who is a lifelong resident of the migrant's current city, including a conversational interview and a series of reading and judgment tasks. Activities will be audio-recorded, enabling the researcher to compare spontaneous and read speech as well as speech associated with different topics and expressed attitudes. Four vowel variables which distinguish the two cities will be analyzed using appropriate phonetic and statistical methods. The results of this analysis will be used to evaluate existing claims and generate new hypotheses about mobility-induced dialect change and to determine how patterns of variation reflect the social and attitudinal content of speech.