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

在这次研究休假期间，我的目标是完成一个项目，研究一系列协调一致的变化，这些变化影响了许多英语口音中的几个元音。这种“连锁转移”被称为“南移”，因为据称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。这些口音在发音上有很多相似之处，最明显的是MOUTH （/au/）和PRICE （/ai/）等单词中的元音（这些单词的第一个元音在嘴的前面发/au/，在嘴的后面发/ai/），这些相似之处使研究人员认为，在所有这些地方，这些元音以相似的方式移动，遵循相似的路线，形成了它们今天的发音。然而，只有美国英语才提供了这种变化的证据。自1998年以来，我一直在研究历史和当代的资料，以发现它们是否支持英国南部口音和南半球英语的南移路线。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？我建议在美国之外写一篇关于南移的文章，提出元音的变化途径与美国不同，并研究这种不同途径对当代元音变化理论的影响。该项目首先考察了新西兰，发现在那里说英语的150年里，/ai/和/au/基本上没有改变，所以研究新西兰英语本身的历史并没有让我们更接近于解释元音变化的路线。因此，我接着研究了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）已经有了变化的元音，但其他地区有一个传统的元音，有一个中心起点。至关重要的是，那些支持这种元音变化的南移路线的元音没有出现。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，这种变化被19世纪的移民带到新西兰。新西兰的这项研究现在已经完成并发表了，但它让我对另外两个南半球的口音——澳大利亚和福克兰群岛的口音——提出了进一步的问题。对澳大利亚英语历史的研究比对新西兰英语的研究要少，所做的研究主要集中在伦敦和爱尔兰英语在这种方言形成中的作用上。2000年，我在澳大利亚呆了3个月，研究澳大利亚罪犯和移民的人口来源以及这种方言的后续历史。和新西兰一样，南部的英国移民在早期的澳大利亚英语人口中占主导地位。在休假期间，我打算写一篇关于澳大利亚英语元音的历史的文章，这些元音可能受到南移的影响，以及其他方言特征，这些特征表明“南方英语”在这种口音的输入形式中占主导地位。我希望在2007年6月塞浦路斯的一次会议上介绍这项工作。福克兰岛英语与南半球其他英语变体有一些相似之处，但就南移元音而言，福克兰岛英语与南半球其他英语变体有很大不同（除了/au/这个音）。我打算写一篇关于福克兰群岛英语中元音的文章，这些元音在其他口音中（据说）经历了南移，在这种南大西洋口音中显示出它们非常不同的历史。这项研究将吸引那些对语言变异和变化以及英语及其方言的历史感兴趣的人，并将揭示一些关于英格兰以外的英语变体如何发展的普遍神话。

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.