The long vowels in the Midlands and South of England shifted in pronunciation
Nobody knows why it happened!
The sounds changed or shortened.
Examples:
Modern English --- Middle English
wife --- weef
mouse --- moos
been --- bayn
her --- heer
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Labov - Martha's Vineyard - 1966
Labov studied changing speech patterns in a small fishing community called MArtha's Vineyard on a north-eastern American island.
Had a small indigenous population, but a large tourist trade.
The indigenous vowel pronunciation began to change. It had always been different to mainlad USA but was now becoming markedly different.
Labov said the locals were trying to separate themselves linguistically from the tourists by using a local dialect and accent to show a kind of covert prestige.
Reasons? To maintain their culture and tradition, trying to stake their claim to the island against the influx of tourists.
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Peter Trudgill
In 1983, studied southern English speakers who were showing a continual slide from their original rural dialects towards a form of Received Pronunciation or their school language.
Called this style shifting.
Reasons? shift to city jobs - more exposed to RP, RP reatins status, so more likely to use RP.
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Jean Aitchison
1991 - identified rceent changes in phonology.
Mistake had become 'merstake'
Astronomy had become 'erstronomy'
The 't' in football had been replaced with a glottal stop so it is pronounced 'foo'ball'
In the 1990s, tenagers speech patterns mad eevrythig sound like a question, especially for girls, as they used a rising intonation.
Though to have been influenced by Australian tv programmes like Home and Away.
It has been called - Australian question intonation, rising intonation, uptalk, upspeak.
Not as common anymore - Australian tv shows no longer as popular, 'Friends' has eneded.
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Kerswill and Williams
1999 - Milton Keyne study - noticed that younger residents were losing their original dialet and using a single dialect called Estuary English
This process is called dialect levelling.
Different dialects had been brought to the town, but EE prevailed.
All the dialects levelled into EE - the one considered to be more prestigious and socially preferred.
Esturay English is a mix of RP and cockney
More prevalent in older schoolchildren - teachers more relaxed, more susceptible to peer pressure - more likely to create a prestige dialect.
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Reasons for Phonological Change
Not always clear
Social factors are often important
Imitation of those we admire or respect can change phonology
Movement around the country due to the economoy can change phonology.
Pronunciation can change for ease or articulation - so they are just physically easier to say.
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Jean Aitchison's Four Stages
Based on Labov.
1. The speech of one social group changes from the local pronunciation.
2. A second social group begins copying the first group, possibly unconsciously.
3. The new pronunciation becomes established among the second group as part of their usual accent.
A third group begins to copy the second group and the process repeats.
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Omission
When sounds disappear from words.
'tomb', 'lamb', 'thumb' - the 'b' used to be pronounced.
'hadst', 'gavest' - now just 'had' and 'gave'. They were difficult to pronounce before so the pronunciation changed and the spelling reflects this change.
15th century - the 'k' in 'knee' and 'knight' was pronounced.
Dropping the 'aitches' e.g. from 'hospital' - now pronounced 'ospital'
Glottal stop - dropping the 't' sound e.g. 'butter' - 'bu'er'
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