The New Cockney

Fox, Susan Patricia

doi:10.1057/9781137318251

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…The diachronic analysis showed greater use of glottalisation and schwa in modern data compared to archival data and a close association between these two features indicating a change to definite article allomorphy in line with observations from the UK (Britain & Fox 2009, Cheshire et al 2011, Fox 2015, the US (Todaka 1992, Keating et al 1994) and New Zealand (Hay et al 2012). Interestingly, the use of glottalisation to manage the hiatus is more common than the use of schwa in the PVDA.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

“…Findings also show that young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are advanced with respect to allomorphic regularisation of the definite article (New Zealand: Meyerhoff et al 2020; UK: Britain & Fox 2009, Cheshire et al 2011, Fox 2015. Similar observations have been made for some speakers of (middle class) South African English (Lass 2002).…”

Section: English Definite Article Allomorphysupporting

confidence: 70%

“…This is particularly true of the non-MS speakers who represent culturally and linguistically diverse communities in this study. The results raise questions about the role of linguistic diversity in language change, suggesting parallels with Multicultural London English where diversity is driving change towards definite article regularisation (Cheshire et al 2011, Fox 2015. Further research is needed with a more extensive range of data and speakers to determine whether the observed changes are linked to widespread effects involving the management of hiatus, and the use of glottalisation more generally, and to further explore data that may help us unravel the conditions that may have led to the actuation and spread of the change.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…They provide evidence that contact between speakers in diverse communities may have been the impetus for change in London English where multicultural varieties are at the forefront of simplification to the hiatus resolution system. They, along with Fox (2015), showed the influence of young Bangladeshi males in London in the spread of /D´/ amongst their male Anglo peers. Britain & Fox (2009) propose multi-ethnic friendship groups as the catalyst for diffusion of this variant in the community.…”

Section: Changes To Definite Article Allomorphymentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Although the previous studies discussed above have demonstrated increasing use of prevocalic /D´/ (Hay et al 2012, Fox 2015, few have explored the relationship between PVDA and hiatus management strategies in the progression of the change.…”

Section: Aims and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Fifty years of change to prevocalic definite article allomorphy in Australian English

Cox¹,

Penney²,

Palethorpe³

2022

Journal of the International Phonetic Association

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The English definite article has two major allomorphs: prevocalic /ðiː/ and preconsonantal /ðə/. Recent studies have shown changes to definite article allomorphy in some English varieties. Younger speakers, particularly from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, often use /ðə/ prevocalically rather than /ðiː/. The prevocalic definite article (PVDA) /ðiː/ facilitates management of vowel hiatus because it supports the emergence of [j] in preventing vowel adjacency (e.g. the ash [ðiːjœʃ]). An alternative strategy for separating adjacent vowels is glottalisation or glottal stop ([ðiːʔœʃ]). Few studies have explored the relationship between the vowel in the PVDA and hiatus management during the process of change. We report a diachronic analysis of Australian English (AusE) PVDA and associated hiatus management across a 50-year period (∼1960s to ∼2010s) and a synchronic analysis of present-day speakers from mainstream (MS) and non-mainstream (non-MS) (diverse) backgrounds using two read-sentence contexts. The aim is to provide insight into the process of change and factors that may influence its progression. Speech data from adolescents recorded in 1959/1960 were compared with recordings from Mainstream AusE-speaking (MS) young people recorded in the 2010s. Results showed significantly greater incidence of schwa in the PVDA and hiatus-breaking glottalisation in the modern data, particularly amongst females. The synchronic analysis comparing present-day MS and non-MS speakers showed increased use of glottalisation in females and non-MS speakers. Additionally, acoustic analysis showed more schwa-like productions in the PVDA by non-MS speakers. Of key importance in both analyses is that glottalisation was more prevalent than schwa, possibly indicating glottalisation triggered the change.

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