This thesis presents experiments and interviews which investigate pronunciation variation in the Liverpool accents of young speakers. Experiment One investigates inter-speaker variation, Experiment Two investigates intra-speaker variation, and Experiment Three investigates both inter- and intra-speaker variation. These three experiments are conducted from a sociophonetic perspective, with controlled elicitation of natural speech and acoustic analysis of speech data. The experimental investigations are complemented by interviews, which incorporate the perceptions and opinions of speakers of Liverpool English into the study. The study makes several contributions to the field of sociolinguistic research. It provides a new examination of Liverpool English. Experiment One is specifically designed to explore one of its most complex and ill-defined phonetic features, the realisation of plosives as affricates or fricatives. In addition to this phonetic investigation, Experiment One also examines sociolinguistic variation in this feature, and shows that speakers' individual attributes (such as their social networks and their plans for the future) are as relevant to variation as their socio-economic status. The study also makes important methodological contributions. Instrumental phonetic techniques and standards are successfully applied to sociolinguistic investigation conducted in the field. An interdisciplinary approach, bringing together qualitative interviews and sociophonetic experiments, is adopted. A new quiz-questionnaire technique for data collection, which should prove useful for many kinds of future sociolinguistic research, is developed for Experiment Three. Finally, Experiment Three tests many accounts and models of intra-speaker variation. Speakers are shown to vary their pronunciation as the speech situation varies, but not all the seven phonetic variables investigated show the same patterns of variation. Speakers vary their pronunciation according to audience, and also according to topic. Speakers with a high level of ambition vary their pronunciation of certain phonetic variables more than those with a lower level of ambition, and female speakers vary their pronunciation more than male speakers.

This thesis undertakes a comprehensive examination of the effects of a variety of social, phonological and morphosyntactic factors on the process of s-weakening in the Spanish of San Miguel, El Salvador. The corpus used in this study consists of sixteen speakers native to San Miguel, evenly distributed according to age, sex and socioeconomic status. It was found that s-weakening appears to be in stable variation and that it is primarily governed by phonological factors: the quality of the segment following the /s/, the position of the /s/ in the syllable and word, and whether the /s/ is in a stressed or an unstressed syllable. Regarding the quality of the following segments, it was found that coronal stops caused /s/ to resist weakening. Consequently, it is argued that /st/ and /sd/ sequences are partial geminates in this dialect of Spanish, i.e. they share a place node. An account of the phonological factors conditioning s-weakening is provided within the framework of Optimality Theory, utilising the notion of crucially unranked constraints.

Typescript. / Bibliography: leaves 159-165. / vi, 165 l tables

This thesis is a sociolinguistic examination of the use of English by Aboriginal people in Southeast Queensland (SEQAB people). It is written within a framework of the ethnography of speaking, and specifically relates what people say (language form), to its effect on people (language function), examining aspects of context. This ethnographically based language study goes beyond formal details of grammatical structure, presents new data on the Aboriginal use of English, and explores some areas where the conventional grammatical analysis of Standard English does not adequately account for differences between Aboriginal and White Australian uses of English. It also provides evidence which shows that Aboriginal ways of speaking persist in a region where traditional Aboriginal languages are rarely used. The first chapter introduces the study, giving background to the research and motivating the central questions addressed in the thesis. The second chapter provides the theoretical orientation of the thesis, asks its central questions and, after reviewing the ethnography of speaking literature, provides a framework to answer them. The third chapter reviews literature on Australian Aboriginal languages from a sociolinguistic perspective. The fourth chapter provides background information about SEQAB society. The following three chapters treat the SEQAB use of English, each chapter focusing on a specific function of language: the fifth chapter focuses on seeking information, the sixth chapter on giving and seeking reasons for actions, and the seventh chapter on talking about future action. The final chapter concludes that while linguistic forms used by SEQAB speakers of English are mostly shared with White Australian speakers of English, there are crucial differences in meaning which can be understood only in terms of the SEQAB socio-cultural context, including customary intentions of speakers and interpretations of hearers. Considering the data and analysis presented in this thesis, I assert that SEQAB people today use English as an Aboriginal language.

This thesis is a sociolinguistic examination of the use of English by Aboriginal people in Southeast Queensland (SEQAB people). It is written within a framework of the ethnography of speaking, and specifically relates what people say (language form), to its effect on people (language function), examining aspects of context. This ethnographically based language study goes beyond formal details of grammatical structure, presents new data on the Aboriginal use of English, and explores some areas where the conventional grammatical analysis of Standard English does not adequately account for differences between Aboriginal and White Australian uses of English. It also provides evidence which shows that Aboriginal ways of speaking persist in a region where traditional Aboriginal languages are rarely used. The first chapter introduces the study, giving background to the research and motivating the central questions addressed in the thesis. The second chapter provides the theoretical orientation of the thesis, asks its central questions and, after reviewing the ethnography of speaking literature, provides a framework to answer them. The third chapter reviews literature on Australian Aboriginal languages from a sociolinguistic perspective. The fourth chapter provides background information about SEQAB society. The following three chapters treat the SEQAB use of English, each chapter focusing on a specific function of language: the fifth chapter focuses on seeking information, the sixth chapter on giving and seeking reasons for actions, and the seventh chapter on talking about future action. The final chapter concludes that while linguistic forms used by SEQAB speakers of English are mostly shared with White Australian speakers of English, there are crucial differences in meaning which can be understood only in terms of the SEQAB socio-cultural context, including customary intentions of speakers and interpretations of hearers. Considering the data and analysis presented in this thesis, I assert that SEQAB people today use English as an Aboriginal language.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, School of English and Linguisitics, 1984. / Bibliography: leaves 443-447. / Introduction -- The social setting of Norfolk speech -- Outline of analytical framework -- This study in relation to recent research into variation -- Collection of data and interview procedures -- Inventory of distinctive broad Norfolk features -- Study of Norfolk texts : diglossic speakers - varieties 1 and 2 (part 1) : special broad speakers -- Study of Norfolk texts : diglossic speakers - varieties 1 and 2 (part 2) : general broad speakers -- Study of Norfolk texts : modified broad speakers - variety 3 speakers -- Young Norfolk Island informants -- Analysis of young people's elicited data (part 1): grammatical structures -- Analysis of young people's elicited data (Part 2) -- Conclusion. / This thesis examines the behaviour of Norfolk Islanders in a particular language situation: in which the participants are Islanders, in which the purpose is understood to be informal conversation, and in which the setting is conducive to the speaker producing his/her natural vernacular. -- Emphasis on dialectal speech means that for some speakers types of Broad Norfolk are the object of investigation; for others Modified Norfolk is the dialectal variety. In the speech situation under study, all Islanders may be heard to shift through partial change of code into Modified Norfolk so that various stylistic patterns occur, dependent on the interaction of dialectal and situational factors. The analysis of such dialectal and stylistic variants as Norfolk Islanders employ in informal speech is of central interest in this work. -- Following on from an explanation of the social setting and analytical framework of the thesis, textual data of a number of Norfolk informants are examined; a set of propositions relating to the defining characteristics of diglossia, as enunciated by Charles Ferguson (1959), serves as reference points for the examination of each speaker's dialectal competence. Text analysis concentrates on the following principal areas of inquiry: / (1) Identification of the formal qualities of each speaker's dialect in relation to the distinctive features of old Broad Norfolk and location of his/her dialectal norms along the Broad Norfolk to Modified Norfolk continuum. (2) Inquiry into the degree of informants' conformity to the kind of diglossic stability which is typically demonstrated by older Islanders: the extent to which individuals reserve the use of their Norfolk and Norfolk English codes for separate dialectal and superposed purposes. (3) Speakers' code-variation in the Modified Norfolk continuum is examined: Firstly, to identify the linguistic configuration of mutated, merged and blended forms of Modified Norfolk, and Secondly, to analyse the meaning of Modified structures: whether they signify a stylistic shift pertaining to the speaker in relation to his language situation or whether they represent habitual, unmarked variants in the dialect of the speaker concerned. -- (4) Analysis of the dialect of old and young Norfolk Islanders is designed to demonstrate how maintenance and change are manifested in the present community; how their different types of code-variation relate to the dialectal-superposed norms of older diglossia; and how a range of stylistic meanings, determined by the interaction of dialectal/situational factors, is expressed within the Modified Norfolk continuum. Thus this study aims to provide a coherent interpretation of the uses of code-variation in a community of unstable diglossic practice so that it is possible to refer different types of variants to the basic diglossic framework. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / viii, 449 leaves

This thesis describes the morphology and lexicon of the dialect of Romany spoken in Kotel, Bulgaria. The introduction shows the position of the dialect within Bulgarian Romany and gives brief details of its speakers (pp 12-15). A phonological transcription is used for the morphology and lexicon. This reveals the relationship between Kotel and other dialects, a relationship normally concealed by its phonetic system. The paradigmatic affixes added to nominals are listed with their variants and specimen paradigms are given (pp 16-31) . Verbs are similarly treated, with special notes on medio-passives and impersonal verbs (pp 32-42). The affixes used in building compound-words are listed with their variants and numerous examples (pp 43-59) o A brief note is included on some non-productive methods of word-formation (p. 60). The changes undergone by loan-words from Turkish and Bulgarian are summarized, together with the paradigmatic affixes used with loans from these languages and Greek (pp 61-66). Two texts are given in phonological transcription with a translation and notes, to illustrate the morphology (pp 67-94). A Romany-English lexicon follows, together with some shorter word-lists(pp 95-202) . The lexicon excludes those loan-words which are freely formed by stated rules from Turkish and Bulgarian, languages with which the people are familiar. Finally phonological rules are given which conver the symbols used up to this point into a broad phonetic transcription (pp 203-211), and a text in parallel phonological and phonetic transcription illustrates the application of these rules (pp 212-219). A concise bibliography concludes the study.

D.Litt. et Phil. (Afrikaans) / Today linguists generally accept that languages change continuously and that variation characterizes language. lt appears from sociolinguistic research done since 1964 that there is a connection between linguistic and social or non-linguistic variables. Even an initial acquaintance with Rehoboth Afrikaans will indicate the general occurrence of variation; yet little research has been done in this area. The only noteworthy study in this field was carried out by J.H. Rademeyer in 1938. Variation, more specifically phonetic variation, is the object of study of this thesis ...

M.A. / Primere doelstelling 'n Sosiolinguistiese beskrywing van die taalgebruik van wingerdwerkers, wat 'n relatief eentalige, homogene taalgemeenskap is. Sekondere doelstellings Die saamstel van 'n wingerd-leksikon. Die gee van 'n transkripsie van dele uit Bacchus in die Boland op grond van die veranderlike uitspraakvorme wat deur die navorsing vasgestel is. 'n Voorondersoek is eers onderneem om to bepaal of hierdie spesifieke groep sprekers se taalgebruik enigsins uniek is as dit vergelyk sou word met die ondersoeke wat reeds op die gebied in ander bruin gemeenskappe gedoen is. Gedurende die voorondersoek is slegs met 'n paar respondente gesels (twee manlike wingerdwerkers op die wynplaas Louwshoek, drie manlike wingerdwerkers op die wynplaas Merwida en een manlike wingerdwerker op die wynplaas Klein Pokkraal). Daar is ook vroulike wingerdwerkers, maar die onderskeie plaasbestuurders het telkens voorgestel met wie gesels moes word, omdat die werkers volgens hulle "baie geselserig" is. Die werkers wat deur hulle vir onderhoude uitgewys is, was almal manlik. Tydens die hoofondersoek is onderhoude met vroulike wingerdwerkers sowel as met kinders van die werkers gevoer. Al die onderhoude is op band geneem. Onderhoude wat op band geneem word, is the heeltemal natuurlik the, want "Interview speech is formal speech" en "monitored and controlled in response to the presence of an outside observer." Die ondersoeker het as vreemdeling (slegs bekend gestel aan respondente kort voor die onderhoude, wat wel vooraf gereel is en waartoe respondente toestemming verleen het) met 'n bandopnemer opgedaag en informeel met werkers probeer kommunikeer. Sommige respondente was ontspanne en het gemaklik op vrae reageer, terwyl ander duidelik ongemaklik was met die ondersoeker en die bandopnemer. Hierdie ongemak het veroorsaak dat respondente vrae in kort, eenvoudige sinne beantwoord het of baie sag of binnensmonds gepraat het. Dit het aanvanklik 'n in diepte studie van die wingerdwerkers se taalgebruik bemoeilik.Om hierdie rede is tydens 'n volgende ondersoek op 'n gemakliker basis met respondente kommunikeer. Tydens die hoofondersoek is genoemde probleme grootliks uitgeskakel deur die respondente se taalgebruik sover moontlik in hul natuurlike sosiale konteks te bestudeer. Bandopnames is gemaak tydens interaksie met familielede en vriende asook tydens sosiale geleenthede. 'n Ooglopende oplossing was om tydens hul werksure in die wingerde na die respondente te gaan luister. Hierdie projek was baie tydrowend, maar beslis lonend, aangesien die sprekers in 'n vertroude omgewing en situasie tussen bekendes is en sodoende is juis hul alledaagse, natuurlike taalgebruik op band vasgele. Hierdie situasie was ideaal vir die studie, aangesien dit meer spesifiek handel oor die taalgebruik (uitspraak, woordvorme, leksikon en sintaktiese vorme) van die wingerdwerkers in die aangeduide omgewing. Tydens die voorondersoek is vasgestel dat hierdie groep sprekers se taalgebruik verskille vertoon van die van ander bruin gemeenskappe, hoofsaaklik wat hul leksikon en omgangstaal betref, en dit was ook opvallend dat hierdie groep sprekers net oor 'n informele styl beskik.

Ph.D. (African Languages) / Please refer to full text to view abstract