Singing Accent Americanisation in the Light of Frequency Effects: LOT Unrounding and PRICE Monophthongisation in Focus

• Authors: Monika Konert-Panek
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper investigates – within the framework of usage-based phonology – the significance of lexical frequency effects in singing accent Americanisation. The accent of Joe Elliott of a British band, Def Leppard is analysed with regard to LOT unrounding and PRICE monophthongisation. Both auditory and acoustic methods are employed; PRAAT is used to provide acoustic verification of the auditory analysis whenever isolated vocal tracks are available. The statistical significance of the obtained results is verified by means of a chisquare test. In both analysed cases the percentage of frequent words undergoing the change is higher compared with infrequent ones and in the case of PRICE monphthongisation the result is statistically significant, which suggests that word frequency may affect singing style variation.

Keywords

EN

frequency effects; LOT unrounding; popular music; singing accent; usage-based phonology; PRICE monophthonggisation

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Research in Language
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 155-168

Dates

published

2018-06-30

Contributors

author

Monika Konert-Panek

• University of Warsaw

References

• Beal, Joan. 2004. English dialects in the North of England: phonology. In Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Volume 1: Phonology, 113-123. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Beal, Joan. 2009. “You’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham”: Dialect and identity in British indie music. Journal of English Linguistics 37 (3). 223-240.
• Boersma, Paul and David Weenink. 2016. Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer [Computer program]. Version 6.0.14, [Online]. Available from: http://www.praat.org/
• Bybee, Joan. 2000. The phonology of the lexicon: evidence from lexical diffusion. In Michael Barlow and Suzanne Kemmer (eds.), Usage-based models of language, 65-85. Stanford, CA: CSLI.
• Bybee, Joan. 2001. Phonology and language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bybee, Joan. 2002. Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change. Language Variation and Change 14. 261-290.
• Bybee, Joan. 2006. From Usage to Grammar: The Mind’s Response to Repetition. Language 82 (4). 711-733.
• Cramer, Jennifer. 2016. Rural vs. urban: Perception and production of identity in a border city. In Jennifer Cramer and Chris Montgomery (eds.), Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology, 27-54. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Erker, Daniel and Gregory R. Guy. 2012. The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability: Variable subject personal pronoun expression in Spanish. Language 88 (3). 526-557.
• Foulkes, Paul and Gerard Docherty. 2006. The social life of phonetics and phonology. Journal of Phonetics 34. 409-438.
• Gibson, Andy. 2010. Production and Perception of Vowels in New Zealand Popular Music, MPhil thesis, Auckland University of Technology.
• Gibson, Andy and Allan Bell. 2012. Popular Music Singing as Referee Design. In Juan M. Hernández-Campoy and Juan A. Cutillas-Espinosa (eds.), Style-Shifting in Public. New Perspectives on Stylistic Variation, 139-164. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Hawkins, Sarah and Jonathan Midgley. 2005. Formant frequencies of RP monophthongs in four age groups of speakers. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (2). 183-199.
• Hay, Jennifer, Stefanie Jannedy and Norma Mendoza-Denton. 1999. Oprah and /ay/: lexical frequency, referee design and style. Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Studies. San Francisco August 1999. 1389-1392.
• Hickey, Raymond. 1998. The Dublin Vowel Shift and the historical perspective. In Jacek Fisiak and Marcin Krygier (eds.), Advances in English Historical Linguistics (1996), 79-106. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Hooper, Joan. 1976. Word frequency in lexical diffusion and the source of morphophonological change. In William Christie (ed.), Current Progress in Historical Linguistics, 96-105. Amsterdam: NorthHolland.
• Johnson, Keith. 1997. Speech perception without speaker normalization: An exemplar model. In Johnson Keith and John Mullennix (eds.), Talker Variability in Speech Processing, 145-165. San Diego: Academic Press.
• Pierrehumbert, Janet B. 2001. Exemplar dynamics: Word frequency, lenition, and contrast. In Joan Bybee and Paul Hopper (eds.), Frequency effects and the emergence of lexical structure, 137-157. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Schuchardt, Hugo. 1885. Über die Lautgesetze. Gegen die Junggrammatiker. Berlin: Oppenheim.
• Shockey, Linda. 2003. Sound Patterns of Spoken English. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
• Simpson, Paul. 1999. Language, Culture and Identity: With (another) look at accents in pop and rock singing, Multilingua 18(4). 343-367.
• Trudgill, Peter. 1983. Acts of Conflicting Identity. The Sociolinguistics of British Pop-Song Pronunciation. In Peter Trudgill (ed.), On Dialect. Social and Geographical Perspectives, 141-160. Oxford: Blackwell.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/rela-2018-0008