Phonological change Flashcards
What is phonological change?
Phonological change is the change in the pronunciation of words, changes in the way we speak and how certain sounds are acquired or lost over time.
What was the Great Vowel Shift?
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of systemic changes in the pronunciation of English vowels that occurred in southern England during the late Middle English period (roughly the period from Chaucer to Shakespeare).
What is dialect levelling?
The process by which local accents and dialects are gradually dying out?
Why is dialect levelling occurring?
Dialect levelling is triggered by contact between dialects which can occur through migration, travel, commuting, urbanisation (people moving from rural areas to towns and cities) and, even, exposure to different accents and dialects in the media.
What is communication accommodation theory?
The idea is that people have a tendency to accommodate their speech styles to the person they are speaking with, making them either similar (convergence) or dissimilar (divergence).
What is convergence and why does it occur?
Convergence is a process of people naturally tending to adapt to others’ way of communicating to connect and decrease their social differences.
What is divergence and why does it occur?
Divergence is an exaggeration of social and nonverbal communication differences to accentuate differences and to create social difference.
Why has there been a move away from Received Pronunciation as the language of prestige?
Received Pronunciation has lost its prestige as social class is less important these days.
There has also been increased informalisation in our culture beginning after the Second World War and increasing from the 60s/70s onwards.
What is TH fronting and why is it common today?
Replacing the th sound with /f/ (e.g. fink rather than think). This is a feature of Estuary English and Multicultural London English (both common in the South of England), as well as a number of regional accents.
Why are features such as omission, elision and assimilation common in spoken language?
Because people tend to miss out phonemes and run the sounds together to make it easier.
