Consonantal Sound Change in American English by Wiebke Ahlers

Consonantal Sound Change in American English by Wiebke Ahlers

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Summary

Focusing on /str/-retraction, this pioneering book uses a combination of phonological and sociolinguistic theories to explore consonantal sound change in American English. Detailed yet engaging, it is essential reading for both researchers and students in phonetics, phonology, language variation and change, sociolinguistics, and corpus linguistics.

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Consonantal Sound Change in American English by Wiebke Ahlers

Research on sound change often focuses on vowels, yet consonantal sound change also offers fascinating insights into language development and variation. This pioneering book provides a detailed investigation of consonantal sound change in English, by analyzing a large corpus of specifically designed field recordings from Austin, Texas. It offers one of the most in-depth analyses of /str/-retraction to date, drawing comparisons with studies of change in the distinguishing phonetic features of other varieties of English, and with studies of /str/-retraction in other Germanic languages. It further deepens our understanding of sound change by including qualitative data to position the sound change in the social reality of Austin, showing that specific sound changes are universally driven by age, gender and ethnicity. The results provide a testing ground for models of sociolinguistic and sound change, and highlight the importance of the social fabric of language in modeling language change.
Wiebke Ahlers is a postdoctoral researcher of English Linguistics at TU Dortmund University. She is a Fulbright scholar.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9781316512722
ISBN 10 131651272X
Title Consonantal Sound Change in American English
Author Wiebke Ahlers
Series Studies In English Language
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Hardback
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Year published 2023-08-24
Number of pages 180
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.