Anne Fabricius
Several changes in consonant and vowel pronunciations in younger generations
of native speakers of Received Pronunciation (RP) are currently the object of
research interest. In order to further an empirically grounded description of
changes in RP, the present study examines variation in weak vowels. Patterns
of variation in word-final open weak syllables (happy, city) as well as in past
and present/plural suffixes (waited, changes) are investigated acoustically
in the interview speech of eight young (born in the late 1970s) speakers of
modern RP. The data show variation in happY vowels for some speakers according
to phonetic environment, a phenomenon which deserves further study. KIT/schwa
variation in the inflectional suffixes studied here shows a tendency to maintain
KIT-like values. Overall, the study indicates that acoustic analysis of such
weak vowels can provide interesting data on variation.
[Language Variation and Change (2002), 14:211-237 ]