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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 898

Part of Session 148: Child Language Variation (Other abstracts in this session)

Acquisition as participation in a rural speech community

Authors: Roberts, Julie
Submitted by: Roberts, Julie (University of Vermont, United States of America)

One of the assumptions of this symposium on a unified account of child language variation is that in rural areas children will acquire the local vernacular, then the standard (Cornips and Corrigan 2005). However, logical as this assumption is, as is almost always the case, the data, in this case in sociophonetics, present a more complicated picture. The local first model also assumes that the rural dialect is robust enough to be passed on more or less intact to the next generation. In fact, in many areas, rural dialects are undergoing a leveling process. The language serving as input for the language acquiring child is, therefore, a mixture of local forms and supralocal (or leveled) forms, depending on the order, rate, and progress of the obsolescent features.

 

Northwestern Vermont, located in the New England region of the U.S., presents a rural community with a leveling vernacular dialect but one whose features show a markedly different rate of merging with supralocal forms if they do so at all (Roberts 2006, 2007). /au/ raising has almost completely reversed in all but the oldest, male speakers., but /ai/ raising reversal is progressing more slowly with evidence of this feature even in some of the 9-year-olds recorded. Finally, /t/ glottalization is a robust and possibly increasing feature of the Vermont dialect with the highest application rate in the high school aged speakers.

 

What, then, do young children do with this mixed input? This paper attempts to answer this question by examining the speech of 4- and 5-year-old children in local preschool and kindergarten programs. Tokens of /ai/, /au/ and glottalized /t/ were perceptually and acoustically analyzed. Results revealed that none of the children raised /au/. On the other hand, some of the children variably produced raised /ai/, suggesting that this feature will “survive” in simplified form for another generation. All of the children produced glottalized /t/ but the overall rates and patterns were highly variable, although the phonological constraints had been largely acquired. Some of this variation could be explained by home input, although all of the children attended school programs full time. In addition, some children showed emerging patterns of differential glottalization based on the activity taking place, a form of emergent stylistic variation as well as an indicator of the underlying form. These results allow us to make the following suggestions: 1. Models of rural dialect acquisition should include situations of change, particularly when the direction of change is generally toward a more supralocal variety. 2. In addition to contributing to learning theory, acquisition studies also suggest directions and rate of future change in the variety itself.

 

Cornips, L. and Corrigan, K. 2005. Syntax and Variation. Reconciling the Biological and the Social. John Benjamins.

 

Roberts, J. (2006). "As old becomes new:  Glottalization in Vermont." American Speech 81(3): 227-249.

 

Roberts, J. (2007). "Vermont lowering?  Raising some questions about (ay) and (aw) south of the Canadian border." Language Variation and Change.