TY - JOUR
T1 - Frequency effects over the lifespan
T2 - A case study of attenborough’s r’s
AU - MacKenzie, Laurel
N1 - Funding Information:
Thanks to the reviewers and editors of Linguistics Vanguard and audiences at NWAV 43, FWAV 2 (particularly Tony Kroch and George Walkden), the University of Leeds, the University of Newcastle, Cambridge University, and New York University. Research assistance by Grace Ormerod (funded by a Learning through Research grant from the University of Manchester), Lana Ali, Darian Flowers, and Laura Gallagher is gratefully acknowledged.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.
PY - 2017/12
Y1 - 2017/12
N2 - This paper uses a small-scale case study of the speech of a single speaker at two points in time to investigate the question of whether and how speakers’ mental representations change over their lives. Specifically, I test two predictions of usage-based models of phonological representation: that individuals surrounded by a changing community will show the community change in their own production, and that this individual-level change will show an effect of item frequency. The community change under study is the loss in English Received Pronunciation of [] as a realization of //; the speaker studied is Sir David Attenborough, a well-known British nature documentary narrator. I find that Attenborough’s narrations do not show evidence of him participating in the community change away from [] over time; however, he does show a different sort of change, by which he increases his rate of [] in high-frequency collocations in later life. I propose that this result may be attributable to Attenborough’s mental representation of high-frequency collocations becoming more word-like over time. The results speak to questions about the malleability of mental representations and the role of the individual language user in cases of community change.
AB - This paper uses a small-scale case study of the speech of a single speaker at two points in time to investigate the question of whether and how speakers’ mental representations change over their lives. Specifically, I test two predictions of usage-based models of phonological representation: that individuals surrounded by a changing community will show the community change in their own production, and that this individual-level change will show an effect of item frequency. The community change under study is the loss in English Received Pronunciation of [] as a realization of //; the speaker studied is Sir David Attenborough, a well-known British nature documentary narrator. I find that Attenborough’s narrations do not show evidence of him participating in the community change away from [] over time; however, he does show a different sort of change, by which he increases his rate of [] in high-frequency collocations in later life. I propose that this result may be attributable to Attenborough’s mental representation of high-frequency collocations becoming more word-like over time. The results speak to questions about the malleability of mental representations and the role of the individual language user in cases of community change.
KW - Language change across the lifespan
KW - Phonological representations
KW - Received pronunciation
KW - Sound change
KW - Usage-based models
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U2 - 10.1515/lingvan-2017-0005
DO - 10.1515/lingvan-2017-0005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85040811599
VL - 3
JO - Linguistics Vanguard
JF - Linguistics Vanguard
SN - 2199-174X
IS - 1
M1 - 20170005
ER -