Speech Science Forum 14th January - Dr. James Brand
Please join us on the 14th of January for Dr. James Brand's talk "Identifying systematic co-variation of vocalic variables across speakers of New Zealand English"
Title: Identifying systematic co-variation of vocalic variables across speakers of New Zealand English
Abstract:
The study of sound change tends to concentrate on trajectories of particular variables in isolation, but it has proven challenging to move beyond individual or small groups of variables, towards a better theoretical and empirical understanding of sound systems. We introduce here, a large scale analysis of how full sound systems co-vary in different ways, demonstrating how constellations of vocalic variables operate together across multiple speakers. By statistically modelling F1 and F2 values for 10 monophthongs of New Zealand English with GAMMs, we were able to use the by-speaker intercepts as an estimate of how advanced each speaker was in our corpus, irrespective of known predictors of sound change (i.e. year of birth, gender, speech rate). By using Principal Component Analysis on the intercepts, we were able to investigate the underlying structural co-variation that exists across the vocalic variables. Our results demonstrate the inter-relatedness of vowel productions and vowel changes. Within a large subset of vowels, we see 'leaders' and 'laggers'. However there are also vowels which appear to be linked together through structural relationships, and some sets of vowels which appear to carry opposing social meaning, such that if you are innovative in one, you tend to be conservative in the other. Our results offer a means to overcome long-standing methodological challenges in the study of phonetic co-variation, offering novel insights into the structure of sound systems across large groups of speakers.
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
University of Canterbury - New Zealand Institute of Langauge, Brain and Behaviour
Dr. Brand is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the NZILLB - University of Canterbury in New Zealand, researching the sociolinguistic factors of sound change.
Previously, he have worked as a Post-doc in the Embodied Cognition Lab at Lancaster University.
James completed my PhD at Lancaster University under the supervision of Prof Padraic Monaghan and Dr Peter Walker
Research InterestsHow do cognitive biases shape our language? James' research focuses on the different ways that our language is shaped by the brain, addressing how language acquisition and use can explain many fundamental properties of language. He employs a variety of experimental techniques (such as cross-situational, artificial language and iterated learning paradigms) which is complimented by large scale, corpus based analyses, in order to produce robust and comprehensive empirical evidence for his research questions. This approach is highly multidisciplinary, with the aim being to answer and generate questions that have implications for areas of psychology, linguistics and the cognitive sciences.
Further information
Ticketing
Open
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Availability
Yes