Re: THEORY: Vowel shift (was: THEORY: Storage Vs. Computation)

At 11:30 am +1200 19/6/99, Andrew Smith wrote:
>On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
.....
>When I studied socio-linguistics I was told that the shift in
>pronunciation of diphthongs was acting virtually as a second great vowel
>shift.
>
>ai > Oi
>ei > aei
>au > aeu
>
>Pardon my translitteration.  Essentially the points of articulation is
>shifting and it is found in Southern England,
As far as southern England is concerned, this is rather dated & not true of
current English.

The shift of [ai] > [Oi] is considered strictly rustic.  It was normal at
least in the Kent, Sussex, Hampshire region at the beginning of the century
but is not so now.  In many (all?) colloquial English dialects /ai/ and
/Oi/ had apparently fallen together, a couple of centuries or so back IIRC,
being pronounced variously [@i], [ai] or [Oi] according to region.  But the
gradual growth of universal education last century did much to restore the
difference between the two sounds.  When I grew up in West Sussex in the
1940s & 50s, /ai/ had already been established as the usual sound; /Oi/ was
heard among older speakers of my grandparents' generation and was still
common in East Sussex which was - and is - the more rural half.  It may be
that /Oi/ still holds on there; but self-respecting town-dweller would use
it.

I'm sure what sound you mean by {aeu}; if you mean [Eu] then that is hardly
modern change. It goes back at least to the 19th century.  It is what I was
brought up with and is still heard.  But two factors are mitigating against
this, one is universal education & mass media, the other is the simple fact
that so many people now, like myself, do not spend all our lives in the
south east.

I've had to acquire a "more acceptable" pronunciation and this is true
generally of the 'professional' and 'executive' classes in the SE.  The
pronunciation general among the latter (and my pronunciation), it is true,
is [&u] rather than [au].

But I fail to see how any of this constitutes a _second_ shift.  it seems
to me only the continuation of the first vowel shift of Tudor London where
[i:] and [u:] shifted to [@i] and [@u] (sounds still heard in the English
of south east Wales).

I don't know quite what [ei] -> [aei] is but it looks remarkably like the
triphthong devotees of Australian soaps operas know well from the habitual
greeting "G'daigh!"  :-)

The sound is not used here (except, of course, when imitating Ozzies).
[ei] remains [ei] in southern England.  In London one often hears [Ei]
which to many sounds like [ai].  Italians tend to pronounce /ei/ as [Ei]
which is often rendered as [ai] by English people who have nothing better
to do than mimic foreigners.

Now Ozzie English is, I admit, showing some interesting vowel developments
- at least as we hear it on the soap operas.  But, unless the afficionados
of 'Neighbours' and 'Home & Away' exert undue influence, I don't think
we'll be following along those lines.

Ray.