Asia-Pacific Language Variation - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2016

This paper presents the first sociophonetic study of Cantonese vowels using sociolinguistic interview data from the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Corpus. It focuses on four allophones [iː], [ɪk/ɪŋ], [uː], and [ʊk/ʊŋ] of two contrastive vowels /iː/ and /uː/ across two generations of speakers. The F1 and F2 of 30 vowel tokens were analyzed for these four allophones from each of 20 speakers (N = 600 vowel tokens). Results show inter-generational maintenance of allophonic conditioning for /iː/ and /uː/ as well as an interaction between generation and sex such that second-generation female speakers have the most retracted variants of [ɪk/ɪŋ] and the most fronted variants of [iː]. This paper will discuss three possible explanations based on internal motivation, phonetic assimilation, and phonological influence. This will illustrate the importance of multiple comparisons (including inter-generational, cross-linguistic, and cross-community) in the relatively new field of heritage language phonology research.

Gender has been shown to be a salient factor in acquisition of second language variation ( Adamson & Regan, 1991 ; Major, 2004 ; Meyerhoff & Schleef, 2012 ; Rehner, Mougeon, & Nadasdi, 2003 ; Schleef, Meyerhoff, & Clark, 2011 ). However, these studies have primarily focused on learner production of target language variation and style in the sense of attention paid to speech. There has been little focus on learner perceptions of the social meanings associated with L2 variants and styles. The present article addresses this gap in the research by examining L2 learner perceptions of a gendered style of speaking in Mandarin Chinese known as sajiao. Results from a perception experiment confirm the salience of gender in the acquisition of L2 variation and show that American L2 Mandarin learners have acquired some of the social meanings associated with sajiao but not others. An acoustic phonetic analysis of sajiao is also presented.

This is the first variationist study of clan intermarriage and intergenerational change in Nagaland (India). The study investigates clan as a sociolinguistic variable by drawing data from the Angami (belonging to the Kuki-Chin-Naga sub-group of Tibeto-Burman languages) community of Kohima village in Nagaland. The linguistic variables examined include two alveolar fricatives and three affricates showing variable palatalization. Like many other clan-based communities (cf. Stanford, 2007 , 2008 , 2009 ), Angamis practice exogamy. Women settle down in their husband’s clans in the same village after marriage, but continue to maintain their original clanlects despite being in contact with their husband’s clanlects for many years. Exogamy practices are however weakening in Kohima, resulting in intra-clan marriages. The study examines the linguistic implications of the inter-clan and intra-clan marriages, illustrating the patterns that young learners acquire under such circumstances and the way they respond to the new changes. Labov finds evidence for an “outward orientation of the language learning faculty” (2012, 2014). The Nagaland results build on this notion but provide a new perspective: In Nagaland, children’s language learning is inwardly oriented with respect to stable variation and outwardly oriented in the case of change in progress.