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Out of the AIR and into the EAR: Another view of the New Zealand diphthong merger

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Margaret A. Maclagan  and
Elizabeth Gordon
Margaret A. Maclagan
Affiliation:
University of Canterbury
Elizabeth Gordon
Affiliation:
University of Canterbury
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Abstract

In this article, we report on the results of a study of the diphthongs EAR and AIR, which are merging for many New Zealand speakers. Each stage of the study, which has been repeated at five-year intervals since 1983, involves the analysis of word lists and sentences read by over 100 14- and 15-year-old school pupils. The results show a clear trend toward a merger to the EAR diphthong. This is also confirmed in a study carried out in 1994 of 79 speakers (selected according to age, sex, and socioeconomic class) reading six word pairs. The results from both of these studies differ from those reported by Holmes and Bell (1992). We suggest the reasons for the different results could be methodological, and that the mechanism of the merger is merger by approximation after the AIR diphthong became involved in the New Zealand front vowel chain-shift raising.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 125 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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