NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI) for FY 2013 in New Zealand

Sneller Elizabeth A, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds Elizabeth Sneller of The University of Pennsylvania to conduct a research project in the Social, Behavioral and Economics sciences area during the summer of 2013 at The University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. The project title is "The PROICE is ROIGHT: A Longitudinal Acoustic Analysis of New Zealand English Vowel Shift." The host scientist is Dr. Beth Hume. This project uses automatic vowel extraction to analyze the trajectory of vowels in New Zealand English throughout the time spanned by the Origins of New Zealand English (ONZE) corpus held at the University of Canterbury. According to Labov's (1961) Apparent Time theory, this corpus provides the opportunity to study over a century of sound change in New Zealand. This project provides a timeline and visual representation of the acoustic changes in vowel subsystems over time. It also provides an analysis of vowel shift as affected by social factors such as race, gender, and socio-economic status, with the overarching goal of providing quantitative evidence to test theories of the social motivation of sound change. Broader impacts of an EAPSI fellowship include providing the Fellow a first-hand research experience outside the U.S.; an introduction to the science, science policy, and scientific infrastructure of the respective location; and an orientation to the society, culture and language. These activities meet the NSF goal to educate for international collaborations early in the career of its scientists, engineers, and educators, thus ensuring a globally aware U.S. scientific workforce. Furthermore, the goals of this project include educating the public about the mechanism of sound change as well as the field of Linguistics through the medium of an interactive website which will allow visitors to actually see and hear how vowels have changed throughout the course of New Zealand English.