Hay Jennifer B, Pierrehumbert Janet B, Walker Abby J, LaShell Patrick
New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour, University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University, United States; Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, United States; New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Cognition. 2015 Jun;139:83-91. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.02.012. Epub 2015 Mar 23.
Contemporary New Zealand English has distinctive pronunciations of three characteristic vowels. Did the evolution of these distinctive pronunciations occur in all words at the same time or were different words affected differently? We analyze the changing pronunciation of New Zealand English in a large set of recordings of speakers born over a 130 year period. We show that low frequency words were at the forefront of these changes and higher frequency words lagged behind. A long-standing debate exists between authors claiming that high frequency words lead regular sound change and others claiming that there are no frequency effects. The leading role of low frequency words is surprising in this context. It can be elucidated in models of lexical processing that include detailed word-specific memories.
当代新西兰英语对三个特征元音有着独特的发音。这些独特发音的演变是在所有单词中同时发生的，还是不同的单词受到的影响有所不同呢？我们分析了在长达130年的时间段里出生的众多说话者的大量录音中新西兰英语发音的变化情况。我们发现低频词汇处于这些变化的前沿，而高频词汇则滞后。在主张高频词汇引领规则音变的作者与主张不存在频率效应的作者之间，存在着长期的争论。在这种背景下，低频词汇的主导作用令人惊讶。这可以在包含详细的特定单词记忆的词汇处理模型中得到解释。
