This dissertation investigates how sound change is adopted by speakers and listeners, based on a currently-ongoing cluster of changes in Dutch termed the ‘Polder shift’. The main aim of the... Show moreThis dissertation investigates how sound change is adopted by speakers and listeners, based on a currently-ongoing cluster of changes in Dutch termed the ‘Polder shift’. The main aim of the dissertation is to form a bridge between five key areas of linguistics: historical phonology, sociophonetics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and quantitative linguistics. A unified account of these different angles to the study of sound change is not trivial. This dissertation uses psycholinguistic experiments combined with detailed quantitative analysis to study the contributions of the different components to the adoption of sound change in the medium and long term. The population studied in this dissertation is sociolinguistic migrants: in this case, Flemish speakers of Dutch who have migrated to the Netherlands, and thereby migrated from a non-Polder-shift area to a Polder-shift area. The methods adopted in this dissertation include a corpus study of regional variation, longitudinal psycholinguistic experiments over nine months’ time, cross-sectional psycholinguistic experiments spanning multiple decades of apparent time, and two neurolinguistic studies using EEG. Results show that the sociolinguistic migrants rapidly acquire allophonic variation at the phonological level (albeit not necessarily the associated sociolinguistic knowledge), but that it takes a long time (more than nine months, up to multiple decades) for this to carry forward to their behavioral production and perception, and moreover is subject to significant individual differences. The contributions by this dissertation show how the fundamentally sociolinguistic phenomenon of sound change can be studied empirically using psycho- and neurolinguistics, and profit from recent innovations in statistics. Show less
Through a series of well-controlled experiments, this dissertation provides a comprehensive study of incomplete tonal neutralization regarding both production and perception in Dalian Mandarin.... Show moreThrough a series of well-controlled experiments, this dissertation provides a comprehensive study of incomplete tonal neutralization regarding both production and perception in Dalian Mandarin. Dalian Mandarin is used in this instance, as it is known for its interesting tonal characteristics between Tone 1 and Tone 4, the two falling tones. Its Tone 2 and Tone 3 are also comparable with Standard Chinese. Therefore, Dalian Mandarin presents us with an opportunity to gain a better understanding of incomplete tonal neutralization in both isolation and tonal contexts. The dissertation consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 briefly introduces the main research questions to be discussed in this dissertation. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the production of the two falling tones (Tone 1 and Tone 4) in Dalian Mandarin, both in isolation and tonal contexts (in terms of both tone sandhi and tonal coarticulation contexts). Chapter 4 then investigates the online perception of the two falling tones in isolation and in tonal coarticulation contexts. Chapter 5 studies the production and online perception of the 3rd tone sandhi of Dalian Mandarin. Chapter 6 revisits the research questions and concludes the main findings. Show less
