3 r-variation in urban accents of Dutch - Koen Sebregts

332 Pages·2014·12.85 MB·English

The Sociophonetics and
Phonology of Dutch r
Published by
LOT phone: [phone]
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3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected]
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Cover photo: The game’s a bogie by P2

ISBN: 978-94-6093-161-1
NUR 616

Copyright © 2014: Koen Sebregts. All rights reserved.
The Sociophonetics and
Phonology of Dutch r

Sociofonetiek en fonologie van de Nederlandse r
(met een samenvatting in het Nederlands)

Proefschrift

ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van
de rector magnificus, prof.dr. G.J. van der Zwaan, ingevolge het besluit van het
college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 7 januari 2015
des middags te 12.45 uur

door

Koen Dirk Corné Jac Sebregts

geboren op 20 juli 1972
te Goirle
Promotor: Prof.dr. W. Zonneveld
Copromotor: Dr. H. Van de Velde

Dit proefschrift maakt deel uit van het onderzoeksprogramma r-kennen, socio-
dialectological, phonetic and phonological qualities of /r/ in Dutch, gefinancierd
door het Vlaams-Nederlands Comité, samenwerkingsverband van de Nederlandse
Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) en het Vlaamse Fonds voor
Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO).
Contents
!
Preface ix!
Acknowledgements xi!
1! Introduction 1!
1.1! r-variation 3!
1.1.1! Cross-linguistic variation 3!
1.1.2! Dutch r-variation 6!
1.2! Dimensions of language variation 7!
1.2.1! Phonological variation: allophony and the phonetics-phonology distinction 8!
1.2.2! Stylistic and ‘free’ variation 12!
1.2.3! Sociolinguistic variation 13!
1.2.4! Geographical dialect variation 14!
1.3! The theoretical model 16!
1.3.1! Usage-based phonology and Exemplar Theory 17!
1.3.2! Diachronic explanations for phonological patterns 23!
1.3.3! Modelling r-variation: from family resemblance to family relationships 28!
1.4! Outline of the thesis 31!
2! Previous accounts of r-variation in Dutch 33!
2.1! Dutch dialect studies 33!
2.2! Urban accents of Dutch 37!
2.2.1! The Netherlands 38!
2.2.2! Flanders 40!
2.3! Standard Dutch 41!
2.3.1! Increasing variation of r in Standard Dutch? 41!
2.3.2! Recent studies of r-variation in Standard Dutch 42!
2.3.3! Conclusion: Standard Dutch and variability 45!
vi CONTENTS

3! r-variation in urban accents of Dutch 47!
3.1! Design of the HEMA urban accent corpus 48!
3.1.1! Definitions of Standard Dutch and urban accents 48!
3.1.2! Cities in the corpus 49!
3.1.3! The speakers 51!
3.1.4! The r-items 52!
3.1.5! Data collection and processing 54!
3.2! Distinguishing r-variants 56!
3.2.1! An acoustic description of the variants 57!
3.2.2! A description of the index scores used 71!
3.3! Results 73!
3.3.1! Frequency of variants in the corpus 73!
3.3.2! Allophonic variation: frequency of variants by syllabic context 75!
3.3.3! Geographical, social and allophonic variation: index scores 77!
3.4! Patterns of r-variation in urban accents 86!
3.4.1! Antwerp 86!
3.4.2! Bruges 89!
3.4.3! Ghent 93!
3.4.4! Hasselt 96!
3.4.5! Amsterdam 99!
3.4.6! Rotterdam 102!
3.4.7! Utrecht 107!
3.4.8! Leiden 110!
3.4.9! The Hague 115!
3.4.10! Nijmegen 120!
3.5! Conclusion 123!
4! r-variation: trills, taps and fricatives 125!
4.1! Alveolar and uvular r in Dutch 125!
4.1.1! The geographical distribution of alveolar and uvular r in Dutch 126!
4.1.2! The linguistic distribution of alveolar and uvular r in Dutch 129!
4.1.3! Uvular r in Germanic as a French import: Trautmann’s hypothesis 130!
4.1.4! The origin of uvular r in Dutch 132!
4.1.5! The articulatory complexity of apical trills 134!
4.1.6! Acoustic similarity between apical and uvular trills 135!
4.2! Trills and fricatives 137!
4.2.1! The phonetic properties of trilled r 138!
4.2.2! The distribution of trills in urban accents of Dutch 140!
4.2.3! The aerodynamics of trills 151!
4.2.4! Trills, voicing, and frication 154!
4.2.5! Trill complexity and cross-linguistic frequency 156!
4.2.6! Fricative r in Dutch 157!
4.2.7! Fricative realisations of r in the urban dialects 157!
CONTENTS vii

4.3! Taps 170!
4.3.1! Taps versus trills 171!
4.3.2! Taps in the urban accent data 174!
4.4! Conclusion 179!
5! r-variation: approximants and vowels 183!
5.1! Approximant r-variants 184!
5.1.1! Approximants as lenition variants of r 184!
5.1.2! Weakening to approximants and vocalisation in Articulatory Phonology 186!
5.1.3! Approximants in the urban dialect data 188!
5.1.4! Alveolar approximant r in the urban accent data 191!
5.1.5! Uvular approximant r in the urban accent data: onsets 194!
5.2! The retroflex/bunched approximant and the palatal glide 196!
5.2.1! The origin of the retroflex/bunched approximant in Dutch 198!
5.2.2! The articulatory properties of retroflex/bunched r 200!
5.2.3! The origin of the retroflex/bunched approximant revisited 207!
5.3! Other vocalic variants of r in the Dutch dialect data 210!
5.4! The ‘zero’ variants: r-deletion 217!
5.4.1! Accounts of coda r-deletion in Dutch 217!
5.4.2! Coda-r deletion in the HEMA corpus 220!
5.5! Conclusion 222!
6! Implications for phonology 225!
6.1! Phonotactics of Dutch /r/ 226!
6.2! Representations of /r/ 228!
6.2.1! Full specification in Generative Phonology 228!
6.2.2! Alternatives to full specification: underspecification and Government
Phonology 231!
6.2.3! Capturing the unity and variation of r 232!
6.2.4! Representing variation and phonetic detail: Exemplar models 234!
6.3! Schwa-insertion/intrusion 235!
6.3.1! Schwa-insertion: a phonological account 236!
6.3.2! Schwa-intrusion: a phonetic account 238!
6.3.3! Schwa-insertion in the urban accent data 240!
6.3.4! The phonetics of schwa-insertion 246!
6.3.5! Schwa-insertion before coronal obstruents 259!
6.4! Conclusion 267!
viii CONTENTS

7! Summary, discussion and conclusions 269!
7.1! The HEMA corpus of urban accent data 269!
7.1.1! Dutch r variants 270!
7.1.2! The use of r variants across accents 270!
7.1.3! Sociolinguistic and allophonic variation: index scores 274!
7.1.4! The urban accent corpus: conclusions 278!
7.2! A model of rhotic relationships 279!
7.2.1! Trills, taps and fricatives 281!
7.2.2! Approximants and vowels 283!
7.3! Implications of the family relationships model 286!
7.3.1! Capturing the unity in r-variation 286!
7.3.2! The role of diachrony in linguistic theory 288!
7.3.3! Lenition and articulatory reduction 288!
7.3.4! Representational issues 290!
7.4! Closing remarks 291!
7.4.1! How extraordinary is Dutch r-variation? 291!
7.4.2! Synthesising sources of linguistic evidence 292!
References 295!
Samenvatting in het Nederlands 313!
Curriculum Vitae 319!
Preface
The research project this thesis forms part of, r-kennen, socio-dialectological,
phonetic and phonological qualities of /r/ in Dutch, investigating aspects of Dutch r
variation, was jointly funded by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific
Research) and FWO (Research Foundation Flanders). Focusing on the particularly
striking example of linguistic variability that is Dutch r-variation, it involved
researchers from Utrecht University, Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands)
and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (Belgium). The principal applicants and
supervisors of the project were Hans Van de Velde and Wim Zonneveld. This is the
second of two doctoral theses to be published from the project, the first being Evie
Tops’ thesis (Brussels, 2006), published as Tops (2009). It reports on r-variation in
Belgian Dutch, with a focus on changes in progress concerning uvular r variants.
These are on the rise throughout Flanders, and Tops uses a geolinguistic approach
showing how they are spreading from a number of centres within the country. In
addition, she examines the sociolinguistic situation surrounding alveolar vs. uvular
variants of r in Flanders.
While the aim and focus of the present study are different from those of
Tops (2009), there is some overlap in the data used for the respective studies, and
therefore in some of the reported results. The data for Tops’ study primarily come
from two corpora collected specifically for the purpose of studying Dutch r variation:
the SAP corpus, containing speech data from 1900 speakers in 89 speech
communities across Flanders, and the HEMA corpus, which contains recordings from
400 speakers in 10 larger urban speech communities in the Netherlands and
Flanders. The latter corpus in fact forms the primary data source for the present
study. The data for it were collected by Koen Sebregts (Amsterdam, Rotterdam,
Utrecht, The Hague), Charlotte Giesbers (Nijmegen) and Evie Tops (Antwerp,
Bruges, Ghent, Hasselt) between 2001 and 2003 at branches of the HEMA
department store. Tops (2009) reports some of the major results from the HEMA
corpus and some particulars concerning the Flemish accents, but her primary source
of data is the SAP corpus. The present study does not make use of the SAP corpus, but
relevant findings from Tops’ study are reported. An additional source of original data
used in the present study is a smaller corpus of detailed articulatory data collected by
Koen Sebregts and James M Scobbie at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh in
2004.
A number of other publications have come out of the larger project.
Preliminary findings were reported in Sebregts et al. (2003). The sociolinguistic
aspects of uvular r and coda approximant r in Netherlandic Standard Dutch were
explored by Renée van Bezooijen, the primary investigator at Radboud University,