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Phonological convergence in dialect contact: Evidence from citation forms

ABSTRACT This article addresses the question: In dialect contact, is there a difference in degree of convergence at different phonological levels? Data are taken from three experimental studies on British English. The first, a comparison of alveolar assimilation and l-vocalization, tests the hypothesis that the phonologization of connected speech processes involves increasing phonetic discreteness. The second provides evidence of the phonological restructuring of final /1/ in speakers who consistenly vocalize it and who, hypercorrectly, occasionally use “clear” /1/. This anomalous behavior, which may be due to underlying phonological differences, is explained in terms of a clash between nonstandard and standard speech. The third experiment looks at the “clarification” of /1/ before vowels in environments such as peel it, as well as the glottaling of /t/. Data are collected from the speech of two teenagers, native to Reading. It is argued that the phonetically subtle differences between them are due to quite different underlying processes. These data are interpreted in light of Labov's speech community model; it seems necessary to differentiate between levels of analysis and to explain convergence in terms of salience.