The KIJK Vowel in Achterhoeks

The KIJK vowel is, as noted earlier, frequently pronounced as [ɛi] in Standard Dutch, and [i]

in the Achterhoeks dialect, and this appears to be the vowel that has most consistently retained its pronunciation from 1979 to 2015. In fact, comparing the positions of this vowel as pronounced in kijken (which had the most realisations of the KIJK vowel in both the picture and sentence tasks) in the scatter plot of the F1/F2 onset position in Figure 83, there is almost no change from 1979 to 2015, with the vowel occupying roughly the same space over the years (the average position of the KIJK, KAART, and PRAAT vowels are provided for reference, as they were for the previous graphs). This continues the pattern observed in the small sample of 2014 speakers in the pilot study, and confirms the conclusions made then that there are perhaps stronger retention tendencies observed in this vowel than others.

193

Figure 83: F1/F2: kijken, 1979/2015 (scatter plot) (N=123).

The scatter plot in Figure 83 showing F1/F2 onset position of the vowel in kijken visualises the onset of diphthongs for three speakers in 2015 and only one in 1979. It also shows, however, that for those speakers who use the monophthong, little has changed in the

production of this particular vowel. The graphs for spijkers, stijf and prijzen in Figures 84-86 also show comparable results. What this suggests is that the [i] realisation in Achterhoeks of the KIJK vowel is a particularly obvious feature of the dialect that is not showing any significant signs of convergence.

194

Figure 84: F1/F2: spijkers, 1979/2015 (scatter plot) (N=136) Figure 85: F1/F2: stijf, 1979/2015 (scatter plot) (N=58)

Looking specifically at the results for the word prijzen (prices) in Figure 86, we can see that a small number of speakers in 2015 have begun to diphthongise the vowel (represented in onset position nearer the average phonetic values for KAART and PRAAT), and this is also evident in spijkers (Figure 84) and stijf (Figure 85). This diphthongisation is a marker of Standard Dutch, and was notably absent in 1979, but appeared in the speech of some non-rural speakers in 2015. While the number of speakers who have used the diphthongised vowel in 2015 is probably not, at this stage, particularly substantial, it is worth noting the occurrences in order to ascertain in future studies whether these pronunciations were merely outliers or the very beginning of convergence in the vowel of this word to Standard Dutch. These occurrences are represented by the pink circles in Figures 84-86, which show the onset position of the diphthong, which was absent in 1979. The onset position of the diphthong in prijzen appears to also be further back than might be expected, closer to the average phonetic values for the KAART vowel. The monophthong, however, shows little change in F1/F2 position between 1979 and 2015. This discreteness shows an interesting contrast with the results for nagel, as shown in Figure 78. During the pilot study, prijzen showed more

tendency towards convergence than the other vowels of the same set; it is therefore important to watch.

195

Figure 86: F1/F2: prijzen, 1979/2015 (scatter plot) (N=58).

The aforementioned observations do not point to significant change within the KIJK vowel between 1979 and 2015, and an independent samples t-test confirms that. The p-values for normalised onset F1 and F2 are .293 and .173 respectively, indicating that no significant change has taken place. However, the p-values for normalised offset F1 and F2 are .084 and 0.41 respectively, which although are not significant at the level previously observed in the KAAS, PAARD and HUIS vowels does indicate that there may be some increased

diphthongisation within the 2015 speakers.

Vowel Formant Year Mean Significance

KIJK F1 onset 1979 -.81294 p = .293

2015 -.77413

F2 onset 1979 1.01285 p = .173

2015 .96324

196

F1 offset 1979 -.87812 p = .084

2015 -.82501

F2 offset 1979 1.06008 p = .041

2015 1.11695

Table 21: Independent samples t-test showing 2-tailed significance for the variation in the KIJK vowel in 1979 (N=243) and 2015 (N=477) speakers.

6.5. Summary

Overall, the results indicated that there has been some change in speakers’ vowel realisations between 1979 and 2015. The HUIS vowel has undergone fronting, and there was emergent use of the diphthong [œy] in a small number of cases. We see that the back vowel is still used when following /r/, particularly in speakers from rural areas. 1979 saw a small number of speakers using the back vowel in other phonetic conditions; these instances have been all but eliminated by 2015, and back vowel usage is confined to situations where the vowel appears after /r/.

Standard pronunciations of the KAAS vowel have increased since 1979. Although many speakers still showed front realisations of the vowel, the increase in standard pronunciations was enough to be deemed statistically significant. There appears to be a contrast between front and Standard pronunciations in 2015; however, in 1979, there was more of a contrast between how fronted the vowel was, and whether realisations corresponded to the phonetic values of either /e:/ or /i:/.

Only two words from the PAARD set were analysed (paard and gaarne), so it is evident that more research could be undertaken on this vowel in the future. However, differences were noted between the two words studied. Paard (‘horse’) appeared to mostly retain the dialectal diphthong, whereas gaarne showed movement towards more use of the Standard

monophthong. These differences could possibly be attributed to the actual usage of these words within the Achterhoek region; paard would be a common word for the region, with its dialectal pronunciation perhaps encouraged amongst Low Saxon-speaking areas by folk songs such as “Peerd van Ome Loeks” in the Gronings dialect. Conversely, gaarne acts as a

197

function, rather than content, word. However, as stated earlier, more research would need to be done on this vowel, including the addition of more tokens to be analysed.

No change was observed in the KAART vowel, except for an instance of possible

hypercorrection based on the fact that the word kaart looks as though it may follow the same conventions as the PAARD vowel (where the vowel precedes /r/). The PRAAT vowel also showed some resistance to change, with a back realisation of the vowel being the most common result. There were some slightly more instances of pronunciations similar to the Standard Dutch pronunciation in 2015 than in 1979; however, these were not shown to be statistically significant.

The KIJK vowel has also not seen a significant amount of change, but the results indicated that there may be some slightly more diphthongisation occurring in the 2015 speakers than in the 1979 speakers.

The overall picture indicates that certain features of the Achterhoeks dialect are more

noticeable to speakers than others. For example, the PRAAT and KIJK vowels continue to be pronounced using dialectal realisations, but change has been observed in the KAAS vowel.

Additionally, the frontedness of the dialectal pronunciation of HUIS differs depending on the speaker, and there is some emergent use of the Standard diphthong in 2015.