Initial Consonant Cluster Reduction As a Function of Age Group in ...

[Pages:26]INITIAL CONSONANT CLUSTER REDUCTION AS A FUNCTION OF AGE GROUP IN BANGKOK THAI SPEAKERS

LE SLIE M . B E E B E

I . I NT RO DUCT I O N

The purpose of this paper i s two-fold . First it i s an attempt t o d e s cribe s ome s p e e c h charac t er i s t i c s o f t wo d i fferent age group s o f native Bangkok-Thonburi res ident s . S e c ondly , i t i s an a t t emp t t o speculate o n the s i gn i f i c ance o f these s ynchroni c data for the s t udy o f sound change .

In rec ent years t here has b e en increasing int e r e s t in the search for s o c i a l ly condit ioned variat i ons in language . Age or age group of the speaker has received part icular at t ent ion . Thi s is be cause people o f d i fferent age group s have s p e e c h hab i t s formed at d i f ferent pOint s i n t ime . A l t hough the s p e e c h of an i ndividual c hange s with the p a s s age o f t ime , t h e stat i c influence of early speech hab i t s s eems t o dominate over the tendency for gradual change . Thu s , older people ret ain some features of speech from their chi ldhood that younger generations may not have devel oped at all .

The l i ngui s t i c var iab l e s under s tudy in t h i s paper are the e leven initial c onsonant c lusters of Bangkok Thai . Each c luster cons i s t s of a s t op p lus a l iquid or a s emi -vowe l . For t he s ake of c lar i t y , the c lusters may b e d ivided into three group s : ( 1 ) c lusters of stop p lus R ; ( 2 ) c lu s t e r s o f s t op p lu s L; ( 3 ) c lu s t e r s o f s t op p lus W. Each o f the s e t hree group s h a s s ome c lu s t e r s w i t h a s p i rat e d and s ome w i t h un aspirated initial s t op s , but no group has a ful l range in p lace of arti culat i on for the init i al stop . There are never any palatal s t op s in modern Bangkok initial consonant c lusters . The nat ive R c lusters

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Beebe, L.M. "Initial Consonant Cluster Reduction As a Function of Age Group in Bangkok Thai Speakers". In Gething, T. and Nguyen, D.L. editors, Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics No. 6: Tai studies in honour of William J. Gedney. A-52:11-36. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1979. DOI:10.15144/PL-A52.11 ?1979 Pacific Linguistics and/or the author(s). Online edition licensed 2015 CC BY-SA 4.0, with permission of PL. A CRCL initiative.

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may have b i l ab ial , alveo l ar , and velar s t op s as first member s : PR, TR, KR, PHR, KHR. The L c lu s t ers have only four p o s s ib i l it i e s : PL, KL, PHL, and KHL. The a lveo lar serie s i s m i s s ing . The W c lu s t er s are even more r e s t r i c t e d . Only ve lar s t o p s may o c c ur with W, leaving j us t KW and KHW.

The variab l e s li s t ed here c orre spond t o c on sonant c lu s t e r init i a l s whi c h are found in Thai writ ing . They are the same e leven consonant c lusters which are tradit ionally posited in des criptions of St andard Thai . In t h i s pap e r " S t andard Tha i " is used to mean no more than a " s t andard " , a s e t of s ounds b e lieved t o be " c orre c t " by the p e o p l e o f Thai land . It i s not t o be equated w i t h the a c t ual speech o f any s p e c i f i c group . Cap it a l l e t t ers are used t o i ndi c at e d i s t i n c t i ons whi c h are required b y St andard Thai and s t i l l repre sented in wri t t en Thai . The s e are d i s t i n c t from small l e t t e r s , whi c h are used here t o i nd i c a t e the a c t ua l phone t i c value s o f t h e sounds a s used by the in formant s o f t h i s s t udy . In the c ourse of t h i s p ap e r , the t erm " fu l l ret ained variant s " i s u s ed t o refer to variant s which are pronounced as c lu s t er s with the written R retained as flapped r, the written L retained as the lateral , 1 , and the wri t t en W retained as t h e s emi-vowe l , w. " Redu c e d variant s " i s used t o refer t o s ituat ions where an initial writ ten c luster , b e l ieved t o be corre c t ly pronounced as a c luster , i s realised phonet i ca l ly as a s ingle init ial .

The 1 5 1 informan t s for t h i s s tudy range in age from 1 8 t o 60 years old . They were selected from a list of the nat ive Bangkok-Thonburi employees of three large ins t itutions : a university med i c al s chool , a hote l , and an o i l c ompany . The s e le c t i on was made by random s amp l ing s t rat i fying for five levels of oc cupat i onal pre s t i ge and two age group s . The o c cupat i onal levels inc luded profe s s ionals , managers , s emi-pro fe s s i onals and c lerical workers , semi-ski lled labourers , and unskilled labourers . T h e t w o age group s inc luded in formant s b etween a g e s 1 8 and 35 y ears o ld on the one hand and informants b e tween ages 36 and 60 years old on the o ther . Since all i n formant s were of working age , no ex treme ly old informants could be obtained , and the very young were also automat ical ly e l iminat ed . However , an age range of forty-two years was found in the s amp le populat i on , and the 1 5 1 int ervi ewe e s were fairly evenly distributed throughout the different socio-e conomi c classe s . The data pre s ented are based on t abula t i ons of s ounds made from t aped inter views o f one t o three hours with each informant .

The remainder of t h i s p aper i s in two p art s . First , the r e s u l t s o f t h e l ingu i s t i c survey are presented in graph form i n t e rms o f p erc entages o f oc currence . S e c ondly , the s i gn i fi cance o f the s e dat a for the s t udy o f sound c hange is d i s cu s s e d .

INITIAL CONSONANT CLUSTER REDUCTION IN BANGKOK THAI SPEAKERS

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I I. RE SULTS

R C LUSTERS : F U L L R ETA I N ED VARI ANTS

There was a p o s i t ive c orre lation in a l l R c lu s t e r s b etween age and full c lu s t e r re t ent ion . That i s , the highe r age group always had a higher percent age of full R c lu s t e r s t han the lower age group had . Figures 1 t o 5 demonstrate this fact .

On the average the older group had 8% more ful l retained R c lusters than the younger group . Howeve r , TR showed twice as high a difference between t he age groups as the average R c luster . There were 16% more t r vari ant s for TR pronounc e d b y o lder s p e akers t han by younger one s .

Both age group s ret ained ful l c lu s t er s for TR more frequent ly t han for any other R c lust e r . A p o s s i b l e explanat ion for why TR has e x c e p t ionally h i gh f u l l c lu s t er r e t ent ion i s t hat it i s the produc t o f people ' s c onsc ious e ffort s at s p e l l ing pronunc i at i on . There i s some evidence t hat TR underwent a s ound change in recent h i s t ory t o k r and t hen subsequent ly changed back again to the t r prevalent t oday due t o people ' s concern with "correctne s s " i n language . This evidence may b e u s e d t o c on s t ru c t a n argument which explains t h e high rate o f fu l l c lu s t e r retent i on for TR.

The first s t ep in the argument begins with the Ramkhamhaeng I n s c r i p t i on o f A.D. 1 2 9 2 ( C oedes 1 9 62 : 1 3 3 ) . This do cume n t s the ear l i e s t Thai writ ing system which was developed during the Sukhothai Period . The wri t ing s y s t em was based on t he Camb odian alphabet o f the t ime wh i c h in turn was derived from Sanskrit ( Coedes and Burnay 1 9 2 7 : 8 8&90 ) . Thi s s y s t em had a s c lu s t er whi c h c orre s p onds t o modern TR. I t i s imp o s s i b l e t o d o c ument the p hone t i c value a s s o c iated w i t h the l e t t er . However , W i l l i am J . Gedney , the d e d i c a t e e of the Fe s t s chrift t o whi c h t h i s p ap e r i s c ontribut ed , has informed me that i s believed t o have been the l e t t e r t hat the Camb odians u s e d for t h e i r t sound c . 1 2 9 2 . Thus we c an infer t hat the Tha i s adopt ed t h i s let t e r for a t s ound in their own language .

The argument c ont inues ( for whi c h I am indeb t ed t o Dr Gedne y ) with a s e c ond point based on evidence in l i t e rary s ourc e s . The s e s our c e s indicate t hat t here w a s a wide ly a c c ep t ed k r variant whi c h deve loped after the Sukhothai Period . In the works o f Rama I and Rama I I , the first two rei gn s o f t he Bangkok Period , 1 7 8 2 - 18 2 5 , t here is an e xpre s s i o n , p e n ? e e k nay s aw e e k k r a c h a t ' to be firs t under t h e wh i t e umbre L L a ' ( i . e . t o b e the K i ng ) . Alt hough modern e d i t i ons wri t e s a w e e t t r a c h a t , we know t hat t h i s was pronounced a s a k r ( or a k ) variant b e c au s e of the int ernal rhyme in the exp r e s s ion ( Rama II 1 9 2 1 : 9 ) .

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The Pallegoix d i c t i onary of 1 8 5 4 provides evidenc e for the third point in the argument . It shows t hat the T in the TR c lu s t er was pro nounced as a k during the first hal f of the 19th century . Pallegoix ( 18 5 4 : 3 4 9 , 35 1 , 35 5 , 362 , 364 ) l i s t s k r o n as a variant of t r o n ' to be s traight ' , k r a a as a variant of t r aa 'seaL ' , k ray as a variant of t ra y ' t h r e e ' , a s we l l a s other examp l e s o f TR words alt ernat ively pronoun c e d with k r . Also , the Royal Institute Dictionary ( 19 5 0 : 8 0 ) lists k r a a p as a n Ayuthaya Period ( 1 3 5 0 - 1 7 67 ) variant o f t r a a p , a n e legant word me aning ' u n t i L ' in a few expre s s ions .

From the pre c eding evidence we i nfer t hat between the Sukho thai Period and the r e i gn o f Rama IV in the 1 8 5 0 s , a k f variant for TR had b e c ome prevalent . The fourth s t ep in the argument i s t hat King Mongkut ( Rama IV ) s eems to have b e e n the first man on r e c ord to voi c e conc ern about " c orre ctnes s " in the Thai language . Thi s concern may have been d u e t o i n c reased West ern influence i n Thai l and during the 1 9 t h c entury . Whatever the reason , King Mongkut ( Rama IV 1 9 2 3 : 1 6 ) began i s suing e d i c t s on proper usage at t hat t ime .

To conc lude the argument , we find t hat t oday in Bangkok teachers urge their s t udent s t o pronounce TR as t r. tr is now the only a c c e p t ab le s t andard pronun c i a t i on . The change in a c c e p t ab i l i t y o f t h e k f variant f o r T R comb ined with e f forts by author i t i e s t o enforce " c orre c t " us age leads us to infer t hat a s p e l l ing pronunc iat ion regained promi n e n c e due to people ' s c o n s c ious e ffort s . Thi s i s p o s i t e d as a p o s s ib le explanation why TR shows an e x c ept ionally high rate of ful l c lu s t e r re tent ion c ompared t o other R c lu s t e r s .

TR d i s t ingui shed i t s e l f from other R c lu s t ers in another way . I t had the sharpest strat ificat ion between age groups of all the R c lusters on the rate of full c luster retent ion . Not only were the retent ion rat e s for each age group higher t han the rates on other R c lu s t er s , but the d i fference betwe e n t he rat e s o f the two age groups was greater than for other R c lu s t e r s . The l at t er sugg e s t s t hat age i s a more powerful conditioning factor on TR than on other c lust ers .

R C LUSTERS: R EVUCEV VAR I ANTSI

The dat a show t hat there was a negat ive c orrelat ion between age group and c lu s t er s imp l i f i c a t i on . That i s , t he older age group had a cons i s t en t l y l ower percentage o f simp l i f i ed c lu s t e r s t han t h e younger group . F i gure s 6 to 1 0 i l lustrate t h i s phenomenon .

lIt should be notd that the sections on full retained and reduced variant s are not

redundant since other variants for each c luster , not discussed in this paper , do exist .

INITIAL CONSONANT CLUSTER REDUCTION IN BANGKOK THAI SPEAKERS

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PERCENTAGE OF FULL CLUSTER RETENTION IN R C LUSTERS ACCORDING TO AGE GROUP

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%

----

3S and under

36 and over

F i g. 1 - pr for PR

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%

---

35 and under

36 and over

F i g. 2 - kr for KR

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L .M. BEEBE

100% 9 0% 80% 7 0% 60% 50% 40% 3 0% 20% 10%

-- -

35 and under

36 and over

F i g . 3 - p h r for PHR

100% 90% 8 0% 7 0% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%

--

V-

35 and under

36 and over

F i g. 4 - k h r for KHR

INITIAL CONSONANT CLUSTER REDUCTION IN BANGKOK THAI SPEAKERS

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%

/ V

35 and under

36 and over

F i g . 5 - t r for TR

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L.M. BEEBE

PERC ENTAGE OF CLUSTER SIMPLIFICATION IN R CLUSTERS ACCORDING TO AGE GROUP

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%

""'"

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%

--r--

35 and under

36 and over

F i g . 6 - p for PR

35 and under

36 and over

Fi g. 7 - k for KR

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