Article published in:
Language Development: The lifespan perspectiveEdited by Annette Gerstenberg and Anja Voeste
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 37] 2015
► pp. 9–38
Disassociating the effects of age from phonetic change
A longitudinal study of formant frequencies
Our study aimed at disassociating age-related from phonetic changes in broadcasts by British-American radio commentator Alistair Cooke, spanning 60 years. Both the first formant (F1) and fundamental frequency (f0) in non-low vowels showed a falling-rising pattern with increasing age. We argue that this covariation may have a perceptual origin because the distance between F1 and f0 is a perceptual cue to vowel height. A covariation of F1 and F2 in low back vowels is also consistent with a perceptual explanation. By contrast, F1 changes in low vowels may be associated with physiological changes to the jaw-opening mechanisms. Finally, we discuss phonetic changes, showing accent reversion from General American towards Cooke’s former Received Pronunciation over a thirty-year period.
Published online: 22 July 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.37.02reu
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.37.02reu
Cited by
Cited by other publications
Ruch, Hanna, Yvonne Zürcher & Judith M. Burkart
2018. The function and mechanism of vocal accommodation in humans and other primates.
Biological Reviews 93:2 ► pp. 996 ff. 
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 february 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
References
References
Baayen, R.H.
2009 Analyzing Linguistic Data. Cambridge: CUP.
Bailey, G., Wikle, T., Tillery, J. & Sand, L.
1991 The apparent time construct. Language Variation and Change 3(3): 241–264.
de Bot, K.D. & Clyne, M.
1989 Language Reversion Revisited. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 11(2): 167–177.
Cedergren, H.
1987 The spread of language change: Verifying inferences of linguistic diffusion. In Language Spread and Language Policy: Issues, Implications and Case Studies, P.H. Lowenberg (ed.), 45–60. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
Chistovich, L.A. & Lublinskaya, V.V.
1979 The “center of gravity” effect in vowel spectra and critical distance between the formants: Psychoacoustical study of the perception of vowel-like stimuli. Journal of Hearing Research 1(3): 185–195.
Clarke, N.
2000 Alistair Cooke: The Biography. London: Orion.
Clyne, M.
2011 Bilingualism, code-switching and aging. A myth of attrition and a tale of collaboration. In Modeling Bilingualism: From Structure to Chaos – In Honor of Kees de Bot [Studies in Bilingualism 43], M. Schmid & W. Lowie (eds), 201–220. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cooke, A.
2007 Letter from America, 1946–2004. St. Ives: Penguin Books.
Di Benedetto, M.G.
1987 On vowel height: Acoustic and perceptual representation by the fundamental and the first formant frequency. In Proceedings of the XIth International Congress on Phonetic Sciences, Vol. 5, 198–201. Tallinn: The International Phonetic Association.
1994 Acoustic and perceptual evidence of a complex relation between F1 and F2 in determining vowel height. Journal of Phonetics 22: 205–224.
2003 Vowels: A Revisit. In Studi in Onore di Franco Ferrero, P. Cosi, E.M. Caldognetto & A. Zamboni (eds), 143–148. Rome: Unipress.
Evans, B.G. & Iverson, P.
2007 Plasticity in vowel perception and production: A study of accent change in young adults. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 121(6): 3814–3826.
Fahey, R.P., Diehl, R.L. & Traunmüller, H.
1996 Perception of back vowels: Effects of varying F1-F0 Bark distance. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 99(4): 2350–2357.
Ferguson, S.H. & Kewley-Port, D.
2007 Talker differences in clear and conversational speech: acoustic characteristics of vowels. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 50: 1241–1255.
Garrod, S. & Pickering, M.
2009 Joint action, interactive alignment, and dialog. Topics in Cognitive Science 1(2): 292–304.
Giles, H. & Coupland, N.
1991 Language: Contexts and Consequences. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Giles, H., Coupland, N. & Coupland, J.
1991 Accommodation theory: Communication, context and consequences. In Contexts of Accommodation, H. Giles, J. Coupland & N. Coupland (eds), 1–68. Cambridge: CUP.
Harrington, J.
2006 An acoustic analysis of ‘happY-tensing’ in the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts. Journal of Phonetics 34: 439–457.
2007 Evidence for a relationship between synchronic variability and diachronic change in the Queen’s annual Christmas broadcasts. In Laboratory Phonology 9, J. Cole & J.I. Hualde (eds), 125–143. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Harrington, J., Kleber, F. & Reubold, U.
2008 Compensation for coarticulation, /u/-fronting, and sound change in standard southern British: An acoustic and perceptual study. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123(5): 2825–2835.
Harrington, J., Palethorpe, S. & Watson, C.
2000a Does the Queen speak the Queen’s English? Nature 408: 927–928.
2000b Monophthongal vowel changes in Received Pronunciation: an acoustic analysis of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 30: 63–78.
2005 Deepening or lessening the divide between diphthongs? An analysis of the Queen’s annual Christmas broadcasts. In A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver, W.J. Hardcastle & J. Beck (eds), 227–261. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Harrington, J., Palethorpe, S. & Watson. C.
2007 Age-related changes in fundamental frequency and formants: A longitudinal study of four speakers. In Proceedings of the 8th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2007), 2753–2756. Antwerp: International Speech Communication Association.
Hay, J., Jannedy, S. & Mendoza-Denton, N.
1999 Oprah and /ay/: Lexical frequency, referee design, and style. In Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1389–1392. San Francisco CA: The International Phonetic Association.
2010 Oprah and /ay/: Lexical frequency, referee design and style. In The Sociolinguistics Reader, M. Meyerhoff & E. Schleef (eds), 53–58. London: Routledge.
Hoemeke, K.A. & Diehl, R.L.
1994 Perception of vowel height: The role of F1-F0 distance. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 96(2): 661–674.
Howell, P., Barry, W. & Vinson, D.
2006 Strength of British English accents in altered listening conditions. Perception and Psychophysics 68(1): 139–153.
Keijzer, M.
2011 Language reversion versus general cognitive decline: Towards a new taxonomy of language change in elderly bilingual immigrants. In Modeling Bilingualism: From Structure to Chaos – In Honor of Kees de Bot [Studies in Bilingualism 43], M. Schmid & W. Lowie (eds), 221–232. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Labov, W.
1994 Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 1: Internal Factors. Malden MA: Blackwell.
Lindblom, B.
2001 Explaining phonetic variation: A sketch of the H&H theory. In Speech Production and Speech Modelling, W.J. Hardcastle & A. Marchal (eds), 403–439. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Lindblom, B. & Sundberg, J.
1971 Acoustical consequences of lip, tongue, jaw, and larynx movement. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 50(4): 1166–1179.
Linville, S.E. & Fisher, H.
1985 Acoustic characteristics of women’s voices with advancing age. Journal of Gerontology 40(3): 324–330.
Linville, S.E. & Rens, J.
2001 Vocal tract resonance analysis of aging voice using long-term average spectra. Journal of Voice 15(3): 323–330.
Liss, J.M., Weismer, G. & Rosenbek, J.C.
1990 Selected acoustic characteristics of speech production in very old males. Journal of Gerontology 45(2): 35–45.
Mariën, P., Verslegers, L., Moens, M., Dua, G., Herregods, P. & Verhoeven, J.
2013 Posterior fossa syndrome after cerebellar stroke. The Cerebellum 12(5): 686–691.
Mioche, L., Bourdiol, P., Monier, S., Martin, J.-F. & Cormier, D.
2004 Changes in jaw muscles activity with age: Effects on food bolus properties. Physiology & Behavior 82(4): 621–627.
Monemi, M., Thornell, L.-E. & Eriksson, P.-O.
1999 Diverse changes in fibre type composition of the human lateral pterygoid and digastric muscles during aging. Journal of the Neurological Sciences 171(1): 38–48.
Pardo, J.S.
2006 On phonetic convergence during conversational interaction. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 119(4): 2382–2393.
2013 Measuring phonetic convergence in speech production. Frontiers in Psychology 4: 559.
Pardo, J.S., Gibbons, R., Suppes, A. & Krauss, R.M.
2012 Phonetic convergence in college roommates. Journal of Phonetics 40(1): 190–197.
Peterson, G.E. & Barney, H.L.
1952 Control methods used in a study of the vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 24(2): 175–184.
Pickering, M.J. & Garrod, S.
2004 Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27(2): 169–226.
Prescher, P.
2007 Identity, immigration and first language attrition. In Language Attrition: Theoretical Perspectives [Studies in Bilingualism 33], B. Köpke, M. Schmid, M. Keijzer & S. Dostert (eds), 189–204. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Rastatter, M.P. & Jacques, R.D.
1990 Formant frequency structure of the aging male and female vocal tract. Folia phoniatrica 42: 312–319.
Reubold, U., Harrington, J. & Kleber, F.
2010 Vocal aging effects on F0 and the first formant: A longitudinal analysis in adult speakers. Speech Communication 52(7–8): 638–651.
Roth, E.J., Fink, K., Cherney, L.R. & Hall, K.D.
1997 Reversion to a previously learned foreign accent after stroke. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 78(5): 550–552.
Sankoff, G.
2004 Adolescents, young adults and the critical period: Two case studies from “Seven Up”. In Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical reflections, C. Ford (ed.), 121–139. Oxford: OUP.
Sankoff, G. & Blondeau, H.
2007 Language change across the lifespan: /r/ in Montreal French. Language 83(3): 560–588.
Schiel, F., Draxler, C. & Harrington, J.
2011 Phonemic segmentation and labelling using the MAUS technique. Paper presented at
the Workshop ‘New Tools and Methods for Very-Large-Scale Phonetics Research’
, University of Pennsylvania, January 28–31, 2011. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-13684-8 (21 August 2014).
Scukanec, G., Petrosino, L. & Squibb, K.
1991 Formant frequency characteristics of children, young adult, and aged female speakers. Perceptual and Motor Skills 73(1): 203–208.
Syrdal, A.K. & Gopal, H.S.
1986 A perceptual model of vowel recognition based on the auditory representation of American English vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 79(4): 1086–1100.
Traunmüller, H.
1981 Perceptual dimension of openness in vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 69(5): 1465–1475.
1991 The context sensitivity of the perceptual interaction between f0 and F1. In Proceedings of the XIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Vol. 5, 62–65. Aix-en-Provence: The International Phonetic Association.
Trudgill, P.
1992 Norwich revisited: Recent linguistic changes in an English urban dialect. In Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution: Studies in Honour of René Dirven on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, M. Pütz (ed.), 361–377. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Weinreich, U., Labov, W. & Herzog, M.
1968 Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Directions for Historical Linguistics, W.P. Lehmann & Y. Malkiel (eds), 95–188. Austin TX: University of Texas Press.
Wells, J.C.
1982 Accents of English. Cambridge: CUP. Standard lexical sets online: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/stanlexsets.htm (21 August 2014).
Wright, J.
1905 The English Dialect Grammar. Oxford: OUP.
Xue, S.A. & Hao, G.J.
2003 Changes in the human vocal tract due to aging and the acoustic correlates of speech production: A pilot study. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46(3): 689–701.
Xue, S.A., Jiang, J., Lin, E., Glassenberg, R. & Mueller, P.B.
1999 Age-related changes in human vocal tract configurations and the effects on speakers’ vowel formant frequencies: A pilot study. Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology 24(3): 132–137.