The Bernard data revisited∗

I am thankful to John Bernard for giving me permission to reanalyse his data, to Robert Mannell for making the data available in electronic form, and to Sally arm e Palethorpe for advice on statistical matters.

Abstract

For the past thirty years John Bernard's acoustic analysis of Australian English vowels (Bernard 1967, 1970) has remained the standard vowel reference for Australian speech researchers. The published papers present a set of data which is generally considered to be representative of vowel productions across the range of accent types available to speakers of the dialect. The present paper provides a reanalysis and reintetpretation of some aspects of the classic Bernard account focusing on the significant spectral differences between the accent types and examining age heterogeneity within the original sample. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) is used to investigate the effects of accent type and age on formant frequency values. The results reveal the presence of numerous accent and age effects. Univariate ANOVA and t‐tests are used to further refine the analysis and establish the specific differences between the age and accent groups. The presence of age effects can, in some instances, be interpreted as evidence of changes that were in progress at the time of the data collection.

Notes

I am thankful to John Bernard for giving me permission to reanalyse his data, to Robert Mannell for making the data available in electronic form, and to Sally arm e Palethorpe for advice on statistical matters.