earticle

영어

Focusing on the sociolinguistic realization of /aw/-monophthongization in the “Pittsburghese” English, this paper shows that the social meaning of the /aw/-monophthongization in Pittsburghese is related to the awareness of its phonological system, which consists of the ranking relation among the constraints involved in the selection of [ah] as an output form. This argument is based on the phonological analysis of Optimality Theory (McCarthy & Prince 1993, Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004). Further, extending the Optimality Theoretic analysis to the exploration of the mapping between the phonological system of /aw/-monophthongization and its social meaning in Pittsburghese, this paper shows that its mapping is a result of the interaction between the constraints involved in associating the phonological system with regional and social meanings. It is also shown in this paper that in this process, the change of ranking relation among the constraints interacts with the change of people’s awareness of social meaning associated with the /aw/-monophthongization in Pittsburghese.