The area of East Anglia in which its traditional dialects are spoken has shrunk significantly over the past few decades and seen a marked decline in the use of traditional features. These include lack of -s marking on third-person singular forms (Kingston, 2000; Potter, 2018), as well as the long-standing distinction between those words descended from Middle English /ɔ:/ and /ɔu/, as in ‘moan’ vs ‘mown’, which failed to become homophonous as part of the Long Mid Mergers (Wells, 1982a). Like other relics, this distinction now only remains in East Anglia's more northern locales (Trudgill & Foxcroft, 1978; Trudgill, 2004; Butcher, 2019). This apparent ‘dialect death’ situation (Trudgill, 1986: 68) is the outcome of continued supralocalisation, a situation in which locally specific linguistic forms lose out to linguistic variants with greater socio-spatial currency, usually as a result of mobility and dialect contact (Britain, 2010). In East Anglia's case, Trudgill (2001) argues that dialect levelling has largely been driven by the impact of London and Home Counties varieties of English. This process is predicted to continue (Trudgill, 1986; Kingston, 2000), though is unlikely to be straightforward. Britain (2011) reports that substantial intra-regional differences are found in relation to route and rate of sound change in East Anglia. This calls for more comprehensive analyses of East Anglian English to better understand the workings of this ‘heterogenous homogenisation’ (Britain, 2011: 57), and how individual case studies relate to the overall shrinkage of the area in which traditional East Anglian dialects are spoken. This paper presents data in this vein from two studies undertaken in Suffolk, southern East Anglia. The first presents data on unstressed vowel tensing, which refers to the alternation between [ə] and [ɪ] in those unstressed syllables where /ɪ/ occurs in other varieties of Southern British English (SBE) e.g. ‘carpet’ [kɑ:pɪt] / [ka:pəʔ]. The second reports data on yod dropping, i.e. the absence of /j/ from sequences of C+/ju/ e.g. ‘huge’ [hju:dʒ] / [hu:dʒ]. Both variables are well known from descriptions of East Anglian dialects but, as we will see later, they appear to behave differently in this study of contemporary East Anglian English.

中文翻译：

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东英吉利的方言维护

在过去的几十年里，使用传统方言的东英吉利地区显着缩小，传统特征的使用明显下降。这些包括缺乏-s标记第三人称单数形式（Kingston，2000；Potter，2018），以及源自中古英语 /ɔ:/ 和 /ɔu/ 的这些词之间的长期区别，如“moan”与“mown” ，作为 Long Mid Mergers 的一部分未能成为谐音（Wells，1982a）。与其他遗迹一样，这种区别现在只存在于东安格利亚更北部的地区（Trudgill & Foxcroft，1978；Trudgill，2004；Butcher，2019）。这种明显的“方言死亡”情况（Trudgill，1986：68）是持续超本地化的结果，在这种情况下，当地特定的语言形式输给了具有更大社会空间流通性的语言变体，通常是由于流动性和方言接触的结果（英国，2010）。在东英吉利的案例中，Trudgill (2001) 认为，方言水平的提升很大程度上是受到伦敦和家乡英语品种的影响。预计这一过程将继续下去（Trudgill，1986；Kingston，2000），尽管不太可能是直截了当的。英国（2011 年）报告说，在东英吉利的路线和声音变化率方面发现了巨大的区域内差异。这需要对东盎格鲁英语进行更全面的分析，以更好地理解这种“异质同质化”（英国，2011：57）的工作原理，以及个别案例研究如何与传统东盎格鲁方言区域的整体缩小相关联. 本文介绍了在东英吉利南部萨福克进行的两项研究的数据。第一个展示了关于非重读元音时态的数据，它指的是在那些非重读音节中 [ə] 和 [ɪ] 之间的交替，其中 /ɪ/ 出现在其他英国南部英语 (SBE) 变体中，例如 'carpet' [kɑ:pɪt] / [ka:pəʔ]。第二个报告有关 yod 下降的数据，即 C+/ju/ 序列中没有 /j/，例如 'huge' [hju:dʒ] / [hu:dʒ]。这两个变量在对东盎格鲁方言的描述中都是众所周知的，但正如我们稍后将看到的，在对当代东盎格鲁英语的这项研究中，它们的表现似乎有所不同。