This paper investigates the California Vowel Shift, previously characterized as a chain shift, in communities across California's Central Valley. An incremental apparent time analysis of 72 Californians’ vowel spaces provides no clear evidence of a gradual chain shift; that is, changes have not unfolded in an order that reflects an implicational chain in chronological time. Instead, we see contemporaneous movements of vowels that work against the phonological tendency of maximal dispersion typically invoked in describing chain shifts. By analyzing change in the size and dispersion of the entire vowel space, we find that ongoing sound change is instead characterized by a holistic compression of the vowel space. This suggests that, in these California communities, the shift's unfolding was driven by articulatory and social, rather than purely phonological, factors. We propose that the analysis of the size and spread of holistic vowel space can help characterize the nature and motivations for vocalic changes.

中文翻译：

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加州元音转换中的压缩：跟踪加州中央山谷的代际声音变化

本文调查了加州中央山谷社区中的加州元音转换，以前被描述为连锁转换。对 72 个加利福尼亚人的元音空间的增量表观时间分析没有提供明显的证据表明链式逐渐转移；也就是说，变化并没有按照反映时间顺序的暗示链的顺序展开。取而代之的是，我们看到元音的同时运动与描述链移时通常调用的最大分散的语音趋势相反。通过分析整个元音空间的大小和分布的变化，我们发现正在进行的声音变化的特征是对元音空间的整体压缩。这表明，在这些加利福尼亚社区，这种转变的展开是由发音和社会推动的，而不是纯粹的语音因素。我们建议分析整体元音空间的大小和分布可以帮助描述发音变化的性质和动机。