| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 語言學研究所 === 104 === The thesis aims to investigate the phonological variation between [z] and [l] with the design of sampling from different generations. The phonological variation between [z] and [l] in Taiwan Southern Min is ongoing according to the investigations of sociodialectology, which describes [un], a regular and phonological context, triggers changing from [z] to [l]. Moreover, people in old generation tend to reserve [z]. Thus, the thesis raises three research questions from the perspectives of ‘external (social) factors’ and ‘internal (linguistic) factors’ to examine linguistic variation and change: (1) How is the variation between [z] and [l] occurring in the old, middle, and young generations of the Fengshan District of Kaohsiung? (2) Is the variation between [z] and [l] affected by social factors, such as generations, gender, education, and occupations? (3) Is the variation between [z] and [l] affected by linguistic factors, such as categories of phonological context, the syllable positions, the tones of the syllable, and the counts of the syllable in words?
A total of 60 participants, divided into generations with 10 participants of males and females each, were invited to read a word list, to speak in a manner of short question-and-answer, and to be interviewed in Taiwan Southern Min. The data were analyzed with Implicational Scaling, and Bar Chart (for descriptive statistics) to describe the frequency distributions of [z] and [l]. With Rbrul analysis (Johnson, 2009), a mixed-effect regression was performed to ensure whether social and linguistic predictors account for the alternation between [z] and [l]. A Decision Tree method was also used to automatically detect the interactions in the independent variables and variation beyond main effects in a regression model.
The results show that the social factor ‘generation’ significantly affected the choice between [z] and [l], whereas other social factors ‘gender’, ‘education’, and ‘occupation’ did not. The people in old and middle generations tended to reserve [z], while the people in young generation tended to reserved [l]. None of the linguistic factors, e.g., categories of phonological context, the syllable positions, the tones of the syllable, and the counts of the syllable in words, significantly affected the choice of [z] and [l]. The conclusion is that ‘generation’ indeed affects the variation between [z] and [l].
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