Monophthongs

The ellipse plots of the vowel targets for male and female tense and lax monophthongs are given in Figure 1. Each ellipse includes at least 95% of the tokens. The labels b, g, and c represent the mean F1 and F2 values for Broad, General and Cultivated speakers (Harrington, Cox and Evans 1997: 164).

There is not much variation across the three varieties in the targets for the monophthongs. No significant differences were found between General and Cultivated, but there were some for Broad, particularly for the GOOSE vowel for both men and women and the NURSE vowel for women. The GOOSE vowel was fronted for men and women and the NURSE, KIT and DRESS vowels were fronted for Broad speaking women. Ongliding for both FLEECE and GOOSE have often been noted as characteristic of AusE. In this study FLEECE was found to have an onglide from a more central vowel but there was much less evidence for ongliding of the GOOSE vowel. The longest onglide was found for Broad speakers for the FLEECE vowel; the oldest Broad speakers exhibited the most extensive onglides and young Cultivated speakers the least marked onglide.