What can the Falkland Islands tell us about Diphthong Shift

Abstract

Introduction A number of non-standard varieties of English realise the diphthong /au/, found in words such as ‘out’ and ‘down’, with a front mid-open nucleus, [ ae], and the diphthong /ai/ in words such as ‘nice’ and ‘time’ with a back mid-open one, [ ]. Such varieties include the traditional accents of London and the South East of England, and also those spoken in the Southern Hemisphere Anglophone countries of Australia and New Zealand. Traditional accounts suggest that, following the completion of the Great Vowel Shift, during which Middle English u and i  diphthongised and the nuclei of the new diphthongs lowered all the way to [a] and [a] respectively, the nucleus of /au/ then raised and fronted from this fully open position to reach its current location in front mid-open position and the nucleus of /ai/ underwent a parallel movement, backing and raising to its current location. These shifts from [a] to [] and from [a] to [] are often claimed to form part of a chain

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