20 William Labov
–10Percent complete acquisitionaw ay ̊ ow oy uw01020304050607080901000–4 [n = 17]
5–9 [n = 14]
10–14 [n = 3]Figure 1. Acquisition of Philadelphia variables by 34 children of out-of-state families
in King of Prussia by age of arrival. Based on Payne (1980).2.2 Milton KeynesA second study of a new town was Kerswill and Williams’ research in Milton Keynes,
composed of inmigrants from many different areas of England (Williams & Kerswill
1999; Kerswill & Williams 2000). Milton Keynes did not exist in 1971, but grew to
176,000 in 1991. Three quarters of its residents came from the southeastern England:
35% from London, 32% from other southern counties, but only 3% from the imme-
diate sub-region within 15 minutes drive. This project was elegantly and carefully
designed to record the phonology of 8 boys and 8 girls at each of three age levels: 4,
8 and 12 years old, together with the caretakers of each, a total of 96 speakers. The
new Milton Keynes dialect that arose was a distinct entity to combining the some
features of London and the home counties with some remnants of the local dialect.
Kerswill and Williams provide Figure 2 for the Milton Keynes development
of the variable (ow), in goat, go, road, etc. The distribution of phonetic variants
are shown for the three age levels of children together with that for their female
caretakers. The horizontal axis shows the frequencies of three variants: front nuclei
with unrounded glides, front nuclei with rounded glides, and back upgliding vow-
els with a central or back glide, The four-year-olds have clearly not departed from
the pattern of their parents and caretakers following them in a moderate percent of
the second variant and a high representation of the third. But the eight and twelve-
year-olds have, shifting massively to the front nuclei with rounded glides. Though
Kerswill and Williams do not match individual children with their caretakers, it is
clear that by eight years of age, these children no longer take their parents’ vowel
systems as the target for language learning.