Pitch and duration in RP: A corpus-based historical exploration

As a reference variety, Received Pronunciation (RP), a non-regional accent of British English, is extensively described both in terms of synchronic variation and its historical development. There is a long tradition of describing changes over time in the traditional phonemic framework. However, modern corpus-based acoustic investigations have not been attempted on material older than the 1950s and most of such work focuses on vowel systems, with other phonetic features less extensively covered. In the present paper, we examine data from two closely matched groups of middle-aged male RP speakers, recorded in 1929 and 2010, demonstrating that corpus-based comparisons can be extended further back in time than previously done. Investigating pitch and durational characteristics of their speech, we also show historical investigations can go beyond the segment. Possible reasons for the discrepancies between the groups are explored.