ABSTRACT
This chapter includes a research that consists of fieldwork carried out in 1968, as reported in Trudgill, with a random sample of 60 informants born and brought up in or around Norwich; and a follow-up study carried out in 1983, as reported in Trudgill, with a quota sample of 17 informants. It is also based on 54 years of residence in the city as an observer and as a native speaker of one form of Norwich English. Some of the phonetic and phonological changes that the author had observed in Norwich English appear to be truly endogenous. The diphthongisation of the TRAP vowel, the fronting of the GOAT vowel, and the merger of the vowels of NEAR and SQUARE are without parallel anywhere in neighbouring or metropolitan or national prestige varieties. Exogenous changes, moreover, will be further subdividable according to the source and the nature of the external influence.
