Synchronic Sound Change as a Unique Look At Representation in /aɪ/ Raising in Fort Wayne, Indiana

There is an ongoing sound change in progress in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area. This change is well documented as several phonetically and phonologically conditioned patterns of American /aɪ/ raising. While the various locations, patterns and features of American raising are described in several studies, there is little work on the necessary change in the perceptual and/or representational systems of those speakers involved in the change. This dissertation combines a description of speech production and perception, both processes prevalent in production of /aɪ/ raising in Fort Wayne, and investigates perceptual patterns of speakers who both produce a raised /aɪ/ and also perceive it on a daily basis. This work set out to document paths through sound change for both speech production and perception in /aɪ/ for participants in Fort Wayne, Indiana. What was revealed was variation in the approaches taken by individuals to produce raising, as well as variation without any apparent patterns within individuals in the perception data. These varied perception results, the target results in the clear speech task, and the lack of correlation between the production patterns and perception results within individuals are interpreted to mean that for Fort Wayne speakers, raised pre-voiceless /aɪ/ is not yet part of their representation. </p

Multidimensional signals and analytic flexibility: Estimating degrees of freedom in human speech analyses

Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis which can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time. Even greater flexibility is to be expected in fields in which the primary data lend themselves to a variety of possible operationalizations. The multidimensional, temporally extended nature of speech constitutes an ideal testing ground for assessing the variability in analytic approaches, which derives not only from aspects of statistical modeling, but also from decisions regarding the quantification of the measured behavior. In the present study, we gave the same speech production data set to 46 teams of researchers and asked them to answer the same research question, resulting insubstantial variability in reported effect sizes and their interpretation. Using Bayesian meta-analytic tools, we further find little to no evidence that the observed variability can be explained by analysts’ prior beliefs, expertise or the perceived quality of their analyses. In light of this idiosyncratic variability, we recommend that researchers more transparently share details of their analysis, strengthen the link between theoretical construct and quantitative system and calibrate their (un)certainty in their conclusions

What does incipient/ay/-raising look like?: A response to Josef Fruehwald

In examining the history of /ay/-raising before voiceless consonants in Philadelphia, Josef Fruehwald (2016) concludes that either categorical phonological conditioning was present from the very onset of this phonetic change, or the period of purely phonetic conditioning was too brief to be identified. This is based on the observation that raising is phonological in the Philadelphia data: it occurs before voiced flaps that are underlyingly voiceless (as in writing), but not before underlyingly voiced flaps (as in riding). In this response, we provide the first acoustic documentation of an English variety that shows an incipient phase of /ay/-raising where the conditioning environment is purely phonetic

Unlocking the Mystery of Dialect B: A Note on Incipient/aI/-Raising in Fort Wayne, Indiana

This article addresses incipient/aI/-raising in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Acoustic analysis of word list data from 27 participants targets both typical items (e.g., write, writing) and monomorphemic trochaic words often overlooked in previous research (e.g., Nike, bison, cyber, tiger). It reports four major/aI/production patterns in the Fort Wayne data, which range on a continuum from no/aI/-raising to phonological raising of/aI/(i.e., raising before t-flaps, a pattern of Canadian raising referred to as Dialect A). In the middle of the continuum is found the elusive Dialect B, a pattern of Canadian raising first documented by Martin Joos in 1942 in which raising occurs in write but not before t-flaps. The authors find that speakers of this type of raising tend not to raise in any trochaic words. In fact, raising in monomorphemic trochaic words, such as Nike or bison, is exceedingly rare in the Fort Wayne data. In tandem with the variation observed within Fort Wayne, the fact that raising has not yet extended into monomorphemic trochaic words further suggests that raising is incipient in this variety. The authors propose that Dialect B is not a separate dialect at all but an incipient variety of Dialect A