13 research outputs found
A typology of laterals in twelve English dialects
Allophonic patterns of variation in English laterals have been well studied in phonetics and phonology for decades, but establishing broad generalizations across varieties has proven challenging. In this study, we advance a typology of onset/coda lateral distinctions in English, using crowdsourced recordings from 95 speakers across twelve dialects of Anglo (UK) English. Results confirm the existence of dialects with and without onset/coda distinctions, and conditional inference trees are used to identity three main patterns in the data: (1) clear onsets and dark codas; (2) intermediate/dark onsets and dark codas, but with a positional distinction intact; (3) dark onsets and dark codas, with minimal or no distinctions between positions
Morphological effects on pronunciation
Converging, albeit inconsistent, empirical evidence suggests that the morphological structure of a word influences its pronunciation. We investigated this issue using Ultrasound Tongue Imaging in the context of an experimental cognitive psychology paradigm. Scottish speakers were trained on apparently homophonous monomorphemic and bimorphemic novel words (e.g. zord, zorred), and
tested on speech production tasks. Monomorphemic items were realised acoustically with shorter durations than bimorphemic items; however, this difference was not statistically significant. Progressive coarticulatory effects were also observed in the monomorphemic condition for some speakers. A dynamic analysis of the articulatory data revealed that the observed differences in the pronunciations of the two types of items could be due to factors other than morphological structure. Our results, albeit inconclusive, make a significant contribution to the literature in this research domain insofar as the presence or absence of morphological effects on pronunciation has important implications for extant theories of speech production.https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs/icphs2015caslpub3961pub81
Coarticulation across morpheme boundaries: An ultrasound study of past-tense inflection in Scottish English
Articulatory dynamics of (de-)gemination in Dutch
Data and R scripts from a study on fake geminate rhotics in Standard Dutc
Articulatory dynamics of (de-)gemination in Dutch
Data and R scripts from a study on fake geminate rhotics in Standard Dutc
Locating de-lateralization in the pathway of sound changes affecting coda /l/
âVocalizationâ is a label commonly used to describe an ongoing change in progress affecting coda
/l/ in multiple accents of English. The label is directly linked to the loss of consonantal constriction
observed in this process, but it also implicitly signals a specific type of change affecting manner
of articulation from consonant to vowel, which involves loss of tongue lateralization, the defining
property of lateral sounds. In this study, we consider two potential diachronic pathways of change:
an abrupt loss of lateralization which follows from the loss of apical constriction, versus slower
gradual loss of lateralization that tracks the articulatory changes to the dorsal component of
/l/. We present articulatory data from seven speakers of New Zealand English, acquired using a
combination of midsagittal and lateral EMA, as well as midsagittal ultrasound. Different stages of
sound change are reconstructed through synchronic variation between light, dark, and vocalized
/l/, induced by systematic manipulation of the segmental and morphosyntactic environment,
and complemented by comparison of different individual articulatory strategies. Our data show a
systematic reduction in lateralization that is conditioned by increasing degrees of /l/-darkening
and /l/-vocalization. This observation supports the idea of a gradual diachronic shift and the
following pathway of change: /l/-darkening, driven by the dorsal gesture, precipitates some loss
of lateralization, which is followed by loss of the apical gesture. This pathway indicates that loss
of lateralization is an integral component in the changes in manner of articulation of /l/ from
consonantal to vocalic
Phonetic evidence on phonologyâmorphosyntax interactions: sibilant voicing in Quito Spanish
Fronting of Southern British English high-back vowels in articulation and acoustics
The following article has been submitted to/accepted by The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. After it is published, it will be found at: https://asa.scitation.org/journal/jas.The fronting of the two high-back vowels /uË/ and /Ê/ in Southern British English is very well documented, but mainly in the acoustic domain. This paper presents articulatory (ultrasound) data, comparing the relative tongue position of these vowels in fronting and non-fronting consonantal contexts, i.e., preceding a coronal consonant (food, foot) and preceding a coda /l/ (fool, full). Particular attention is paid to the comparison between articulatory results and corresponding acoustic measurements of F2 in both vowels. Results show that the average differences between food and foot and their dynamic profiles are similar in articulation and acoustics. In /uËl/ sequences (fool), tongue position is more advanced than could be inferred from its low F2. In addition, even though the tongue position in fool and full is clearly distinct, there is no comparable corresponding difference in F2. This suggests that the common articulatory metaphor that characterises F2 increase as fronting must be used cautiously. In the case of English high-back vowel fronting, special attention must be paid to the flanking consonants when estimating vowel distances. This paper also provides specific recommendations for recording and analysing ultrasound data in research on vowel variation and change.The Authors acknowledge the support of British Academy (grant PDF/pf130029) and ESRC (grant ES/N008189/1).casl142pub4681pub