Large-scale Acoustic Analysis of Dialectal and Social Factors in English /s/-retraction
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Abstract
The retraction of /s/ in /str/, eg street, is a
sound change found in certain English dialects.
Previous work suggests that /s/-retraction arises
from lower spectral frequency /s/ in /str/. The
extent to which /s/-retraction differs across English
dialects is unclear. This paper presents results
from a large-scale, acoustic phonetic study of
sibilants in 420 speakers, from 6 spontaneous speech
corpora (9 dialects) of North American and Scottish
English. Spectral Centre of Gravity was modelled
from automatic measures of word-initial sibilants.
Female speakers show higher frequency sibilants
than males, but more so for /s/ than /S/; /s/ is also
higher in American than Canadian/Scottish dialects;
/S/ is surprisingly variable. /s/-retraction, modelled
as retraction ratios, is generally greater for /str/ than
/spr skr/, but varies by dialect; females show more
retraction in /str/ than males. Dialectal and social
factors clearly influence /s/-retraction in English
clusters /sp st sk/, /spr skr/, and /str/