Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T03:18:42.078Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Variation in stop consonant voicing in two regional varieties of American English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2009

Ewa Jacewicz ,
Robert Allen Fox  and
Samantha Lyle
Ewa Jacewicz
Affiliation:
Speech Perception and Acoustics Laboratories, Department of Speech and Hearing Science, The Ohio State Universityjacewicz.1@osu.edu, fox.2@osu.edu, samantha.lyle@gmail.com
Robert Allen Fox
Affiliation:
Speech Perception and Acoustics Laboratories, Department of Speech and Hearing Science, The Ohio State Universityjacewicz.1@osu.edu, fox.2@osu.edu, samantha.lyle@gmail.com
Samantha Lyle
Affiliation:
Speech Perception and Acoustics Laboratories, Department of Speech and Hearing Science, The Ohio State Universityjacewicz.1@osu.edu, fox.2@osu.edu, samantha.lyle@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study is an acoustic investigation of the nature and extent of consonant voicing of the stop /b/ in two dialectal varieties of American English spoken in south-central Wisconsin and western North Carolina. The stop /b/ occurred at the juncture of two words such as small bids, in a position between two voiced sonorants, i.e. the liquid /l/ and a vowel. Twenty women participated, ten representing the Wisconsin and ten the North Carolina variety, respectively. Significant dialectal differences were found in the voicing patterns. The Wisconsin stop closures were usually not fully voiced and terminated in a complete silence followed by a closure release whereas North Carolina speakers produced mostly fully voiced closures. Further dialectal differences included the proportion of closure voicing as a function of word emphasis. For Wisconsin speakers, the proportion of closure voicing was smallest when the word was emphasized and it was greatest in non-emphatic positions. For North Carolina speakers, the degree of word emphasis did not have an effect on the proportion of closure voicing. The results suggest different mechanisms by which closure voicing is maintained in these two dialects, pointing to active articulatory maneuvers in North Carolina speakers and passive in Wisconsin speakers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , December 2009 , pp. 313 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bell-Berti, Fredericka.1975. Control of pharyngeal cavity size for English voiced and voiceless stops. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 57, 456–461.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chen, Matthew. 1970. Vowel length variation as a function of the voicing of the consonant environment. Phonetica 22, 129–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clopper, Cynthia G., Pisoni, David B. & de Jong, Kenneth. 2005. Acoustic characteristics of the vowel systems of six regional varieties of American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 118, 1661–1676.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crowther, Court S. & Mann, Virginia. 1992. Native language factors affecting use of vocalic cues to final consonant voicing in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 92, 711–722.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Docherty, Gerard J. 1992. The timing of voicing in British English obstruents. Berlin: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flege, James E. & Brown, W. S. Jr. 1982. The voicing contrast between English /p/ and /b/ as a function of stress and position-in-utterance. Journal of Phonetics 10, 335–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayward, Katrina. 2000. Experimental phonetics. Harlow: Pearson.Google Scholar
Jacewicz, Ewa, Fox, Robert A. & Salmons, Joseph C.. 2006. Prosodic prominence effects on vowels in chain shifts. Language Variation and Change 18, 285–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, Raymond D. & Moll, Kenneth L.. 1969. Vocal-tract characteristics of the stop cognates. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 46, 1549–1555.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kewley-Port, Diane & Preston, Malcolm S.. 1974. Early apical stop production: A voice onset time analysis. Journal of Phonetics 2, 195–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingston, John & Diehl, Randy L.. 1994. Phonetic knowledge. Language 70, 419–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koenig, Laura L. & Lucero, Jorge C.. 2008. Stop consonant voicing and intraoral pressure contours in women and children. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123, 1077–1088.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Künzel, Hermann J. 1979. Some observations on velar movement in plosives. Phonetica 36, 384–404.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors. Maldon, MA & Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon & Boberg, Charles. 2006. Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, phonology and sound change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William, Yaeger, Malcah & Steiner, Richard. 1972. A quantitative study of sound change in progress. Philadelphia, PA: U.S. Regional Survey.Google Scholar
Lisker, Leigh. 1957. Closure duration and the intervocalic voiced–voiceless distinction in English. Language 33, 42–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lisker, Leigh. 1986. ‘Voicing’ in English: A catalogue of acoustic features signaling /b/ versus /p/ in trochees. Language and Speech 19, 3–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lisker, Leigh & Abramson, Arthur S.. 1964. A cross-linguistic study of voicing in initial stops: Acoustical measurements. Word 20, 384–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milenkovic, Paul. 2003. TF32 software program. University of Wisconsin–Madison.Google Scholar
Nihalani, Paroo. 1975. Velopharyngeal opening in the formation of voiced stops in Sindhi. Phonetica 32, 89–102.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ohala, John J. & Riordan, Carol J.. 1979. Passive vocal tract enlargement during voiced stops. In Wolf, Jared J. & Klatt, Dennis H. (eds.), Speech communication papers, 89–92. New York: Acoustical Society of America.Google Scholar
Ohde, Ralph N. 1984. Fundamental frequency as an acoustic correlate of stop consonant voicing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 75, 224–230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Purnell, Thomas C., Salmons, Joseph C. & Tepeli, Dilara. 2005. German substrate effects in Wisconsin English: Evidence for final fortition. American Speech 80, 135–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purnell, Thomas C., Salmons, Joseph C., Tepeli, Dilara & Mercer, Jennifer. 2005. Structured heterogeneity and change in laryngeal phonetics: Upper Midwestern final obstruents. Journal of English Linguistics 33, 307–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Bruce L. 1979. A phonetic analysis of consonantal devoicing in children's speech. Journal of Child Language 6, 19–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snoeren, Natalie D., Hallé, Pierre A. & Segui, Juan. 2006. A voice for the voiceless: Production and perception of assimilated stops in French. Journal of Phonetics 34, 241–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, Kenneth N. 1998. Acoustic phonetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Studenbaker, Gerald A. 1985. A ‘rationalized’ arcsine transform. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 28, 455–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svirsky, Mario A., Stevens, Kenneth N., Matthies, Melanie L., Manzella, Joyce, Perkell, Joseph S. & Wilhelms-Tricarico, Reiner. 1997. Tongue surface displacement during bilabial stops. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102, 562–571.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thomas, Erik R. 2000. Spectral differences in /ai/ offsets conditioned by the voicing of the following consonant. Journal of Phonetics 28, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. 2001. An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. 2002. Instrumental phonetics. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, Peter & Schilling-Estes, Natalie (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change,168–200. Maldon, MA & Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Van Hofwegen, Janneke & Thomas, Erik R.. 2009. Velarization of word-initial /l/ in African American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 125, 2567.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westbury, John R. 1983. Enlargement of the supraglottal cavity and its relation to stop consonant voicing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 73, 1322–1336.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Westbury, John R. & Keating, Patricia A.. 1986. On the naturalness of stop consonant voicing. Journal of Linguistics 22, 145–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar