Stuart-Smith, J. , Sonderegger, M., Macdonald, R., Mielke, J., McAuliffe, M. and Thomas, E. (2019) Large-scale Acoustic Analysis of Dialectal and Social Factors in English /s/-retraction. In: International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2019), Melbourne, Australia, 5-9 Aug 2019, pp. 1273-1277. ISBN 9780646800691
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Publisher's URL: https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS2019/index.php
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/.
| Item Type: | Conference Proceedings |
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| Status: | Published |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Macdonald, Dr Rachel and Stuart-Smith, Professor Jane |
| Authors: | Stuart-Smith, J., Sonderegger, M., Macdonald, R., Mielke, J., McAuliffe, M., and Thomas, E. |
| Subjects: | P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics |
| College/School: | College of Arts > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics |
| ISSN: | 0241-0669 |
| ISBN: | 9780646800691 |
| Copyright Holders: | Copyright © 2019 Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc. |
| First Published: | First published in Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain & Paul Warren (eds.) Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019 pp. 1273-1277 |
| Publisher Policy: | Reproduced under a Creative Commons license |
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