How Variable are English sibilants?

Sonderegger, M., Stuart-Smith, J. and Mielke, J. (2023) How Variable are English sibilants? In: 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), Prague, Czech Republic, 7-11 Aug 2023, pp. 3196-3200. ISBN 9788090811423

Abstract

This paper takes a corpus-phonetic approach to consider variability in word-initial, prevocalic English sibilants in 5k speakers, 235k tokens, from 27 geo-social-ethnic regions of North America and the British Isles. We analyse ERBtransformed, spectral peak measures calculated from amplitude-normalised multitaper spectra using a ‘distributional’ Bayesian mixed-effects regression which explicitly models token, speaker, and regionlevel variability. Following previous phonetic and sociolinguistic research we expected English /s/ to be more variable than /S/. The results, however, differ according to the level at which we consider variability. Across English regions, /s/ and /S/ show a similar degree of variability. Across speakers within-region, /s/ is generally more variable than /S/, and within speakers, /s/ is generally more variable by token than /S/, both results likely reflecting linguistic and social-indexical sources of variation—such as gender, which has a greater effect on spectral peak for /s/ than for /S/.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Additional Information: We acknowledge funding from ESRC (ES/R003963/1) to Stuart-Smith; SSHRC (869-2016-0006, 435-2017-0925) and NSERC (RGPDD 501771-16) to Sonderegger; and NSF (SMA-1730479) to Mielke
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Stuart-Smith, Professor Jane and Sonderegger, Professor Morgan
• Authors: Sonderegger, M., Stuart-Smith, J., and Mielke, J.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• ISBN: 9788090811423
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 GUARANT International spol. s r. o.
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

Related URLs

• Organisation

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
300161		SPeech Across Dialects of English (SPADE): large-scale digital analysis of a spoken language across space and time	Jane Stuart-Smith	Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)	ES/R003963/1	Arts - English Language and Linguistics