1 / 38

Covert articulation of Scottish English /r/ now you see and hear it… now you don’t

Covert articulation of Scottish English /r/ now you see and hear it… now you don’t. MFM 14 2006 Manchester James M Scobbie Speech Science Research Centre, QMUC Jane Stuart-Smith English Language, Glasgow. Overview. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

jacie
Download Presentation

Covert articulation of Scottish English /r/ now you see and hear it… now you don’t

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Covert articulation of Scottish English /r/ now you see and hear it… now you don’t MFM 14 2006 Manchester James M Scobbie Speech Science Research Centre, QMUC Jane Stuart-Smith English Language, Glasgow

  2. Overview • Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose • When is phonological change phonological? • How is fine phonetic detail grammaticalised? • What are phonological features? • What is a phonological inventory? • Coda /r/ derhoticisation in Scottish English • Study 1: Auditory and acoustic – socially stratified • Study 2: Ultrasound Tongue Imaging – pilot

  3. Coda /r/ in Scottish English • Scottish English is typically described as rhotic(e.g. Wells, 1982: 10-11) • Coda /r/ is “phonetically” variable • [] - trills are rare and/or stereotypical (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996: 236) • [] - alveolar taps are more often noted (e.g. Johnston 1997) • [] [] – approximants – retroflex and post-alveolar - are also common (e.g. Johnston 1997)

  4. Coda /r/ is changing • Changes to coda /r/ have been reported in working-class speakers in Edinburgh (e.g. Romaine 1978) and Glasgow (Johnston 1997; Stuart-Smith 2003) to • a very weak approximant • vowels produced with secondary articulation (e.g. pharyngealization / uvularization) • vowels without any audible secondary articulation, i.e. similar to vowels in syllables without /r/

  5. Characteristics of /r/ • Differing acoustic properties for approximants (e.g. Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996) • lowered F3 – retroflex and post-alveolar approximants • high F3 – uvular articulations • Coda /r/ in Dutch also shows variable ‘deletion’ (Plug and Ogden 2003; Scobbie & Sebregts 2005) • longer vowels • differing vowel and consonantal quality • covert post-alveolar articulations

  6. Study 1: Coda /r/ in Glaswegian • 12 male working-class informants • 1m = 10-11 years • 2m = 12-13 years • 3m = 14-15 years • 4m = 40-60 years • Words selected from larger wordlist

  7. Study 1: Coda /r/ in Glaswegian • Impressionistic auditory analysis • transcription • Acoustic analysis • duration of vocalic portion • vowel quality by formant analysis (midpoint; every 5 pulses up to and including end of vocalic portion)

  8. Auditory results Older speakers showed most articulated /r/ - [] [] []: [] 4m1_farm and even []: [] 4m2_car

  9. Auditory results Younger speakers showed: weakly approximated [] [] []: [] 3m1_far pharyngealized/uvularized vowels: [a] 2m1_card

  10. Auditory results Younger speakers showed - vowels with no audible ‘colouring’ [] 1m3_car odd instances of vowels followed by [h] or [] [] 3m3_far

  11. Acoustic analysis - duration Age group 1 Overall, the vocalic portion of words with /r/ is longer than those without /r/ (p =.0039).

  12. Acoustic analysis - duration Age group 3 This is regardless of whether an apical /r/ is heard (red dots) or not. There is also some variation.

  13. Acoustic analysis – vowel quality Age group 1 Midpoint formant values show that words with /r/ are generally more retracted than for words without /r/.

  14. Acoustic analysis – vowel quality Age group 3 Words heard with /r/ (red dots), tend to be even more retracted.

  15. Acoustic analysis – vowel quality Sample tracks (3m1 ‘rhotic’) shows slight dip in (high) F3 in most words with /r/.

  16. Acoustic analysis – vowel quality Sample tracks (3m3 ‘pharyngealized /r/’) shows high, flat F3.

  17. Phonological Implications • Has /r/ changed phonologically? • How can we tell? • If only from neutralisation then “phonology” is thin • What is changing in speakers’ grammars? • Features and phonotactics? • Place, manner, timing, duration, phonation all affected • Fine-grained phonetic targets? • Articulatory or acoustic? • How is variation encoded?

  18. Why ultrasound? • Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI) • Relatively informal • Dynamic • Real-time • Image of whole mid-sagittal tongue surface • Impressionistic and objective analyses • /r/ is characterised by • Open approximation • Multiple articulations

  19. Study 2. Pilot 1. Field transcription • Glasgow Science Centre, QM open days, Edinburgh International Science Festival • Live qualitative analysis • Numerous subjects (dozens) • All age groups, wide spectrum of social mix • Handheld probe plus microphone • Possible to record data for re-analysis • Visual and auditory transcription

  20. Pilot 1. Preliminary results • Lots of inter-speaker variation • Acoustically derhoticised /r/ is often • Acoustically something else (cf. Study 1) • Articulatorily present • May involve retracted tongue root • May be anterior • retroflex or bunched (inter & intra-speaker variation) • Little or no meta-linguistic self-awareness of change or variation in /r/ among Scots • Cf. labiodental /r/, vocalised /l/ and others

  21. Study 2. Pilot 2. Lab study • Laboratory recordings • Still piloting method • Head stabilisation • Higher sampling rate to become available • Subject read from semantic-class wordlist • e.g. “eyes, hair, teeth, nose, ear, mouth”

  22. Study 2. Pilot 2. UTI lab subjects • Control rhotic speaker, female (23) Argyll • UTI shows characteristic retroflex /r/ bar harm Pa ham

  23. Study 2. Pilot 2. continued • Derhoticiser, male (22) Edinburgh • Impressionistically • Coda /r/ vary from weak approximants to vocalisation • Onset /r/ is approximant or fricative • Medial /r/ may be tap • Onset clusters are tapped, approx, affricated • Other variables also suggest he is comparable to derhoticisers from Study 1

  24. Pilot 2. Vowel space & inventory

  25. Pilot 2. UTI – derhoticising speaker • He has acoustic (and articulatory) rhotics • Approximants • rain • Taps • ferry

  26. Pilot 2. Acoustics – higher V + /r/ • Weakly rhoticised forms shading into derhoticised centring glides & diphthongs

  27. Pilot 2. continued – lower vowels + /r/ • Derhoticisation is more frequent, with relatively monophthongal productions – yet no mergers? • Weak syllables may sound highly vocalised

  28. Articulatory dynamics with UTI • Scobbie & Sebregts (2005) at MFM • Dutch derhoticisation • Covert /r/ reflex • easier to see, harder to hear • late, devoiced, weakened, coarticulated • Scottish pilot speaker also has visible but not so audible anterior lingual constrictions

  29. UTI orientation • A frame of [] from rain • Tongue surfaceis the clearestfeature – whiteline • Internalstructures are visible and helpgin transcription

  30. UTI – derhoticising speaker • Covert anterior rhotic-like post-alveolar tongue movement in derhoticised words • car, storm, suburb car target 120ms later car towards end of phonation covert tip raising

  31. Summary & discussion • Fairly extreme auditory derhoticisation • Listeners hear little rhoticity from speakers like this • Probably can acquire “same” contrasts, lexical sets • Articulatory evidence of an [] (and an /r/) • Anterior gestures are delayed and/or weak • Posterior (pharyngeal?) gestures also seen

  32. Targets • We assume acoustic derhoticisation and covert articulatory targets are required in the grammar • Are the targets compatible or incompatible? • Speaker-hearer models suggest there is no need to give either priority… they are in equilibrium • Various models • Demands from speech production tend to make speakers economical with effort and reduce contrastivity • Perceptual demands from listeners tend to make speakers enhance contrasts • Covert articulation is the opposite • Speakers / hearers have social demands too (Foulkes & Docherty 2005)

  33. Rough exemplar model • A shared lexicon is crucial • Highly detailed lexical entries (exemplars) • Quantity of stored memories causes overlap and abstraction of commonalities • Abstraction = formation of • categorical features (recurrent if functionally-motivated) • gradient tendencies (may also be recurrent) • Sociophonetic variation is crucial • It stretches and structures phonetic variation • Learning and abstraction are not replication of input

  34. Rough exemplar model • Within a prosodic position, nothing is gained by positing independent labels such as “/r/” in addition to the fine social and phonetic detail plus recognising emergentrecurrent categories (cf. Docherty 1992, Scobbie 2006)

  35. Rough Model • We create a system mediated by the input • Our intended output is mediated by our articulation • Cognitive knowledge has to reflect all three loci The Speaker Hearer The Community

  36. Conclusion • Derhoticisation is a typical phenomenon of central phonological interest • To merely describe the linguistic situation in Scottish English • We need more phonetic detail • We need more social detail • To develop theories of the traditional core topics of phonology • We need new quantitative evidence of all sorts

  37. THE END Thanks for listening and watching

More Related