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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

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

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  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

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