“Non-normative” preaspiration of voiceless fricatives in Scottish English

1. “Non-normative” preaspiration of voiceless fricatives in Scottish English a comparison with Swedish preaspiration Olga Gordeeva and James M.Scobbie, Queen Margaret University College (Edinburgh)

2. Introduction • Descriptive aim: to present new data on preaspiration of voiceless fricatives in Scottish Standard English (SSE) • A cross-linguistic comparison is drawn to the so called “non-normative” preaspiration of voiceless stops and fricatives found in Central Standard Swedish (CSw). Helgason, 1998, 1999, 2002; Helgason et al 2003 compare frequency of occurrence, and prosodic conditioning of preaspiration • We also discuss the preaspiration in SSE and it’s possible socio-phonetic conditioning with a reference to recent studies in the UK Docherty & Foulkes 1999, Foulkes et al. 1999, Jones & Llamas, 2003

3. What is Preaspiration? • Preaspiration = “co-ordinatory relationship between the vowel and the following voiceless segment” (Laver, 1994) • In North Western Europe, it occurs in many areas covering Scandinavian, Germanic and Celtic languages • It is often described as a property bound to the transition between a vowel (or sonorant) and the following voiceless stops (Ladefoged & Madieson, 1996) • For British English, preaspiration of voiceless stops [p], [t] and [k] is reported in: • Newcastle English (Docherty & Foulkes 1999, Foulkes et al. 1999) • Middlesbrough English(Jones & Llamas, 2003)

4. Preaspiration of voiceless fricatives • Is far less studied, even though devoicing before voiceless fricatives is accomplished earlier than before voiced ones: either in CSw or in British English (Gobl & Ní Chasaide 1988, 1999) • preaspiration of voiceless fricatives has been reported in: • CSw Helgason, 2002 • MdE Jones & Llamas, 2003 Both sources agree that preaspiration should be seen as ”a co-articulatory property of the voiceless coda segment”, rather than as a particular feature of voiceless stops

5. Auditory Salience PLACE PLAYS Sounds as : either a glottal fricative (usually a weak one) or whispery

6. Subjects

7. Materials • included a set of different vowels before voiced and voiceless stops, and fricatives. • since preaspiration was only found before voiceless fricatives, we only report for tokens GOOSE, FISH and BUS. • Per subject and per carrier, 20 realisations were gathered in two types of phrases: (1) It’s a BUS. a phrase with a single pitch accent in a phrase final position (final1) (2) A BUS is a BUS, and nothing but a BUS. a phrase with multiple pitch accents covering phrase initial , phrase medial, phrase final (final2) pitch accents.

8. Annotation a 30 ms of glottal fricative or whispery transition between the offset of the modal voicing in the vowel and initiation of the friction of the following voiceless fricative 74 ms 100 ms

9. Frequency of Occurrence in BUS Nr of preaspirated fricatives in word BUS per speaker.

10. Frequency of Occurrence in FISH Nr of preaspirated fricatives in FISH per speaker.

11. Vowel Duration and Preaspiration SSE Pr/VPr ratio BUS = 0.38 FISH = 0.39 MASS in MbE = 0.54 CSw 0.32 to 0.37

12. Prosodic structure and duration Similarly to CSw, in SSE, phrase final pitch accent yields longer duration of preaspiration The Pr/V+Pr ratio increases from 0.34 (focal) to 0.44 (final1)

13. Prosodic structure and frequency of occurrence in BUS phrasal structure also affects the frequency of occurrence of preaspiration in SSE. It is more likely to occur in phrase final positions.

14. Prosodic structure and frequency of occurrence in FISH phrasal structure seems to affect the frequency of occurrence of preaspiration in SSE. It is more likely to occur in phrase final positions.

15. Other Contexts and Examples? Examples of other read speech from the Scottish Vowel Length Project (Scobbie). from CDS in my PhD data. Preaspiration appears also before [T] and [st] + after other vowels of all height including [e a]

16. Read speech versus spontaneous CDS

17. Summary of Results (1) • We have observed preaspiration of word final voiceless fricatives in SSE. • No previous reports for SSE • This finding supports the previous reports of Helgason 2002 for CSw, and Jones& LLamas 2003 for MbE, that preaspiration can also accompany voiceless fricatives, not only voiceless stops. • It is observed before voiceless fricatives, but not before voiceless stops. • This shows that this preaspiration is not an automatic co-articulation due to segmental voicelessness. It is rather implemented in a LANGUAGE SPECIFIC way. • This language specificity is in line with Gobl & Ní Chasaide’s findings of 2 different cross-linguistic patterns of cessation of voicing before voiceless stops, but not before voiceless fricatives.

18. Summary of Results (2) • We have observed that preaspiration of word final voiceless fricatives is conditioned by the strength prominence in terms of: (1)an increase of duration in phrase final positions as compared to phrase initial or medial (2)an increase of the frequency of occurrence in phrase final positions, as compared to initial or medial • As compared to CSw, preaspiration in SSE shows quite some similarities in: • being “non-normative”, phonetic and non-obligatory, some speakers have it to a bigger extent than others • prosodic conditioning • extent of duration (similar Pr/VPr ratios).

19. Open questions • Is it an innovation from within the language, or from language contact? • more dialectally stratified data is needed to answer this • Why fricatives and not stops? • Language specific patterns of cessation of voicing in anticipation of voiceless stops (Gobl & Ní Chasaide 1988, 1999) CWs early cessation, BrE two types (early and late) • A study of glottal source parameter is needed to prove that • Is it a recent innovation, or was it not noticed before? • previous studies of Scots or SSE gives no notice of preaspiration Johnston (1997), McKenna (1988) • 3 younger speakers in the data have it to a bigger extent than the older speakers (37,45) • A age-related socio-phonetically stratification in data is needed to answer this question