Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T02:38:38.538Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Acoustic analysis of a sound change in progress: The consonant cluster /stɹ/ in English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

Ben Rutter*
Affiliation:
Department of Human Communication Sciences, The University of Sheffieldb.rutter@sheffield.ac.uk

Abstract

For some speakers of English, realization of the fricative in the consonant cluster /stɹ/may be undergoing a sound change in progress. Previous reports suggest that /s/ is being realized as the postalveolar fricative [ʃ], with the approximant /ɹ/ as a possible trigger. Research in sociolinguistics also indicates that there may be various intermediate stages of the change, falling somewhere between a typical /ʃ/ and /s/. However, information about the precise phonetic characteristics of these novel variants is still sparse, and existing sociolinguistic studies have not compared speakers’ realization of /stɹ/ to their typical /s/ and /ʃ/ productions. This paper uses the acoustic measurement of spectral peak to compare ten English speakers’ productions of the onsets /ʃ/, /ʃɹ/, /stɹ/, and /s/. The findings suggest that the majority of tokens produced by these speakers fall within their normal range for /ʃ/, with only limited evidence of intermediate forms. It is proposed that spectral peak measurement seems to be a stable method for use in future research categorizing variants of /stɹ/. However, this should include comparison to subjects’ normal /ʃ/ productions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Altendorf, Ulrike. 2003. Estuary English: Leveling at the interface of RP and South-Eastern British English. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Ball, Martin J. & Müller, Nicole. 2005. Phonetics for communication disorders. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bass, Michael. 2009. Street or shtreet? Investigating (str-) palatalisation in Colchester English. Estro: Essex Student Research Online 1 (1), 1021.Google Scholar
Blevins, Juliette. 2005. The role of phonological predictability in sound change: Privileged reduction in Oceanic reduplicated substrings. Oceanic Linguistics 44, 455464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2010. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.1.26). http://www.praat.org/ (retrieved 2 February 2010). [Computer program]Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2007. Frequency and the organization of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delattre, Pierre & Freeman, Donald C.. 1968. A dialect study of American R's by X-ray motion picture. Linguistics 44, 2968.Google Scholar
Durian, David. 2007. Getting [ʃ]tronger every day? More on urbanization and the socio-geographic diffusion of (str) in Columbus, OH. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 13 (2), 6579.Google Scholar
Firth, J. R. 1948. Sounds and prosodies. Transactions of the Philological Society, 127–152.Google Scholar
Henderson, Eugénie J. A. 1949. Prosodies in Siamese. Asia Major 1, 189215.Google Scholar
Janda, Richard D. & Joseph, Brian D.. 2003. Reconsidering the canons of sound-change: Towards a ‘big bang’ theory. In Blake, Barry J. & Burridge, Kate (eds.), Historical linguistics 2001: Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 13–17 August 2001, 205219. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Keith. 2003. Acoustic and auditory phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Jongman, Allard, Wayland, Ratree & Wong, Serena. 2000. Acoustic characteristics of English fricatives. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 108 (3), 12521263.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Labov, William. 1984. Field methods of the project on language change and variation. In Baugh, John & Schezer, Joel (eds.), Language in use, 2853. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2001. Principles of linguistic change: Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter. 2006. A course in phonetics, 5th edn. Boston, MA: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
LaRiviere, Conrad, Winitz, Harris & Herriman, Eve. 1975. The distribution of perceptual cues in English prevocalic fricatives. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 18, 613622.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lass, Roger. 1984. Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Laver, John. 1994. Principles of phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, Wayne. 2000. /str/ → /ʃtr/: Assimilation at a distance? American Speech 75, 8287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Local, John K. 2003. Variable domains and variable relevance: Interpreting phonetic exponents. Journal of Phonetics 31, 321339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maclagan, Margaret & Gillon, Gail. 2007. New Zealand English speech acquisition. In McLeod, Sharynne (ed.), International guide to speech acquisition, 257268. Clifton. Park, NY: Delmar Thomas.Google Scholar
Maniwa, Kazumi, Jongman, Allard & Wade, Travis. 2008. Perception of clear English fricatives by normal-hearing and simulated hearing-impaired listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123, 11141125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Munson, Benjamin, McDonald, Elizabeth C., DeBoe, Nancy L. & White, Aubrey R.. 2006. The acoustic and perceptual bases of judgments of women and men's sexual orientation from read speech. Journal of Phonetics 34, 202240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogden, Richard. 2009. An introduction to English phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Betty. 2001. Lexical diffusion, lexical frequency, and lexical analysis. In Bybee, Joan & Hopper, Paul (eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure, 123136. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Betty. 2006. Word frequency and lexical diffusion. New York: Pelgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickett, James M. 1999. The acoustics of speech communication. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Reetz, Henning & Jongman, Allard. 2009. Phonetics: Transcription, production, acoustics, and perception. Cambridge, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Michael. 1995. A case of distant assimilation: /str/–/ʃtr/. American Speech 70, 701−101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuraw, Kie. 2003. Probability in language change. In Bod, Rens, Hay, Jennifer & Jannedy, Stefanie (eds.), Probabilistic linguistics, 139176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar