American sociolinguists have largely ignored obstruents as invariant, including how speakers distinguish /s, t/ from /z, d/. Upper Midwestern final obstruents provide clear evidence that the realization of such contrasts can and does vary. In a once German-speaking Wisconsin town, we have found that speakers systematically produce final laryngeal distinctions differently than reported for American English, with an apparent partial neutralization of the distinction. Here, we seek the historical antecedents of this pattern, comparing acoustic characteristics of recordings from speakers throughout the region born from 1866-1986. Analysis by date of birth shows distinct obstruent phonetics over this whole period, revealing striking changes in which acoustic cues have been exploited to maintain the distinction: The oldest speakers used primarily glottal pulsing, younger ones exhibit a "trading relation" between pulsing and preceding-vowel duration, and the youngest have reduced the acoustic cues of the distinction dramatically.This article provides evidence that the phonetics of laryngeal or "voicing" distinctions in regional American English, observable in minimal pairs sing~zing, bussing~buzzing, hiss~his, vary and change in systematic and previously unappreciated ways. Examination of multiple acoustic characteristics for the phonological voicing distinction in syllable codas indicates that the cues are used in tandem, and

A once predominantly German-speaking community in Watertown, Wisconsin,shows distinct phonetic and phonological traces of that immigrant heritage in the speech of its English-speaking monolinguals. Acoustic and perceptual studies suggest that speakers do not produce all the expected cues for English fi nal laryngeal distinctions, nor do they exploit those cues to the same degree as a set of control speakers. This instance, for which the language varieties and contact situation involved are all well understood, provides good evidence for structural influence from a substrate and provides a challenge to conventional views of language contact.

The German /r/ sound is one of the most difficult sounds for American English (AE) speakers learning German as a foreign language. Part of this difficulty may be due to its rich phonetic variation. The standard German /r/ variant [R] and dialectal variant [R′] are achieved by varying the tongue constriction degree while keeping place of articulation constant [Schiller and Mooshammer (1995)]. The close articulatory proximity of these allophones provides an opportunity for testing the relationship between perception and production in L2 sound acquisition. The aim of this study is to investigate how well experienced AE speakers and naive AE speakers can discriminate and produce the difference between the uvular fricative [R] versus the uvular trill [R′]. Two groups of AE subjects who participated in an imitation study were prompted to produce single words beginning with either [R] or [R′]. Subjects also participated in a discrimination and categorization test. Preliminary results suggest that inexperienced AE can discriminate [R] versus [R′] well. They often perceive the sounds as /h/ and are more successful at producing [R′] than [R]. Experienced speakers also discriminate the two sounds well, perceive both sounds as the German /r/ and struggle more with producing [R′] than [R].

This study investigates the discrimination and categorization of two German /r/ allophones—the uvular fricative [R’] and the uvular trill [R]—by experienced and naive American English (AE) speakers. Two groups of AE speakers participated in a categorization experiment followed by a discrimination experiment. Preliminary results suggest that experienced AE speakers perceive both variants predominantly as a German /r/ sound, followed by an English /r/ sound. Inexperienced AE speakers also predominantly perceive both variants as a foreign /r/; however, their second most frequent selection during the experiment was “no category,” reflecting their inability to categorize the two variants. These results suggest a qualitative perception difference between the two groups. The experiment also revealed no significant categorization difference between the two types of /r/ allophones. The results of the discrimination experiment revealed that both groups of AE speakers performed equally well on average; however, the standard deviation of percent correct scores is greater for inexperienced AE participants than experienced AE participants. The obtained results will be discussed in relation to existing second language acquisition models.