Cue switching in the perception of approximants: Evidence from two English dialects

Abstract

A surprising dissimilarity is attested in the perception of approximants by speakers of American and Standard Southern British English. Eighteen subjects (6 AE and 12 SSBE) performed an identification task in which they judged whether stimuli were more like /r/ or /w/. The stimuli comprised five sounds, copy-synthesised from a source /r/, where the values of F2 and F3 we adjusted to fall between the frequencies typical for ["turned r"] and [w]. The only significant difference between the two dialect groups' performance occurred with a token in which F3 was at a frequency typical for /r/ and F2 was lowered to that of /w/. AE and SSBE speakers identified this token as /r/ 90% and 59% of the time, respectively. This is unexpected as /r/ in both dialects is characterised by a low F3. However, the difference may be due to the existence of the 'labiodental' variant of /r/ in SSBE. As this variant does not have a low F3, SSBE speakers must tolerate a wider diversity of /r/-types than AE speakers. Therefore, the /r/ category in SSBE may be becoming increasingly defined by F2, rather than F3, which also has implications for the future production of /r/ in this accent