Please cite this article as: Zimmerer, F., Scharinger, M., Reetz, H., When BEAT becomes HOUSE: Factors of word final /t/-deletion in German, Speech Communication (2011Communication ( ), doi: 10.1016Communication ( /j.specom.2011 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.-1 -
When BEAT becomes HOUSE:
Factors of word final /t/-deletion in German
AbstractThe deletion and reduction of alveolar /t/ is a phenomenon that has been given considerable attention in the research on speech production and perception. Data have mainly be drawn from spoken language corpora, where a tight control over contributing factors of /t/-deletion is hardly possible. Here, we present a new way of creating a spoken language corpus adhering to some crucial factors we wanted to hold constant for the investigation of word-final /t/-deletion in German. German is especially interesting with regard to /t/ deletion due to its rich suffixal morphology, attributing morphological status to word-final /t/ in many paradigms. We focused on verb inflection and employed a verb form production task for creating a concise corpus of naturally spoken language in which we could control for factors previously established to affect /t/-deletion. We then determined the best estimators for /t/-productions (i.e. canonical, deleted, or reduced) in our corpus. The influence of extra-linguistic factors was comparable to previous studies. We suggest that our method of constructing a natural language corpus with carefully selected characteristics is a viable way for the examination of deletions and reductions during speech production. Furthermore, we found that the best predictor for non-canonical productions and deletions was the following phonological context.