Tracking the phonological status of /l/ in Newfoundland English: Experiments in articulation and acoustics

Decker, Paul De; Mackenzie, Sara

doi:10.1121/1.4991349

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…in dark /l/) involves tongue body backing, the degree of velarization can be measured acoustically via the difference between F1 and F2 values (Morris, ; Simonet, ; Van Hofwegen, ). This cline of velarization has been observed in the context of language across varieties of English (DeDecker & Mackenzie, ; Morris, ; Van Hofwegen, ).…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 55%

Embodying “tech”: Articulatory setting, phonetic variation, and social meaning

Pratt

2019

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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This article examines the co‐occurring realization of two sociophonetic variables within a style—the LOT vowel in English and word‐initial /l/—to explore the link between articulatory setting and stylistic practice. At an arts‐focused high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, the curricular and social practices of students in the technical theatre department centre around manual labour. Ethnographic analysis demonstrates that “tech” constitutes a locally enregistered persona, informed by tech students’ positioning as working‐class subjects through their bodily, sartorial, and technological practices. Tech students also produce higher and more rounded variants of LOT, and more velarized productions of /l/, than their non‐tech peers, and I suggest that articulatory setting is at play in the cohesive indexicality of these variants. I advocate for the continued exploration of co‐occurring sociolinguistic variables which treat the body as a broader stylistic context, and propose that studies of co‐occurring features focus on the ideological processes by which combinations of variables come to index thematic styles.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 55%

Embodying “tech”: Articulatory setting, phonetic variation, and social meaning

Pratt

2019

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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“…Therefore, we can expect that vocalization of context of /l/-darkening, is not direct. Some studies report /l/-darkening differences realized along the F2 dimensions with no detectable midsagittal articulatory correlates (De Decker & Mackenzie, 2017;Turton, 2014). Furthermore, Ying, Shaw, Kroos, and Best (2012) report a correlation between tongue dorsum advancement and F2 lowering.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Locating de-lateralization in the pathway of sound changes affecting coda /l/

Strycharczuk

Derrick

Shaw

2020

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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'Vocalization' is a label commonly used to describe an ongoing change in progress affecting coda /l/ in multiple accents of English. The label is directly linked to the loss of consonantal constriction observed in this process, but it also implicitly signals a specific type of change affecting manner of articulation from consonant to vowel, which involves loss of tongue lateralization, the defining property of lateral sounds. In this study, we consider two potential diachronic pathways of change: an abrupt loss of lateralization which follows from the loss of apical constriction, versus slower gradual loss of lateralization that tracks the articulatory changes to the dorsal component of /l/. We present articulatory data from seven speakers of New Zealand English, acquired using a combination of midsagittal and lateral EMA, as well as midsagittal ultrasound. Different stages of sound change are reconstructed through synchronic variation between light, dark, and vocalized /l/, induced by systematic manipulation of the segmental and morphosyntactic environment, and complemented by comparison of different individual articulatory strategies. Our data show a systematic reduction in lateralization that is conditioned by increasing degrees of /l/-darkening and /l/-vocalization. This observation supports the idea of a gradual diachronic shift and the following pathway of change: /l/-darkening, driven by the dorsal gesture, precipitates some loss of lateralization, which is followed by loss of the apical gesture. This pathway indicates that loss of lateralization is an integral component in the changes in manner of articulation of /l/ from consonantal to vocalic.

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“…In English, the distribution and realization of allophones of /l/ varies significantly across dialects and this dialectal variation has also been subject to extensive instrumental investigations (e.g., Scobbie & Wrench, 2003;Carter & Local, 2007;Turton, morphological constituency andsegmental context Art. 13, page 4 of 34 2014, 2017;De Decker & Mackenzie, 2017). Allophones identified as dark and light differ in acoustic and articulatory properties.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

North American /l/ both darkens and lightens depending on morphological constituency and segmental context

Mackenzie

Olson

Clayards

et al. 2018

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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It is uncontroversial that, in many varieties of English, the realization of /l/ varies depending on whether /l/ occurs word-initially or word-finally. The nature of this effect, however, remains controversial. Previous analyses alternately analyzed the variation as darkening or lightening, and alternately found evidence that the variation involves a categorical distinction between allophones or a gradient scale conditioned by phonetic factors. We argue that these diverging conclusions are a result of the numerous factors influencing /l/ darkness and differences between studies in terms of which factors are considered. By controlling for a range of factors, our study demonstrates a pattern of variability that has not been shown in previous work. We find evidence of morpheme-final darkening and morpheme-initial lightening when compared to a baseline of morpheme-internal /l/. We also find segmental effects such that, in segmental contexts which independently darken /l/, one can observe /l/ lightening, and contexts which independently lighten /l/ can make lightening effects undetectable. Morphological and prosodic effects are hence sometimes trumped by segmental context. Once contextual effects are controlled for, there is evidence both for morphologically-conditioned /l/-darkening and for morphologicallyconditioned /l/-lightening, both of which can be understood as a result of prosodic differences reflecting morphological junctures.

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Tracking the phonological status of /l/ in Newfoundland English: Experiments in articulation and acoustics

Cited by 11 publications

References 28 publications

Embodying “tech”: Articulatory setting, phonetic variation, and social meaning

Embodying “tech”: Articulatory setting, phonetic variation, and social meaning

Locating de-lateralization in the pathway of sound changes affecting coda /l/

North American /l/ both darkens and lightens depending on morphological constituency and segmental context

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