covert articulation of scottish english /r/ now you see and hear it… now you don’t mfm 14 2006...

Covert articulation of Scottish English /r/ now you see and hear it…

now you don’tMFM 14 2006Manchester

James M Scobbie Speech Science Research Centre, QMUC

Jane Stuart-Smith English Language, Glasgow

Overview

• Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose When is phonological change phonological?How is fine phonetic detail grammaticalised?What are phonological features?What is a phonological inventory?

• Coda /r/ derhoticisation in Scottish EnglishStudy 1: Auditory and acoustic – socially stratifiedStudy 2: Ultrasound Tongue Imaging – pilot

Coda /r/ in Scottish English• Scottish English is typically described as rhotic

(e.g. Wells, 1982: 10-11) • Coda /r/ is “phonetically” variable

[] - trills are rare and/or stereotypical (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996: 236)

[] - alveolar taps are more often noted (e.g. Johnston 1997)

[] [] – approximants – retroflex and post-alveolar - are also common

(e.g. Johnston 1997)

Coda /r/ is changing • Changes to coda /r/ have been reported in

working-class speakers in Edinburgh (e.g. Romaine 1978) and Glasgow (Johnston 1997; Stuart-Smith 2003) to a very weak approximant vowels produced with secondary articulation (e.g.

pharyngealization / uvularization)vowels without any audible secondary articulation,

i.e. similar to vowels in syllables without /r/

Characteristics of /r/

• Differing acoustic properties for approximants

(e.g. Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996)

lowered F3 – retroflex and post-alveolar approximants

high F3 – uvular articulations

• Coda /r/ in Dutch also shows variable ‘deletion’

(Plug and Ogden 2003; Scobbie & Sebregts 2005)

longer vowels differing vowel and consonantal qualitycovert post-alveolar articulations

Study 1: Coda /r/ in Glaswegian

• 12 male working-class informants1m = 10-11 years2m = 12-13 years3m = 14-15 years4m = 40-60 years

• Words selected from larger wordlist

hat ban fan cat

heart barn farm card far car

Study 1: Coda /r/ in Glaswegian

• Impressionistic auditory analysistranscription

• Acoustic analysisduration of vocalic portionvowel quality by formant analysis (midpoint; every 5

pulses up to and including end of vocalic portion)

Auditory results

Older speakers showed most articulated /r/ - [] [] []:

[] 4m1_farm and even []:

[] 4m2_car

Auditory results

Younger speakers showed: weakly approximated [] [] []:

[] 3m1_far pharyngealized/uvularized vowels:

[a] 2m1_card

Auditory results

Younger speakers showed - vowels with no audible ‘colouring’

[] 1m3_car

odd instances of vowels followed by [h] or []

[] 3m3_far

Acoustic analysis - duration

Overall, the vocalic portion of words with /r/ is longer than those without /r/ (p =.0039).

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hat cat ban fan heart card barn farm far car

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1m1

1m2

1m3

Age group 1

Acoustic analysis - duration

This is regardless of whether an apical /r/ is heard (red dots) or not.There is also some variation.

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hat cat ban fan heart card barn farm far car

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3m1

3m2

3m3

Age group 3

Acoustic analysis – vowel quality

Midpoint formant values show that words with /r/ are generally more retracted than for words without /r/.

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10001200140016001800F2 (Hz)

F1

(Hz)

a - 1m2 ar - 1m2 a - 1m3 ar - 1m3

Age group 1


Words heard with /r/ (red dots), tend to be even more retracted.

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10001100120013001400150016001700

F2 (Hz)

F1 (H

z)

a - 3m1 ar - 3m1 a - 3m2 ar - 3m2 a - 3m3 ar - 3m3

Age group 3


Sample tracks (3m1 ‘rhotic’) shows slight dip in (high) F3 in most words with /r/.

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endend-1end-2end-3end-4end-5

heart F1

heart F2

heart F3

card F1

card F2

card F3

barn F1

barn F2

barn F3

farm F1

farm F2

farm F3

far F1

far F2

far F3

car F1

car F2

car F33m1

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cat F1

cat F2

cat F3

hat F1

hat F2

hat F3

3m1


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ban F1

ban F2

ban F3

fan F1

fan F2

fan F3

cat F1

cat F2

cat F3

hat f1

hat f2

hat f3

3m3

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heart F1

heart F2

heart F3

card F1

card F2

card F3

barn F1

barn F2

barn F3

farm F1

farm F2

farm F3

far F1

far F2

far F3

car F1

car F2

car F33m3

Sample tracks (3m3 ‘pharyngealized /r/’) shows high, flat F3.

Phonological Implications• Has /r/ changed phonologically?

How can we tell? If only from neutralisation then “phonology” is thin

• What is changing in speakers’ grammars? Features and phonotactics?

o Place, manner, timing, duration, phonation all affected

Fine-grained phonetic targets?o Articulatory or acoustic? o How is variation encoded?

Why ultrasound?

• Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI)Relatively informalDynamicReal-timeImage of whole mid-sagittal tongue surfaceImpressionistic and objective analyses

• /r/ is characterised byOpen approximationMultiple articulations

Study 2. Pilot 1. Field transcription

• Glasgow Science Centre, QM open days, Edinburgh International Science FestivalLive qualitative analysisNumerous subjects (dozens)All age groups, wide spectrum of social mixHandheld probe plus microphonePossible to record data for re-analysis

• Visual and auditory transcription

Pilot 1. Preliminary results

• Lots of inter-speaker variation• Acoustically derhoticised /r/ is often

Acoustically something else (cf. Study 1)Articulatorily present

oMay involve retracted tongue rootoMay be anterior

– retroflex or bunched (inter & intra-speaker variation)

• Little or no meta-linguistic self-awareness of change or variation in /r/ among ScotsCf. labiodental /r/, vocalised /l/ and others

Study 2. Pilot 2. Lab study

• Laboratory recordingsStill piloting methodHead stabilisationHigher sampling rate to become available

• Subject read from semantic-class wordlist e.g. “eyes, hair, teeth, nose, ear, mouth”

Study 2. Pilot 2. UTI lab subjects

• Control rhotic speaker, female (23) Argyll• UTI shows characteristic retroflex /r/

bar harm

Pa ham

Study 2. Pilot 2. continued

• Derhoticiser, male (22) Edinburgh• Impressionistically

Coda /r/ vary from weak approximants to vocalisation

Onset /r/ is approximant or fricativeMedial /r/ may be tapOnset clusters are tapped, approx, affricated

• Other variables also suggest he is comparable to derhoticisers from Study 1

Pilot 2. Vowel space & inventoryVowel space

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9001100130015001700190021002300

F2

F1

i

3e

3E

3o

3I

3a3A3

Pilot 2. UTI – derhoticising speaker

• He has acoustic (and articulatory) rhotics

• Approximantsrain

• Taps ferry

Pilot 2. Acoustics – higher V + /r/

• Weakly rhoticised forms shading into derhoticised centring glides & diphthongs

Pilot 2. continued – lower vowels + /r/

• Derhoticisation is more frequent, with relatively monophthongal productions – yet no mergers?

• Weak syllables may sound highly vocalised

Articulatory dynamics with UTI

• Scobbie & Sebregts (2005) at MFM Dutch derhoticisationCovert /r/ reflex

oeasier to see, harder to hearo late, devoiced, weakened, coarticulated

• Scottish pilot speaker also has visible but not so audible anterior lingual constrictions

UTI orientation• A frame of [] from rain

• Tongue surfaceis the clearestfeature – whiteline

• Internalstructures are visible and helpgin transcription

UTI – derhoticising speaker

• Covert anterior rhotic-like post-alveolar tongue movement in derhoticised wordscar, storm, suburb

car towards end of phonation car target 120ms later

covert tip raising

Summary & discussion

• Fairly extreme auditory derhoticisation Listeners hear little rhoticity from speakers like thisProbably can acquire “same” contrasts, lexical sets

• Articulatory evidence of an [] (and an /r/)Anterior gestures are delayed and/or weakPosterior (pharyngeal?) gestures also seen

Targets

• We assume acoustic derhoticisation and covert articulatory targets are required in the grammarAre the targets compatible or incompatible?Speaker-hearer models suggest there is no need to give

either priority… they are in equilibrium

• Various modelsDemands from speech production tend to make speakers

economical with effort and reduce contrastivityPerceptual demands from listeners tend to make speakers

enhance contrasts

• Covert articulation is the opposite • Speakers / hearers have social demands too (Foulkes

& Docherty 2005)

Rough exemplar model

• A shared lexicon is crucialHighly detailed lexical entries (exemplars)Quantity of stored memories causes overlap and

abstraction of commonalitiesAbstraction = formation of

o categorical features (recurrent if functionally-motivated)o gradient tendencies (may also be recurrent)

• Sociophonetic variation is crucialIt stretches and structures phonetic variationLearning and abstraction are not replication of input

Rough exemplar model

• Within a prosodic position, nothing is gained by positing independent labels such as “/r/” in addition to the fine social and phonetic detail plus recognising emergent recurrent categories

(cf. Docherty 1992, Scobbie 2006)

Rough Model

• We create a system mediated by the input

• Our intended output is mediated by our articulation

• Cognitive knowledge has to reflect all three loci

TheSpeaker

HearerTheCommunity

Conclusion

• Derhoticisation is a typical phenomenon of central phonological interest

• To merely describe the linguistic situation in Scottish EnglishWe need more phonetic detail We need more social detail

• To develop theories of the traditional core topics of phonology We need new quantitative evidence of all sorts

THE END

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covert articulation of scottish english /r/ now you see and hear it… now you don’t mfm 14 2006...

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