phonological and prosodic conditioning of /s/-retraction...

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Phonological and prosodic conditioning of/s/-retraction in American English

Jacob B. PhillipsUniversity of Chicago

17 July 2016

Jacob B. Phillips Phonological and prosodic conditioning of /s/-retraction

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Overview

I /s/-retraction is the phenomenon by which /s/ is realized asan [S]-like sound, especially when it occurs in an / stô/cluster. (Shapiro, 1995; Lawrence, 2000; Mielke et al., 2010;Baker et al., 2011; Rutter, 2011; Gylfadottir, 2015).

I i.e., ‘street’ is pronounced approaching [Stôit] rather than [stôit]I yet less advanced in other clusters, like /skr/ or /spr/

I i.e, ‘scream’ is not approaching [Skôim]


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Sociolinguistic overview

I “A general American innovation” (Shapiro, 1995): Not strictlydialectal or regional

I Equally exhibited by men and women (Gylfadottir, 2015);more female than male (Wilbanks, Forthcoming)


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Phonological overview

I /s/-retraction is a phonological (assimilatory) process and iscategorical (Shapiro, 1995; Rutter, 2011)

I /s/-retraction is a phonetic (coarticulatory) process and isgradient (Mielke et al., 2010; Baker et al., 2011; Gylfadottir,2015)


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Prosodic conditioning

I Segments adjacent to prosodic boundaries lengthencross-linguistically (Fougeron & Keating, 1997; Cho &Keating, 2001, 2009; Pycha, 2009).

I Segments with longer durations exhibit less coarticulation;segments adjacent to boundaries exhibit hyperarticulation(Fougeron & Keating, 1997; Cho & Keating, 2009).

I Korean sibilants adjacent to prosodic boundaries exhibit adampening in CoG (Jang, 2009, 2011).


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Predictions

I If /s/-retraction is coarticulation, sibilants should lengthenand exhibit less retraction in phrase-initial positions.

I If /s/-retraction is assimilation, sibilants should behyperarticulated in phrase-initial positions (either /s/ or /S/).

I A general dampening in CoG should be observed for sibilantsin phrase-initial positions.


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ParticipantsUndergraduate students at the University of Chicago. (21 male, 10female; 18–22 y.o.)


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Carrier phrases: Contrasting prosodic position of targets

initial I don’t know what he said to me.STRAIN or sage is maybe what he said.

medial I don’t know what he said.Maybe STRAIN or sage is what he said to me.


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Stimuli: Target words and their frequencies

word onset WF word onset WFbait /b/ 9.73 brake /bô/ 5.98dame /d/ 13.76 drake /dô/ 5.96gaze /g/ 2.53 grape /gô/ 4.00jade /dZ/ 5.08 sprain /spô/ 0.84sage /s/ 1.75 strain /stô/ 7.08shade /S/ 5.96 scrape /skô/ 4.12rave /ô/ 2.53 knave /n/ 0.37mace /m/ 3.49 lace /l/ 3.71

Table: Frequency values in instances per million words from SUBTLEXUS(Brysbaert & New, 2009).


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Phonological environment

CoG for /s/ and /S/ in different phonological environments.


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Timecourse of retraction

Mean CoG for each phonological environment across the duration of thesibilant.


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Sibilant Contrast

Relative CoG measurements for /s/ and /S/, demonstrating the role ofcontrastivity in retraction.


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Sibilant Contrast

Difference between prevocalic /s/ and /sCr/ CoG. Left 〈s〉V-〈s〉pr.Center: 〈s〉V-〈s〉tr. Right: 〈s〉V-〈s〉kr


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Prosodic Position

Mean CoG across all time points in both prosodic positions.Jacob B. Phillips Phonological and prosodic conditioning of /s/-retraction

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Duration

Left: effect of duration across all values of /s/. Right: effect ofduration by following segment.


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Prosodic Position

Time course of retraction for an individual displaying no effect ofthe interaction of Position*FollSegment.


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Prosodic Position

Time course of retraction for an individual displaying a significanteffect of the interaction of Position*FollSegment.


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Summary

I /s/-retraction is constrained by the individual’s phonologicalcontrast between /s/ and /S/.

I Following consonant clusters and adjacency to a prosodicboundary dampen CoG of /s/.

I Individuals vary greatly in the interaction of these twovariables.


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Implications

I Not only can higher order structures (e.g., phonological andprosodic systems) help us understand (systematic) variation atthe community level, but also the variation observed at theindividual level.

I I.e., Higher order structures explain both within- andbetween-speaker variation

I These findings suggest a role of prosodic position in theactuation and propagation of sound change.


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Thank you!


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Baker, Adam, Diana Archangeli & Jeff Mielke. 2011. Variability in American English s-retraction suggests asolution to the actuation problem. Language Variation and Change 23. 347–374.

Brysbaert, Marc & Boris New. 2009. Moving beyond Kucera and Francis: A critical evaluation of current wordfrequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English.Behavior Research Methods 41(4). 977–990.

Cho, Taehong & Patricia Keating. 2001. Articulatory and acoustic studies on domain-initial strengthening inKorean. Journal of Phonetics 29. 155–190.

Cho, Taehong & Patricia Keating. 2009. Effects of initial position versus prominence in English. Journal ofPhonetics 37(4). 466–485.

Fougeron, Cecile & Patricia Keating. 1997. Articulatory strengthening at edges of prosodic domains. The Journalof the Acoustical Society of America 101(6). 3728–3740.

Gylfadottir, Duna. 2015. Shtreets of Philadelphia: An acoustic study of /str/-retraction in a naturalistic speechcorpus. In University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 21 2, 2–11.

Jang, Mi. 2009. Prosodically driven phonetic properties in the production and perception of spoken Korean:University of Texas at Austin dissertation.

Jang, Mi. 2011. Prosodically driven phonetic properties in the production of Korean fricatives. Studies inPhonetics, Phonology and Morphology 17(1). 65–86.

Lawrence, Wayne P. 2000. /str/ → /Str/: Assimilaton at a distance? American Speech 75(1). 82–87.Mielke, Jeff, Adam Baker & Diana Archangeli. 2010. Variability and homogeneity in American English /r/

allophony and /s/ retraction. Laboratory Phonology .Pycha, Anne. 2009. Lengthened affricates as a test case for the phonetics–phonology interface. Journal of the

International Phonetic Association 39. 1–31.Rutter, Ben. 2011. Acoustic analysis of a sound change in progress: The consonant cluster /stÉź/ in english.

Journal of the International Phonetic Association 41. 27–40.Shapiro, Michael. 1995. A case of distant assimilation: /str/ → /Str/. American Speech 70(1). 101–107.Wilbanks, Eric. Forthcoming. Social and structural constraints on a phonetically motivated change in progress:

(str) retraction in Raleigh, NC. In Penn working papers in linguistics, vol. 23 1, .


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Sampling specification

I Spectral measurements (CoG, SD, Kurtosis, Skewness,Peak Frequency) were extracted from FAVE-alignedsegments.

I 40ms Hamming window with preemphasis at 80 HzI Frequency range 500 to 12000 HzI Centered at eleven points, measurements from the first

and last 20% of the fricative were excluded


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Mixed-effects model

CoG ∼ Order + Sex + CoG-/sh/ + (Position +TimePoint + FollSegment + SDuration +SpeechRate)2 + (1 + Order + (PositionFollSegment) | Participant).


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Estimate SE . t n <> p(Intercept) 7241.87 98.52 73.50 < 0.001**Order -14.25 22.98 -0.62 < 0.53Sex 377.36 53.47 7.05 < 0.001**CoG-/sh/ 271.60 19.82 12.70 < 0.001**Position -161.53 41.26 -3.91 < 0.001**TimePoint 249.74 19.53 12.78 < 0.001**FollSegment-/p/ -360.83 94.14 -3.83 < 0.001**FollSegment-/t/ -1078.90 132.26 -8.15 < 0.001**FollSegment-/k/ -476.66 96.82 -4.92 < 0.001**SDuration -119.28 33.57 -3.55 < 0.001**SpeechRate -239.63 61.90 -3.87 < 0.001**Position:TimePoint 40.44 6.88 5.87 < 0.001**Position:FollSegment-/p/ 84.72 56.10 1.51 < 0.13Position:FollSegment-/t/ 1.65 61.52 0.02 < 0.97Position:FollSegment-/k/ 21.58 68.46 0.31 < 0.75Position:SDuration 46.21 13.57 3.40 < 0.001**Position:SpeechRate -42.03 19.72 -2.13 < 0.33TimePoint:FollSegment-/p/ -176.68 25.51 -6.92 < 0.001**TimePoint:FollSegment-/t/ -173.28 27.08 -6.38 < 0.001**TimePoint:FollSegment-/k/ -120.78 27.60 -4.37 < 0.001**TimePoint:SDuration 38.72 8.74 4.42 < 0.001**TimePoint:SpeechRate -4.43 12.27 -0.36 < 0.71SDuration:FollSegment-/p/ 177.72 38.34 4.63 < 0.001**SDuration:FollSegment-/t/ 188.08 41.87 4.49 < 0.001**SDuration:FollSegment-/k/ 178.75 45.33 3.94 < 0.001**SDuration:SpeechRate 51.40 10.37 4.95 < 0.001**SpeechRate:FollSegment-/p/ 239.81 69.64 3.44 < 0.01*SpeechRate:FollSegment-/t/ 310.31 71.84 4.31 < 0.001**SpeechRate:FollSegment-/k/ 138.32 72.91 1.89 < 0.05

Table: Estimate, standard error, and statistical values for main andinteractions effects of all predictors.


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Retraction Ratio


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Prosodic Position

Time course of retraction for an individual (retractor) displaying no effectof the interaction of Position*FollSegment.


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Prosodic Position

Time course of retraction for an individual (non-retractor) displaying aneffect of the interaction only of Position*FollSegment-/k/.


phonological and prosodic conditioning of /s/-retraction...

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