The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics

Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 22
[Paper List] [Goto Volume List]

[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 22, No. 0, pp. 1133-1158
Abbreviation: KASELL
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Received 25 Aug 2022 Revised 20 Oct 2022 Accepted 30 Oct 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.22..202210.1133

A Mismatch in Completeness between Acoustic and Perceptual Neutralization in English Flapping
Gwanhi Yun
Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Daegu University 201 Daegudae-ro, Gyeongsan Gyeongbuk, 38453, Korea, Tel: 053) 850-6025 (ghyun@daegu.ac.kr)


© 2022 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract

This study attempts to reveal the acoustical characteristics of flapped /t/s and /d/s as well as phonetic correlates of word-final /t,d/ contrast and to examine whether English native listeners distinguish a flapped /t/ and /d/ by using the durations of pre-flap vowels. For these purposes, production and perception experiments were administered for English native speakers. First, we found that word final devoicing does not occur in /t,d/ contrast and significant differences lie in many acoustic correlates, including durations of preceding vowels, stop closure durations, voicing duration and F0 of the preceding vowels. Second, the result showed the evidence that English flapping is incomplete neutralization, exhibiting that many acoustic properties differ between /t/ flaps and /d/ flaps in duration of pre-flap vowels, flap duration, voicing duration and VOT. Furthermore, the perception task yielded high perceptibility of word final /t,d/ contrast due to the availability of many acoustic cues. Next, it was shown that English listeners have difficulty in deciding whether a flap is an underlying /t/ or /d/. This suggests that complete neutralization engenders imperceptibility of /t/ flaps and /d/ flaps. Finally, our identification test revealed that the manipulation of the duration of the pre-flap vowels does not function as a perceptual cue for word medial /t/-/d/ contrast embedded in a flapping environment.

Keywords: flapping, word final devoicing, (in)complete neutralization, acoustic correlates of voicing, (im)perceptiblity, length of pre-flap vowels
References
1. Boersma, P. and D. Weenink. 2020. Praat: Doing phonetics by Computer. Version 6.1.
2. Braver, A. 2011. Incomplete neutralization in American English flapping: A production study. Proceedings of the 34th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium 17, 30-40
3. Braver, A. 2013. Degrees of Incompleteness in Neutralization: Paradigm Uniformity in a Phonetics with Weighted Constraints. Doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University.
4. Burrows, L. E. 2014. The Learning of Phonetic Flap by English Language Learners: Data from Kindergarten and Fourth Grade. Doctoral dissertation, University of Memphis.
5. Byrd, D. 1994. Relations of sex and dialect to reduction. Speech Communication 15, 39-54.
6. Chambers, J. K. 2006. Canadian raising retrospect and prospect. Canadian Journal of Linguistcs 51, 105-118.
7. Charles-Luce, J. 1997. Cognitive factors involved in preserving a phonemic contrast. Language and Speech 40, 229-248.
8. Connine, C. M. 2004. It’s not what you hear but how often you hear it: On the neglected role of phonological variant frequency in auditory word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 11, 1084-1089.
9. Derrick, D., I. Stavness and B. Gick. 2015. Three speech sounds, one motor action: Evidence for speech-motor disparity from English flap production. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 137(3), 1493-1502.
10. de Jong, K. 1998. Stress-related variation in the articulation of coda alveolar stops: Flapping revisited. Journal of Phonetics 26, 283-310.
11. Eddington, D. and D. Elzinga. 2008. The phonetic context of American English flapping: Quantitative evidence. Language and Speech 51(3), 245-266.
12. Fox, R. A. and D. Terbeek. 1977. Dental flaps, vowel duration and rule ordering in American English. Journal of Phonetics 5, 27-34.
13. Herd, W., A. Jongman and J. Sereno. 2010. An acoustic and perceptual analysis of /t/ and /d/ flaps in American English. Journal of Phonetics 38, 504-516.
14. Jongman, A. 2004. Phonological and phonetic representations: The case of neutralization. Proceedings of the 2003 Texas Linguistics Society Conference, 9-16.
15. Jongman, A., J. Sereno, M. Raaijmakers and A. Lahiri. 1992. The phonological representation of [voice] in speech perception. Language and Speech 35, 137-152.
16. Joos, M. 1942. A phonological dilemma in Canadian English. Language 18(2), 141-144.
17. Khan, D. 1980. Syllable-based Generalizations in English Phonology. New York: Garland.
18. Lavoie, L. M. 2000. Phonological Patterns and Phonetic Manifestations of Consonant Weakening. Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University.
19. Lee, M. K. 2022. A foot-based approach to English /t/-lenition. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 28(2), 259-280.
20. Malécot, A. and P. Lloyd. 1968. The /t/:/d/ distinction in American alveolar flaps. Lingua 19, 264-272.
21. McCarthy, J. 2001. A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory. Research Surveys in Linguistics.
22. Mitterer, H. and M. Ernestus. 2006. Listeners recover /t/s that speakers reduce: Evidence from /t/-lenition in Dutch. Journal of Phonetics 34, 73-103.
23. Patterson, D. and C. M. Connine. 2001. Variant frequency in flap production: A corpus analysis of variant frequency in American English flap production. Phonetica 58, 254-275.
24. Port, R. 1976. Influence of tempo on the closure interval cue to the voicing and place of intervocalic stops. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 59, 1208.
25. Port, R. 1981. Linguistic timing factors in combination. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 69, 262-274.
26. Riehl, A. K. 2003. American English flapping: Perceptual and acoustic evidence against paradigm uniformity with phonetic features. Working Papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory 15, 271-337.
27. Roettger, T., B. Winter, S. Grawunder, J. Kirby and M. Grice. 2014. Assessing incomplete neutralization of final devoicing in German. Journal of Phonetics 43, 11-25.
28. Selkirk, E. 1982. The syllable. In H. van der Hulst and N. Smith, eds., The Structure of Phonological Representations Part II, 337-383. Dordrecht: Foris.
29. Sharf, D. J. 1960. Distinctiveness of 'voiced T' words. Amercian Speech 35, 105-109.
30. Simonet, M., M. Rohena-Madrazo and M. Paz. 2008. Preliminary evidence of incomplete neutralization of coda liquids in Puerto Rican Spanish. In L. Colantoni and J. Steele, eds., Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonology III, 72-86. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.
31. Steriade, D. 2000. Paradigm uniformity and the phonetics-phonology boundary. In M. Broe and J. Pierrehumbert, eds., Papers in Laboratory Phonology 83, 213-238.
32. Stathopoulos, E. T. and G. Weisner. 1983. Closure duration of stop consonants. Journal of Phonetics 11, 395-400.
33. Sung, E.-K. 2003. Acoustics and perception of flaps in American English and Korean. Language Research 39(4), 933-958.
34. Turk, A. 1992. The American English flapping rule and the effect of stress on stop consonant durations. Working Papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory 7, 103-133.
35. Warner, N., A. Fountain and B. V. Tucker. 2009. Cues to the perception of reduced flaps. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 125, 3317-3327.
36. Warner, N., A. Jongman, J. Sereno and R. Kemps. 2004. Incomplete neutralization and other sub-phonemic durational differences in production and perception: Evidence from Dutch. Journal of Phonetics 32, 251-276.
37. Warner, N., E. Good, Al. Jongman and J. Sereno. 2006. Orthography vs. morphological incomplete neutralization effects. Journal of Phonetics 34, 285-293.
38. White, L. and A. Turk. 2010. English words on the Procrustean bed: Polysyllabic shortening reconsidered. Journal of Phonetics 38, 459-471.
39. Yavaʂ, M. 2011. Applied English Phonology. Wiley-Blackwell.
40. Yun, G. 2015. Complete flapping through polysyllabic shortening in English. Paper presented at 2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology. UBC, Canada.
41. Zue, V. W. and M. Laferriere. 1979. Acoustic study of medial /t, d/ in American English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 66, 1038-1050.