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

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

• MFM 14 2006
• Manchester
• James M Scobbie Speech Science Research Centre,
  QMUC
• Jane Stuart-Smith English Language, Glasgow

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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 English
• Study 1 Auditory and acoustic socially
  stratified
• Study 2 Ultrasound Tongue Imaging pilot

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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)

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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/

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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 quality
• covert post-alveolar articulations

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Study 1 Coda /r/ in Glaswegian

• 12 male working-class informants
• 1m 10-11 years
• 2m 12-13 years
• 3m 14-15 years
• 4m 40-60 years
• Words selected from larger wordlist

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Study 1 Coda /r/ in Glaswegian

• Impressionistic auditory analysis
• transcription
• Acoustic analysis
• duration of vocalic portion
• vowel quality by formant analysis (midpoint
  every 5 pulses up to and including end of vocalic
  portion)

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Auditory results

• Older speakers showed most articulated /r/ - ?
  ? ?
• ? 4m1_farm and even ?

? 4m2_car
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Auditory results

• Younger speakers showed weakly approximated ?
  ? ?
• ? 3m1_far pharyngealized/uvularized
  vowels

a? 2m1_card
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Auditory results

• Younger speakers showed - vowels with no audible
  colouring
• ? 1m3_car
• odd instances of vowels
  followed by h or ?

?? 3m3_far
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Acoustic analysis - duration
Age group 1

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

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Acoustic analysis - duration
Age group 3

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

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Acoustic analysis vowel quality
Age group 1

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

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Acoustic analysis vowel quality
Age group 3

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

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Acoustic analysis vowel quality

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

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Acoustic analysis vowel quality
Sample tracks (3m3 pharyngealized /r/) shows
high, flat F3.
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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?
• Place, manner, timing, duration, phonation all
  affected
• Fine-grained phonetic targets?
• Articulatory or acoustic?
• How is variation encoded?

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Why ultrasound?

• Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI)
• Relatively informal
• Dynamic
• Real-time
• Image of whole mid-sagittal tongue surface
• Impressionistic and objective analyses
• /r/ is characterised by
• Open approximation
• Multiple articulations

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Study 2. Pilot 1. Field transcription

• Glasgow Science Centre, QM open days, Edinburgh
  International Science Festival
• Live qualitative analysis
• Numerous subjects (dozens)
• All age groups, wide spectrum of social mix
• Handheld probe plus microphone
• Possible to record data for re-analysis
• Visual and auditory transcription

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Pilot 1. Preliminary results

• Lots of inter-speaker variation
• Acoustically derhoticised /r/ is often
• Acoustically something else (cf. Study 1)
• Articulatorily present
• May involve retracted tongue root
• May be anterior
• retroflex or bunched (inter intra-speaker
  variation)
• Little or no meta-linguistic self-awareness of
  change or variation in /r/ among Scots
• Cf. labiodental /r/, vocalised /l/ and others

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Study 2. Pilot 2. Lab study

• Laboratory recordings
• Still piloting method
• Head stabilisation
• Higher sampling rate to become available
• Subject read from semantic-class wordlist
• e.g. eyes, hair, teeth, nose, ear, mouth

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Study 2. Pilot 2. UTI lab subjects

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

bar harm
Pa ham
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Study 2. Pilot 2. continued

• Derhoticiser, male (22) Edinburgh
• Impressionistically
• Coda /r/ vary from weak approximants to
  vocalisation
• Onset /r/ is approximant or fricative
• Medial /r/ may be tap
• Onset clusters are tapped, approx, affricated
• Other variables also suggest he is comparable to
  derhoticisers from Study 1

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Pilot 2. Vowel space inventory
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Pilot 2. UTI derhoticising speaker

• He has acoustic (and articulatory) rhotics
• Approximants
• rain
• Taps
• ferry

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Pilot 2. Acoustics higher V /r/

• Weakly rhoticised forms shading into derhoticised
  centring glides diphthongs

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Pilot 2. continued lower vowels /r/

• Derhoticisation is more frequent, with relatively
  monophthongal productions yet no mergers?
• Weak syllables may sound highly vocalised

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Articulatory dynamics with UTI

• Scobbie Sebregts (2005) at MFM
• Dutch derhoticisation
• Covert /r/ reflex
• easier to see, harder to hear
• late, devoiced, weakened, coarticulated
• Scottish pilot speaker also has visible but not
  so audible anterior lingual constrictions

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(No Transcript)
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UTI orientation

• A frame of ? from rain
• Tongue surfaceis the clearestfeature
  whiteline
• Internalstructures are visible and helpgin
  transcription

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UTI derhoticising speaker

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

car target 120ms later
car towards end of phonation
covert tip raising
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Summary discussion

• Fairly extreme auditory derhoticisation
• Listeners hear little rhoticity from speakers
  like this
• Probably can acquire same contrasts, lexical
  sets
• Articulatory evidence of an ? (and an /r/)
• Anterior gestures are delayed and/or weak
• Posterior (pharyngeal?) gestures also seen

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Targets

• We assume acoustic derhoticisation and covert
  articulatory targets are required in the grammar
• Are the targets compatible or incompatible?
• Speaker-hearer models suggest there is no need to
  give either priority they are in equilibrium
• Various models
• Demands from speech production tend to make
  speakers economical with effort and reduce
  contrastivity
• Perceptual demands from listeners tend to make
  speakers enhance contrasts
• Covert articulation is the opposite
• Speakers / hearers have social demands too
  (Foulkes Docherty 2005)

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Rough exemplar model

• A shared lexicon is crucial
• Highly detailed lexical entries (exemplars)
• Quantity of stored memories causes overlap and
  abstraction of commonalities
• Abstraction formation of
• categorical features (recurrent if
  functionally-motivated)
• gradient tendencies (may also be recurrent)
• Sociophonetic variation is crucial
• It stretches and structures phonetic variation
• Learning and abstraction are not replication of
  input

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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)

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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

The Speaker Hearer
The Community
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Conclusion

• Derhoticisation is a typical phenomenon of
  central phonological interest
• To merely describe the linguistic situation in
  Scottish English
• We 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

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THE END

• Thanks for listening and watching