Schwa Elision in Fast Speech: Segmental Deletion or Gestural Overlap?
Abstract
Pretonic schwa elision in fast speech (e.g. potato -› [pt]ato, demolish -›[dm]olish) has been studied by both phonologists and phoneticians to understandhow extralinguistic factors affect surface forms. Yet, both types of studies havemajor shortcomings. Phonological analyses attributing schwa elision to acrossthe-board segmental deletion have been based on researchers’ intuitions. Phoneticaccounts proposing that elision is best characterized as gestural overlap havebeen restricted to very few sequence types. In this study, 28 different [#CəC-]sequences are examined to define appropriate acoustic criteria for ‘elision’, toestablish whether elision is a deletion process or the endpoint of a continuum ofincreasing overlap, and to discover whether elision rates vary for individualspeakers. Results suggest that the acoustic patterns for elision are consistent withan overlap account. Individual speakers differ as to whether they increase elision
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© 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel
Articles in the same Issue
- Original Paper
- Schwa Elision in Fast Speech: Segmental Deletion or Gestural Overlap?
- Testing Licensing by Cue: A Case of Russian Palatalized Coronals
- On the Prosody of Orkney and Shetland Dialects
- Prosodic Shaping of Consonant Gemination in Cypriot Greek
- In Memoriam
- Peter Nielsen Ladefoged
- Leigh Lisker, PhD
- Further Section
- Publications Received for Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Original Paper
- Schwa Elision in Fast Speech: Segmental Deletion or Gestural Overlap?
- Testing Licensing by Cue: A Case of Russian Palatalized Coronals
- On the Prosody of Orkney and Shetland Dialects
- Prosodic Shaping of Consonant Gemination in Cypriot Greek
- In Memoriam
- Peter Nielsen Ladefoged
- Leigh Lisker, PhD
- Further Section
- Publications Received for Review
