Coarticulation guides sound change: an acoustic-phonetic study of real-time change in word-initial /l/ over four decades of Glaswegian
-
Rachel Macdonald
Abstract
Phonetic theories of sound change posit that coarticulatory factors systematically motivate the fine phonetic variation which promotes sound change time (Ohala 1981; Harrington and Schiel 2017). This chapter presents the first direct empirical evidence of how coarticulatory factors effectively control the progression of a sound change as it plays out in a community over real-time. Specifically, we show how the acoustic quality of word-initial /l/ in spontaneous Glaswegian vernacular speech changed across four decades, and in particular, we find that the change towards acoustic darkening of the lateral is both propelled, and resisted, entirely consistently with the kinds of predictions we would make from synchronic phonetic observation (Recasens and Espinosa 2005; Simonet 2015), namely that the darkening of the lateral takes place in acoustically “darker” preceding and following phonological contexts, and before acoustically “lighter” contexts, which resist darkening over time. An additional analysis of formant trajectories, using GAMM modelling, illustrates the diachronic impact of coarticulatory context on the dynamic acoustic quality of initial /l/. It also reveals how women led in the acoustic darkening of initial /l/ in Glasgow, underscoring the interaction of phonetic and social factors in the propagation of this real-time change.
Abstract
Phonetic theories of sound change posit that coarticulatory factors systematically motivate the fine phonetic variation which promotes sound change time (Ohala 1981; Harrington and Schiel 2017). This chapter presents the first direct empirical evidence of how coarticulatory factors effectively control the progression of a sound change as it plays out in a community over real-time. Specifically, we show how the acoustic quality of word-initial /l/ in spontaneous Glaswegian vernacular speech changed across four decades, and in particular, we find that the change towards acoustic darkening of the lateral is both propelled, and resisted, entirely consistently with the kinds of predictions we would make from synchronic phonetic observation (Recasens and Espinosa 2005; Simonet 2015), namely that the darkening of the lateral takes place in acoustically “darker” preceding and following phonological contexts, and before acoustically “lighter” contexts, which resist darkening over time. An additional analysis of formant trajectories, using GAMM modelling, illustrates the diachronic impact of coarticulatory context on the dynamic acoustic quality of initial /l/. It also reveals how women led in the acoustic darkening of initial /l/ in Glasgow, underscoring the interaction of phonetic and social factors in the propagation of this real-time change.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- On the nature of speech dynamics: approaches to studying synchronic variation and diachronic change 1
-
Part 1: Empirical perspectives on diachronic change
- Fifty years of monophthong and diphthong shifts in Mainstream Australian English 17
- Coarticulation guides sound change: an acoustic-phonetic study of real-time change in word-initial /l/ over four decades of Glaswegian 49
- The impact of automated phonetic alignment and formant tracking workflows on sound change measurement 89
- One place, two speech communities: differing responses to sound change in Mainstream and Aboriginal Australian English in a small rural town 117
- Prosodic change in 100 years: the fall of the rise-fall in an Albanian variety 145
-
Part 2: Factors conditioning synchronic variation
- Control of larynx height in vowel production revisited: a real-time MRI study 175
- Sheila’s roses (are in the paddick): reduced vowels in Australian English 207
- The future of the queen: how to pronounce “König✶innen” ‘gender-neutrally’ in German 245
- Synchronic variation and diachronic change: mora-counting and syllable-counting dialects in Japanese 273
- Reconstructing the timeline of a consonantal change in a German dialect: evidence from agent-based modeling 307
-
Part 3: Theoretical approaches at the interface between synchronic variation and diachronic change
- On (mis)aligned innovative perception and production norms 343
- Phonological patterns and dependency relations may arise from aerodynamic factors 369
- Actuation without production bias 395
- Understanding the role of broadcast media in sound change 425
- Connecting prosody and duality of patterning in diachrony, typology, phylogeny, and ontogeny 453
- Index 483
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- On the nature of speech dynamics: approaches to studying synchronic variation and diachronic change 1
-
Part 1: Empirical perspectives on diachronic change
- Fifty years of monophthong and diphthong shifts in Mainstream Australian English 17
- Coarticulation guides sound change: an acoustic-phonetic study of real-time change in word-initial /l/ over four decades of Glaswegian 49
- The impact of automated phonetic alignment and formant tracking workflows on sound change measurement 89
- One place, two speech communities: differing responses to sound change in Mainstream and Aboriginal Australian English in a small rural town 117
- Prosodic change in 100 years: the fall of the rise-fall in an Albanian variety 145
-
Part 2: Factors conditioning synchronic variation
- Control of larynx height in vowel production revisited: a real-time MRI study 175
- Sheila’s roses (are in the paddick): reduced vowels in Australian English 207
- The future of the queen: how to pronounce “König✶innen” ‘gender-neutrally’ in German 245
- Synchronic variation and diachronic change: mora-counting and syllable-counting dialects in Japanese 273
- Reconstructing the timeline of a consonantal change in a German dialect: evidence from agent-based modeling 307
-
Part 3: Theoretical approaches at the interface between synchronic variation and diachronic change
- On (mis)aligned innovative perception and production norms 343
- Phonological patterns and dependency relations may arise from aerodynamic factors 369
- Actuation without production bias 395
- Understanding the role of broadcast media in sound change 425
- Connecting prosody and duality of patterning in diachrony, typology, phylogeny, and ontogeny 453
- Index 483
