Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
7532710 Journal of Phonetics 2018 14 Pages PDF
Abstract
V1.V2 hiatus is disallowed in many languages. In several varieties of English, when V1 is non-high, hiatus may be resolved by glottalization or /ɹ/ insertion. However, it is not well understood why speakers choose one over the other. In addition, questions remain about how foot boundary influences the hiatus-breaking strategy and whether perceived /ɹ/ is a phonetic transition or segmental insertion. Using an elicited production task, we investigated the effect of foot boundary on hiatus resolution and examined whether perceived inserted /ɹ/ exerts co-articulatory influence on V1 onset as predicted if it is segmental. Hiatus contexts were constructed from two types of coda-less nouns to generate V1 (e.g. paw without orthographic 'r', door with orthographic 'r') followed by one of three onset-less prepositions ('under', 'above', 'of'). Foot boundary locations were manipulated in three metrical conditions to examine gradient influence of foot boundary proximity (e.g. 'This is the [paw] under the dog', 'This is the [paw a]bove the dog', 'This is the [paw of the] dog'). Results showed complementarity between glottalization and /ɹ/ insertion. Expanding the distance between the hiatus and foot boundary increased the use of /ɹ/ and decreased glottalization. F3 lowering at V1 onset occurred in perceived /ɹ/ contexts, providing acoustic evidence for inserted segmental /ɹ/.
Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Arts and Humanities Language and Linguistics
Authors
, , ,