DO LEARNERS CONNECT SOCIOPHONETIC VARIATION WITH REGIONAL AND SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS?

Learners must develop the ability to perceive linguistic and social meaning in their second language (L2) to interact effectively, but relatively little is known about how learners link social meaning to a single phonetic variable. Using a matched-guise test targeting coda /s/ (realized as [s] or debuccalized [h]), we explore whether L2 Spanish learners identify native speakers’ social characteristics based on phonetic variants. Our results indicate that advanced learners were more sensitive to sociophonetic information; advanced listeners who had completed a phonetics course were significantly more likely to categorize /s/ reducers as Caribbean and those who had studied abroad in aspirating regions recognized a relationship between coda /s/ and status. To account for the complex interplay among proficiency, explicit instruction, and dialectal exposure in the development of L2 sociophonetic perception, we suggest the union of the L2 Linguistic Perception Model with exemplar models of phonological representation and indexical meaning.

The Trini Sing-Song: Sociophonetic variation in Trinidadian English prosody and differences to other varieties

The current study provides a phonetic perspective on the questions of whether a high degree of variability in pitch may be considered a characteristic, endonormative feature of Trinidadian English (TrinE) at the level of speech production and contribute to what is popularly described as ‘sing-song’ prosody. Based on read and spontaneous data from 111 speakers, we analyze pitch level, range, and dynamism in TrinE in comparison to Southern Standard British (BrE) and Educated Indian English (IndE) and investigate sociophonetic variation in TrinE prosody with a view to these global F0 parameters. Our findings suggest that a large pitch range could potentially be considered an endonormative feature of TrinE that distinguishes it from other varieties (BrE and IndE), at least in spontaneous speech. More importantly, however, it is shown that a high degree of pitch variation in terms of range and dynamism is not as much characteristic of TrinE as a whole as it is of female Trinidadian speakers. An important finding of this study is that pitch variation patterns are not homogenous in TrinE, but systematically sociolinguistically conditioned across gender, age, and ethnic groups, and rural and urban speakers. The findings thus reveal that there is a considerable degree of systematic local differentiation in TrinE prosody. On a more general level, the findings may be taken to indicate that endonormative tendencies and sociolinguistic differentiation in TrinE prosody are interlinked.

The sociolinguistics of /l/ in Manchester

This paper presents a study of sociophonetic variation in the lateral approximant /l/ in Manchester, UK. We know little about how English laterals pattern sociolinguistically, despite them having been subject to extensive investigation in the phonetic literature. We present acoustic measures taken from interviews with 96 speakers from the city, stratified across five socioeconomic classes, spanning 99 years of birthdates (1907–2006). We demonstrate that word-initial /l/ is becoming darker in apparent time: younger speakers have darker /l/s. There is, however, no evidence that the allophonic status of /l/ is changing, with /l/ in all positions becoming darker. There is a monotonic relationship with social class: the higher the social class, the lighter the /l/, with some middle-class speakers showing potential of an allophonic distribution. We find an effect of ethnicity, with white speakers having darker /l/s in comparison to Black and Pakistani Mancunians. Overall, our findings are a novel contribution to the understanding of the sociophonetics of English laterals and provide new evidence of social patterning and the allophonic status of /l/ in this variety.

Analyzing phonetic data with generalized additive mixed models

This chapter provides a user's guide to analysing phonetic data with the Generalized Additive Model (GAM). We show how GAMs can be used to capture the different kinds of nonlinear effects and patterns that are ubiquitous in phonetic data. To illustrate how GAMs work, we present analyses of three datasets of Taiwan Mandarin, addressing nonlinearities in time series of experimental response times, in F0 contours, and in the geographic distribution of sociophonetic variation. By building models incrementally, we clarify the kinds of problem that arise at various stages of analysis, and show how these can be addressed within the GAM framework. In our analyses, we also show how variation between individual speakers can be accounted for.

A large-scale smartphone-based sociophonetic study of Taiwan Mandarin

This study aims to (i) identify patterns of sociophonetic variation in Taiwan Mandarin, and (ii) evaluate smartphone technologies as a tool for crowdsourcing sociophonetic data. Specifically, this study examines both phonological variables found in prior literature to be highly salient (deretroflexion, labiovelar glide deletion), and variables that are less likely to index social properties (merging of final /n, ŋ/, changes to Tones 2 and 3). Unlike past studies which have primarily relied on smaller sample sizes, I utilize a smartphone application to crowdsource audio recordings across Taiwan; subsequent Rbrul analysis of 292 recordings revealed robust patterns of sociolinguistic variation. Deretroflexion correlates strongly with gender and age, while glide deletion correlates with gender. Nasal final merging and tonal change exhibit less socio-indexical variation, but provide evidence of potential change in progress. These findings suggest that smartphone-based crowdsourcing can complement traditional sociolinguistic fieldwork, and reveal new knowledge about large-scale variation.

Acquisition of sociophonetic variation

This study investigates the acquisition of nativelike variation in the production of Spanish /d/ by English-speaking learners. Specifically, we examine the production of /d/ in word-internal intervocalic position in the speech of 13 highly advanced nonnative speakers (NNSs) and 13 native speakers (NSs) of Spanish in digitally-recorded sociolinguistic interviews. The analysis includes a discrete categorization of /d/ realization based on spectrographic examination (stop vs. spirant vs. deleted) and a continuous intensity difference measure. Tokens were coded for grammatical category, surrounding segments, stress, number of syllables, and lexical frequency. Results indicate that both NNSs and NSs exhibit /d/ spirantization and deletion, but these two processes are affected by different factors both between and across groups: NNS deletion patterns are predicted most significantly by lexical frequency, whereas degree of spirantization is influenced by articulatory/contextual factors of phonetic context and stress. NS patterns for both processes are influenced by most factors in a similar manner.