Book contents
- Consonantal Sound Change in American English
- STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE
- Consonantal Sound Change in American English
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Phonetic and Phonological Background for Sibilant Analysis
- Chapter 3 Sound Change
- Chapter 4 Methodology and Data
- Chapter 5 Results
- Chapter 6 Discussion
- Chapter 7 Conclusion
- Glossary
- References
- Index
Chapter 6 - Discussion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 August 2023
- Consonantal Sound Change in American English
- STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE
- Consonantal Sound Change in American English
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Phonetic and Phonological Background for Sibilant Analysis
- Chapter 3 Sound Change
- Chapter 4 Methodology and Data
- Chapter 5 Results
- Chapter 6 Discussion
- Chapter 7 Conclusion
- Glossary
- References
- Index
Summary
Chapter 6 discusses both the phonological and the sociolinguistic findings of the study. It underlines that /str/-production is currently encroaching on the phonetic realization of post-alveolar sibilants for many speakers. Phonetically, there is no evidence for an effect of /t/, such that assimilation or coarticulation at a distance is likely. Lexical gradualness was found to be affected significantly be the age of speakers. The data further confirm phonetic gradualness as well as indicators of phonologization. The effect of duration in regression models serves as further evidence for coarticulation. From a sociolinguistic point of view, the chapter discusses the lack of a gender pattern and contrasts this with ethnicity. It further adresses the perception of /str/-clusters in the comments section, which support the assumption that /str/-retraction presents as change from below.
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- Consonantal Sound Change in American EnglishAn Analysis of Clustered Sibilants, pp. 195 - 207Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023