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Acoustic analysis of a sound change in progress: The consonant cluster /stɹ/ in English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

Ben Rutter
Ben Rutter*
Affiliation:
Department of Human Communication Sciences, The University of [email protected]
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Abstract

For some speakers of English, realization of the fricative in the consonant cluster /stɹ/may be undergoing a sound change in progress. Previous reports suggest that /s/ is being realized as the postalveolar fricative [ʃ], with the approximant /ɹ/ as a possible trigger. Research in sociolinguistics also indicates that there may be various intermediate stages of the change, falling somewhere between a typical /ʃ/ and /s/. However, information about the precise phonetic characteristics of these novel variants is still sparse, and existing sociolinguistic studies have not compared speakers’ realization of /stɹ/ to their typical /s/ and /ʃ/ productions. This paper uses the acoustic measurement of spectral peak to compare ten English speakers’ productions of the onsets /ʃ/, /ʃɹ/, /stɹ/, and /s/. The findings suggest that the majority of tokens produced by these speakers fall within their normal range for /ʃ/, with only limited evidence of intermediate forms. It is proposed that spectral peak measurement seems to be a stable method for use in future research categorizing variants of /stɹ/. However, this should include comparison to subjects’ normal /ʃ/ productions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , April 2011 , pp. 27 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2011

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