Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T17:56:28.530Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contextualizing /s/ retraction: Sibilant variation and change in Washington D.C. African American Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2022

Kaylynn Gunter ,
Charlotte Vaughn  and
Tyler Kendall
Kaylynn Gunter*
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
Charlotte Vaughn
Affiliation:
University of Oregon & University of Maryland
Tyler Kendall
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent work has demonstrated an ongoing change across varieties of English in which /s/ retracts before consonants, particularly before /tɹ/ clusters (e.g., Lawrence, 2000; Shapiro, 1995; Stuart-Smith et al., 2019). Much of this work has focused on the social and linguistic distributions of /stɹ/ within single communities, without an examination of the broader sibilant space (e.g., /s/ and /ʃ/). Meanwhile, analyses across multiple corpora have shown that /s/ and /ʃ/ also show within-community variability, beyond /stɹ/ contexts (Stuart-Smith et al., 2019, 2020). Intersecting these approaches, this paper explores sibilant variation and change across /stɹ/, /s/, and /ʃ/ using a corpus of Washington D.C. African American Language (AAL). Results indicate that /stɹ/-retraction is a stable variant in this variety of AAL and /s/ and /ʃ/ show evidence of socially stratified variation and change. Overall, this paper demonstrates the need to examine the sibilant space more holistically when examining changes in /stɹ/.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , October 2021 , pp. 331 - 357
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ahlers, Wiebke, & Meer, Philipp. (2019). Sibilant Variation in New Englishes: A Comparative Sociophonetic Study of Trinidadian and American English /s(tr)/-Retraction. Interspeech 2019: 291–95. doi: 10.21437/Interspeech.2019-1821Google Scholar
Bailey, George, Nichols, Stephen, Baranowski, Maciej, & Turton, Danielle. (2019). A [ʃ]triking change in Manchester English [Conference presentation]. New Ways of Analyzing Variation 48, University of Oregon, Eugene.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy, & Maynor, Natalie. (1985). The present tense of be in Southern Black folk speech. American Speech 60(3): 195–213. doi: 10.2307/454884CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Adam, Archangeli, Diana, & Mielke, Jeff. (2011). Variability in American English s-retraction suggests a solution to the actuation problem. Language Variation and Change 23(3): 347–74. doi: 10.1017/S0954394511000135CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bass, Michael (2009). Street or Shtreet? Investigating (str-) palatalisation in Colchester English. Estro: Essex Student Research Online 1(1): 10–21.Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Sarkar, Deepayan, Bates, Maintainer Douglas, & Matrix, L. (2007). The lme4 package.Google Scholar
Behrens, Susan J., & Blumstein, Sheila E. (1988). Acoustic characteristics of English voiceless fricatives: A descriptive analysis. Journal of Phonetics 16(3): 295–298. doi: 10.1016/S0095-4470(19)30504-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blake, Renée. (1997). Defining the envelope of linguistic variation: The case of “don't count” forms in the copula analysis of African American Vernacular English. Language Variation and Change 9(1): 57–79. doi: 10.1017/S0954394500001794CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brysbaert, Marc, & New, Boris. (2009). Moving beyond Kučera and Francis: A critical evaluation of current word frequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English. Behavior Research Methods 41(4): 977–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Calder, Jeremy, & King, Sharese. (2020). Intersections between Race, Place, and Gender in the Production of /s/. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 26(2): Article 5.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. (2011). Intersecting variables and perceived sexual orientation in men. American Speech 86(1): 52–68. doi: 10.1215/00031283-1277510CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chodroff, Eleanor, & Wilson, Colin. (2020). Acoustic-phonetic and auditory mechanisms of adaptation in the perception of sibilant fricatives. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 82(4): 2027–48. doi: 10.3758/s13414-019-01894-2CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crist, Sean. (1997). Duration of onset consonants in gay male stereotyped speech. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 4(3): Article 4.Google Scholar
Durian, David. (2007). Getting [ʃ]tronger Every Day? Urbanization and the Socio-Geographic Diffusion of (str) in Columbus, OH. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 13(2): Article 6.Google Scholar
Farrington, Charlie. (2019). Language Variation and the Great Migration: Regionality and African American Language. Doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon.Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph W. (1981). The relation between black and white speech in the South. American Speech 56(3): 163–89. doi: 10.2307/454432CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, Susanne, & Toda, Martine. (2010). Do differences in male versus female /s/ reflect biological or sociophonetic factors? In Zygis, M. (Ed.), Turbulent Sounds. 281–302. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton. doi: 10.1515/9783110226584.281CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gain, Oliver. (2014). Introducing contemporary palatalisation. York Papers In Linguistics PARLAY Proceedings 1: 16–27.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, Su, Yu-Sung, Yajima, Masanao, Hill, Jennifer, Pittau, Maria Grazia, Kerman, Jouni, Zheng, Tian, & Dorie, Vincent. (2020). Package ‘arm.’ URL: https://cran.r-project.org/package=arm.Google Scholar
Green, Lisa. (2007). NPs in aspectual Be constructions in African American English. Creole Language Library 31: 403–20. doi: 10.1075/cll.31.22greCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gylfadottir, Duna. (2015). Shtreets of Philadelphia: An Acoustic Study of /stɹ/-retraction in a Naturalistic Speech Corpus. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 21(2): Article 11.Google Scholar
Hazan, Valerie, Romeo, Rachel, & Pettinato, Michèle. (2013). The impact of variation in phoneme category structure on consonant intelligibility. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 19: 060103–060103. doi: 10.1121/1.4800618CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinrichs, Lars, Bergs, Alexander, Axel, Bohmann, Brozovsky, Erica, Hodge, Brian, Meeman, Kristen, & Schultz, Patrick. (2015). Sibilants and ethnic diversity: A sociophonetic study of palatalized /s/ in STR clusters among Hispanic, White, and African-American speakers of Texas English [Conference presentation]. New Ways of Analyzing Variation 44, University of Toronto and York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Google Scholar
Holliday, Jeffrey J., Beckman, Mary E., & Mays, Chanelle. (2010). Did you Say Susi or Shushi? Measuring the Emergence of Robust Fricative Contrasts in English- and Japanese-Acquiring Children. In Kobayashi, T., Hirose, K., & Nakamura, S. (Eds.), Interspeech 2010, 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association. 4. Makuhari, Japan. Retrieved from http://www.isca-speech.org/archive/interspeech_2010CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janda, Richard D., & Joseph, Brian D. (2001). Reconsidering the Canons of Sound-Change: Towards a “Big Bang” Theory. In Blake, B. J. & Burridge, K. (Eds.), Historical Linguistics 2001. Selected Papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical. 21. Melbourne, Australia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Jongman, Allard, Wayland, Ratree, & Wong, Serena. (2000). Acoustic characteristics of English fricatives. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 108(3): 1252–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendall, Tyler, & Farrington, Charlie. (2020). CORAAL User Guide. Retrieved from http://lingtools.uoregon.edu/coraal/userguide/CORAALUserGuide_current.pdf.Google Scholar
Kendall, Tyler, & Farrington, Charlie. (2021). The Corpus of Regional African American Language. Version 2021.07. Eugene, OR: The Online Resources for African American Language Project. http://oraal.uoregon.edu/coraal.Google Scholar
Kendall, Tyler, Quartey, Minnie, Farrington, Charlie, McLarty, Jason, Arnson, Shelby, Josler, Brooke. (2018). The Corpus of Regional African American Language: DCB (Washington DC 2016). Version 2018.10.06. Eugene, OR: The Online Resources for African American Language Project.Google Scholar
King, Sharese. (2016). On negotiating racial and regional identities: Vocalic variation among African Americans in Bakersfield, California. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 22(2): Article 12.Google Scholar
Kohn, Mary E. (2014). “The Way I Communicate Changes But How I Speak Don't.” A Longitudinal Perspective on Adolescent Language Variation and Change. Publication of the American Dialect Society 99. Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Kohn, Mary, & Farrington, Charlie. (2013). A tale of two cities: Community density and African American English vowels. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 19(2): Article 12.Google Scholar
Kraljic, Tanya, & Samuel, Arthur G. (2007). Perceptual adjustments to multiple speakers. Journal of Memory and Language 56(1): 1–15. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2006.07.010CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (2001). Principles of linguistic change, Volume 2: Social factors. Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Wayne. (2000). /stɹ/-/stɹ/: Assimilation at a distance? American Speech 75(1): 82–87. doi: 10.1215/00031283-75-1-82CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levon, Erez, & Holmes-Elliott, Sophie. (2013). East End Boys and West End Girls: /S/-Fronting in Southeast England. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 19(2): Article 13.Google Scholar
Levon, Erez, Maegaard, Marie, & Pharao, Nicolai. (2017). Introduction: Tracing the origin of /s/ variation. Linguistics 55(5): 979–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAuliffe, Michael, Coles, Arlie, Goodale, Michael, Mihuc, Sarah, Wagner, Michael, Stuart-Smith, Jane, & Sonderegger, Morgan. (2019). ISCAN: a System for Integrated Phonetic Analyses Across Speech Corpora. 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2019). 1322–26.Google Scholar
McAuliffe, Michael, Socolof, Michaela, Mihuc, Sarah, Wagner, Michael, & Sonderegger, Morgan. (2017). Montreal Forced Aligner: Trainable Text-Speech Alignment Using Kaldi. Interspeech 2017: 498–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munson, Benjamin, McDonald, Elizabeth C., DeBoe, Nancy L., & White, Aubrey R. (2006). The acoustic and perceptual bases of judgments of women and men's sexual orientation from read speech. Journal of Phonetics 34(2): 202–40. doi: 10.1016/j.wocn.2005.05.003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, Rochelle S., Clouse, Sheryl A., & Burnham, Jessica L. (2001). The perceptual consequences of within-talker variability in fricative production. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 109(3): 1181–96. doi: 10.1121/1.1348009CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phillips, Jacob B., & Resnick, Paige. (2019). Masculine toughness and the categorical perception of onset sibilant clusters. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 145(6): EL574–EL580. doi: 10.1121/1.5113566CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Podesva, Robert J., Roberts, Sarah J., & Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. (2002). Sharing resources and indexing meanings in the production of gay styles. Language and sexuality: Contesting meaning in theory and practice. 175–89.Google Scholar
Podesva, Robert J., & Van Hofwegen, Janneke. (2015). /s/exuality in smalltown California: Gender normativity and the acoustic realization of/s. In Levon, E. & Mendes, R. B. (Eds.), Language, sexuality, and power (pp. 168–88). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
R Core Team (2020). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria. URL: https://www.R-project.org/.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. (1999). Variation in the Jamaican Creole copula and its relation to the genesis of AAVE: New data and analysis. In Rickford, J. R. & Romaine, S. (Eds.), Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse: Studies celebrating Charlene J. Sato. Creole Language Library 20: 143–56. doi: 10.1075/cll.20.12ricCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romeo, Rachel, Hazan, Valerie, & Pettinato, Michèle. (2013). Developmental and gender-related trends of intra-talker variability in consonant production. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 134(5): 3781–92. doi: 10.1121/1.4824160CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rutter, Ben. (2011). Acoustic analysis of a sound change in progress: The consonant cluster / stɹ/ in English. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 41(1): 27–40. doi: 10.1017/S0025100310000307CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapiro, Michael. (1995). A Case of Distant Assimilation: /stɹ/ → /ʃtr/. American Speech 70(1): 101–107. doi: 10.2307/455876CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Bridget J., Mielke, Jeff, Magloughlin, Lyra, & Wilbanks, Eric. (2019). Sound change and coarticulatory variability involving English /ɹ/. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 4(1): 63. doi: 10.5334/gjgl.650CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soli, Sigfrid D. (1981). Second formants in fricatives: Acoustic consequences of fricative-vowel coarticulation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 70(4): 976–84. doi: 10.1121/1.387032CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, Mary, & Harrington, Jonathan. (2016). The phonetic origins of /s/-retraction: Acoustic and perceptual evidence from Australian English. Journal of Phonetics 58: 118–34. doi: 10.1016/j.wocn.2016.08.003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, Mary, Harrington, Jonathan, & Schiel, Florian. (2019). Associating the origin and spread of sound change using agent-based modelling applied to /s/-retraction in English. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 4(1): 8. doi: 10.5334/gjgl.620CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane. (2007). Empirical evidence for gendered speech production: /s/ in Glaswegian. In Cole, J. & Hualde, J. I. (Eds.), Labratory Phonology 9. Phonology and phonetics Vol. 4-3. 65–86). De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane. (2020). Changing perspectives on /s/ and gender over time in Glasgow. Linguistics Vanguard 6(s1). doi: 10.1515/lingvan-2018-0064CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, Sonderegger, Morgan, Macdonald, Rachel, Mielke, Jeff, McAuliffe, Michael, & Thomas, Erik. (2019). Large-scale acoustic analysis of dialectal and social factors in English /s/-retraction. In Calhoun, S., Escudero, P., Tabain, M., & Warrent, P. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 1273–77).Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, Sonderegger, Morgan, Mielke, Jeff, Tanner, James, & Willerton, Vanna. (2020). Desperately seeking ‘English’ sibilants, discovering dialect norms and speaker variability for /s ʃ/ from large-scale, multi-dialect analysis [Conference presentation]. LabPhon 17, University of British Columbia, Virtual.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. (2007). Phonological and phonetic characteristics of African American vernacular English. Language and Linguistics Compass 1(5): 450–75. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00029.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, Paul. (1996). S/-retraction,/t/-deletion and regional variation in New Zealand English /stɹ/ and /stj/ clusters. Proceedings 11th Australian International Conference on Speech Science & Technology. 466–71.Google Scholar
Weide, Robert L. (1998) “The CMU pronouncing dictionary.” URL: http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel, Labov, William, & Herzog, Maivin I. (1968). Empirical foundations for a theory of language change 58. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Wilbanks, Eric. (2017). Social and Structural Constraints on a Phonetically-Motivated Change in Progress: (Str) Retraction in Raleigh, NC. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 23(1): Article 33.Google Scholar
Yu, Alan C. L. (2019). On the nature of the perception-production link: Individual variability in English sibilant-vowel coarticulation. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology 10(1): 2. doi: 10.5334/labphon.97CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimman, Lal. (2017). Gender as stylistic bricolage: Transmasculine voices and the relationship between fundamental frequency and/s. Language in Society 46(3): 339–70. doi: 10.1017/S0047404517000070CrossRefGoogle Scholar