Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T16:22:01.512Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Voice quality and coda /r/ in Glasgow English in the early 20th century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2020

Márton Sóskuthy  and
Jane Stuart-Smith
Márton Sóskuthy
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
Jane Stuart-Smith
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We present acoustic and auditory analyses of changes to coda /r/ and voice quality in Glasgow English in the early twentieth century. Our initial acoustic analysis suggests that /r/ was weakening across the board based on an increase in F3. However, an auditory analysis of the same data finds no significant changes. An acoustic analysis of the same speakers’ vowels reveals that the shift in F3 is not unique to /r/. It reflects a change in voice quality, which we link to velarization using Vocal Profile Analysis. We then reanalyze the acoustic /r/ data, controlling for voice quality, and find only moderate changes that are restricted to females. These findings provide new evidence for diachronic changes in voice quality, contribute to our understanding of the development of /r/ in Glasgow English, and highlight the importance of investigating speech sounds in their broader context using multiple methodologies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , July 2020 , pp. 133 - 157
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. 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.)

Footnotes

Jane Stuart-Smith is grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for Research Project Grant RPG-142, which supported the collection of the Sounds of the City corpus and the initial data processing. The segmentation and the first pass hand correction of the formant tracks was carried out by: Brian Jose, Robert Lennon, Rachel Macdonald, the late Farhana Alam Shaukat, and Duncan Robertson, whose work was an invaluable first step for the subsequent analysis and processing presented here. We would also like to thank three anonymous reviewers, the editors of LVC, and audiences at UKLVC 11 and NWAV 47 for their valuable input.

References

REFERENCES

Abercrombie, David. (1967). Elements of general phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald, Vasishth, Shravan, Bates, Douglas, & Kliegl, Reinhold. (2017). The cave of shadows: Addressing the human factor with Generalized Additive Mixed Models. Journal of Memory and Language 94:206–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barr, Dale, Levy, Roger, Scheepers, Christoph, & Tily Harry, J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68(3):255–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beck, Janet, & Schaeffler, Felix. (2015). Voice quality variation in Scottish adolescents: gender versus geography. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow.Google Scholar
Blaxter, Tam, Beeching, Kate, Coates, Richard, James, Murphy, & Robinson, Emily. (2019). Each p[ɚ]son does it th[εː] way: Rhoticity variation and the community grammar. Language Variation and Change 31(1):91–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blevins, Juliette. (2004). Evolutionary Phonology: The emergence of sound patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul, & Weenink, David. (2013). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. Computer program. http://www.praat.org/.Google Scholar
Carter, Paul, & Local, John. (2007). F2 variation in Newcastle and Leeds English liquid systems. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37(2):183–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coadou, Marion, & Rougab, Abderrazak. (2007). “Voice quality and variation in English.” In Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2077–80. Saarbrucken.Google Scholar
Esling, John. (1978). The identification of features of voice quality in social groups. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 8 (1–2):18–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fant, Gunnar. (1975). Vocal-tract area and length perturbations. STL-QPSR 4:1–14.Google Scholar
Fromont, Robert, & Jennifer, Hay. (2012). LaBB-CAT: An annotation store. In Proceedings of the Australasian Language Technology Association Workshop 2012, 113–7.Google Scholar
Garellek, Marc, Samlan, Robin, Gerratt, Bruce R., & Kreiman, Jody. (2016). Modeling the voice source in terms of spectral slopes. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 139(3):1404–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gittelson, Benjamin, Li, Yang, & Leeman, Adrian. (2018). Acoustic voice quality analysis of 1000+ speakers from across the UK. Paper Presentation. In Colloquium for British Academic Association of Phoneticians. Kent.Google Scholar
Hillenbrand, James, Getty, Laura A., Clark, Michael J., & Wheeler, Kimberlee. (1995). Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97(5):3099–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Honikman, B. (1964). Articulatory settings. In In Honour of Daniel Jones, edited by Abercrombie, David, Fry, D., MacCarthy, P., Scott, N., and Trim, J.. London: Longman. 73–84.Google Scholar
Johnston, Paul A. (1997). Regional Variation. In The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language, edited by Jones, Charles. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 433–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knowles, Gerry. (1978). The nature of phonological variables in Scouse. In Sociolinguistic patterns in British English, edited by Trudgill, Peter. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change, Vol 1: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter, & Maddieson, Ian. (1996). The sounds of the world's languages. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Laver, John. (1980). The phonetic description of voice quality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Laver, John. (1991). The gift of speech: Papers in the analysis of speech and voice. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Laver, John. (1994). Principles of phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laver, John, Wirz, Sheila, Mackenzie, Janet, & Hiller, Steven. (1981). A perceptual protocol for the analysis of vocal profiles. Edinburgh University Department of Linguistics Work in Progress 14: 139–55.Google Scholar
Lawson, Eleanor, Scobbie, James M., & Stuart-Smith, Jane. (2014). A socio-articulatory study of Scottish rhoticity. In Sociolinguistics in Scotland, edited by Lawson, Robert. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 53–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawson, Eleanor, Stuart-Smith, Jane, & Scobbie, James M. (2008). Articulatory insights into language variation and change: Preliminary findings from an ultrasound study of derhoticization in Scottish English. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 14(2):102–10.Google Scholar
Lawson, Eleanor, Stuart-Smith, Jane, & Scobbie, James M. (2018). The role of gesture delay in coda /r/ weakening: An articulatory, auditory and acoustic study. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 143(3):1646–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawson, Eleanor, Stuart-Smith, Jane, Scobbie, James M., Yaeger-Dror, Malcah, & Maclagan, Margaret. (2010). Analysing liquids. In Sociophonetics: A student's guide, edited by De Paolo, Maria and Yaeger-Dror, Malcah. London: Routledge. 72–86.Google Scholar
Lennon, Robert. (2017). Experience and learning in cross-dialect perception: Derhoticised /r/ in Glasgow. PhD, University of Glasgow.Google Scholar
Levon, Erez, & Holmes-Elliott, Sophie. (2017). The jet set: Articulatory setting and the shifting vowel system of London English. Paper presentation. In New Ways of Analysing Variation 46.Google Scholar
Macafee, Caroline. (1983). Varieties of English around the world: Glasgow. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Nagy, Naomi, & Irwin, Patricia. (2010). Boston (r): Neighbo(r)s nea(r) and fa(r). Language Variation and Change 22(2):241–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nolan, Francis. (1983). The phonetic bases of speaker recognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ohala, John J. (1981). The listener as a source of sound change. In Masek, C. S., Hendrik, R. A., and Miller, M. F. (Eds.), Papers from the Parasession on Language and Behavior. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. 178–203.Google Scholar
Pittam, Jeffery. (1987). The long-term spectral measurement of voice quality as a social and personality marker: A review. Language and Speech 30(1):1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plug, Leendert, & Ogden, Richard. (2003). A parametric approach to the phonetics of postvocalic /r/ in Dutch. Phonetica 60:159–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Podesva, Robert J., & Callier, Patrick. (2015). Voice quality and identity. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 35:173–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Podesva, Robert J., Callier, Patrick, Voigt, Rob, & Jurafsky, Daniel. (2015). The connection between smiling and goat fronting: Embodied affect in sociophonetic variation. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow.Google Scholar
R Core Team. (2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. http://www.r-project.org/.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. (1978). Postvocalic/r in Scottish English: Sound change in progress? In Sociolinguistic patterns in British English, edited by Trudgill, Peter. London: Edward Arnold. 144–57.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian, & Blondeau, Helène. (2007). Language change across the lifespan: /r/ in Montreal French. Language 83(3):560–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
San Segundo, Eugenia, & Mompean, Jose A. (2017). A simplified Vocal Profile Analysis Protocol for the assessment of voice quality and speaker similarity. Journal of Voice 31(5):644.e11–644.e27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sóskuthy, Márton. (2014). Formant Editor: Software for editing dynamic formant measurements (Version 0.8.2). Computer program. https://github.com/soskuthy/formantedit.Google Scholar
Sóskuthy, Márton. (2015). Understanding change through stability: A computational study of sound change actuation. Lingua 163:40–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sóskuthy, Márton. (2017). Generalised Additive Mixed Models for dynamic analysis in linguistics: A practical introduction. arXiv:1703.05339 [stat:AP].Google Scholar
Sóskuthy, Márton, Foulkes, Paul, Hughes, Vincent, & Haddican, Bill. (2018). Changing words and sounds: The roles of different cognitive units in sound change. Topics in Cognitive Science 10:787–802.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Speitel, Hans H., & Johnston, Paul. (1983). A sociolinguistic investigation of Edinburgh speech. Unpublished final report (Grant No. 000230023) for the Social Science Research Council.Google Scholar
Sproat, Richard, & Fujimura, Osamu. (1993). Allophonic variation in English /l/ and its implications for phonetic implementation. Journal of Phonetics 21(3):291–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane. (1999). Glasgow: Accent and voice quality. In Foulkes, Paul and Docherty, Gerard J. (Eds.), Urban voices: Accent studies in the British Isles. London: Edward Arnold. 203–22.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane. (2003). The phonology of modern Urban Scots. In Corbett, John, McClure, Derek J., and Stuart-Smith, Jane (Eds.), The Edinburgh companion to Scots. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 110–37.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane. (2007). A sociophonetic investigation of postvocalic /r/ in Glaswegian adolescents. In Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Saarbrucken. 1449–52.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, José, Brian, Rathcke, Tamara, Macdonald, Rachel, & Lawson, Eleanor. (2017). Changing sounds in a changing city: An acoustic phonetic investigation of real-time change over a century of Glaswegian. In Montgomery, Chris and Moore, Emma (Eds.), Language and a sense of place: Studies in language and region. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 38–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, & Lawson, Eleanor. (2017). Scotland: Glasgow/the Central Belt. In Hickey, Raymond (Ed.), Listening to the past: Audio records of accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 171–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, Lawson, Eleanor, & Scobbie James, M. (2014). Derhoticisation in Scottish-English: Lessons we can learn from sociophonetic data. In Celata, Ciara and Calamai, Silvia (Eds.), Advances in phonetics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 57–94.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, Lennon, Robert, Macdonald, Rachel, Robertson, Duncan, Sóskuthy, Márton, José, Brian, & Evers, Ludger. (2015). A dynamic acoustic view of real-time change in word-final liquids in spontaneous Glaswegian. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, Timmins, Claire, & Tweedie, Fiona. (2007). Talkin’ ‘Jockney’? Variation and change in Glaswegian accent. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(2):221–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szakay, Anita. (2012). Voice quality as a marker of ethnicity in New Zealand: From acoustics to perception. Journal of Sociolinguistics 16(3):382–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szakay, Anita, & Torgersen, Eivind Nessa. (2015). An acoustic analysis of voice quality in London English: The effect of gender, ethnicity and F0. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Glasgow.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1974). The social differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
van Rij, Jacolien, Wieling, Martijn, Baayen, R. Harald, & van Rijn, Hedderik. (2017). itsadug: Interpreting time series and autocorrelated data using GAMMs. R package version 2.3.Google Scholar
Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wieling, Martijn. (2018). Analyzing dynamic phonetic data using Generalized Additive Mixed Modeling: A tutorial focusing on articulatory differences between L1 and L2 speakers of English. Journal of Phonetics 70:86–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Simon. (2011). Fast stable restricted Maximum Likelihood and Marginal Likelihood Estimation of Semiparametric Generalized Linear Models. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Statistical Methodology) 73(1):3–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Simon. (2017). Generalized Additive Models: An introduction with R. 2nd ed. Boca Raton: CRC Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar