School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemCan you t[ae]ll I'm from M[ae]lbourne? An overview of the DRESS and TRAP vowels before /l/ as a regional accent marker in Australian English(John Benjamins Publishing, 2017-01-01)This study gives an overview of the merger of the DRESS and TRAP vowels before laterals, which occurs for some speakers of Australian English in the state of Victoria (in the south-east of the country), as well as in some other varieties of English. Research on this phenomenon in Australian English has been preliminary to date, but has uncovered some general tendencies in distribution, as well as possible motivators for actuation and spread of the change. The aim of this paper is to describe and orient the phenomenon in the context of English worldwide, and while we work with some illustrative experimental data, our aim is not to provide a detailed quantitative sociophonetic perspective here. This paper further aims to illustrate the extent of the variability seen in the Australian English community with respect to ongoing change.
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ItemAn Investigation of the /el/-/ae l/ Merger in Australian English: A Pilot Study on Production and Perception in South-West Victoria(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2014-01-01)This exploratory study looks at evidence of merger between /el/ and /æl/ in Australian English, and the possible relationship between production and perception that might be involved in such a process. This merger appears to occur primarily in Victoria, although its regional distribution within that state still requires investigation. The phenomenon appears to be motivated by the interaction of three different phonetic processes: increasing lateral velarization; increasing vowel lowering; and misperception/misparsing of the phonetic signal. We focus here on the behaviour of a sample of native speakers from Warrnambool, a regional township in south-west Victoria. Given evidence that some speakers merge the vowels in /el/ and /æl/ while others do not, our participants are categorized as maintainers (those who keep /el/–/æl/ distinct) and combiners (those who merge /el/–/æl/), and we compare how the groups process /el/–/æl/ in perception. Overall results point to an association, according to category, between listeners' own production and perception of /el/–/æl/ in an identification task, although individual variability is also evident and needs to be understood.
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ItemLocus equations and coarticulation in three Australian languages(Nature Research, 2015-02-01)Locus equations were applied to F2 data for bilabial, alveolar, retroflex, palatal, and velar plosives in three Australian languages. In addition, F2 variance at the vowel-consonant boundary, and, by extension, consonantal coarticulatory sensitivity, was measured. The locus equation slopes revealed that there were place-dependent differences in the magnitude of vowel-to-consonant coarticulation. As in previous studies, the non-coronal (bilabial and velar) consonants tended to be associated with the highest slopes, palatal consonants tended to be associated with the lowest slopes, and alveolar and retroflex slopes tended to be low to intermediate. Similarly, F2 variance measurements indicated that non-coronals displayed greater coarticulatory sensitivity to adjacent vowels than did coronals. Thus, both the magnitude of vowel-to-consonant coarticulation and the magnitude of consonantal coarticulatory sensitivity were seen to vary inversely with the magnitude of consonantal articulatory constraint. The findings indicated that, unlike results reported previously for European languages such as English, anticipatory vowel-to-consonant coarticulation tends to exceed carryover coarticulation in these Australian languages. Accordingly, on the F2 variance measure, consonants tended to be more sensitive to the coarticulatory effects of the following vowel. Prosodic prominence of vowels was a less significant factor in general, although certain language-specific patterns were observed