TY - JOUR
T1 - Some determinants of stylistic phonological variations
AU - Iannucci, David
AU - Liben, Lynn
AU - Anisfeld, Moshe
N1 - Funding Information:
It is a rather common characteristic of American English speech that words of similar phonological shape-even the same word-will often be pronounced differently by one speaker on different occasions. This type of “stylistic” variation is exemplified in the following five phonetic alternations, which were chosen for investigation in this study. In the discussion of these alternations, slant lines // indicate underlying phonological representation (see, for example, Chomsky and Halle, 1968) and brackets [ ] designate a “broad” phonetic notation. (a) When an underlying /t/ is preceded by a strong-stressed syllabic and followed by a weak-stressed syllabic (symbolized S/t/S), the /t/ is usually realized in speech as a voiced alveolar flap [?I, a sound similar to the 1 We are grateful to J. Iannucci and R. Weber for helpful linguistic advice, to M. Gordon and P. Carlson for acting as judges in classifying pronunciations, and to A. Savishinsky for giving us the benefit of her experience with Brush Recorder measurements. Thanks are also due to G. Suci for permission to use this recorder. This investigation was carried out while D. Iannucci was supported by Training Grant in Psycholinguistics MH 08520 from the National Institute of Mental Health.
PY - 1968/10
Y1 - 1968/10
N2 - An investigation was made of factors that influence the choice of alternate stylistic pronunciations of words in five categories, each category consisting of an SP (Spelling Pronunciation) alternant and a less formal NSP (Non-SP) alternate; e.g., for round, SP [rawnd] versus NSP [rawn]. Each S first read aloud words-16 in each category-from flash cards as part of an ostensible learning task and then read through the same list of words under instructions to pronounce the words "clearly and accurately." A significantly higher number of SP pronunciations was found in the second task than in the first for all five categories. The frequency and status (a dimension ranging from casual to formal) of words were related to the choice between SP and NSP in two of the categories in both tasks, and Ss' speed of articulation was found to be minimally relevant in the same respect. A crucial structural difference-subphonemic versus phonemic alternation-which differentiates two of the categories from the others, played a central role in the interpretation of results.
AB - An investigation was made of factors that influence the choice of alternate stylistic pronunciations of words in five categories, each category consisting of an SP (Spelling Pronunciation) alternant and a less formal NSP (Non-SP) alternate; e.g., for round, SP [rawnd] versus NSP [rawn]. Each S first read aloud words-16 in each category-from flash cards as part of an ostensible learning task and then read through the same list of words under instructions to pronounce the words "clearly and accurately." A significantly higher number of SP pronunciations was found in the second task than in the first for all five categories. The frequency and status (a dimension ranging from casual to formal) of words were related to the choice between SP and NSP in two of the categories in both tasks, and Ss' speed of articulation was found to be minimally relevant in the same respect. A crucial structural difference-subphonemic versus phonemic alternation-which differentiates two of the categories from the others, played a central role in the interpretation of results.
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U2 - 10.1016/S0022-5371(68)80104-5
DO - 10.1016/S0022-5371(68)80104-5
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:49949123606
SN - 0749-596X
VL - 7
SP - 956
EP - 961
JO - Journal of Memory and Language
JF - Journal of Memory and Language
IS - 5
ER -