Interspeaker variation among Shetland Islanders as the long term outcome of dialectally varied input : speech production evidence for fine-grained linguistic plasticity
Citation
Scobbie, J. (2005) Interspeaker variation among Shetland Islanders as the long term outcome of dialectally varied input : speech production evidence for fine-grained linguistic plasticity, QMU Speech Science Research Centre Working Papers, WP-2, , , ,
Abstract
The English stop voicing contrast is examined in both word-initial position (via VOT) and word-final position (via the duration of the preceding vowel) in young adult speakers born and brought up in the Shetland Isles. The subjects'
parents were either also from Shetland, from elsewhere in Scotland, or
England. All have identical phonemic stop systems, unambiguously so in
initial position. The quasi-phonemic role in Scottish English of vowel
duration in signalling the suffixual vs. tautomorphemic word final /d/ instead
of the /t/-/d/ contrast (the Scottish Vowel Length Rule) renders final position
more complex. There are fine-grained interspeaker differences covering a
wide area of the phonetic space, exemplifying the potential for
phonologically-relevant variation. The targets may be speaker-specific
responses to input, especially mismatches between the dialect of their parents
and the wider community.