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The production and perception of coda glottalisation in Australian English

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posted on 2022-03-28, 12:47 authored by Joshua James Penney
Previous research suggests that glottalisation is a cue to voiceless coda stops in Australian English and may be a recent change to the variety. In this thesis, we examine glottalisation in production and perception by Australian English speaker/listeners. We first consider coda glottalisation in the production of unstressed syllables, with the results confirming previous findings that glottalisation signals coda voicelessness and is more frequent in younger rather than older speakers, supporting suggestions of recent change. We then examine how perception of coda stop voicing is affected by glottalisation, finding that glottalisation facilitates increased perception of coda voicelessness, and that older and younger listeners perceive glottalisation similarly, despite differences in production. In a following study we show that listeners are perceptually sensitive to glottalisation, and do not merely perceive shorter modally voiced vowels when glottalisation is present. We examine glottalisation in production in different phrase positions to disentangle its effects from those of phrase final creaky voice, demonstrating that the effects of glottalisation do indeed occur independently of creaky voice. We also find that glottalisation is more frequent in pre-consonantal environments rather than pre-vocalic environments, and that younger speakers employ glottalisation more often than older speakers, particularly in pre-vocalic environments, indicating a possible progression of change Finally, we examine links between production and perception at the individual level. Although we find no consistent pattern between perception and production of glottalisation, we observe that a subset of individuals are progressive in both modalities and may be the drivers of change. This thesis thus contributes to our understanding of glottalisation, its use in production and perception, and its spread in Australian English. More generally, it advances our understanding of the cues that contribute to the phonological coda stop voicing contrast in English.

History

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Glottalisation of word-final stops in Australian English unstressed syllables -- Chapter 3. Effects of glottalisation, preceding vowel duration, and coda closure duration on the perception of coda stop voicing -- Chapter 4. Perception of coda voicing : glottalisation, vowel duration, and silence -- Chapter 5. Production of coda glottalisation in Australian English -- Chapter 6. Links between production and perception of glottalisation in individual Australian English speaker/listeners -- Chapter 7. General discussion and directions for future research -- Appendix.

Notes

Includes bibliographical references Thesis by publication. "Department of Linguistics, Centre for Language Sciences, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia" -- title page.

Awarding Institution

Macquarie University

Degree Type

Thesis PhD

Degree

PhD, Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Linguistics

Department, Centre or School

Department of Linguistics

Year of Award

2019

Principal Supervisor

Felicity Cox

Additional Supervisor 1

Anita Szakay

Rights

Copyright Joshua James Penney 2019. Copyright disclaimer: http://mq.edu.au/library/copyright

Language

English

Extent

1 online resource (xv, 296 pages) graphs

Former Identifiers

mq:72187 http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/1282262