The Department of Contemporary English Language (DoCELu) invites you to a Phon&Phon meeting:
Daniel Huber (Université de Toulouse 2–Le Mirail, CNRS CLLE-ERSS)
Patterns of C-C place assimilation in Lancashire English: Are good girls really goo[g g]irls and do bad boys really become ba[b b]oys?
Tuesday, 07 June 2011, 18:30, Room 601A
Abstract
Dr Huber will talk about patterns of C-to-C place assimilations across word boundaries in Lancashire English, as observed in the PAC Lancashire oral corpus. He will argue that place assimilation between obstruents is far from being as widespread and as consistent as standard textbooks would have us believe: indeed, there is massive non-assimilation.
First, the talk will present a typlogy of place assimilation in Southern British English and why it is phonologically important, specifically in markedness and underspecification theories. In this talk, the discussion will be restricted to assimilations between obstruents: quite cool, could get, got killed, and similar instances. The most important criteria for positively establishing place assimilation will be the lack of release of the first obstruent and the presence of formants across the first obstruent consistent with the formants of the second obstruent. In this corpus it is impossible to test tongue movement, which would, however, uncover more details about the C-to-C transitions.
Dr Huber will then present the PAC corpus project (its construction, its principles of annotation, privacy considerations and access) so that it is easier to evaluate the possibilities of PAC and the eventual limitations for the present study. He will argue that such oral corpora are suitable for the study of such phonetic detail, especially for pilot studies. Then he will explain how Lancashire English, that is a non-RP variety, can come to have a role in the discussion of the phenomenon which is most fully described for RP in the literature.
Data will be played and discussed from the whole range of speech styles in the Lancashire corpus: a reading passage, formal and then informal interview. The major findings based on the Lancashire data are the following: while place assimilation does occur in the data, they are typically at the end of reduced grammatical words such as that or out, and frequently it is highly problematic to decide whether there is true gemination or simple deletion of C1. The lack of place assimilation is, however, due to glottalisation of C1 most of the time. Nevertheless, some interesting cases of assimilation of C1 /t/ to a [p] could be identified after a labial vowel, which is then not a case of consonantal place assimilation (this has no parallels in velars, however). Furthermore, assimilations also seem to correlate with aspects of discourse: obstruents in fast short remarks such as it’s quite popular, asides, insertions or short conclusions, delivered typically in a low register, tend to assimilate; while explications such as my dad got a job or without people actually and enumerations, tend to favour rhythmic delivery as well as consonantal release.
Submitted by J Weckwerth
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