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Phonetic variation of Irish English /t/ in the syllabic coda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2022

Radek Skarnitzl Open the ORCID record for Radek Skarnitzl [Opens in a new window]  and
Diana Rálišová
Radek Skarnitzl
Affiliation:
Institute of Phonetics, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic radek.skarnitzl@ff.cuni.cz
Diana Rálišová
Affiliation:
Institute of Phonetics, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic d.ralisova@icloud.com
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Abstract

The consonant /t/ is acknowledged as being an immensely variable sound in the accents of English. This study aims to contribute to accounting for this variability by analyzing the phonetic realizations of /t/ in 21 speakers (15 female, six male) of Southern Irish English. The speakers were asked to read a short text (Deterding 2006) and to speak spontaneously with the experimenter. In total, 1,519 items of /t/ in coda positions were examined by careful auditory analysis combined with visual inspection of spectrograms. The analysis shows, among others, a strong dependence on the neighbouring segmental context and semantic status of the word. Word-final /t/ is realized mostly as a flap in grammatical words linked to the following word-initial vowel, and as the traditional Irish English weakened fricative realization (slit-T) in lexical words. The second part of the analysis focuses on minor realizations of /t/ documented in the dataset which are noteworthy in their phonetic detail. We show that the slit-T – typically a voiceless apico-alveolar fricative – may exhibit sporadic voicing and, more rarely, be pronounced as a laminal [s]-like sound and as a fricative flap, in which a ballistic movement is combined with a fricative realization. An enhanced typology of /t/ lenition in Irish English is proposed based on these findings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , December 2023 , pp. 728 - 747
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International Phonetic Association

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