Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T10:48:19.249Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The organisation and structure of rhotics in American English rhymes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2019

Rachel Walker  and
Michael Proctor
Rachel Walker*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Michael Proctor*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
*
E-mail: rwalker@usc.edu, michael.proctor@mq.edu.au.
E-mail: rwalker@usc.edu, michael.proctor@mq.edu.au.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Language-specific maximal size restrictions on syllables have been defined using frames such as moraic structure. In General American English, a trimoraic syllable template makes largely successful predictions about contexts where tense/lax vowel contrasts are neutralised, but neutralisation preceding a coda rhotic has not been adequately explained. We attribute the apparent special properties of coda /ɹ/ to two characteristics of its representation, informed by our articulatory investigation: sequential coordination of dorsal and coronal subsegmental units and a high blending strength specification, corresponding to high coarticulatory dominance. Characteristics of coda laterals are compared. Our approach employs phonological representations where sequencing is encoded directly among subsegments, and coordination is sensitive to strength. Mora assignment is computed over sequencing of subsegments, predicting that complex segments may be bimoraic. The account brings phonotactics for rhymes with postvocalic liquids into line with the trimoraic template, and supports representing coordination and strength at the subsegmental level.

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 457 - 495
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

For helpful discussion on various aspects of this research, we thank especially Louis Goldstein and Caitlin Smith, and also Dani Byrd, Lisa Davidson, Ewald Enzinger, Bruce Hayes, Khalil Iskarous, Shri Narayanan, Tünde Szalay and audiences at the 165th and 172nd meetings of the ASA, ICLCE 4, LabPhon 15, MIT, New York University, OCP 9, UC Merced, UC Santa Cruz, University of Melbourne, University of Toronto, University of Tromsø, joint USC/UCLA Phonology Seminar, USC PhonLunch, USC SPAN and MQ Phonetics groups. This work has also significantly benefited from comments from an anonymous associate editor at Phonology and three anonymous reviewers. This research has been supported in part by National Institutes of Health grant R01 DC007124, Australian Research Council Award DE150100318 and a USC Dornsife Faculty Development Grant.

References

Alwan, Abeer A., Narayanan, Shrikanth S. & Haker, Katherine (1997). Toward articulatory-acoustic models for liquid approximants based on MRI and EPG data. Part II: The rhotics. JASA 101. 1078–1089.Google Scholar
Archangeli, Diana (1991). Syllabification and prosodic templates in Yawelmani. NLLT 9. 231–283.Google Scholar
Bladon, R. A. W. & Al-Bamerni, Ameen (1976). Coarticulation resistance in English /l/. JPh 4. 137–150.Google Scholar
Borowsky, Toni (2001). The vocalisation of dark l in Australian English. In Blair, David & Collins, Peter (eds.) English in Australia. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. 69–87.Google Scholar
Botma, Bert, Ewen, Colin J. & van der Torre, Erik Jan (2008). The syllabic affiliation of postvocalic liquids: an onset-specifier approach. Lingua 118. 1250–1270.Google Scholar
Bradley, Travis G. (2007). Morphological derived-environment effects in gestural coordination: a case study of Norwegian clusters. Lingua 117. 950–985.Google Scholar
Browman, Catherine P. & Goldstein, Louis (1986). Towards an articulatory phonology. Phonology Yearbook 3. 219–252.Google Scholar
Browman, Catherine P. & Goldstein, Louis (1988). Some notes on syllable structure in articulatory phonology. Phonetica 45. 140–155.Google Scholar
Browman, Catherine P. & Goldstein, Louis (1989). Articulatory gestures as phonological units. Phonology 6. 201–251.Google Scholar
Browman, Catherine P. & Goldstein, Louis (1992). Articulatory phonology: an overview. Phonetica 49. 155–180.Google Scholar
Browman, Catherine P. & Goldstein, Louis (1995). Gestural syllable position effects in American English. In Bell-Berti, Fredericka & Raphael, Lawrence (eds.) Producing speech: contemporary issues. For Katherine Safford Harris. Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics Press. 19–33.Google Scholar
Browman, Catherine P. & Goldstein, Louis (2000). Competing constraints on intergestural coordination and self-organization of phonological structures. Bulletin de la Communication Parlée 5. 25–34.Google Scholar
Byrd, Dani, Tobin, Stephen, Bresch, Erik & Narayanan, Shrikanth (2009). Timing effects of syllable structure and stress on nasals: a real-time MRI examination. JPh 37. 97–110.Google Scholar
Campbell, Fiona, Gick, Bryan, Wilson, Ian & Vatikiotis-Bateson, Eric (2010). Spatial and temporal properties of gestures in North American English /r/. Language and Speech 53. 49–69.Google Scholar
Campos-Astorkiza, Rebeka (2004). Faith in moras: a revised approach to prosodic faithfulness. NELS 34. 163–174.Google Scholar
Casserly, Elizabeth D. (2012). Gestures in optimality theory and the laryngeal phonology of Faroese. Lingua 122. 41–65.Google Scholar
Clements, G. N. (1985). The geometry of phonological features. Phonology Yearbook 2. 225–252.Google Scholar
Clements, G. N. & Keyser, Samuel J. (1983). CV phonology: a generative theory of the syllable. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cohn, Abigail C. (2003). Phonological structure and phonetic duration: the role of the mora. Working Papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory 15. 69–100.Google Scholar
Cohn, Abigail C. & Tilsen, Sam (2015). Relation between syllable count judgments and durations of English liquid rimes. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (ed.) Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow: University of Glasgow.Google Scholar
Davidson, Lisa (2003). The atoms of phonological representation: gestures, coordination and perceptual features in consonant cluster phonotactics. PhD dissertation, Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Delattre, Pierre & Freeman, Donald C. (1968). A dialect study of American r’s by X-ray motion picture. Linguistics 6. 29–68.Google Scholar
Di Paolo, Marianna & Faber, Alice (1990). Phonation differences and the phonetic content of the tense-lax contrast in Utah English. Language Variation and Change 2. 155–204.Google Scholar
Espy-Wilson, Carol Y., Boyce, Suzanne E., Jackson, Michel, Narayanan, Shrikanth & Alwan, Abeer (2000). Acoustic modeling of American English /r/. JASA 108. 343–356.Google Scholar
Ewen, Colin J. & Botma, Bert (2009). Against rhymal adjuncts: the syllabic affiliation of English postvocalic consonants. In Nasukawa, Kuniya & Backley, Phillip (eds.) Strength relations in phonology. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 221–250.Google Scholar
Farnetani, E. (1990). V-C-V lingual coarticulation and its spatiotemporal domain. In Hardcastle, William J. & Marchal, Alain (eds.) Speech production and speech modelling. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 93–130.Google Scholar
Flemming, Edward (2002). Auditory representations in phonology. London & New York: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Flemming, Edward (2004). Contrast and perceptual distinctiveness. In Hayes, Bruce, Kirchner, Robert & Steriade, Donca (eds.) Phonetically based phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 232–276.Google Scholar
Fowler, Carol A. & Saltzman, Elliot (1993). Coordination and coarticulation in speech production. Language and Speech 36. 171–195.Google Scholar
Gafos, Adamantios I. (2002). A grammar of gestural coordination. NLLT 20. 269–337.Google Scholar
Gick, Bryan (1999a). A gesture-based account of intrusive consonants in English. Phonology 16. 29–54.Google Scholar
Gick, Bryan (1999b). The organization of segment-internal gestures. In Ohala, John J., Hasegawa, Yoko, Ohala, Manjari, Granville, Daniel & Bailey, Ashlee C. (eds.) Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Berkeley: University of California. 1789–1792.Google Scholar
Gick, Bryan (2002). An X-ray investigation of pharyngeal constriction in American English schwa. Phonetica 59. 38–48.Google Scholar
Gick, Bryan, Campbell, Fiona, Oh, Sunyoung & Tamburri-Watt, Linda (2006). Toward universals in the gestural organization of syllables: a cross-linguistic study of liquids. JPh 34. 49–72.Google Scholar
Gick, Bryan, Iskarous, Khalil, Whalen, D. H. & Goldstein, Louis (2003). Constraints on variations in the production of English /r/. In Palethorpe, Sallyanne & Tabain, Marija (eds.) Proceedings of the 6th International Seminar on Speech Production. Sydney: Macquarie University. 73–78.Google Scholar
Gick, Bryan, Kang, A. Min & Whalen, D. H. (2002). MRI evidence for commonality in the post-oral articulations of English vowels and liquids. JPh 30. 357–371.Google Scholar
Gick, Bryan & Wilson, Ian (2006). Excrescent schwa and vowel laxing: cross-linguistic responses to conflicting articulatory targets. In Goldstein, Louis, Whalen, D. H. & Best, Catherine T. (eds.) Papers in Laboratory Phonology 8. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 635–659.Google Scholar
Giegerich, Heinz J. (1992). English phonology: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Giles, Stephen B. & Moll, Kenneth L. (1975). Cinefluorographic study of selected allophones of English /l/. Phonetica 31. 206–227.Google Scholar
Green, Antony Dubach (2001a). The tense–lax distinction in English vowels and the role of parochial and analogical constraints. Linguistics in Potsdam 16. 32–57.Google Scholar
Green, Antony Dubach (2001b). American English ‘r-colored’ vowels as complex segments. Linguistics in Potsdam 16. 70–78.Google Scholar
Guenther, Frank H., Espy-Wilson, Carol Y., Boyce, Suzanne E., Matthies, Melanie L., Zandipour, Majid & Perkell, Joseph S. (1999). Articulatory tradeoffs reduce acoustic variability during American English /r/ production. JASA 105. 2854–2865.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos (2009). Vowel duration, syllable quantity, and stress in Dutch. In Hanson, Kristin & Inkelas, Sharon (eds.) The nature of the word: studies in honor of Paul Kiparsky. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 181–198.Google Scholar
Hall, Nancy (2003). Gestures and segments: vowel intrusion as overlap. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Hall, T. A. (2001). The distribution of superheavy syllables in Modern English. Folia Linguistica 35. 399–442.Google Scholar
Hall, T. A. (2002). Against extrasyllabic consonants in German and English. Phonology 19. 33–75.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris (1977). Tenseness, vowel shift, and the phonology of the back vowels in Modern English. LI 8. 611–625.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Mohanan, K. P. (1985). Segmental phonology of Modern English. LI 16. 57–116.Google Scholar
Hammond, Michael (1997). Vowel quantity and syllabification in English. Lg 73. 1–17.Google Scholar
Hammond, Michael (1999). The phonology of English: a prosodic optimality-theoretic approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hardcastle, William & Barry, William (1989). Articulatory and perceptual factors in /l/ vocalisations in English. JIPA 15. 3–17.Google Scholar
Harris, John (1994). English sound structure. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce (1989). Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology. LI 20. 253–306.Google Scholar
Horvath, Barbara M. & Horvath, Ronald J. (2001). A multilocality study of a sound change in progress: the case of /l/ vocalization in New Zealand and Australian English. Language Variation and Change 13. 37–57.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M. (1985). A theory of phonological weight. Dordrecht: Foris. Reprinted 2003, Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Iskarous, Khalil, McDonough, Joyce & Whalen, D. H. (2012). A gestural account of the velar fricative in Navajo. Laboratory Phonology 3. 195–210.Google Scholar
Itô, Junko (1989). A prosodic theory of epenthesis. NLLT 7. 217–259.Google Scholar
Krakow, Rena A. (1999). Physiological organization of syllables: a review. JPh 27. 23–54.Google Scholar
Labov, William (1994). Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 1: Internal factors. Oxford & Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon & Boberg, Charles (2006). The atlas of North American English: phonetics, phonology and sound change. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Karen, Mark & Miller, Corey (1991). Near-mergers and the suspension of phonemic contrast. Language Variation and Change 3. 33–74.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter & Johnson, Keith (2015). A course in phonetics. 7th edn. Stamford, Conn.: Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Lavoie, Lisa & Cohn, Abigail (1999). Sesquisyllables of English: the structure of vowel-liquid syllables. In Ohala, John J., Hasegawa, Yoko, Ohala, Manjari, Granville, Daniel & Bailey, Ashlee C. (eds.) Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California. 109–112.Google Scholar
Lin, Susan, Beddor, Patrice Speeter & Coetzee, Andries W. (2014). Gestural reduction, lexical frequency, and sound change: a study of post-vocalic /l/. Laboratory Phonology 5. 9–36.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan (1995). Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. In Beckman, Jill N., Dickey, Laura Walsh & Urbanczyk, Suzanne (eds.) Papers in Optimality Theory. Amherst: GLSA. 249–384.Google Scholar
McMahon, April, Foulkes, Paul & Tollfree, Laura (1994). Gestural representation and Lexical Phonology. Phonology 11. 277–316.Google Scholar
Marin, Stefania & Pouplier, Marianne (2014). Articulatory synergies in the temporal organization of liquid clusters in Romanian. JPh 42. 24–36.Google Scholar
Mielke, Jeff, Baker, Adam & Archangeli, Diana (2016). Individual-level contact limits phonological complexity: evidence from bunched and retroflex /ɹ/. Lg 92. 101–140.Google Scholar
Morén, Bruce (2000). The puzzle of Kashmiri stress: implications for weight theory. Phonology 17. 365–396.Google Scholar
Nam, Hosung (2007). Syllable-level intergestural timing model: split-gesture dynamics focusing on positional asymmetry and moraic structure. In Cole, Jennifer & Hualde, José Ignacio (eds.) Laboratory phonology 9. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 483–506.Google Scholar
Nam, Hosung, Goldstein, Louis & Saltzman, Elliot (2009). Self-organization of syllable structure: a coupled oscillator model. In Pellegrino, François, Marisco, Egidio, Chitoran, Ioana & Coupé, Christophe (eds.) Approaches to phonological complexity. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 299–328.Google Scholar
Narayanan, Shrikanth, Nayak, Krishna, Lee, Sungbok, Sethy, Abhinav & Byrd, Dani (2004). An approach to real-time magnetic resonance imaging for speech production. JASA 115. 1771–1776.Google Scholar
Ní Chiosáin, Máire & Padgett, Jaye (2001). Markedness, segment realization, and locality in spreading. In Lombardi, Linda (ed.) Segmental phonology in Optimality Theory: constraints and representations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 118–156.Google Scholar
Padgett, Jaye (2008). Glides, vowels, and features. Lingua 118. 1937–1955.Google Scholar
Pouplier, Marianne (2011). The atoms of phonological representations. In Oostendorp, Marc van, Ewen, Colin J., Hume, Elizabeth & Rice, Keren (eds.) The Blackwell companion to phonology. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell. 107–129.Google Scholar
Prieto-Vives, Pilar (1994). Vowel lengthening in Northern Italy: a case for segmental and prosodic optimization. PhD dissertation, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.Google Scholar
Prince, Alan & Smolensky, Paul (2004). Optimality Theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. Malden, Mass. & Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Proctor, Michael (2009). Gestural characterization of a phonological class: the liquids. PhD dissertation, Yale University.Google Scholar
Proctor, Michael & Walker, Rachel (2012). Articulatory bases of sonority in English liquids. In Parker, Steve (ed.) The sonority controversy. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. 289–316.Google Scholar
Proctor, Michael, Walker, Rachel, Smith, Caitlin, Szalay, Tünde, Goldstein, Louis & Narayanan, Shrikanth (2018). Articulatory characterization of English liquid-final rimes. Ms, Macquarie University & University of Southern California. Available (May 2019) at http://mproctor.net/docs/proctor_etal18_liquidrimes.pdf.Google Scholar
Recasens, Daniel (1985). Coarticulatory patterns and degrees of coarticulatory resistance in Catalan CV sequences. Language and Speech 28. 97–114.Google Scholar
Recasens, Daniel & Espinosa, Aina (2009). An articulatory investigation of lingual coarticulatory resistance and aggressiveness for consonants and vowels in Catalan. JASA 125. 2288–2298.Google Scholar
Recasens, Daniel, Pallarès, Maria Dolors & Fontdevila, Jordi (1997). A model of lingual coarticulation based on articulatory constraints. JASA 102. 544–561.Google Scholar
Rosenthall, Sam (1994). Vowel/glide alternation in a theory of constraint interaction. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Sagey, Elizabeth (1986). The representation of features and relations in nonlinear phonology. PhD dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Saltzman, Elliot & Munhall, Kevin G. (1989). A dynamical approach to gestural patterning in speech production. Ecological Psychology 1. 333–382.Google Scholar
Scobbie, James M. & Pouplier, Marianne (2010). The role of syllable structure in external sandhi: an EPG study of vocalisation and retraction in word-final English /l/. JPh 38. 240–259.Google Scholar
Smith, Caitlin (2016). Morphological consonant mutation as gestural affixation. CLS 50. 411–426.Google Scholar
Smith, Caitlin (2018). Harmony in Gestural Phonology. PhD dissertation, University of Southern California. Available at https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004180.Google Scholar
Smith, Caitlin & Blaylock, Reed (2017). Deriving exceptional phonological patterns from contrastive gestural strength. Poster presented at the Dynamic Modeling in Phonetics and Phonology Workshop at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Available (May 2019) at https://pages.jh.edu/~csmit372/pdf/smithblaylock_cls53_poster.pdf.Google Scholar
Sproat, Richard & Fujimura, Osamu (1993). Allophonic variation in English /l/ and its implications for phonetic implementation. JPh 21. 291–311.Google Scholar
Tejada, Laura (2012). Tone gestures and constraint interaction in Sierra Juárez Zapotec. PhD dissertation, University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Uffmann, Christian (2007). Intrusive [r] and optimal epenthetic consonants. Language Sciences 29. 451–476.Google Scholar
Walker, Rachel (2017). Temporal structure in phonology. Paper presented at MIT. Available (May 2019) at https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/1208/docs/Walker_MITColloq_Handout_2017.pdf.Google Scholar
Walker, Rachel & Proctor, Michael (2013). Articulatory overlap in English syllables with postvocalic /ɹ/. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 19. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4799574.Google Scholar
Weide, Robert L. (1994). Carnegie Mellon University pronouncing dictionary. http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict.Google Scholar
Wells, John C. (1982). The accents of English. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wells, John C. (2008). Longman pronunciation dictionary. 3rd edn. Harlow: Pearson.Google Scholar
Westbury, John R., Hashi, Michiko & Lindstrom, Mary J. (1998). Differences among speakers in lingual articulation for American English /ɹ/. Speech Communication 26. 203–226.Google Scholar
Zawadzki, Paul A. & Kuehn, David P. (1980). A cineradiographic study of static and dynamic aspects of American English /r/. Phonetica 37. 253–266.Google Scholar
Zec, Draga (1995). Sonority constraints on syllable structure. Phonology 12. 85–129.Google Scholar
Zhou, Xinhui, Espy-Wilson, Carol Y., Boyce, Suzanne, Tiede, Mark, Holland, Christy & Choe, Ann (2008). A magnetic resonance imaging-based articulatory and acoustic study of ‘retroflex’ and ‘bunched’ American English /r/. JASA 123. 4466–4481.Google Scholar
Zsiga, Elizabeth C. (1997). Features, gestures, and Igbo vowels: an approach to the phonology–phonetics interface. Lg 73. 227–274.Google Scholar