Excrescent Vowels in American English Read Speech: A Preliminary Study

• 영문명: Excrescent Vowels in American English Read Speech: A Preliminary Study
• 발행기관: 한국영어학학회
• 저자명: Suyeon Yun
• 간행물 정보: 『영어학연구』제29권 2호, 61~78쪽, 전체 18쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2023.05.31

영문 초록

This study investigates the phonetic and phonological features of excrescent vowels in American English, which have not previously been well reported in research. A close examination of a read speech corpus reveals that American English speakers occasionally produce a short and weak vowel despite the absence of a vowel at the underlying level. The unexpectedly inserted vowels occur (i) after a word-final voiced stop, (ii) between voiced obstruents in a heterorganic cluster, and (iii) in a context where the article a or the could have appeared. The inserted vowels possess the typical characteristics of excrescent vowels; they are equivalent to unstressed vowels with their short duration and low intensity and display a centralized vowel quality or a copied value of the preceding vowel. A perception experiment indicates that native English speakers rarely recognize inserted vowels, which may be derived because of gestural retiming, like other excrescent vowels, or an extension of the vocalic release after the final voiced stop unlike typical excrescent vowels.

목차

1. Introduction

2. Methods

3. Results

4. Perception of inserted vowels

5. Discussion

6. Conclusion

References

키워드

vowel insertion excrescent vowels landmark TIMIT American English