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Towards a dynamical model of English vowels. Evidence from diphthongisation

Strycharczuk, Patrycja; Kirkham, Sam; Gorman, Emily; Nagamine, Takayuki; (2024) Towards a dynamical model of English vowels. Evidence from diphthongisation. Journal of Phonetics , 107 , Article 101349. 10.1016/j.wocn.2024.101349. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Diphthong vowels exhibit a degree of inherent dynamic change, the extent of which can vary synchronically and diachronically, such that diphthong vowels can become monophthongs and vice versa. Modelling this type of change requires defining diphthongs in opposition to monophthongs. However, formulating an explicit definition has proven elusive in acoustics and articulation, as diphthongisation is often gradient in these domains. In this study, we consider whether diphthong vowels form a coherent phonetic category from the articulatory point of view. We present articulometry and acoustic data from six speakers of Northern Anglo-English producing a full set of phonologically long vowels. We analyse several measures of diphthongisation, all of which suggest that diphthongs are not categorically distinct from long monophthongs. We account for this observation with an Articulatory Phonology/Task Dynamic model in which diphthongs and long monophthongs have a common gestural representation, comprising two articulatory targets in each case, but they differ according to gestural constriction and location of the component gestures. We argue that a two-target representation for all long vowels is independently supported by phonological weight, as well as by the nature of historical diphthongisation and present-day dynamic vowel variation in British English.

Type: Article
Title: Towards a dynamical model of English vowels. Evidence from diphthongisation
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.wocn.2024.101349
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2024.101349
Language: English
Additional information: © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Vowels, Diphthongs, Representation, Articulatory Phonology, EMA
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10198626
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