Abstract

There are many reasons why most phonetic studies have been made based on data from read word lists or sentences. However, in doing so, it is interesting to know some ways in which this speech differs systematically from the informant's natural speech patterns. While for many studies reading passages or word lists will remain the only feasible practice, it is helpful to be able to hypothesize in what ways such data may differ from vernacular speech. It has been found in systematic parallel analyses made of natural speech and reading lists of the same subject, that, as would be expected, certain patterns of phones emerge which may differ from each other from style to style. For example, in recent analyses of sound change in progress, Labor has found that a phonological unit whose position within phonetic space is in flux will, in its progress toward a new target position, order its allophones in space according to the immediate phonetic environment. Often the environmental influence is much larger than mere coarticulation, and in many cases influences the phone in a contrary direction. This patterning of allophones has been documented for several speakers of a dialect in which the phone is changing. Yet before the change, or after it is complete, no such environmental influence is determinable. However, in the reading style of the same speaker with fine phonetic patterning of allophones in his natural style, these patterns will become obscured. [Work supported in part by an NSF Grant.]

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