Acoustic-phonetics of coronal stops: A cross-language study of Canadian English and Canadian French

Abstract

The study was conducted to provide an acoustic description of coronal stops in Canadian English (CE) and Canadian French (CF). CE and CF stops differ in VOT and place of articulation. CE has a two-way voicing distinction (in syllable initial position) between simultaneous and aspirated release; coronal stops are articulated at alveolar place. CF, on the other hand, has a two-way voicing distinction between prevoiced and simultaneous release; coronal stops are articulated at dental place. Acoustic analyses of stop consonants produced by monolingual speakers of CE and of CF, for both VOT and alveolar/dental place of articulation, are reported. Results from the analysis of VOT replicate and confirm differences in phonetic implementation of VOT across the two languages. Analysis of coronal stops with respect to place differences indicates systematic differences across the two languages in relative burst intensity and measures of burst spectral shape, specifically mean frequency, standard deviation, and kurtosis. The majority of CE and CF talkers reliably and consistently produced tokens differing in the SD of burst frequency, a measure of the diffuseness of the burst. Results from the study are interpreted in the context of acoustic and articulatory data on coronal stops from several other languages.