Southern stops: Phonation type differences in Mississippi

Abstract

While the voicing contrast between American English word-initial stops is often described as relatively uniform across speakers (e.g., voiced segments are produced with short positive VOTs while voiceless segments are produced with long positive VOTs), considerable sociophonetic variation exists. The current study investigates variation in the VOT of voiced and voiceless word-initial stops in pot, bot, tot, dot, cot, gotproduced in isolation and in carrier sentences. Participants included 40 native English speakers from Mississippi grouped according to their self-identified gender and ethnicity. As previously reported, African American speakers produced significantly more voiced stops with negative VOTs and more fully voiced closures preceding voiced stops than Caucasian American speakers. While speakers did not differ in their production of voiceless VOT when words were read in isolation, African American speakers maintained closure voicing preceding voiceless stops far more often than Caucasian American speakers. No gender differences were found. These data suggest this voicing variation is due to robust dialectal differences. The possibility that speakers who exhibit more prevoicing and more fully voiced closures are prolonging closure voicing through laryngeal lowering or nasal venting is explored through the examination of pitch and intensity trajectories within the closure and within the following vowel.