The understanding of sociolinguistic variation is growing rapidly, but basic gaps still remain. Whether some languages or dialects are spoken faster or slower than others constitutes such a gap. Speech tempo is interconnected with social, physical and psychological markings of speech. This study examines regional variation in articulation rate and its manifestations across speaker age, gender and speaking situations (reading vs. free conversation). The results of an experimental investigation show that articulation rate differs significantly between two regional varieties of American English examined here. A group of Northern speakers (from Wisconsin) spoke significantly faster than a group of Southern speakers (from North Carolina). With regard to age and gender, young adults read faster than older adults in both regions; in free speech, only Northern young adults spoke faster than older adults. Effects of gender were smaller and less consistent; men generally spoke slightly faster than women. As the body of work on the sociophonetics of American English continues to grow in scope and depth, we argue that it is important to include fundamental phonetic information as part of our catalog of regional differences and patterns of change in American English.

This study characterizes the speech tempo ͑articulation rate, excluding pauses͒ of two distinct varieties of American English taking into account both between-speaker and within-speaker variation. Each of 192 speakers from Wisconsin ͑the northern variety͒ and from North Carolina ͑the southern variety͒, men and women, ranging in age from children to old adults, read a set of sentences and produced a spontaneous unconstrained talk. Articulation rate in spontaneous speech was modeled using fixed-mixed effects analyses. The models explored the effects of the between-speaker factors dialect, age and gender and included each phrase and its length as a source of both between-and within-speaker variation. The major findings are: ͑1͒ Wisconsin speakers speak significantly faster and produce shorter phrases than North Carolina speakers; ͑2͒ speech tempo changes across the lifespan, being fastest for individuals in their 40s; ͑3͒ men speak faster than women and this effect is not related to the length of phrases they produce. Articulation rate in reading was slower than in speaking and the effects of gender and age also differed in reading and spontaneous speech. The effects of dialect in reading remained the same, showing again that Wisconsin speakers had faster articulation rates than did North Carolina speakers.

This study aims to characterize the nature of the dynamic spectral change in vowels in three distinct regional varieties of American English spoken in the Western North Carolina, in Central Ohio, and in Southern Wisconsin. The vowels /(, , e, ae, a(/ were produced by 48 women for a total of 1920 utterances and were contained in words of the structure /bVts/ and /bVdz/ in sentences which elicited nonemphatic and emphatic vowels. Measurements made at the vowel target ͑i.e., the central 60% of the vowel͒ produced a set of acoustic parameters which included position and movement in the F1 by F2 space, vowel duration, amount of spectral change ͓measured as vector length ͑VL͒ and trajectory length ͑TL͔͒, and spectral rate of change. Results revealed expected variation in formant dynamics as a function of phonetic factors ͑vowel emphasis and consonantal context͒. However, for each vowel and for each measure employed, dialect was a strong source of variation in vowel-inherent spectral change. In general, the dialect-specific nature and amount of spectral change can be characterized quite effectively by position and movement in the F1 by F2 space, vowel duration, TL ͑but not VL which underestimates formant movement͒, and spectral rate of change.

The article reports on an acoustic investigation into the duration of five American English vowels, those found in hid, head, had, hayed, and hide. We compare duration across three major dialect areas: the Inland North, Midlands, and South. The results show systematic differences across all vowels studied, with the longest durations in the South and the shortest in the Inland North, with the Midlands in an intermediate but distinct position. More generally, the sample differs from and complements other work on this question by including detailed evidence from relatively small, cohesive areas, each within a different established dialect region.

Cross-generational and cross-dialectal variation in vowels among speakers of American English was examined in terms of vowel identification by listeners and vowel classification using pattern recognition. Listeners from Western North Carolina and Southeastern Wisconsin identified 12 vowel categories produced by 120 speakers stratified by age (old adults, young adults, and children), gender, and dialect. The vowels / , o, U, u/ were well identified by both groups of listeners. The majority of confusions were for the front /i, I, e, e, ae/, the low back /A, O/ and the monophthongal North Carolina /aI/. For selected vowels, generational differences in acoustic vowel characteristics were perceptually salient, suggesting listeners' responsiveness to sound change. Female exemplars and native-dialect variants produced higher identification rates. Linear discriminant analyses which examined dialect and generational classification accuracy showed that sampling the formant pattern at vowel midpoint only is insufficient to separate the vowels. Two sample points near onset and offset provided enough information for successful classification. The models trained on one dialect classified the vowels from the other dialect with much lower accuracy. The results strongly support the importance of dynamic information in accurate classification of cross-generational and cross-dialectal variations.