North American /l/ both darkens and lightens depending on morphological constituency and segmental context

Abstract

It is uncontroversial that, in many varieties of English, the realization of /l/ varies depending on whether /l/ occurs word-initially or word-finally. The nature of this effect, however, remains controversial. Previous analyses alternately analyzed the variation as darkening or lightening, and alternately found evidence that the variation involves a categorical distinction between allophones or a gradient scale conditioned by phonetic factors. We argue that these diverging conclusions are a result of the numerous factors influencing /l/ darkness and differences between studies in terms of which factors are considered. By controlling for a range of factors, our study demonstrates a pattern of variability that has not been shown in previous work. We find evidence of morpheme-final darkening and morpheme-initial lightening when compared to a baseline of morpheme-internal /l/. We also find segmental effects such that, in segmental contexts which independently darken /l/, one can observe /l/ lightening, and contexts which independently lighten /l/ can make lightening effects undetectable. Morphological and prosodic effects are hence sometimes trumped by segmental context. Once contextual effects are controlled for, there is evidence both for morphologically-conditioned /l/-darkening and for morphologicallyconditioned /l/-lightening, both of which can be understood as a result of prosodic differences reflecting morphological junctures.

Locating de-lateralization in the pathway of sound changes affecting coda /l/

“…For /l/-vocalization, this is expected, based on previous results that show stochastic variation in the rates at which this process applies in New Zealand (Horvath & Horvath, 2002). The interaction between vowel and morphosyntactic environment in conditioning /l/-darkening is reminiscent of similar interactions reported for British English (Strycharczuk & Scobbie, 2017b) and American English (Mackenzie et al, 2018). The instances of /l/-vocalization in our data are generally limited to word-final preconsonantal /l/.…”

“…For instance, in a study of Southern British English, Strycharczuk and Scobbie (2017b) find robust morphosyntactic differences on the degree of vowel fronting before /l/ for pairs such as hula and fool-ing (when the preceding vowel is goose), but much smaller differences for pairs such as bully and wool-ly (when the preceding vowel is foot). Similarly, Mackenzie et al (2018) report differences in the acoustic effect of /l/-darkening when the preceding vowel is fleece (ceiling versus kneel-ing), but they find no difference between morpheme-final and morpheme-initial /l/ when the preceding vowel is dress (cellar versus sell-er), or kit (skillet versus kill-it). Note also other works that report differences between morpheme-medial and morpheme-final /l/, using fleece as the vocalic context (Sproat & Fujimura, 1993;Turton, 2015Turton, , 2017.…”

“…For each vowel context, we included /l/ in the following morphosyntactic context: word-initial (#lV), word-medial morpheme-internal (VlV), word-medial morpheme-final (Vl-V), word-final pre-vocalic (Vl#V), word-final pre-consonantal (Vl#C). We know from previous research, that the degree of /l/-darkening varies gradiently, depending on the strength of the following morpho-syntactic boundary (Lee-Kim et al, 2013;Sproat & Fujimura, 1993;Turton, 2015Turton, , 2017, and furthermore, the darkening effects interact with the quality of the preceding vowel (Mackenzie et al, 2018;Strycharczuk & Scobbie, 2017b). Therefore, by manipulating these two factors we expected to elicit a broader spectrum of /l/-darkening from light to dark/vocalized /l/.…”

Evidence against interactive effects on articulation in Javanese verb paradigms

“…However, morphological relatives tend to pattern together: both the wordform Räder "wheels" and its relative Rad "wheel" have longer vowels than the unrelated Rat "council," even though the voiced obstruent is medial only in Räder (Nicenboim et al, 2018). Similar morphologically conditioned phonetic patterns are attested in English and several other languages (especially Germanic; Ben Hedia & Plag, 2017; Davis, 2005;Hall & Scott, 2007;Kaplan, 2017;Lee-Kim & Davidson, 2013;Mackenzie et al, 2018;Smith, Baker, & Hawkins, 2012;Strycharczuk & Scobbie, 2016; see Garrett, 2015 §4.2 andPlag, 2014 for other English examples).…”

“…For instance, Rad is spelled with a voiced <d>, and the morphological structure of a word is often apparent in its spelling (Aronoff, Berg, & Heyer, 2016), so such patterns may also reflect speakers' orthographic awareness (Brewer, 2008;Ernestus & Baayen, 2006;Winter & Roettger, 2011). The German voicing effect is also argued to be the result of partial devoicing (van Oostendorp, 2008), while other patterns have been claimed to derive from a phonological concatenation mechanism (Cho, 2001;Mackenzie et al, 2018;Smith et al, 2012).…”