Spontaneous speech variability across languages: Labial and velar stops

Abstract

Stops such as /ptkbdg/ are perhaps the most-studied type of consonant in all of phonetics, and they have well-defined acoustic properties that one expects to find in a typical pronunciation. However, casual spontaneous speech reveals highly variable realizations of stops, ranging from voiceless stops with silent closure, burst, and aspiration noise, to weak approximants with only a slight weakening of formants, to deletion. Even careful speech reveals considerable variability. We examine acoustic realizations of intervocalic stops in Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and English, as well as the L2 English speech of the native Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese speakers. For each speaker, we measure data from spontaneous casual conversation and from careful word-list reading. In this presentation, we focus on realizations of /pbkg/. Preliminary results indicate that Dutch speakers variably transfer word-final devoicing of Dutch voiced stops to their English /bg/, but that they do not rely on the Dutch /x/ (orthographic “g”) as a source of their English /g/. Results also show that Spanish /bg/ in conversation are almost categorically approximants or nearly deleted. Spanish speakers, especially those who learned English late, appear to apply this pronunciation to English consonants as a reduced speech style.