An acoustic investigation of postvocalic /r/ variants in two sociolects of Glaswegian

Lennon, Robert and Smith, Rachel and Stuart-Smith, Jane (2015) An acoustic investigation of postvocalic /r/ variants in two sociolects of Glaswegian. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences :. International Phonetic Association, London. ISBN 9780852619414

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Abstract

This paper presents a small-scale acoustic investigation into postvocalic /r/ in both middle class and working class varieties of the Glaswegian accent. Tokens of /CVC/ and /CVrC/ minimal pairs (e.g. hut/hurt, bead/beard) were elicited from two middle-class and two working-class speakers, and the formant frequencies throughout the V(r) portion were analysed. The results show significant differences in the formant patterns across both varieties and across vowel environments, for minimal pairs such as bead/beard and hut/hurt. The middle class minimal pairs are acoustically distinct throughout the V(r) portion; the working class hut and hurt pairs differ only at the end, and only in F2, potentially causing misperception for listeners. These results support previous work on /r/ in working class speech in Glasgow. The results also support previous work on the characteristics of higher formants in bunched tongue configurations of /r/.