2018/10/01 by Charlie Farrington · 1 citation
Psychology · Social Sciences · Medicine · #Phonetics and Phonology Research #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Multilingual Education and Policy #Voice #Duration (music) #Vowel #Consonant #Linguistics #Voice-onset time #Vowel length #American English #Stop consonant #Phonology #Word (group theory) #Contrast (vision) #Audiology #Psychology #History #Computer science #Medicine #Acoustics #Physics #Artificial intelligence #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1017/s0954394518000145
openalex publication_date 2018/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract In many varieties of African American English (AAE), glottal stop replacement and deletion of word-final /t/ and /d/ results in consonant neutralization, while the underlying voicing distinction may be maintained by other cues, such as vowel duration. Here, I examine the relationship between vowel duration, final glottal stop replacement, and deletion of word-final /t, d/ to determine whether the phonological contrast of consonant voicing is maintained through duration of the preceding vowel. Data come from conversational interviews of AAE speakers in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington, DC. Results indicate that glottalization and deletion of word-final /t/ and /d/ are widespread across the speakers in the analysis. Additionally, the duration of vowels is significantly longer before underlying /d/ than /t/ for consonant neutralized contexts, thus showing that duration, normally a secondary cue to final voicing, may be becoming a primary cue in AAE.