schwa-raising - common samples

[Mark J. Jones]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Cecil and fellow list members,

many thanks to Cecil for the latest post on schwa, and the kind comments on
my own contributions. We seem agreed that more data is required, but i'd
just like to make a comment on the request for variation in the same word.

In fact, production variation in repeated utterances of the same word is
precisely what we find with acoustic analysis (even if these are
consistently related to a single phoneme by our perceptual mechanisms). For
example, I've just been measuring some data on voice onset time (VOT = the
period between the release of the stop and the onset of vocal fold
vibration) in Barnsley English. For one female speaker I have (so far) VOT
values of 71 ms, 71 ms, 51 ms, 53.5 ms. This kind of variation is normal
and is why phoneticians ask their subjects to repeatedly utter the same
phrase or word, so that we can get an average as well as an idea of the
range of variation. This speaker has an average VOT for /t/ of 61.6 ms,
which is far in excess of her values for /d/ (average around 15 ms).

So, I am pretty convinced that *any* utterance of *any* word would show a
great deal of variation in its acoustic structure (frequency and amplitude
values, and relative timing of events). The real question is, what
boundaries is Cecil employing to hear /I/, and do the formant values for
raised schwa cross those perceptual boundaries? This is not a question
which can be directly answered by acoustic analysis, but requires
perceptual testing involving controlled (and so often synthetic) stimuli.
Cecil has heard /I/ once, because the vowel possessed the relevant
qualities for that vowel in Cecil's perceptual vowel space, but that does
not mean that the speaker produced normal /I/ values for his or her own
speech (though with single instances such as this there is always the case
of a speaker error too - another reason why phoneticians collect averages
of many repetitions).

I'm happy to pass on my 'Saddam' and 'Sidney' tokens to any list member for
them to listen to. Any southern British English speakers out there who hear
/I/ in 'Saddam'?

Mark

Mark Jones
Department of Linguistics
University of Cambridge