Paul Foulkes

The social life of phonetics and phonology

In this article we define and illustrate sociophonetic variation within speech, highlighting both its pervasiveness and also the relatively minor role it has played in the development of phonetic and phonological theory. Reviewing evidence from studies of adults and children, we suggest that cognitive representations of words combine linguistic and indexical information, and that both types of information are present from the first stages of acquisition. We suggest that an exemplar-based model of phonological knowledge offers the most productive means of modeling sociophonetic variation. We discuss some of the characteristics of an exemplar-based account of sociophonetic variability and highlight some strands of investigation which would facilitate its further development.

Descriptive adequacy in phonology: A variationist perspective

This paper offers a variationist critique of aspects of phonological theory and method, focusing on advances in descriptive methods and highlighting the problems that need to be addressed in explaining phonological variation. On the one hand, socially situated language samples which have been systematically collected and analysed constitute a legitimate – indeed often vital – source of evidence to be utilised by linguists for assessing and refining theoretical models. On the other hand, variationists cannot operate in isolation from theoretical concerns, and can benefit from an evaluation of the competing theoretical frameworks available to them. The paper begins with a brief review of the philosophical foundations underlying the tension between ‘external’ and ‘internal’ methodology. We then focus on a particular phonological example – glottalisation in English. We demonstrate that phonological models of this can be complemented by systematic and accountable data collection and analysis of the kind associated with sociolinguistics. It is suggested that the patterns of variation produced by speakers are significantly more complex than has been indicated in the phonological literature. Consequently, these approaches can be usefully expanded and extended as theoretical models. We discuss some desiderata for extending the range of phonological models, focusing chiefly on the need to account for variability and change in language.

Gestural representation and Lexical Phonology

Recent work on Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein 1986, 1989, 1991, 1992a, b) raises a number of questions, specifically involving the phonetics–phonology ‘interface’. One advantage of using Articulatory Phonology (henceforth ArtP), with its basic units of abstract gestures based on articulatory movements, is its ability to link phenomena previously seen as phonological to those which are conventionally described as allophonic, or even lower-level phonetic effects, since ‘gestures are... useful primitives for characterising phonological patterns as well as for analysing the activity of the vocal tract articulators’ (Browman & Goldstein 1991: 313). If both phonetics and phonology could ultimately be cast entirely in gestural terms, the phonetics–phonology interface might effectively cease to exist, at least in terms of units of analysis.

Listener evaluation of sociophonetic variability: Probing constraints and capabilities

Abstract This paper reports the results of an experimental study designed to investigate how listeners learn to create new associations between phonetic properties of the speech signal and external social referents. Very little is known of how this learning takes place in children, and it is a particularly challenging area to study given the difficulty in controlling some of the variables which are likely to be important factors in childrens learning of the productive and interpretative dimensions of social-indexical phonetic variation. Thus, in this study, we focus on adult listeners in order to develop a sense of how adults might approach this learning task, and also to test out a method for probing this form of learning in a controlled fashion. 49 participants were trained on new patterns of social-indexical variability and, in a subsequent test phase, we assessed the extent to which this training led the listeners to acquire new associations between specific realizational variants and the social categories with which they have been associated in the training material. Results are reported from four experimental conditions which provided listeners with a range of different learning tasks. Our findings suggest that learning of novel sociophonetic associations can be achieved as the result of a relatively short amount of exposure to training material incorporating the new association, but that the success with which learning takes place is dependent on a number of factors such as the nature of the criterial variable and individual learner variation.

Historical Laboratory Phonology—Investigating /p/>/f/>/h/ Changes

This paper offers a contribution to laboratory phonology, extending experimental methods to the investigation of a cross-linguistic historical problem. The issue in question is the recurrent and unidirectional series of sound changes from /p/ > /f/ > /h/. A large sample of languages was surveyed, which revealed no evidence for direct changes from /p/ > /h/ (contrary to popular claims in the literature). Instead, an intervening /f/ stage appears mandatory. /p/ > /f/ changes are widely assumed to be articulatorily-motivated lenitions. By contrast, /f/ > /h/ changes have received little attention. The survey indicates that this change tends to be motivated in the proximity of /u/. A perceptual experiment was carried out to investigate this pattern, which shows that the change may be initiated due to the acoustic similarity of [fu] and [hu] sequences. Some implications of these findings for phonological theory are then briefly outlined.

The relevant population in forensic voice comparison

LRs based on different definitions of the relevant population computed.Relevant population varied according to socio-economic class and age.Strength of evidence affected substantially for individual comparisons.Systems based on narrow, appropriate relevant population produce the best validity.Broad definition of class and age preferable to narrow, inappropriate definition. In forensic voice comparison, the expert is typically instructed to compare the voices in a pair of offender and suspect samples. To appropriately evaluate the strength of such evidence, it is necessary to consider both the similarity between the samples and their typicality in the wider, relevant population. This paper considers the effects of different definitions of the relevant population when computing numerical likelihood ratios (LR), with specific regard to socio-economic class and age. Input data consist of cubic polynomial estimations of F1, F2 and F3 trajectories for /e?/ in New Zealand English. Calibrated LRs are computed for a sociolinguistically homogeneous sets of test data using three systems comprising of training and reference data which, with regard to the social class or age of the test speakers, are Matched, Mismatched or Mixed. The distributions of LRs were found to be relatively stable across systems, although LRs for individual comparisons may be substantially affected. As expected, the Mismatched systems produced the worst validity, while the Matched systems produced the best validity. The implications of these results for voice comparison casework are considered in light of the paradox that one cannot know for certain the sociolinguistic community to which the offender belongs.

Introduction: Language acquisition and sociolinguistic variation

The special issue appears in a new scientific landscape of innovative attempts to link sociolinguistics and cognitive psycholinguistics. Studies on acquisition of variation have been conducted since the late 1960s, but the changing scientific landscape gives them a new impetus. On the one hand, our work draws on and contributes to sociolinguistics. As a result, it focuses on the acquisition of sociolinguistic patterns conceived of as properties shared by communities of speakers consisting of both children and adults. At the same time, our work draws on the traditions of developmental psycholinguistics. These connections lead us to discuss the cognitive mechanisms that are involved in the acquisition of sociolinguistic variants and social meaning. The contributions of the special issue address four questions which may be the key driving issues in research in the years to come.

Changing Words and Sounds: The Roles of Different Cognitive Units in Sound Change

This study considers the role of different cognitive units in sound change: phonemes, contextual variants and words. We examine /u/-fronting and /j/-dropping in data from three generations of Derby English speakers. We analyze dynamic formant data and auditory judgments, using mixed effects regression methods, including generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs). /u/-fronting is reaching its end-point, showing complex conditioning by context and a frequency effect that weakens over time. /j/-dropping is declining, with low-frequency words showing more innovative variants with /j/ than high-frequency words. The two processes interact: words with variable /j/-dropping (new) exhibit more fronting than words that never have /j/ (noodle) even when the /j/ is deleted. These results support models of change that rely on phonetically detailed representations for both word- and sound-level cognitive units.

Missed Connections at the Junction of Sociolinguistics and Speech Processing

In recent years, significant momentum has built up in efforts to integrate the social with the cognitive in theoretical models of speech production/processing and phonological representation. While acknowledging these advances, we argue that what limits our ability to elaborate models of processing and representation in which social-indexical properties of speech are effectively integrated is that we remain some way from fully understanding how these properties are manifested within spoken interaction in the first place. We explore some of these limitations, drawing on data from a study of sociophonetic variability in a population of speakers of Australian English. We discuss issues relating to methods for capturing variability in the realization of vowels and consonants, and we highlight the pivotal role of speech style and the challenges that this raises for models of production and processing.

Three steps forward for predictability. Consideration of methodological robustness, indexical and prosodic factors, and replication in the laboratory

Abstract There is now abundant evidence that phonetic forms are shaped by probabilistic effects reflecting predictability or informativity. We outline a number of challenges for such work, where theoretical claims are often based on small differences in acoustic measurements, or interpretations of small statistical effect sizes. We outline caveats about the methods and assumptions encountered in many studies of predictability effects, particularly regarding corpus-based approaches. We consider the wide range of factors that influence patterns of variability in phonetic forms, taking a broad perspective on what is meant by “the message” in order to show that predictability effects need to be considered alongside many others, including indexical and prosodic factors. We suggest a number of ways forward to extend our understanding of the form-predictability relationship.