Regional differences in the perception of a consonant change in progress

This study aims at testing whether there are regional differences in the perception of the labiodental fricative contrast in Dutch. Previous production studies have shown that the devoicing of initial labiodental fricatives is a change in progress in the Dutch language area. We present the results o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of linguistic geography Vol. 4; no. 2; pp. 65 - 75
Main Authors Pinget, Anne-France, Kager, René, Van de Velde, Hans
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.09.2016
Subjects
Consonants
Dialects
Dutch language
Fricatives
Phonetics
Phonology
Regions
Sound
Sound change
Speech
Speech perception
Speech production
Voicing
Belgium
Netherlands
link perception-production
sound change
regional variation
perception
fricatives
devoicing
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Summary:This study aims at testing whether there are regional differences in the perception of the labiodental fricative contrast in Dutch. Previous production studies have shown that the devoicing of initial labiodental fricatives is a change in progress in the Dutch language area. We present the results of a speeded identification task in which fricative stimuli were systematically varied for two phonetic cues, voicing and duration. Listeners (n=100) were regionally stratified, and the regions (k=5) reflect different stages of this sound change in progress. Voicing turned out to be the strongest categorization cue in all regions; duration only played a minor role. Regional differences showed up in the perception of the consonantal contrast that matched regional differences in production reported in previous studies. The addition of random slopes in the mixed model regression showed the importance of within-regional variation.
ISSN:2049-7547
2049-7547
DOI:10.1017/jlg.2016.13