Pitch accent realization in four varieties of British English

• Published in: Journal of phonetics Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 161 - 185
• Main Authors: Grabe, Esther, Post, Brechtje, Nolan, Francis, Farrar, Kimberley
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2000
• Subjects: Accent; English language; Phonetics; Speech; United Kingdom
• ISSN: 0095-4470; 1095-8576
• DOI: 10.1006/jpho.2000.0111

In intonation languages, the realization of pitch accents varies with the application of phonetic effects such as “truncation” and “compression”. These effects can change the surface form of accents but do not affect the inventory of phonological contrasts. Cross-linguistic differences in the application of truncation and compression have been attested for the standard varieties of English and German, and cross-varietal differences have been shown to apply within Swedish and Danish. This paper provides evidence for cross-varietal differences in truncation and compression in four varieties of British English. We show that speakers of Cambridge English and Newcastle English compress rising and falling accents, but in Leeds English, in identical contexts, we find truncation. In Belfast English, we find rise-plateau patterns in contexts eliciting rises and falls in Cambridge English, Leeds and Newcastle, and these rise-plateaux are truncated. Our data show firstly that different varieties of one language can share intonological specifications but differ in the way these specifications are realized inF0 . Secondly, they show that the reverse is also possible. Different varieties can share a phonetic realization effect, but apply this effect to different pitch accents.