Affrication as the cause of /s/-retraction: Evidence from Manchester English
Retraction of /s/ to a more [ʃ]-like sound is a well-known sound change attested across many varieties of English for /stɹ/ words, e.g. street and strong. Despite recent sociophonetic interest in the variable, there remains disagreement over whether it represents a case of long-distance assimilation...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
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Open Library of the Humanities
2022
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| _version_ | 1826258525197697024 |
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| author | Bailey, G Nichols, SJ Turton, D Baranowski, M |
| author_facet | Bailey, G Nichols, SJ Turton, D Baranowski, M |
| author_sort | Bailey, G |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Retraction of /s/ to a more [ʃ]-like sound is a well-known sound change attested across many varieties of English for /stɹ/ words, e.g. street and strong. Despite recent sociophonetic interest in the variable, there remains disagreement over whether it represents a case of long-distance assimilation to /ɹ/ in these clusters or a two-step process involving local assimilation to an affricate derived from the sequence /tɹ/. In this paper, we investigate Manchester English and apply similar quantitative analysis to two contexts that are comparatively under-researched, but which allow us to tease apart the presence of an affricate and a rhotic: /stj/ as in student, which exhibits similar affrication of the /tj/ cluster in many varieties of British English, and /stʃ/ as in mischief. In an acoustic analysis conducted on a demographically-stratified corpus of over 115 sociolinguistic interviews, we track these three environments of /s/-retraction in apparent time and find that they change in parallel and behave in tandem with respect to the other factors conditioning variation in /s/-retraction. Based on these results, we argue that the triggering mechanisms of retraction are best modelled with direct reference to /t/-affrication and with /ɹ/ playing only an indirect, and not unique, role. Analysis of the whole sibilant space also reveals apparent-time change in the magnitude of the /s/–/ʃ/ contrast itself, highlighting the importance of contextualising this change with respect to the realisation of English sibilants more generally as these may be undergoing independent change. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T18:35:19Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:0b050deb-865e-4556-ace0-f963c7172398 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T18:35:19Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | Open Library of the Humanities |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:0b050deb-865e-4556-ace0-f963c71723982022-03-26T09:27:20ZAffrication as the cause of /s/-retraction: Evidence from Manchester EnglishJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:0b050deb-865e-4556-ace0-f963c7172398EnglishSymplectic ElementsOpen Library of the Humanities2022Bailey, GNichols, SJTurton, DBaranowski, MRetraction of /s/ to a more [ʃ]-like sound is a well-known sound change attested across many varieties of English for /stɹ/ words, e.g. street and strong. Despite recent sociophonetic interest in the variable, there remains disagreement over whether it represents a case of long-distance assimilation to /ɹ/ in these clusters or a two-step process involving local assimilation to an affricate derived from the sequence /tɹ/. In this paper, we investigate Manchester English and apply similar quantitative analysis to two contexts that are comparatively under-researched, but which allow us to tease apart the presence of an affricate and a rhotic: /stj/ as in student, which exhibits similar affrication of the /tj/ cluster in many varieties of British English, and /stʃ/ as in mischief. In an acoustic analysis conducted on a demographically-stratified corpus of over 115 sociolinguistic interviews, we track these three environments of /s/-retraction in apparent time and find that they change in parallel and behave in tandem with respect to the other factors conditioning variation in /s/-retraction. Based on these results, we argue that the triggering mechanisms of retraction are best modelled with direct reference to /t/-affrication and with /ɹ/ playing only an indirect, and not unique, role. Analysis of the whole sibilant space also reveals apparent-time change in the magnitude of the /s/–/ʃ/ contrast itself, highlighting the importance of contextualising this change with respect to the realisation of English sibilants more generally as these may be undergoing independent change. |
| spellingShingle | Bailey, G Nichols, SJ Turton, D Baranowski, M Affrication as the cause of /s/-retraction: Evidence from Manchester English |
| title | Affrication as the cause of /s/-retraction: Evidence from Manchester English |
| title_full | Affrication as the cause of /s/-retraction: Evidence from Manchester English |
| title_fullStr | Affrication as the cause of /s/-retraction: Evidence from Manchester English |
| title_full_unstemmed | Affrication as the cause of /s/-retraction: Evidence from Manchester English |
| title_short | Affrication as the cause of /s/-retraction: Evidence from Manchester English |
| title_sort | affrication as the cause of s retraction evidence from manchester english |
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