Interspeaker variation among Shetland Islanders as the long term outcome of dialectally varied input : speech production evidence for fine-grained linguistic plasticity

This is a slightly revised version of Scobbie, J.M. (2005) Interspeaker variation as the long-term outcome of dialectally varied input: speech production evidence for fine-grained plasticity. Proceedings of the Workshop on Plasticity in Speech perception. This WP-2 version includes corrected graphs and should be cited in preference to the published version appearing in those proceedings - see the note about the corrections. The major publications on this Shetlandic dataset are [2], and Marie Cluness's undergraduate project, available at QMUC. This series consists of unpublished working- papers. They are not final versions and may be superseded by publication in journal or book form, which should be cited in preference. All rights remain with the author(s) at this stage, and circulation of a work in progress in this series does not prejudice its later publication. Comments to authors are welcome.The English stop voicing contrast is examined in both word-initial position (via VOT) and word-final position (via the duration of the preceding vowel) in young adult speakers born and brought up in the Shetland Isles. The subjects' parents were either also from Shetland, from elsewhere in Scotland, or England. All have identical phonemic stop systems, unambiguously so in initial position. The quasi-phonemic role in Scottish English of vowel duration in signalling the suffixual vs. tautomorphemic word final /d/ instead of the /t/-/d/ contrast (the Scottish Vowel Length Rule) renders final position more complex. There are fine-grained interspeaker differences covering a wide area of the phonetic space, exemplifying the potential for phonologically-relevant variation. The targets may be speaker-specific responses to input, especially mismatches between the dialect of their parents and the wider community.casl[1] Allen, J. S., Miller, J. L. and DeSteno, D. Individual talker differences in voice-onset-time, J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., Vol. 113: 544-552, 2003. [2] Scobbie, J. M. Flexibility in the Face of Incompatible English VOT Systems, in Goldstein, L. M., Best, C. and Whalen, D. (eds.) Papers in Laboratory Phonology 8: Varieties of Phonological Competence, CUP, Cambridge, in press. [3] van Leyden, K. Prosodic Characteristics of Orkney and Shetland Dialects: An Experimental Approach, LOT, Utrecht, 2004. [4] van Leyden, K. The relationship between vowel and consonant duration in Orkney and Shetland dialects, Phonetica, Vol. 59: 1-19. [5] McKenna, G. E. Vowel duration in the Standard English of Scotland. Unpublished M.Litt. Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1988. [6] Scobbie, J. M, Hewlett, N., and Turk A. E. Standard English in Edinburgh and Glasgow: the Scottish vowel length rule revealed. In Foulkes, P. and Docherty, G. (eds.) Urban Voices: Variation and Change in British Accents. London, Arnold, 230-245, 1999. [7] Scobbie, J. M. The phonetics-phonology overlap. In Ramchand, G. and Reiss, C. (eds.) The Book of Interfaces, in press. [8] Lehiste, I. Suprasegmental features of speech. In Lass, N. J. (ed.) Principles of Experimental Phonetics. St. Louis: Mosby, 226-244, 1996. [9] Scobbie, J. M, Turk, A. E. and Hewlett, N. Morphemes, phonetics and lexical items: the case of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule, Proc. ICPhS, 1617-1620. [10] Cho, T. and Ladefoged, P. Variation and universals in VOT: evidence from 18 languages, J. Phon., 27, 207-229, 1999. [11] Pisoni, D. B. Some thoughts on 'normalisation' in speech perception. In Johnson, K. and Mullenix, J. K. (eds.), Talker Variability in Speech Processing. London, Academic Press, 9-32, 1997.unpub140unpu