Increased Breathiness in Adolescent Kiezdeutsch Speakers: A Marker of Multiethnolectal Group Affiliation?

Kiezdeutsch is a multiethnolectal variety of German spoken by young people from multicultural communities that exhibits lexical, syntactic, and phonetic differences from standard German. A rather salient and pervasive feature of this variety is the fronting of the standard palatal fricative /ç/ (as in "I") to [ɕ] or [ʃ]. Previous perception work shows that this difference is salient and carries social meaning but dependent on the listener group.

Hiatus resolution and linguistic diversity in Australian English.

Vowel hiatus is typically resolved in Australian English through complementary strategies of liaison (j-gliding/w-gliding/linking-r) and glottalisation. Previous work suggests a change in progress towards increased use of glottalisation as an optimal hiatus-breaker, which creates syntagmatic contrast between adjacent vowels, particularly when the right-edge vowel is strong (i.e.

Evaluating automatic creaky voice detection methods.

There is growing interest in research on the non-modal voice quality, creaky voice; however, its identification often relies on time-consuming manual annotation, leading to a recent focus on automatic creak detection methods. Various automatic methods have been proposed, which rely on varying types and combinations of acoustic cues for creak detection. In this paper, we compare the performance of three automatic tools, the AntiMode method, the Creak Detector algorithm, and the Roughness algorithm, against manual annotation of creak using data from 80 Australian English speakers.

Glottalisation, coda voicing, and phrase position in Australian English.

Glottalisation is an important cue to coda stop voicelessness, particularly for younger Australian English speakers who utilise glottalisation more than older speakers, suggesting a recent sound change. However, most previous studies of glottalisation in this variety of English have focussed on single word utterances, raising questions about whether glottalisation in those studies may have been prosodically conditioned rather than specific to the coda stop: Could the observed effect have been due to phrase-final creaky voice, which is acoustically similar to coda-related glottalisation? This study therefore explored the differential effects of phrase position on the production of glottalisation. Phrase-medially (where phrase-final creaky voice is not expected to occur), results confirmed previous findings that glottalisation cues coda stop voicelessness and that it does so more frequently for younger compared to older speakers.

Effects of Glottalisation, Preceding Vowel Duration, and Coda Closure Duration on the Perception of Coda Stop Voicing.

English has multiple potential acoustic cues to coda stop voicing, including the duration of the preceding vowel, the coda closure duration, and, in some varieties, glottalisation. Glottalisation associated with coda stops appears to be a recent change to Australian English (AusE) with younger speakers using glottalisation more than older speakers in production. Here we report on a study designed to examine AusE-speaking listeners' perception of cues to coda stop voicing.