Contextual variability in American English dark-l.
This paper presents a four-subject study that examines the relative influence of syllable position and stress, together with vowel context on the colouring of the dark-l characteristic of speakers of General American English. Most investigators report lighter /l/ tokens in syllable onsets and darker tokens in coda positions. The present study demonstrates that when dark-l serves as an onset in iambic intervocalic context with tautosyllabic high front vowels, it is fully dark as a result of domain-initial strengthening. By contrast, when dark-l is abutted across a word boundary to word-final or word-initial consonants, or when it is contained in a foot-internal context (preboundary intervocalic rime with trochaic stress) its dorsal gesture is constrained, resulting in less dark tokens. In the case of dark-l, articulatory undershoot must be understood not only in terms of the alveolar gesture, but also the dorsal gesture.
Oxley
Judith
J
Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, LA 70504, USA. odj8147@louisiana.edu
Roussel
Nancye
N
Buckingham
Hugh
H
D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D010700:Phonetics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement