Voiced stops in the command performance of Southern US English.

Area of Science:

• Sociolinguistics
• Phonetics
• American English Dialectology

Background:

• Southern US English is characterized by various phonetic features.
• Voice Onset Time (VOT) analysis is crucial for understanding consonant production.
• The role of prevoicing in Southern American English requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the production of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Southern US English.
• To determine if speakers consciously manipulate prevoicing (negative lag voicing) when adopting a Southern accent.
• To examine the association between prevoicing and Southern American English identity.

Main Methods:

• Recruitment of two speaker groups: self-identified code-switchers from Southwest Virginia and actors without Southern accents.
• Recording of stimuli in both a Southern and a Standardized US accent guise for each speaker.
• Acoustic analysis of Voice Onset Time (VOT) for phrase and word initial voiced stops.

Main Results:

• Both groups produced more prevoiced tokens (lead or negative lag voicing) in the Southern guise compared to the Standard guise.
• In the Standard guise, Southern speakers produced significantly more prevoiced tokens than actors.
• Findings support lead voicing as a feature of Southern US English.

Conclusions:

• Speakers demonstrate awareness of the association between prevoicing and Southern US English.
• Prevoicing is manipulated in a socially meaningful way, indicating its status as a linguistic marker.
• Negative lag voicing functions as a marker of Southern US English, as per Labov's sociolinguistic terminology.