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. In phrase-final position, rates of glottalisation increased, but older speakers appeared more similar to younger speakers in use of glottalisation, suggesting that the change towards the increased use of glottalisation may be nearing completion in this prosodic position. Younger speakers appear to represent a more advanced stage of the change extending the use of glottalisation from phrase-final to phrase-medial position.