Phonetic flapping creates a distinction between writer and rider in American English
the verdict
SUPPORTED
the evidence backs this
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
3 sources for · 0 against
Peer-reviewed phonetic research uses writer and rider as classic examples to examine alveolar flapping and incomplete neutralization in American English.
Previous research has demonstrated that semantics and pragmatics influence durational modifications in words and segments. The present research investigated specifically how semantics and pragmatics influence preservation of a phonemic contrast. Experiment 1 examined alveolar flapping in American English. Potentially flapped words, for example, writer and rider, were embedded in each of two types of semantic passages: semantically biasing and semantically neutral passages. In addition, these passages were produced in one of two pragmatic conditions: listener-present and listener-absent. The results showed that the phonemic voicing distinction between /t/ and /d/ was preserved in biasing passages and in the listener-present condition. The /t/-/d/ distinction was not preserved in neutral passages or in the listener-absent condition. Experiment 2 examined whether listeners could use the durational differences found to distinguish phonemic voicing in Experiment 1. Our investigation demonstrates that semantics and pragmatics interact with phonological processes in speech production. We speculate that phonological processes may be affected both by speakers' decision processes to adjust their articulation for the benefit of the listener and by speakers' internal structure and interactive activation among linguistic units.
Researchers found that there are five main cues for distinguishing the voicing of these intervocalic plosives, preceding vowel duration, following vowel duration, closure duration, semantic context, and f0 perturbation, also known as consonant intrinsic f0. In American English, when /t/ and /d/ occur intervocalically, they are realized as a voiced alveolar flap [ɾ] (e.g., [ɹa͡ɪɾɪŋ] writing/riding, [liɾɚ] liter/leader). The presence of these cues indicates incomplete neutralization of these forms. To address a current gap in the literature, the present study focused on American English native speakers’ perception and use of CF0 and closure duration as independent and combined informative cues for deciding voicing contrast of /t/ and /d/ when neutralized by the flap. Participants engaged in a self-administered online forced-judgement task of a pseudoword in 30 combinations of CF0 and flap closure duration to indicate the underlying representation (/hɑtɑ/ or /hɑdɑ/) of the surface production [hɑɾɑ] they perceived. This study observed that participants are more likely to select /hɑtɑ/ when the CF0 is higher and / hɑdɑ/ elsewhere. These modest findings suggest that CF0 is a useful cue for voicing distinction. The results suggest that models of spoken word recognition and speech perception ought to include CF0 as a cue.
ɯ u}[citation needed] ⟨D⟩ for the conflated flapped middle consonant of American English writer and rider.[citation needed] ⟨N⟩ for the homorganic syllable-coda
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association, starting in the late 19th century, as a standard written representation for the sounds of speech. The IPA is used by linguists, lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, speech–language pathologists, sing
⟨…
Everything we examined (3)
This check searched the claim as stated. It did not run a separate search for evidence against it.