Abstract
When voiced segments occur in coda clusters, they undergo varying degrees of devoicing. We investigate this phenomenon in the speech of the second author, a native speaker of American English from Central Minnesota. The coda clusters under investigation occur in the lexical items transcribed phonemically as /θɪŋz/ (things repeated twice), /spunz/ (spoons), and /wɛnz.de/ (Wednesday), /slæbz/ (slabs), /kɪdz/ (kids),and /bægz/ (bags). Acoustic measurements and the 40/60 threshold are used in tandem to determine the gradience of devoicing that take place in the coda clusters /ŋz/, /nz/, /bz/, /dz/, and /gz/.
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Recommended Citation
Koffi, Ettien and Simmonds, Andrea
(2018)
"Gradience in Coda Cluster Devoicing in a Central Minnesota English Idiolect,"
Linguistic Portfolios: Vol. 7, Article 11.
Available at:
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/stcloud_ling/vol7/iss1/11
Author Bio
Ettien Koffi, Ph.D., is a professor of Linguistics at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, USA, specializing in acoustic phonetics (Speech Intelligibility). His research interests center around sociophonetic variations in Central Minnesota English, acoustic phonetic accounts of intelligibility in L2 English, and acoustic phonetic and general description of Anyi, a West African Language spoken in Cote d'Ivoire. He is the author of four books and numerous papers covering topics as varied as syntax, translation, language planning and policy, orthography, and indigenous literacy training manuals. He can be reached at enkoffi@stcloudstate.edu.
Andrea Simmonds earned a BA in English with an emphasis on linguistics and a minor in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) from St. Cloud State University, MN. She is originally from Little Falls, Minnesota where she lived for 18 years. She studied abroad in Port Elizabeth, South Africa where she cultivated an interest in teaching. Her plans include studying for her MA in English Linguistics. She can be reached via e-mail at: andrea.p.simmonds@gmail.com.