Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
“/z/-devoicing: A Feature of Appalachian English?”
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
/z/-devoicing refers to the phenomenon where historically voiced alveolar fricatives are devoiced, usually word-finally; for example, a speaker would pronounce keys as [kis]. This variant has been shown to be a marker of social identity (Bayley & Holland 2014). In this paper we investigate whether z-devoicing might be a feature of Appalachian or Southern American English (cf. Hazen et al. 2016).
We designed an experiment to elicit /z/-final word forms in a picture-naming task. Participants also completed a questionnaire about whether they identified as Southern, Appalachian and how much they oriented towards their hometown. Following Walker & Sedarous (2015), we automatically coded for [z] or [s] realizations using the FAVE Aligner (Rosenfelder et al. 2011).
We have run 34 participants so far, and analyzed the data from 25. All participants come from NOVA, Southwest Virginia, and/or Appalachia. Overall, the aligner coded 39% of tokens as containing an [s] instead of a [z], and all participants exhibited some [s]-devoicing. Critically for our research question, participants who more strongly agree with the statement “I am Appalachian” exhibit greater rates of /z/-devoicing (p
Our data collection and analyses are ongoing, but our results so far suggest that /z/-devoicing may in fact be a feature of Appalachian varieties of English. As we proceed, we will investigate whether rates of [z]-devoicing vary depending on how strongly a person orients towards their hometown (cf. Carmichael 2014), and whether there is also /z/-devoicing in participants who identify as Southern but not Appalachian.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Assistant Professor of English and student.
“/z/-devoicing: A Feature of Appalachian English?”
/z/-devoicing refers to the phenomenon where historically voiced alveolar fricatives are devoiced, usually word-finally; for example, a speaker would pronounce keys as [kis]. This variant has been shown to be a marker of social identity (Bayley & Holland 2014). In this paper we investigate whether z-devoicing might be a feature of Appalachian or Southern American English (cf. Hazen et al. 2016).
We designed an experiment to elicit /z/-final word forms in a picture-naming task. Participants also completed a questionnaire about whether they identified as Southern, Appalachian and how much they oriented towards their hometown. Following Walker & Sedarous (2015), we automatically coded for [z] or [s] realizations using the FAVE Aligner (Rosenfelder et al. 2011).
We have run 34 participants so far, and analyzed the data from 25. All participants come from NOVA, Southwest Virginia, and/or Appalachia. Overall, the aligner coded 39% of tokens as containing an [s] instead of a [z], and all participants exhibited some [s]-devoicing. Critically for our research question, participants who more strongly agree with the statement “I am Appalachian” exhibit greater rates of /z/-devoicing (p
Our data collection and analyses are ongoing, but our results so far suggest that /z/-devoicing may in fact be a feature of Appalachian varieties of English. As we proceed, we will investigate whether rates of [z]-devoicing vary depending on how strongly a person orients towards their hometown (cf. Carmichael 2014), and whether there is also /z/-devoicing in participants who identify as Southern but not Appalachian.
