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English syllabic consonants vs. schwa at discourse level
A perceptual analysis*
Inmaculada de Jess Arboleda and Rafael Monroy
Spanish Air Force Academy / University of Murcia
This is a perceptual study on the production of English syllabic consonants vs.
schwa in word nal position at discourse level. It is intended to nd out whether the speakers gender, accent, speech rate and emphasis placed upon words have any bearing on the production of this alternation. The eect the aforementioned factors may have on the production of this apparently anarchic phonetic alternation demands further exploration (see, however, OShaughnessy, 1981; Byrd, 1994; Wells, 1995; T, 2002). The informants for this study were 80 non-rhotic native newsreaders (40 males and 40 females) taken from the BBC learning English website (2009). Three female listeners not knowledgeable about the purposes of the study had to decide whether they perceived a syllabic consonant in certain words (800 overall) or not. Results show that there is a statistically signicant relationship between each of these factors and the production of English syllabic consonants vs. schwa.
Keywords: English syllabic consonant vs. schwa production, perceptual study, discourse, gender, accent, speech rate, word emphasis
Se trata de un estudio perceptual sobre la produccin de las consonantes silbicas vs. la schwa inglesas en posicin nal de palabra a nivel discursivo. Tiene como objetivo averiguar si el sexo, acento, velocidad de habla y nfasis sobre palabras tiene algn efecto sobre la produccin de esta alternancia. El efecto que los factores previamente mencionados puede tener en la produccin de esta
* We gratefully acknowledge the help of referees participating in the study: Sonya Ross, Stephanie Bremner and Charlotte Sarah Walker (permission has been granted to mention their full names). Without their support and collaboration this research project would not have been carried out. Thanks too to Dr. Francisca J. Serrano Pastor and Prof. Clive Upton for their valuable advice and help. We are also indebted to a research scholarship from the Fundacin Sneca, which has allowed us to explore this challenging topic.
Revista Espaola de Lingstica Aplicada 28:1 (2015), 1747. doi 10.1075/resla.28.1.02arb issn 02132028 / e-issn 22546774 John Benjamins Publishing Company
18 Inmaculada de Jess Arboleda and Rafael Monroy
alternancia fontica aparentemente anrquica exige mayor exploracin (ver, sin embargo, OShaughnessy,...