Using Sound Change to Explore the Mental Lexicon

Variation and change Ask two speakers to produce the same sentence and you will undoubtedly find a number of differences in the ways in which they say that sentence. Ask a single speaker to say the same sentence on more than one occasion and the same will be true. Such variation arises for a number of reasons. Allophonic variation in the pronunciation of individual sounds frequently seems random, but may be constrained by linguistic factors such as the position of a sound in a word or phrase (e.g. unaspirated variants of /p/ occur after initial /s/ as in spot, but aspirated versions occur in initial position as in pot). Connected speech processes, which are abundant in fluent speech, often involve the influence of one sound on its neighbours, resulting in a wide range of different pronunciations for the same word. But such processes can also be quite variable in operation, since they may depend on aspects of speech style, which is in turn linked to the level of formality of the speech situation, as well as to interlocutor effects and other audience factors (Bell, 1984). Speakers are also influenced by environmental and paralinguistic factors (background noise, the expression of different emotions, etc.). Inter-speaker differences are perhaps a more obvious source of variation. Some differences have physiological origins in differences in vocal tract size and shape. Others, such as the dialect and accent of a speaker, can depend on a number of 2 factors which include the region of origin of the speaker, their socioeconomic background and level of education, their age and sex, and their group membership.

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