University of Wollongong

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2012

Phonetic variation in Gurindji Kriol and northern

Australian English: a longitudinal study of fricatives
in maternal speech
Heather Buchan
University of Wollongong

Recommended Citation
Buchan, Heather, Phonetic variation in Gurindji Kriol and northern Australian English: a longitudinal study of fricatives in maternal
speech, thesis, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, 2012. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3789

Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the

University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW
Library: research-pubs@uow.edu.au


Phonetic Variation in Gurindji Kriol and Northern Australian English: A

Longitudinal Study of Fricatives in Maternal Speech

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

from

University of Wollongong

by

Heather Buchan, BPsych (Hons)

Faculty of Education

2012

iii

Abstract

Acquiring the native language involves learning to perceive and produce

sound structures (phonology) of the speech input. Speech to children often contains

phonological modifications, and across languages the speech input to which children

are exposed contains phonetic variation associated with linguistic and socioindexical

information. Previous studies have investigated phonetic variation in infant-directed

speech (e.g. Davis & Lindblom, 2001; Fernald et al., 1989; Kuhl et al., 1997; Snow,

1977), and differences in phonological variation between child-directed and adult-

directed speech (e.g. Bernstein-Ratner, 1984a, 1984b; Lee, Davis & MacNeilage,

2008; Lee & Davis, 2010). There are, however, few studies examining how and when

phonetic variation in speech to children changes after infancy, as they get older. This

thesis is a longitudinal investigation of phonetic variation in mothers’ speech to

children (maternal speech) in two language varieties spoken in northern Australia,

Gurindji Kriol and Australian English.

Gurindji Kriol is an Australian Aboriginal mixed language that contains

lexical forms and phonology from both the traditional language Gurindji and Kriol, an

English-lexifier creole. There are no previous systematic quantitative studies on

fricatives in Gurindji Kriol, or any Australian contact language, although

impressionistically fricatives in Kriol-derived words are highly variable. Australian

English also contains phonetic variation related to speech processes, such as

consonant reduction in casual speech. There is, however, little prior research on

phonetic variation that children are exposed to in Australian English. The purpose of

this thesis was to provide quantitative analyses of fricative variation in maternal

speech in Gurindji Kriol and northern Australian English as children aged from

approximately 1;6 to 2;0 to 2;6. A subsidiary aim was to examine methodological


iv

issues in phonetic transcription when the transcribers are non-native speakers of the

language.

This thesis contains three empirical research studies. In Study 1 we added

phonetic transcription and analysis to a subsample of a corpus of naturalistic family

interactions in Gurindji Kriol created by Felicity Meakins between 2003 and 2007 as

part of the Aboriginal Child Language project (ACLA-1, Simpson & Wigglesworth,

2008). Speakers were three Gurindji Kriol speaking women recorded at three

timepoints, when the focus children were approximately 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. We

analysed stop-fricative variation in tokens of Kriol-derived words that could

potentially be pronounced with a fricative, based on words that had fricatives in their

English cognates. Results showed that words containing stop-fricative variation were

more likely to be open-class than closed-class, with the variable segment most

frequently word-initial and at labio-dental and alveolar places of articulation. Across

all tokens with potential fricatives, the likelihood of fricatives in word-initial position

significantly increased when children were 2;6. In tokens of words found to contain

stop-fricative variation, word-medial fricatives were significantly more likely in

mothers’ speech at child age 2;6. Analyses took into account phonological

environments and interspeaker differences.

Study 2 investigated fricative variation in the form of phonological reduction

in northern Australian English maternal speech. A longitudinal audiovisual corpus of

naturalistic family interactions was recorded and phonetically transcribed for this

study. Speakers were five mothers who were native speakers of Australian English,

and were recorded when their children were approximately 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. We

analysed deletion in word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/, common processes in casual

speech, in mothers’ speech at each timepoint. Results showed a non-linear change in


v

overall deletion over time within a stable set of lexical items. Between child ages 1;6

and 2;0 deletion proportionately increased in mothers’ speech, while between 2;0 and

2;6 deletion proportionately decreased.

Study 3 addressed a methodological issue of checking phonetic transcription

with native speakers of Gurindji Kriol. Native speakers have implicit knowledge of

Gurindji Kriol phonology that would be beneficial to understanding transcription

ambiguities arising from perceptual bias, and for furthering our interpretation of

phonetic variation in Gurindji Kriol. We used visual analogue scales to elicit native

speaker perceptions on sound segments potentially pronounced as fricatives in

Gurindji Kriol. Native speaker judgements on the scales were then compared to the

IPA judgements made by non-native speaker phonetic transcribers. Results showed

both agreements and discrepancies between native and non-native speakers for

different types of judgements and segment word positions.

Empirical findings in this thesis are discussed in terms of processes driving

change in phonetic variation in mothers’ speech to children, such as fine-tuning to

children’s own receptive and productive language development. Results have

implications for theoretical models of children’s phonological acquisition, which must

take into account variable phonetic detail in the input. Pedagogical implications are

also discussed (in Chapter 7) in terms of how teachers can use information about

Gurindji children’s home language to augment their language and literacy teaching.


vi

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge and offer my heartfelt thanks to the many

individuals who have made this thesis possible and my PhD experience one that I will

cherish.

I wish to thank my primary supervisor, Dr Caroline Jones, for the many

opportunities she has afforded me and for her endless support and patience. Caroline

encouraged me to pursue my own research ideas while also contributing her extensive

knowledge and expertise, and I thank her for her contribution to this thesis and to my

growth as a researcher. I am also thankful to my cosupervisor Dr Amanda Baker,

whose involvement and insight helped to develop my ideas and my writing. I am very

grateful to my associate supervisor Dr Felicity Meakins for contributing her

substantial breadth of knowledge of Gurindji Kriol and linguistics in general. I also

owe thanks to Felicity for sharing with us her corpus of Gurindji Kriol and allowing

us to build on her extensive previous work in this project. I would also like to

acknowledge Pete Ball at the University of Tasmania, whose knowledge and

enthusiasm for psycholinguistics started my initial interest in the field.

I would like to acknowledge the Aboriginal Child Language project (ACLA-

1), which was the basis of Felicity’s work on the Gurindji Kriol corpus, and I am

thankful to the ACLA PIs Jane Simpson and Gillian Wigglesworth for supporting the

research in this thesis. I also acknowledge the Australian Research Council for

financial assistance with my stipend, field work and conference trips (ARC Discovery

Grant DP0985395 “Phonological development among child speakers of mixed

language”, 2009-2012, C.I. Caroline Jones) and I thank Caroline for supporting my

research through this grant.


vii

This research could not exist without the many people who assisted in my

fieldwork, especially the speakers and their families, community leaders and

organisations, and community Research Assistants in Katherine and Kalkaringi. I

thank Gurindji Kriol speakers Cecelia Edwards, Anne-Maree Reynolds and Samantha

Smiler for giving us permission to use the recordings of their families that Felicity

Meakins had made. I am also incredibly grateful to the community research assistants

in Kalkaringi: Trisha Morris, Kirsty Smiler, Jessica Vincent, Samantha Smiler, Anne-

Maree Reynolds, Lisa Smiler, Leanne Smiler, and Rosemary Johnson. They taught

me a lot, both for the research and on a personal level, and I treasure the friendships

we have made.

I also thank traditional owners in Kalkaringi for consulting with us on the

project; their advice and direction was invaluable. I am very grateful to Leah Leaman

who worked as a liaison and participant advocate, and provided guidance in my

community visits. I am very appreciative of our evening chats in the garden and

Leah’s extensive knowledge of the community and her readiness to share this with

me. I wish to thank all the people in Kalkaringi and Daguragu who made my trips

there interesting, informative and fun in many different ways.

I am very grateful to the Katherine mothers Cathy, Eva, Kellie, Kim and Erin

(pseudonyms used at participants’ discretion) and their children and families, who let

me into their homes and their lives. They always greeted me with a smile and were

patient when I had to fiddle around with equipment. It was truly a pleasure to work

with them and I feel privileged to have watched their kids grow. I am also grateful to

all the organisations and businesses in Katherine who helped me to set up the project

and find participants. I wish to particularly thank the childcare services Good

viii

Beginnings and Little Mangoes. Also I thank the linguists and others in Katherine

who befriended me and offered much-appreciated advice, dinner and coffee.

I would like to thank the project steering committee at Diwurruwurru Jaru (the

Katherine Language Centre) for their advice and recommendations and for letting me

sit and work in the Language Centre library in my first trip to Katherine. I particularly

thank Ruth Joshua for teaching about Kriol and kinship systems. I am also grateful to

Cerise King for her voluntary cultural mentoring. Cerises’s insight and advice was

always helpful.

I deeply appreciate the contributions of the Research Assistants who have

worked on the project in various capacities: Shujau Muawiyath, Colleen Moerkerken,

Kim Cayzer, Rachel Groves, Sarah Cutfield, and Alison Hannah. I also thank Yvan

Rose and the team at Memorial University for their support with the phonetic

transcription and analysis program Phon and for always providing helpful (and

patient) answers to my questions.

My Building 23 (and 22) buddies have made this whole process fun and

supportive, and I feel so lucky to have formed many lasting friendships. Thank you to

Rosie Welch and a certain energy drink, Jonnell, Narumi, Sophie, Charles, Kyle,

Ashley Sisco for the chocolate activities, prime coffee buddy Alex Miller, Sam

McMahon for feeding me and her special contributions to the office stationary, and

Kay Prcevich who has been an amazing officemate for the entire time.

Finally, I wish to thank all my friends and family who have supported me

along the way. I especially thank Flick for being such a great friend, Alissa for the

cloudy apple nights, MV for the mojo, and Yan for her optimism and friendship. My

parents Rosemary and Grant Buchan, my sisters, grandparents and other family

members have always been supportive and I give them my heartfelt thanks.

ix

Table of Contents

Abstract ................................................................................................................. iii

Acknowledgements............................................................................................... vi
Table of Contents ................................................................................................. ix
List of Tables....................................................................................................... xiii
List of Figures ...................................................................................................... xv
Publications........................................................................................................ xvii
1 Introduction.................................................................................................1
1.1 Gurindji Kriol.................................................................................................. 3
1.2 Australian English........................................................................................... 6
1.3 Approach to Variation in this Thesis............................................................. 8
1.4 Structure of the Thesis.................................................................................. 10
1.5 Research Questions ....................................................................................... 11
2 Empirical and Theoretical Context of Children’s Phonological
Acquisition from Speech Input ..............................................................13
2.1 Literature Review.......................................................................................... 14
2.1.1 Child-Directed Speech .......................................................................... 14
2.1.2 Sources of Speech Input to Children..................................................... 19
2.1.3 Phonological Development After Infancy ............................................ 21
2.1.4 Summary of Literature .......................................................................... 25
2.2 Thesis Aims and Rationale ........................................................................... 26
2.3 Research Questions ....................................................................................... 31
2.3.1 Study 1 (Chapter 4) ............................................................................... 31
2.3.2 Study 2 (Chapter 5) ............................................................................... 31
2.3.3 Study 3 (Chapter 6) ............................................................................... 32
2.4 Significance .................................................................................................... 32
2.5 Theoretical Framework ................................................................................ 33
2.6 Summaries of Research Chapters................................................................ 41
2.6.1 Chapter 4 ............................................................................................... 41
2.6.2 Chapter 5 ............................................................................................... 43
2.6.3 Chapter 6 ............................................................................................... 44
2.7 Chapter Summary......................................................................................... 45
3 Methodology .............................................................................................47

x

3.1 Timeline of Data Collection.......................................................................... 48

3.2 Gurindji Kriol Corpus .................................................................................. 49
3.2.1 Design ................................................................................................... 49
3.2.2 Participants............................................................................................ 52
3.2.3 Procedure............................................................................................... 54
3.2.4 Phonetic Transcription .......................................................................... 54
3.2.5 Ethical Considerations Relating to the Gurindji Kriol Corpus ............. 55
3.3 Katherine English Corpus ............................................................................ 56
3.3.1 Design ................................................................................................... 56
3.3.2 Participants............................................................................................ 56
3.3.3 Procedure............................................................................................... 60
3.3.4 Ethical Considerations Relating to the Katherine English Corpus ....... 62
3.3.5 Phonetic Transcription .......................................................................... 63
3.4 Working with Gurindji Community Members .......................................... 64
3.5 Phonetic Transcription and Analysis in Phon ............................................ 65
3.5.1 Overview ............................................................................................... 65
3.5.2 Getting Started ...................................................................................... 68
3.5.3 Media..................................................................................................... 70
3.5.4 Transcription ......................................................................................... 71
3.5.5 Search.................................................................................................... 73
3.5.6 Conclusion............................................................................................. 75
3.6 Chapter Summary......................................................................................... 76
4 Fricative Variation in Maternal Gurindji Kriol ........................................78
4.1 Abstract .......................................................................................................... 79
4.2 Background.................................................................................................... 81
4.2.1 Gurindji Kriol........................................................................................ 83
4.2.2 Phonetic Variation in Child-Directed Speech ....................................... 85
4.2.3 Lenition Processes and Fricative Variation........................................... 87
4.2.4 The Current Study ................................................................................. 89
4.3 Method............................................................................................................ 90
4.3.1 Design ................................................................................................... 90
4.3.2 Speakers ................................................................................................ 91
4.3.3 Recordings............................................................................................. 91
4.3.4 Analysis................................................................................................. 91

xi

4.3.5 Coding ................................................................................................... 92

4.3.6 Transcription Reliability ....................................................................... 93
4.4 Results ............................................................................................................ 95
4.4.1 Analysis 1: Fricative Variation Within Gurindji Kriol Lexical Forms . 95
4.4.2 Analysis 2: Relationships Between Fricatives in English Cognates and
Pronunciation in Gurindji Kriol Words that Contain Stop-Fricative
Variation ............................................................................................. 100
4.4.3 Analysis 3: Factors affecting fricative variation in maternal Gurindji
Kriol.................................................................................................... 108
4.4.4 Analysis 4: Effect of Child Age .......................................................... 117
4.5 Discussion..................................................................................................... 118
5 Fricative Reduction in Maternal Northern Australian English ...........125
5.1 Abstract ........................................................................................................ 126
5.2 Background.................................................................................................. 127
5.2.1 Phonetic Variation in Australian English............................................ 133
5.2.2 Katherine English................................................................................ 136
5.2.3 The Current Study ............................................................................... 137
5.3 Method.......................................................................................................... 138
5.3.1 Participants.......................................................................................... 138
5.3.2 Procedure............................................................................................. 140
5.3.3 Analysis............................................................................................... 144
5.4 Results .......................................................................................................... 144
5.4.1 Analysis 1: Incidence of Word-Initial /h/ and Word-Final /v/ Deletion in
Maternal Speech Over Time............................................................... 144
5.4.2 Analysis 2: Exploration of Local Effects on Casual Speech
Processes............................................................................................. 154
5.4.3 Analysis 3: Effect of Speech Rate....................................................... 159
5.5 General Discussion ...................................................................................... 160
6 Investigating Native Speaker Judgements of Phonetic Variation in
Gurindji Kriol Using Visual Analogue Scales.....................................169
6.1 Abstract ........................................................................................................ 170
6.2 Introduction ................................................................................................. 171
6.3 Background.................................................................................................. 172

xii

6.3.1 Measuring Speech with Visual Analogue Scales................................ 172

6.3.2 Limitations of Phonetic Transcription ................................................ 174
6.3.3 Language Background Affects Phonetic Transcription ...................... 176
6.3.4 Current Applied Context ..................................................................... 178
6.4 Method.......................................................................................................... 181
6.4.1 Non-Native Speaker IPA Transcriptions ............................................ 181
6.4.2 Visual Analogue Scale Development.................................................. 182
6.4.3 Phonological Awareness Training ...................................................... 187
6.4.4 Visual Analogue Scale Administration............................................... 188
6.5 Results .......................................................................................................... 189
6.5.1 Word-Initial......................................................................................... 190
6.5.2 Word-Medial ....................................................................................... 192
6.5.3 Word-Final .......................................................................................... 193
6.6 Discussion..................................................................................................... 198
6.6.1 Effects of Language Background........................................................ 200
6.6.2 Word Position Effects ......................................................................... 204
6.6.3 Limitations .......................................................................................... 206
6.6.4 Conclusion........................................................................................... 207
7 Conclusion ..............................................................................................209
7.1 Core Findings............................................................................................... 211
7.2 Implications.................................................................................................. 214
7.3 Limitations ................................................................................................... 217
7.4 Directions for Future Research.................................................................. 219
7.5 Conclusion.................................................................................................... 222
References .................................................................................................223
Appendix A: Participant Information and Consent Forms ...................245
Appendix B: Gurindji Kriol Words Containing Potential Fricatives ....261

xiii

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Gurindji Kriol speaking mothers and age of the focus children........... 52

Table 3.2 Total amounts of recording and number of mothers’ utterances in the

Gurindji Kriol subsample at each stage ................................................ 53

Table 3.3 Characteristics of Katherine English speaking mothers and the focus

children ................................................................................................. 57

Table 3.4 Total amounts of recording and number of mothers’ utterances in the

Katherine English corpus at each stage ................................................ 59

Table 4.1 Number and percentage of feature agreement on ‘potential fricative’

segments between two transcribers ...................................................... 94

Table 4.2 Frequencies of word-initial fricatives in English cognates and

corresponding phones in Gurindji Kriol variable words .................... 104

Table 4.3 Frequencies of word-medial fricatives in English cognates and

corresponding phones in Gurindji Kriol variable words .................... 105

Table 4.4 Frequencies of word-final fricatives in English cognates and

corresponding phones in Gurindji Kriol variable words .................... 106

Table 4.5 Logistic regression results for word-initial fricative variation in

all words.............................................................................................. 109

Table 4.6 Logistic regression results for word-initial fricative variation in

variable words..................................................................................... 110

Table 4.7 Logistic regression results for word-medial fricative variation in

all words.............................................................................................. 111

Table 4.8 Logistic regression results for word-medial fricative variation in

variable words..................................................................................... 112


xiv

Table 4.9 Logistic regression results for word-final fricative variation in

all words.............................................................................................. 113

Table 4.10 Logistic regression results for word-final fricative variation in

variable words..................................................................................... 114

Table 5.1 Participant characteristics ................................................................... 140

Table 5.2 Total and mean lengths of recording sessions, hh:mm:ss................... 142

Table 5.3 Raw frequencies of word-initial /h/ deletion out of possible contexts by

each speaker at each average child age............................................... 145

Table 5.4 Logistic regression for word-initial /h/ deletion: Child age and

speaker ................................................................................................ 147

Table 5.5 Raw frequencies of word-final /v/ deletion out of possible contexts by

each speaker at each average child age............................................... 149

Table 5.6 Logistic regression for word-final /v/ deletion: child age and

speaker ................................................................................................ 151

Table 5.7 Lexical items containing word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/ deletion at

each stage............................................................................................ 156

Table 5.8 /h/ deletion in male and female pronouns by mothers of boys (n=2) and

girls (n=2) at each child age................................................................ 157

Table 6.1 Proposed Gurindji Kriol consonant inventory.................................... 180

Table 6.2 Number of each type of judgements in the Visual Analogue Scales

(N = 83)............................................................................................... 183

Table 6.3 Word-initial judgement type frequencies ........................................... 184

Table 6.4 Word-medial judgement type frequencies.......................................... 185

Table 6.5 Word-final judgement type frequencies ............................................. 185


xv

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Map of the Victoria River District and its communities

(Meakins, 2011)...................................................................................... 8

Figure 3.1 Stages of fieldwork and timeframes of data collection ........................ 51

Figure 3.2 Photo of a typical recording session ..................................................... 61

Figure 3.3 Example of a customised session editor display in Phon ..................... 69

Figure 3.4 Using the segmentation tool to create a record that is linked to the

Media .................................................................................................... 71

Figure 3.5 Example of Phon’s syllabification and alignment feature.................... 73

Figure 4.1 Proportions of closed-class and open-class words within lexical form

categories .............................................................................................. 96

Figure 4.2 Proportions of word positions of potential fricatives within lexical form

categories .............................................................................................. 97

Figure 4.3 Proportions of places of articulation of fricatives in English cognates

within Gurindji Kriol lexical form categories ...................................... 99

Figure 4.4 Relationships between fricatives in English cognates and corresponding

pronunciation in Gurindji Kriol words. .............................................. 107

Figure 4.5 Proportions of 'potential fricatives' pronounced as fricatives across child

ages by each speaker in all tokens ...................................................... 115

Figure 4.6 Proportions of word categories at each child age ............................... 116

Figure 4.7 Proportions of 'potential fricatives' pronounced as fricatives across child

ages in variable words, other words, and the total sample ................. 117

Figure 5.1 Spectrogram of utterance "There we go, we'll just leave him there,

Shall we?" ........................................................................................... 142


xvi

Figure 5.2 Percentage word-initial /h/ deletion out of word-initial /h/ contexts by

child age and speaker.......................................................................... 146

Figure 5.3 Percentage word-final /v/ deletion out of word-final /v/ contexts by child

age and speaker................................................................................... 150

Figure 5.4 Most frequent lexical items containing word-initial /h/ deletion at each

timepoint ............................................................................................. 155

Figure 6.1 Example Visual Analogue Scale for [b] and [v]................................. 187

Figure 6.2 Word-initial native speaker judgements (box-and-whisker plot) and

transcriber judgements (circles).......................................................... 195

Figure 6.3 Word-medial native speaker judgements (box-and-whisker plot) and

transcriber judgements (circles).......................................................... 196

Figure 6.4 Word-final native speaker judgements (box-and-whisker plot) and

transcriber judgements (circles).......................................................... 197

 xvii

Publications

This thesis, Phonetic variation in Gurindji Kriol and northern Australian English: A
longitudinal study of fricatives in maternal speech, includes three chapters, and one part
of one chapter, that have been written as the following four journal articles. Two of
these articles have been submitted to peer-reviewed journals. Of these, one of the
articles has been published, and one is under review:

Chapter 3, Section 3.5

Buchan, H. (2011). Phon: Free software for phonological transcription and analysis.
Language Documentation and Conservation, 5, 81-87.

Chapter 4
Buchan, H., Jones, C., & Meakins, F. (2012). Fricative variation in maternal Gurindji
Kriol. Manuscript in preparation. To be submitted to Australian Journal of Linguistics.

Chapter 5
Buchan, H., & Jones, C. (2013). Phonological reduction in maternal speech in northern
Australian English: Change over time. Journal of Child Language. doi:
10.1017/S0305000913000123

Chapter 6
Buchan, H., Jones, C., & Meakins, F. (2012). Investigating native speaker judgements
of fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol using visual analogue scales. Manuscript in
preparation. To be submitted to Language Resources and Evaluation.

As the primary supervisor, I, Dr Caroline Jones, declare that the greater part of the work
in each article listed above is that of the candidate, Heather Buchan. In each of the co-
authored manuscripts above, Heather contributed to the study design, was primarily
responsible for data analysis and data interpretation, and led the writing.

In terms of data collection and transcription, Heather was primarily responsible for data
collection for Chapters 5 (English speech corpus) and 6 (Perceptual judgements). The
thesis also draws on a subset of a pre-existing corpus of Gurindji Kriol, recorded and
orthographically transcribed by Dr Felicity Meakins (2003-07, as part of the Aboriginal
Child Language project through University of Melbourne, funded by Australian
Research Council DP0343189). Transcripts from the pre-existing Meakins corpus were
converted to Phon format by Caroline and Heather. Phonetic transcription was added to
specific words in the transcripts by Heather and a casual research assistant, with
occasional assistance from Caroline. This formed the data for Chapter 4 and the
materials for the perceptual study in Chapter 6. Two casual research assistants
phonetically transcribed 10% of the data in Chapters 4 and 5 as a reliability check.
Gurindji Research Assistants contributed to data collection for Chapter 6 during
Heather’s visits to Kalkaringi, Northern Territory.

Regarding data analysis and writing, Heather performed all the data analyses including
statistical analyses. Heather wrote the first draft of each manuscript and was then
responsible for responding to the suggestions of her co-authors in subsequent versions
of each manuscript. The co-authors, Dr Caroline Jones (Chapters 4-6) and Dr Felicity
Meakins (Chapters 4 and 6), assisted in literature review, study design, data analysis,
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction

CHAPTER 1 2

Learning the sound structure of the home language from speech input is a

critical process in children’s language acquisition. The input provides children with

language-specific information about the systematic organisation of speech sounds,

including the frequency distributions of sounds, probabilities of sound sequences within

words and across word boundaries, and phonetic variability in sounds and words. The

importance of sound patterns in the input to children’s phonological development has

long been recognised in the literature, with systematic studies on the phonology of

caregivers’ speech to children (infant- or child-directed speech) dating back decades

(see Snow & Ferguson, 1977). Since this early research on speech input, our

understanding of the amount and types of information that children encode from the

input has developed. Current acquisition theories recognise the critical role of the input

and posit mechanisms for how detailed phonetic features of input can shape children’s

phonological representations. However, while it has been well established that there are

phonological differences in adult speech directed to children and to adults, surprisingly

little research has been done on how and when phonological variability in the input

changes as children get older – that is, as child-directed speech develops into adult-

directed speech. The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate how phonological

variation in the input to children changes from later infancy into early childhood. The

data used in these studies were primarily speech recordings transcribed phonetically

using the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), and a subsidiary aim of this thesis was

to explore a methodology for checking phonetic transcription with native speakers of

Gurindji Kriol.

This thesis is a longitudinal investigation of phonetic variation in fricatives in

the input children are exposed to in two language varieties of northern Australia,

Gurindji Kriol and northern Australian English. This Introduction chapter provides brief
CHAPTER 1 3

essential background to the three empirical studies that comprise the thesis. The first

and second sections set out the context of previous research into Gurindji Kriol and

Australian English, respectively. The third section, ‘Approach to variation in this

thesis’, defines key terms and describes the analytical approach taken here. In the

closing section of Chapter 1, I lay out the structure of the thesis and present the

overarching research questions.

1.1 Gurindji Kriol

Gurindji Kriol is the main language of the Gurindji people in northern Australia.

It is a contact language variety that systematically combines lexical items and

grammatical structures of two languages, Gurindji and Kriol (Meakins, 2011, pp. 2, 12-

13). Gurindji is an endangered traditional Australian Aboriginal language spoken

mainly by older generations of Gurindji people at Kalkaringi and Daguragu in the

Victoria River District in the Northern Territory, Australia (see map in Figure 1.1).

Kriol is an English-lexifier creole, that is it is a language variety in which most of the

word forms are derived from English although the grammar and semantics reflect

regional Aboriginal languages (Hudson, 1985). The grammar of Gurindji Kriol has been

studied in detail by Meakins (2009, 2010, 2011). Prior to this project there are no

detailed accounts of the phonetics and phonology of Gurindji Kriol, though the

phonological inventory has been described briefly (Meakins, in press; Meakins, 2007).

This thesis is part of a larger project on the phonology of Gurindji Kriol1 (Jones, the CI,

is the primary supervisor of this thesis). Studies in the larger project have examined

Gurindji Kriol’s vowel system (Jones, Meakins & Buchan, 2011; Jones, Meakins &

1
Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP0985395, Phonological development
in child speakers of mixed language (CI Caroline Jones, 2009-2012)
CHAPTER 1 4

Muawiyath, 2012), voicing variation in stop consonants (Jones & Meakins, 2012a), and

the phonetic characteristics of baby-talk (Jones & Meakins, 2012b).

The Gurindji Kriol studies in the current thesis use data from a longitudinal

audiovisual corpus of naturalistic family interactions mainly in Gurindji Kriol recorded

and orthographically transcribed by Felicity Meakins between 2003 and 2007 as part of

the Aboriginal Child Language (ACLA-1) project (Simpson & Wigglesworth, 2008;

Meakins, 2011). For the current research, we built on this corpus to add phonetic

transcription and analysis to a subsample of recordings and transcripts; in this thesis I

added phonetic transcription to Kriol-based words whose English cognates contain

fricatives.

Gurindji Kriol is the home language of children in Kalkaringi community

(Meakins, 2011, p. 42). The speech community is multilingual – children’s home

language is Gurindji Kriol, but they are also exposed to traditional Gurindji from older

speakers and to Kriol, which is spoken with Kriol-speaking visitors. The neighbouring

Aboriginal language Warlpiri is also spoken by some community members and visitors.

Children are taught in English at the school, but they do not generally hear English in

the preschool years, except in fun or role-playing (e.g., doctors and nurses). Children

are thus exposed to some code-switching into English, as well as code-switching into

other language varieties, chiefly Kriol, Gurindji, and Warlpiri, depending on their

family and connections. See Meakins (2008; 2011, pp. 58-70) for further detail on the

language situation in the community.

The phonology of Gurindji Kriol is of both theoretical and educational interest.

Gurindji Kriol is a mixed language that contains a structural split between the noun

phrase system, supplied mostly by Gurindji, and the verb phrase system, supplied

mostly by Kriol (Meakins, 2011, pp. 12-13). Importantly, both Gurindji and Kriol make
CHAPTER 1 5

substantial lexical – and thus phonological – contributions. Gurindji Kriol therefore

contains phonology from both Gurindji and Kriol. Due to the originally English

derivation of most Kriol words, Gurindji Kriol also has some phonological similarities

with English. In addition, Gurindji Kriol phonology is fundamentally characterised by

the high phonological variability in Kriol (Hudson, 1985; Sandefur, 1979; Sandefur,

1991). In Sandefur’s (1979) description of Kriol spoken in the Roper River region (to

the east of the current study sites) he suggested that the high variation in Kriol

phonology is due to the way in which it changed over time. When speakers of

Aboriginal languages first came into contact with English, English words were

pronounced with the phonological structures of Aboriginal languages. According to this

view, for example, fricatives and affricates were pronounced as stops and consonant

clusters were reduced. (Traditional Aboriginal languages of the region do not have

phonemic fricatives, and have restricted consonant cluster types, especially in syllable-

onset position.) Once Kriol developed, speakers continued to have contact with English

and traditional Aboriginal languages, and words were pronounced with some English

phonology in addition to the phonology from traditional languages (Sandefur, 1979).

Sandefur (1979, 1991) suggests that this resulted in the high phonological variability in

Kriol, where many words have several alternate phonetic forms.

From a language acquisition perspective, the variation in Australian Aboriginal

contact language varieties opens up research questions about the amount and type of

variability that children are exposed to in Gurindji Kriol and the phonological structures

that they are learning from their home language in the preschool years. From an

educational viewpoint, systematic descriptions of the phonological variation in Gurindji

Kriol and the sound structures children learn in their early years can provide

information to assist formal teaching of both Aboriginal languages and English. For
CHAPTER 1 6

example, sounds that are rare in Gurindji Kriol, such as some English fricatives, may

require explicit teaching, while sounds that are the same or similar in both language

varieties are generally easier to learn and can be used as a basis for teaching the harder

sounds.

Phonological variation occurs in all languages to some extent. For example

pronunciation of sounds and words can vary according to processes such as

coarticulation, gestural overlap, and lenition or fortition in particular phonological

environments, as well as speaker variables and the situational and stylistic context. It is

therefore useful to investigate phonetic variation in a more documented language

variety such as Australian English, as a reference point and to further our interpretation

of the variation that occurs in Gurindji Kriol. This thesis includes research on a type of

phonetic variation in a variety of Australian English from the town Katherine, Northern

Territory, which is in the same geographic region as Kalkaringi and is the major

regional service centre (Figure 1.1).

1.2 Australian English

The phonological system of standard Australian English has been previously

documented in detail (e.g. Cox, 2006; Cox, 2012; Cox & Palethorpe, 2007; Harrington,

Cox & Evans, 1997; Mitchell & Delbridge, 1965; Tollfree, 2001; Yallop, 2003). As

well as differing from other varieties of English in some lexical items, the phonology

differs in the pronunciation of vowels and in some prosodic patterns (Harrington et al.,

1997). Australia is a multicultural country and there are dialect differences among the

many different cultural backgrounds, and there have also been some suggestions of

regional differences (Cox & Palethorpe, 2003; Loakes, Hajek & Fletcher, 2010). There
CHAPTER 1 7

is, however, a historical perception of relatively low regional variation (i.e. dialect

differences) in Australian English and it has not been studied in depth2.

Sociolinguistic variation has been previously investigated in Australian English

spoken in capital cities in the 1980s. The Sydney Urban Dialect Survey (Horvath, 1985)

was a sociolinguistic survey on 117 speakers of Australian English in Sydney, New

South Wales. Findings revealed differences in both vowel and consonant variation

according to the speaker’s gender, age, socioeconomic status and ethnicity (Horvath,

1985). Ingram (1989) researched variation in connected speech processes in adolescent

speakers from Brisbane, Queensland and found differences in some types of phonetic

reduction according to socioeconomic status. Research on sociolinguistic variation in

Australian English spoken today is scarce. Further, to our knowledge there is no

previously published research on infant- or child-directed speech in Australian English.

Thus I recorded a longitudinal corpus of Australian English maternal speech for this

thesis, in order to examine phonetic variation in local English as a reference point for

investigating variation in Gurindji Kriol. The Australian English corpus is of a regional

variety from northern Australia from the same geographical region as Gurindji people,

in part so that we do not overestimate the variability in Gurindji Kriol or recognise

features as special to Gurindji Kriol when they are in common with regional Australian

English.

2
Though see AusTalk (https://austalk.edu.au/) - a project currently in the process of
collecting a large corpus of Australian English adult speech from all Australian states
and territories. Also see the Australian Voices website (Cox & Palethorpe, 2010:
http://clas.mq.edu.au/australian-voices/australian-voices) for more information and
audio samples of Australian English.
CHAPTER 1 8

Figure 1.1. Map of the Victoria River District and its communities (Meakins, 2011, p.

xxi).

1.3 Approach to Variation in this Thesis

The current research involves discussion and analysis of phonetic variation at a

segmental level. Here the terms segments and phones are used to refer to units of speech

sounds that are perceptually discrete, at least to literate adults, and possess distinct

articulatory and acoustic properties. This includes both phonemic and allophonic
CHAPTER 1 9

segments (Pierrehumbert, 2003). Segmental variation refers to within- and between-

speaker variability in the acoustic, articulatory, and/or perceptual characteristics of

phones. Phonetic variation in speech input may index linguistic variables as well as

social variables. The latter is termed sociophonetic variation and includes variability in

phonetic forms that is related to speaker identities and social groups in the speech

community (Foulkes & Docherty, 2006).

The studies presented here focus on phonetic variation in fricatives. Fricatives

are consonants that are produced by constricting the space between two articulators so

that the airstream is partially restricted, resulting in a turbulent airflow (Ladefoged &

Maddieson, 1996). English contains voiceless and voiced fricatives at four places of

articulation: labio-dental e.g. fat, vat [f, v], dental e.g. bath, bathe [θ, ð], alveolar e.g.

sip, zip [s, z], and palato-alveolar e.g. mission, vision [ʃ, ʒ]. In addition, [h] (who) is

traditionally considered a voiceless glottal fricative, although its status is not the same

as a typical consonant and has also been described as a voiceless vowel in some

environments (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996). Fricatives require precise articulatory

coordination – if the airflow is fully obstructed then the sound becomes a stop, affricate,

or a fricated stop, and if there is too much space between the two articulators then it

becomes an approximant (voiced or voiceless). Cross-linguistically fricatives are

relatively difficult for children to produce and tend to be acquired later than stops and

glides (Dinnsen, 1992; Kent, 1992).

In Gurindji Kriol fricatives are mainly present in Kriol-based words as they do

not occur phonemically in traditional Gurindji. (In fast Gurindji, fricatives occur

occasionally as reductions of intervocalic stops, e.g., tarukap ‘swim’, can be

pronounced with an intervocalic voiced velar fricative.) The fricatives known from

previous research to occur in Gurindji Kriol are at three places of articulation:

CHAPTER 1 10

labiodental [f], alveolar [s] and palatal [ʃ]. There is voicing variation, and fricatives are

also used in variation with stops (Meakins, in press). There is no previous research that

provides a systematic quantitative description of fricatives in Gurindji Kriol, or indeed

in any Australian contact language variety to our knowledge. An investigation of the

distributions and nature of fricatives that children are exposed to in their home language

would contribute toward our understanding of Gurindji children’s acquisition of

fricatives and the acquisition of highly variable phonology in general. This would

provide information for language professionals serving the community such as teachers

and speech pathologists.

1.4 Structure of the Thesis

This thesis is an investigation of phonetic variation in the input children are

exposed to at the segmental level, and how it changes over time as children age from

approximately 1;6 to 2;0 to 2;6. The thesis includes three research studies. The first

study is of fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol maternal speech. We investigated

variation within and between lexical forms, and the relationships between sounds in

Kriol-derived words and fricatives in corresponding English cognates. We also

examined change in fricative variation in maternal speech over time as children aged.

The second study is an investigation of input to children in a monolingual environment

in Katherine, a regional town in northern Australia. Some types of phonetic variation in

fricatives in this variety of Australian English are related to casual speech and different

variants may carry social meanings. We examined how mothers’ use of casual phonetic

variants changed as their children got older.

Studies one and two are based on analyses of phonetic transcription data. The

transcribers were native speakers of Australian English speakers, but there may be

differences in how Gurindji Kriol phones are perceived between native and non-native
CHAPTER 1 11

speakers of Gurindji Kriol. This is because phonetic transcription is a perceptual activity

involving categorical judgements, and the transcriber’s perceptual judgement about the

category a sound belongs to depends to some extent on their own language background

(e.g. Coussé, Gillis, Kloots & Swerts, 2004; Strange & Jenkins, 1978). Depending on

the questions being investigated, native speaker phonetic transcriptions are generally

considered valid because perceptual judgements are made based on the sound categories

of the speech community (Edwards & Beckman, 2008). In the current context, however,

it was not practical to train speakers to the technical level required to do phonetic

transcription, as is often the case in field linguistics and under-documented languages.

Therefore in the third study of this thesis we used Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) to

elicit native speaker judgements of transcribed segments and compared how native

speakers and non-native transcribers perceived fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol.

Results were used to further our interpretation of Gurindji Kriol fricative variation.

1.5 Research Questions

The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate variation in fricative production

in mothers’ speech in Gurindji Kriol and northern Australian English as children aged

from approximately 1;6 to 2;0 to 2;6. The overarching research questions of the

empirical studies in this thesis are:

1) What is the nature and extent of variation in fricative production in

Gurindji Kriol maternal speech?

2) How does phonological reduction change over time in northern

Australian English maternal speech?

3) How can we elicit judgements of fricatives in Gurindji Kriol from

native speakers without phonetic training, and how do native speaker

perceptions add to phonetic transcription?

CHAPTER 1 12

The three studies each make up a chapter of this thesis (Chapters 4, 5 and 6)

written in journal article style3 and are followed by a general conclusions chapter

(Chapter 7). In the next two chapters I discuss the literature and conceptual framework

of children’s acquisition of phonology (Chapter 2), and describe in detail the

methodology of this research (Chapter 3).

3
Because this thesis is written in the journal article format of the University of
Wollongong, whereby some chapters are styled as journal articles, there is necessarily a
small amount of repetition in some sections, particularly the methodology.
 CHAPTER TWO
Empirical and Theoretical Context of Children’s

Phonological Acquisition from Speech Input

CHAPTER 2 14

This thesis contributes to our understanding of how phonological variation in the

input changes as children get older, in the age range 1;6 to 2;6, in two relatively

underdescribed language varieties. The aim of this chapter is to contextualise the

empirical research on phonological variation in maternal speech and to provide the

theoretical rationale for investigating speech input to children. As background to the

empirical studies (Chapters 4, 5, 6), this chapter provides a review of the literature in

child-directed speech and children’s phonological development after infancy, as well as

a discussion of exemplar theories of phonological representations as the theoretical

rationale underlying this research.

The organisation of this chapter is as follows. First, a review of the literature on

child-directed speech and how it is conceptualised in the current studies and the

development of children’s phonological knowledge after infancy. Second, the aims,

rationale and research questions of each empirical study in this thesis. Third, a

discussion of exemplar-based models of phonological acquisition as the theoretical

framework of this research. The chapter ends with summaries of the three research

studies that comprise Chapters 4, 5 and 6.

2.1 Literature Review

2.1.1 Child-Directed Speech

Consistent use of a different speech register when communicating with children

occurs in male and female adult speakers and is widespread across many (if not all)

cultures and language varieties (Byrant & Barrett, 2007; Fernald et al., 1989; Grieser &

Kuhl, 1988). Child-directed speech contains simpler lexical and syntactic structures

than adult-directed speech (Ferguson, 1977), as well as a slower tempo, longer pauses,

more variability in pitch contours, and higher fundamental frequency (Fernald et al.,

1989; Katz, Cohn & Moore, 1996; Snow, 1977). Infants prefer to listen to infant-
CHAPTER 2 15

directed over adult-directed speech (Cooper & Aslin, 1990; Fernald, 1985), regardless

of the sex or language of the speaker (Fernald & Morikawa, 1993; Werker & McLeod,

1989), likely due to the positive affect conveyed in infant-directed speech (Singh,

Morgan & Best, 2002). Speaking in a register that young children prefer to listen to has

the effect of guiding their attention to the speech signal (Dominey & Dodane, 2004) and

encouraging communication between children and caregivers (Cruttenden, 1994). The

linguistic functions of child-directed speech remain unclear and are likely to vary

depending on the type of modification made, the language variety and cultural context,

the kind of interaction taking place, and the child’s age and receptive and productive

language abilities (Cruttenden, 1994; Kitamura, Thanavishuth, Burnham &

Luksaneeyanawin, 2002; Stern, Spieker, Barnett & MacKain, 1983; Soderstrom, 2007).

Research on phonological features of child-directed speech suggests they tend to

be exaggerated, compared to adult-directed speech. Throughout the literature different

terminology has been used to characterise the differences. In an early cross-linguistic

study of baby-talk, Ferguson (1977) talked about baby-talk as a “simplified register” (p.

210) that contains ‘simplifying’ and ‘clarifying’ processes. These processes include use

of limited sounds and syllable forms with a tendency toward reduplicated consonant-

vowel (CV) forms (e.g., mama, dada), and substituting articulatory easy sounds for

articulatory complex ones (e.g. replacing rhotics with glides). Ferguson (1977)

suggested that adults make modifications in baby-talk to adjust to children’s own

language abilities to make the input easier to understand. One function of baby-talk as a

simplified speech register may be “a response to the need for improved communication

when one of the participants has only a limited ability to use language normally”

(Ferguson, 1977, p. 232).

CHAPTER 2 16

Later studies on child-directed speech in the 1980s also used the terms

‘clarification’, contrasted with ‘reduction’, and ‘(un)intelligibility’. ‘Clarification’

referred to exaggerated vowel sounds in mothers’ speech to children, as defined by

greater dispersion and less overlap between vowel categories as measured by formants

(Bernstein Ratner, 1984a). ‘Reduction’ referred to processes such as consonant deletion,

glottalisation, and palatalisation (Bernstein Ratner, 1984b; Shockey & Bond, 1980).

‘Intelligibility’ is a perceptual term used in earlier research on segmental phonology of

interadult conversational speech (see Cole & Jakimik, 1980, for a review). In this

literature, ‘unintelligibility’ (Bard & Anderson, 1983) refers to the perceived

degradation (reduction, deletion) of segments that characterises informal adult speech or

distorted or degraded speech signals.

The variability related to the above processes has also been conceptualised as

being on a continuum with hyperspeech (over-articulation) at one end and hypospeech

(under-articulation) at the other (Lindblom, 1990). Hypoarticulation is characteristic of

casual speech and refers to when articulators do not reach the target, resulting in lenition

(weakening) or deletion in consonants and reduction in vowels, that is, articulation

away from the extremes and toward the centre of vowel space (Browman & Goldstein,

1990). At the other end of the continuum, hyperarticulation characterises careful speech

(Picheny, Durlach & Braida, 1986) where segments are distinctly articulated (de Jong,

Beckman & Edwards, 1993) and vowels are more separated in acoustic space (Davis &

Lindblom, 2001). The continuum represents the dynamic between the perceived needs

of the listener and ease of articulation for the speaker (Lindblom, 1990). In the

sociolinguistics literature variation along the hyper-hypospeech continuum is associated

with style-shifting, referring to the process whereby speakers accommodate their speech

to the situation and perceived needs of the audience (Labov, 1984). While social
CHAPTER 2 17

variation refers to variation due to interspeaker factors such as age, gender and

socioeconomic status, style-shifting variation is due to ‘audience design’ factors (Bell,

1984). These stylistic factors include the speaker’s attention to their own speech, as well

as the audience and the social meaning the speaker wishes to construct with the

audience. Situational factors such as the topic and setting also affect variation as the

speaker dynamically responds to the situation (Bell, 1984; Eckert, 2001). In the

psychology literature the concept of audience design is reflected in communication

accommodation theory, which explains the social and psychological factors that

influence how speakers vary their speech to either converge with or diverge from their

audience’s speech style (Ball, Giles & Hewstone, 1985; Giles, Coupland & Coupland,

1991). ‘Style’ and ‘register’ are often used interchangeably, though ‘register’ is also

used as a broader term encompassing both situational and stylistic variation (Finegan &

Biber, 2001). Child-directed speech may therefore be a speech register, but a better

understanding of the functions of child-directed speech is needed in order to place it on

a style continuum4.

Against this backdrop of dynamic variability in speech, child-directed speech

can be conceptualised as variation in adult speech whereby caregivers make

modifications, either consciously or unconsciously, potentially in response to the

linguistic needs of the child. Considerable research has examined the phonological

modifications caregivers make in their speech during the child’s first year of life (e.g.

Cristia, 2010; Ferguson, 1977; Fernald, 1989; Fernald et al., 1989; Fernald &

Morikawa, 1993; Grieser & Kuhl, 1988; Kirchhoff & Schimmel, 2005; Kitamura et al.,

2002; Kuhl et al., 1997; Lee & Davis, 2010; Lee, Davis & MacNeilage, 2008).

4
Though see Wassink, Wright and Franklin (2007) for evidence that variation in infant-
directed speech resembles that of style-shifting and may relate to audience design.
CHAPTER 2 18

Relatively few studies, however, have investigated longitudinally the characteristics of

adult speech to children after infancy and how and when these change as children get

older.

The studies that have examined phonological features of speech to older children

(e.g. Foulkes, Docherty & Watt, 2005; Ko, 2012; Liu, Tsao & Kuhl, 2009; Smith,

Durham & Fortune, 2007) are discussed in more detail in the literature reviews of

Chapters 4 and 5. Overall, these studies suggest two things. First, a combination of

social and stylistic factors affects phonological variation in speech to children as they

get older. Second, the change from child-directed to adult-directed speech may not

necessarily be a gradual linear shift in style. The input that children are exposed to in

their early years is dynamic, likely changing over time as the perceived needs of the

children as listeners and the functions of child-directed speech develop.

So far I have been referring to ‘infant-directed speech’ and ‘child-directed

speech’, as these are common terms in the literature and the ones generally used by the

studies discussed above. However throughout this thesis I use the term ‘maternal

speech’, particularly when describing the speech data recorded and analysed for this

research. This is because ‘maternal speech’ is a more general term which encompasses

all of the mother’s speech to which children are exposed, rather than just speech

directed specifically to them. ‘Maternal speech’ also covers both infant- and child-

directed speech, which refer to the same concept with the use of ‘infant’ or ‘child’

depending on the age of the children in the study. In the current research children were

aged between approximately 1;6 and 2;6, which is just after infancy and into early

childhood. Much of the literature on the relationship between input and phonological

acquisition has focused on infant-directed speech, but research also shows that

phonological acquisition is an ongoing process and the input continues to play an

CHAPTER 2 19

important role after infancy. My rationale for using the concept of maternal speech and

the supporting evidence is discussed next. This is followed by a brief discussion of the

literature on phonological development after infancy.

2.1.2 Sources of Speech Input to Children

Child-directed speech is not the only type of input that children are exposed to,

as evidenced by van de Weijer (2002) who recorded all the speech that one infant heard

during her waking hours from age 6 to 9 months. He transcribed and analysed in depth

three weeks of these recordings (the first, middle, and last weeks) and found that only

14 per cent of utterances were spoken by an adult directly to the infant. The infant had a

sister 2 years older than her, and 60 per cent of the speech transcribed was between an

adult and the older sister. Inter-adult speech made up 19 per cent of the total, which is

still a higher proportion than the infant-directed speech. Most of the infant’s activities

during the recording period were with one or both parents, at home with the older sister

and an adult babysitter, and at a daycare centre with the older sister, other children, and

the daycare centre staff. Although this study only involves one infant, it makes sense

that the types and amount of input to which children are exposed would be highly

dependent on family structure and functions of family roles.

Studies have also shown that other types of input may be highly relevant for

children’s language learning, as children can encode and store in long-term memory at

least some aspects of speech that are merely overheard. This was demonstrated by Au,

Knightly, Jun and Oh (2002), who found that participants who overheard informal

Spanish spoken by native speakers in childhood were significantly better at producing a

native-like Spanish accent when learning Spanish as an additional language in

adulthood than participants who had not been exposed to Spanish in childhood. The

‘overhearing’ group comprised participants who had overheard Spanish as children

CHAPTER 2 20

(with the most exposure occurring between birth and age 6;0) but were spoken to

directly in Spanish only to a minimal extent, i.e. no more than occasional words or short

phrases (Au et al., 2002). The finding that overhearing a language in childhood had a

positive impact on adult learners’ Spanish accents has two implications. First, phonetic

information can be learned implicitly and retrieved later in life for further language

development (i.e. learning a second language). Second, children may attend to and

encode information in speech they are exposed to above and beyond that directed

specifically to them – that is, child-directed speech is not the only type of speech input

that children are exposed to and encode into memory.

Children’s ability to learn through overhearing was tested more directly by

Akhtar (2005), who examined the ability of children (mean age 2;1) to learn novel

words in third-party conversations between two adults while being distracted with an

activity. Akhtar (2005) found that the presence of a distraction did not significantly

affect children’s learning of a new word, demonstrating that at age 2;1 children can not

only learn words through overhearing adult conversation, but can continue to learn

when being distracted with another activity.

Infant- and child-directed speech are important components of children’s home

language in their early years, but children are also exposed to other sources of speech

input (e.g. from overhearing inter-adult speech) that have been known to contribute to

their language learning. Therefore, descriptions of speech input available to children

should include speech spoken within earshot even if it is not directed specifically to the

child. In a review of the nature of speech input to infants, Soderstrom (2007) noted the

problems with defining what exactly constitutes the input, and contended that

‘maternal’ speech from the female primary caregiver plays a key role in children’s early

language experience. This is perhaps particularly true of Western families.

CHAPTER 2 21

In the current research, maternal speech is the focus of analysis. Maternal speech

is defined as all speech spoken by the mother around as well as to the target child. This

is not to say that the speech of fathers (and aunts, uncles, grandparents and others) is not

also important, but with the relatively small numbers of speakers used in corpus based

studies we cannot reliably analyse interspeaker differences, and so must control for

characteristics of speakers such as sex that may influence the variables being

investigated. In practical terms, there is also a cultural issue in research in northern

Australian Aboriginal societies. The Meakins (2011) corpus that was built on for these

studies contains mostly women speakers, in part because it would have been culturally

inappropriate for female researchers to work with young men who speak Gurindji Kriol.

Both the Meakins (2011) Gurindji Kriol corpus and the Australian English

corpus collected for this research are longitudinal and comprise maternal speech to

children as they age between approximately 1;6 and 2;6. There is currently relatively

little research on how maternal speech changes over time between these ages, despite

research showing that input continues to play a role in phonological and lexical

development in children of these ages and beyond. The following section discusses this

research and provides the rationale for investigating phonetic characteristics of input to

children after infancy.

2.1.3 Phonological Development After Infancy

There are many studies on speech input and language development that focus on

infant-directed speech in children’s first year of life. During this first year infants

acquire information about sound patterns in the ambient language. Specifically, between

ages 0;6 and 0;9 they develop sensitivity to prosodic patterns and permissible segment

sequences in the language being acquired (Jusczyk, Cutler & Redanz, 1993; Jusczyk,

Luce & Charles-Luce, 1994). Infants display sensitivity to vowel contrasts specific to
CHAPTER 2 22

their native language at age 0;6 (Kuhl, Williams, Lacerda, Stevens & Lindblom, 1992),

and by age 0;9 they prefer to listen to words that are consistent with phonetic,

phonotactic and prosodic patterns in their native language (Jusczyk, Friederici, Wessels,

Svenkerud & Jusczyk, 1993). The speech input during infancy plays a critical role in

developing sensitivities to phonetic contrasts and a knowledge base of how sounds are

organised in the ambient language. Phonological acquisition, however, is a protracted

process and speech input continues to play a role throughout development.

The notion that the development of phonological knowledge is an ongoing

process is supported by research that shows a relationship between vocabulary and

phonological development. These studies suggest a feedback loop between the lexicon

and phonological processing, meaning that as the lexicon develops over time, children’s

phonological knowledge will develop as well. Edwards, Beckman and Munson (2004)

used nonword repetition as a measure of phonological processing and tested it in

children aged 3;2 to 8;10. Nonwords contained segment sequences that have both high

and low phonotactic probabilities in the native language (English). It was found that

nonword repetition had a significant positive correlation with expressive vocabulary

size, and that vocabulary size mediated the effect of frequency on nonword repetition

scores (Edwards et al., 2004). The first result suggests that a larger vocabulary supports

children’s phonological knowledge – knowing more words helps children to perceive

and reproduce new word forms, possibly because they are able to make more accurate

generalisations of phonological patterns. The finding that children scored higher on

nonwords with high-frequency segments than low-frequency segments again

demonstrates the effect of the lexicon on phonological development. Low-frequency

segments are not as well represented in the lexicon, which means children have less top-

down information to draw on when trying to produce them. That vocabulary size
CHAPTER 2 23

mediated the effect to some extent supports the argument that a larger vocabulary

allows children to make more robust phonological generalisations (Edwards et al.,

2004), as there is more data in the lexicon to draw on for the creation of an articulatory

representation for the new nonword. Vocabulary growth therefore helps to refine

phonological knowledge.

Perceptual aspects of phonological acquisition also develop gradually over time.

Slawinksi and Fitzgerald (1998) investigated development of perceptual boundaries of

the /ɹ-w/ contrast using a forced-choice identification task for children aged 3;0, 4;0 and

5;0 and adults. They found that the phonemic boundary between /ɹ/ and /w/ was closer

to the /ɹ/ endpoint for children relative to adults, and that it increasingly shifted toward

the adult-like boundary with child age. That is, older children judged more stimuli on

the [ɹ-w] continuum as belonging to the /ɹ/ category. Older children were also more

consistent with judgements, which suggests greater confidence in their perceptual

judgements (Slawinksi & Fitzgerald, 1998). Further, the children aged 5;0 made adult-

like judgements of the /w/ category, but not of the /ɹ/ category. These results show that

perceptual boundaries of phonemic categories are still developing throughout childhood

and must continue to be refined after 5 years of age.

Munson, Swenson and Manthei (2005) also showed that lexical and

phonological development is an ongoing process. They investigated two groups of

children of mean ages 4;3 and 7;2 and tested their ability to repeat real words and

nonwords that varied in neighbourhood density (i.e. phonological similarity to other

words in the lexicon). Munson et al. (2005) found that neighbourhood density affected

real word repetition in the older children but not the younger children, and suggest that

because the younger children have smaller lexicons there is less competition from

phonetically similar words in lexical processing. In the nonword repetition tasks they
CHAPTER 2 24

found evidence of phonological facilitation that increased with age. The older children

were significantly faster at repeating nonwords with high-probability than low-

probability phonotactic segments (Munson et al., 2005). Together these findings show

that both lexical competition, perhaps due to neighbourhood density, and phonological

facilitation continue to develop throughout childhood.

Research on phonemic categorisation in older children suggests that the

development of adult-like strategies for making perceptual decisions continues

throughout childhood and into adolescence (Hazan & Barrett, 2000). Gradient stimuli

were presented across four different phonemic contrasts to children aged between 6;0

and 12;6 and to an adult control group (mean age 29;8) in a forced-choice identification

task. To test children’s ability to integrate acoustic cues the researchers also

manipulated cues to the contrast in the stimuli so that in some conditions only one

acoustic cue was varied, while in “combined-cue” conditions multiple cues were

systematically varied. Hazan and Barrett (2000) found a significant effect of age even

after controlling for possible attention effects (by excluding participants who did not

reach 85% consistency in any condition). Pairwise comparisons revealed a significant

difference between the youngest (6;0-7;6) and oldest (11;6-12;6) groups of children,

and that the largest difference was between all child groups and adults. Thus, although

the older children were significantly more consistent than the younger children in

categorising phonemic contrasts, they were still significantly below the adult level.

Although infancy appears to be a critical period for some aspects of

phonological development that set the basis for future word learning, it is also clear that

it is a gradual process continuing well into at least early adolescence. Further research is

still needed on the nature of the speech input beyond infancy. Even throughout

adulthood new input is presented that may refine phonological representations (for
CHAPTER 2 25

example, perception of a new accent may introduce phonetic variation that an adult has

not heard before but must still somehow process). Periods of large vocabulary growth

may significantly influence phonological representations (Rost & McMurray, 2009),

and in particular growth in expressive vocabulary. In order to produce a segment

children are likely to require articulatory as well as acoustic representations (Edwards et

al., 2004), and children’s representations receive further refinement through the

production-perception feedback loop (Pierrehumbert, 2003). Therefore, speech input

continues to play a role in language development throughout childhood, and may be

especially important in periods of expressive vocabulary growth where input contributes

to both lexical development and refinement of the phonological system.

2.1.4 Summary of Literature

The sound structures in speech input to children play a central role in children’s

language development. Learning to perceive and produce words in the native language

requires children to extract sound segments from the input and organise them in

memory (e.g. Jusczyk et al., 1993; Jusczyk et al., 1994; Kuhl et al., 1992; Stoel-

Gammon, 2011; Swingley, 2007, 2009; Werker, Fennell, Corcoran, Stager, 2002).

There is a large literature on the phonology of speech to children during infancy (e.g.

Cristià, 2010, 2011; Davis & Lindblom, 2001; Fernald et al., 1989; Grieser & Kuhl,

1988; Katz et al., 1996; Kirchhoff & Schimmel, 2005; Kuhl et al., 1997; Snow, 1977;

Stern et al., 1983), as this is an important period for acquiring sound contrasts and

phonotactics of the native language (Aslin, Saffran & Newport, 1998; Coady & Aslin,

2004; Jusczyk et al., 1993; Jusczyk et al., 1994; Kuhl et al., 1992). Speech input to

children consists of more than specific infant-directed and child-directed speech, and

continues to contribute to phonological development after the first year of life.

CHAPTER 2 26

Early childhood is also an important time in children’s language acquisition, as

their knowledge of phonological processes in the native language develops and they

start to consistently produce whole words (e.g. Nelson, 1973; Swingley, 2007), and

expressive vocabulary is important to the phonological development process. Previous

research has found differences in phonological features of child-directed speech to

children after infancy compared with adult-directed speech. There are, however, few

longitudinal studies on phonetic variation in the input to children after infancy that

show how and when variation in child-directed speech develops as children get older.

2.2 Thesis Aims and Rationale

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate fricative variation in mothers’ speech

to children in two language varieties in northern Australia, Gurindji Kriol and northern

Australian English. To realise this purpose there are two specific aims:

1) To longitudinally analyse fricative variation in mothers’ speech in

Gurindji Kriol and northern Australian English as their children age from

approximately 1;6 to 2;0 to 2;6.

2) To add further information to our phonetic transcription of fricatives in

Gurindji Kriol (a phonetically underdescribed language) by eliciting

native speakers’ own perceptions of Gurindji Kriol fricative variation.

In this section I discuss the rationale for the three empirical research studies in

this thesis, that is, our motivation for investigating fricatives in Gurindji Kriol and

northern Australian English maternal speech and for eliciting native speaker judgements

of fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol.

CHAPTER 2 27

The first study in the thesis is a longitudinal analysis of stop-fricative variation

in Gurindji Kriol maternal speech. The aim of this first study is to investigate the

variation in fricatives that Gurindji children are exposed to in their home language

before they go to school, where English is the main language. Gurindji Kriol is a

relatively new mixed language and the Kriol-derived words have inherently high

phonetic variation (Sandefur, 1991). Fricatives are of particular interest in Gurindji

Kriol for several reasons. Traditional Gurindji does not contain phonemic fricatives,

though there are allophonic fricatives in some phonological contexts. Kriol, on the other

hand, is English-lexified, and English contains phonemic fricatives at several places of

articulation. Kriol contains some fricatives due to its English influence, and these are

highly variable with stops as Kriol words often have alternate phonetic forms (Sandefur,

1991). Impressionistically, Kriol-derived words in Gurindji Kriol also contain high

variation between stops and fricatives (e.g. Meakins, 2007, p.358).

From a language acquisition perspective, fricatives are of interest across

languages. Children tend to acquire fricatives later than stops in production, as fricatives

require more precise motor control to constrict the degree of airflow between

articulators and are therefore more difficult to produce (Dinnsen, 1992, pp.196-199;

Kent, 1992, pp.75-76). There is also some cross-linguistic evidence of differences in

distributions of fricatives and stops in mothers’ speech to children compared to their

speech to adults (Lee, Davis & MacNeilage, 2008; Lee & Davis, 2010), likely due to

differences in lexical choice (Daland, 2013). Thus across languages there appears to be

variation in children’s production of fricatives as they acquire them over time, as well as

in the input they are exposed to through variation in segmental distributions.

Whether due to inherent features of the language or developmental and stylistic

factors, fricative variation in speech input to children has implications for our
CHAPTER 2 28

theoretical understanding of children’s phonological acquisition. Phonetic variation is a

broad phenomenon that includes sociolinguistic and phonological processes in

production and perception. Language varieties that do not contain the same extent of

phonetic variability as Gurindji Kriol still contain variation as a result of, for example,

phonological context effects, lexical factors, speech rate and speech style. Across

languages children are exposed to phonetic variation in speech. According to exemplar-

based models of children’s phonological acquisition (see §2.4 Theoretical Framework),

phonetic variation in the input can be perceived, encoded and incorporated into

children’s phonological representations in long-term memory (e.g. Pierrehumbert,

2003). Analysis of different types of phonetic variation across languages is necessary to

further our understanding of the patterns of variation to which children may be exposed,

how these patterns change as children develop, and the range of factors that potentially

contribute to the variation.

The second empirical study in this thesis investigates phonological reduction in

mothers’ speech in northern Australian English, and how it changes over time as

children age. The English variety we analysed is from the town of Katherine in northern

Australia, which is in the same geographic region as the communities where Gurindji

Kriol is spoken. This variety is henceforth referred to as Katherine English. Katherine

English does not have the same inherent high phonetic variation as Gurindji Kriol.

Instead, we examined possible stylistic variation, i.e. variation due to factors such as the

audience and formality of the speech style (for further discussion see §2.1 Literature

Review pp.16-17), taking into account phonological and lexical effects. In this study we

analysed the reduction processes word-initial /h/ deletion and word-final /v/ deletion.

Both these processes involve fricatives and in some contexts the reduction indicates

non-citation speech, or a less carefully articulated speech style. Therefore in maternal

CHAPTER 2 29

speech /h/ and /v/ deletion may be affected by child age, if mothers (consciously or not)

modify phonetic realisations of word forms as their children’s receptive and productive

language develops.

Study 1 provides the first quantitative analysis of fricatives in Gurindji Kriol.

Phonetic variation is high and it is difficult to untangle the many contributing factors to

stop-fricative variation particularly in a naturalistic sample5. Findings did suggest that,

in addition to the variability inherent in the language variety, some of the variation may

have been due to mothers modifying their speech as children got older. In Study 2 we

further explored the possibility that mothers may differentially modify their speech as

children aged in another language variety, Katherine English. The reduction in fricatives

that we analysed in Katherine English is a different kind of phonetic variability to stop-

fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol. Study 1 and 2 together provide us with a bigger

picture of patterns of phonetic variation in the input children are exposed to between

ages 1;6 and 2;6 and potential influences on variation. These findings deepen our

understanding of the phonetic information children may be perceiving and storing as

phonological representations and associated sociolinguistic information in memory.

The data for studies 1 and 2 consist of IPA phonetic transcription of naturalistic

speech recordings. Phonetic transcription is a useful clinical and analytical tool and is

widely-used in phonological development research. It does, however, have some

limitations as it is a record of the transcriber’s perception of auditory events and thus

subject to some perceptual biases. For the Australian English data we addressed this

using the standard method of checking transcription agreement with a second,

5
The study of Gurindji Kriol fricatives is based on phonetic transcription and not
acoustic analysis, in part because the recordings are naturalistic and therefore contain
background noise and amplitude variation that would make spectral analysis of frication
and stop bursts relatively difficult to use.
CHAPTER 2 30

independent transcriber who is a native speaker of Australian English (e.g. Shriberg &

Lof, 1991; Edwards & Beckman, 2008). For Gurindji Kriol we also checked segmental

agreement with an independent transcriber; however, both transcribers were native

Australian English speakers as there is no straightforward procedure for checking

phonetic transcription with native speakers of Gurindji Kriol. Although native speakers

have implicit linguistic knowledge that can improve our (as non-native speakers)

understanding of their language, it was not practical to train native speakers of Gurindji

Kriol to the high technical level required for IPA phonetic transcription. This is our

broad rationale for conducting the third study included the thesis.

The aim of Study 3 was to develop and test a method for eliciting native speaker

perceptual judgements of fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol, and to use the results in

conjunction with phonetic transcription of non-native speakers to further our knowledge

of phonetic and phonological variation in Gurindji Kriol. To do this we used a series of

visual analogue scales, which have previously been used to investigate variation in

children’s productions (Julien, Munson & Edwards, 2012; Munson, Edwards,

Schellinger, Beckman & Meyer, 2010; Schellinger, 2008; Urberg-Carlson, Munson &

Kaiser, 2009). To our knowledge, Study 3 is the first study to use visual analogue scales

to examine variation in adult speech in a phonetically and phonologically under-

described language. We found that the method was largely successful and offer

recommendations for refining the procedure in future research.

In conjunction with the results from Study 1, findings from the visual analogue

scale study provide information about the places of articulation and word positions

where fricative variation occurs in Gurindji Kriol, and where it is less likely to occur.

Comparing native speaker judgements on the visual analogue scales with non-native

speaker phonetic transcription enabled us to examine possible effects of language

CHAPTER 2 31

background on perception of fricative variability and whether these may have affected

the findings of Study 1. Further, Study 3 gives insight into transcriber discrepancies and

ambiguities, that is, when the two Australian English phonetic transcribers disagreed or

were unsure of a transcription. Overall, the third study in this thesis allowed us to

include native speaker judgements of fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol to our

phonetic analyses and provided further information for our interpretation of data based

on phonetic transcription in Study 1.

2.3 Research Questions

This thesis contains three research articles. The overarching research questions

of each study are presented here along with the specific sub-questions.

2.3.1 Study 1 (Chapter 4)

What is the nature and extent of variation in fricative production in Gurindji

Kriol maternal speech?

• What is the nature and extent of fricative variation within common Gurindji

Kriol lexical forms?

• What are the relationships between fricatives in English cognates and their

pronunciation in Gurindji Kriol words that contain stop-fricative variation?

• How does fricative variation within and between Gurindji Kriol lexical

forms change in mothers’ speech as children get older, taking linguistic

factors (phonological environment and word position) into account?

2.3.2 Study 2 (Chapter 5)

How does phonological reduction change over time in northern Australian

English maternal speech?

• How do rates of word-initial /h/ deletion and word-final /v/ deletion change

in mothers’ speech as children age from 1;6 to 2;0 to 2;6?

CHAPTER 2 32

• Are there lexical effects on word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/ deletion? If so,

what are they and how do they change over time?

• What is the effect of speech rate on word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/

deletion?

2.3.3 Study 3 (Chapter 6)

How can we elicit judgements of fricatives in Gurindji Kriol by native speakers

without phonetic training, and how do native speaker perceptions add to phonetic

transcription?

• How can Visual Analogue Scales be used in the field to record native

speaker perceptions of fricatives in Gurindji Kriol?

• How do native speakers’ judgements of fricatives on a continuous scale

differ from non-native transcribers’ categorical judgements, and do

differences depend on word position and type of judgement?

2.4 Significance

There has been little previous research on phonetic variation in speech input to

children of the age group in this project, 1;6 to 2;6, and to the author’s knowledge this is

the first study of maternal speech in regional Australian English and is among the first

studies of phonology in Gurindji Kriol (see also Jones, Meakins & Buchan, 2011; Jones,

Meakins & Muawiyath, 2012; Jones & Meakins, 2012a, 2012b). The project contributes

to our understanding of phonetic variation that children are exposed to between ages 1;6

and 2;6, the phonetic modifications that mothers make in their speech to children at

these ages, how variation in the input changes as children get older, and linguistic and

sociolinguistic factors that influence phonetic variation in maternal speech. Findings are

discussed in terms of theoretical models that explain how variation in speech input is

processed by the listener/speaker and acquired by children. This thesis also provides
CHAPTER 2 33

novel findings on fricative variation in an Australian Aboriginal language and suggests

avenues for further research on fricatives in Kriol varieties spoken in other parts of

Australia.

The current project contributes to a systematic description of phonetic variation

in maternal Gurindji Kriol, which may have future use in the development of measures

to assess and compare the phonological skills of child speakers of mixed languages and

Kriol spoken in northern Australia. Findings can be used to inform teachers of the likely

phonological strengths and weaknesses of Gurindji Kriol speaking children and in

facilitating learning of traditional languages and English, as discussed in Chapter 7.

Practically, Study 1 (Chapter 4) contributed phonetic transcription and analysis

to an existing audiovisual database of conversational Gurindji Kriol. Study 2 (Chapter

5) resulted in the first phonetically transcribed corpus of regional Australian English

maternal speech. Study 3 (Chapter 6) documents a novel methodology for using Visual

Analogue Scales in the field to elicit native speaker perceptual judgements of phones.

Theoretically, the research in this thesis contributes to our understanding of how

mothers modify their speech differentially as children age, and offers some speculation

as to why this may occur. This is discussed further in the discussion sections of Studies

1 and 2. Further, by examining a situation where children are acquiring language under

conditions of highly variable input, these findings provide evidence to inform

theoretical models of children’s acquisition of phonology and variability. In the next

section I describe and discuss the theoretical framework underpinning the empirical

research in the thesis.

2.5 Theoretical Framework

This thesis is based on episodic theories of speech perception and production,

that is the theory that individual perceived auditory events leave episodic traces in long-
CHAPTER 2 34

term memory that are used in categorisation tasks. At a phonological level this means

that each perceived phonetic episode, or exemplar, is encoded into long-term memory

with fine-grained detail intact. A key feature of this theory is that variation in the speech

input is retained in memory rather than filtered out as noise, thus variation contributes to

the organisation of cognitive representations. Therefore with exemplar-based theories

we can gain a greater understanding of phonetic variation that children may be

acquiring by analysing and describing the speech to which they are exposed. This

section contains a description of general exemplar theory and a brief review of the

evidence for exemplar models of speech processing, followed by an examination of how

these models are applied to children’s acquisition of phonology and a discussion of the

theoretical implications of processes explored in this thesis.

Exemplar models of phonological representations are useful for the purpose of

this thesis as they provide an account of how phonetic variation and associated

information, both linguistic and socioindexical, may be processed and used in the

categorisation tasks required for speech perception and production. The purpose of this

thesis is to examine variation in the input and potential contributing factors rather than

to specifically test exemplar theories of phonological development. Given this, the

discussion here is of the theoretical rationale that underlies the current research and will

be limited to the general features of exemplar models relevant to this research without

making claims as to the precise mechanics of the various proposed models in the

literature.

Central to exemplar theories is the distinction between memory of general

information about concepts and memory of specific perceived events, a distinction that

is long-standing in the psychology literature. One of the earliest arguments for the

differentiation of episodic and semantic information was made by the psychologist

CHAPTER 2 35

Tulving (1972), who defined episodic memory as a processing system for temporally

dated perceptual events and semantic memory as organised knowledge about general

concepts and their rules, meanings, and interrelations. Perceptual episodes can be stored

in episodic memory purely on the basis of the perceived features of episodes, while

semantic memory involves the cognitive referents and more general abstracted

information of these episodes (Tulving, 1972). In some literature the terms ‘episodes’

and ‘exemplars’ are synonymous; however, in other memory literature ‘episodes’ refers

more specifically to autobiographical memories that are consciously retrieved (e.g.

Wheeler, Stuss & Tulving, 1997). The more general term ‘exemplar’ will therefore be

used from this point forward to refer to a perceptual event.

The critical difference between exemplar theories and abstractionist theories is

the explanation of how memories of specific exemplars and memories of general

concepts are processed and stored in long-term memory. The more traditional

abstractionist theories, such as Tulving’s (1972) model, posit separate memory systems

for these different types of information. Abstractionist theories of language processing

therefore postulate abstract forms of lexical representations that are separate from the

perceptual events (e.g. Becker, 1980; Forster, 1976; Morton, 1979), with phonological

processing occurring either through additional pathways (dual-route models, e.g.

Behrmann & Bub, 1992; Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins & Haller, 1993) or in parallel with

lexical access (connectionist models, e.g. Seidenberg & McClelland, 1990). On the

other hand, exemplar theories propose that representations in long-term memory are of

specific individual episodes and abstractions emerge from this store of exemplars (for

an in-depth review of abstractionist and exemplar theories of word identification see

Tenpenny, 1995).
CHAPTER 2 36

Exemplar theories are supported by the robust finding that listeners retain

information about phonetic detail after long delays, which suggest that fine acoustic

details of speech are in fact represented in long-term memory (Church & Schacter,

1994; Goldinger 1996, 1998; Goldinger & Azuma, 2004; Nygaard & Pisoni, 1998;

Palmeri, Goldinger & Pisoni, 1993; Pisoni, 1997). Exemplars are organised in clusters

according to similarity across attributes, so categories consist of distributions of

exemplars associated with a category label. Exemplars can be distributed along any

dimension and so the same exemplar or attribute can contribute to many categories, for

example the attribute of fundamental frequency may contribute to both linguistic

categories such as vowel phone and socioindexical categories such as the speaker’s

gender. This is a strength of exemplar models, as it means that information from speech

input can be stored in multiple ways and different kinds of information can be extracted

and used for different tasks (Hawkins, 2003). Exemplars can therefore be thought of as

individual data points in memory, with categories emerging from clusters of these data

points. The ‘dataset’ can be drawn on to make generalisations about the language as

required.

Different models propose different mechanisms for exactly how exemplars are

encoded and stored. Depending on the model, a new perceptual event may be organised

according to either its similarity to existing exemplars or to the generalisations that

emerge from categories, and each encoded perceptual event may either form a new

exemplar or raise the activation of an existing exemplar (Wedel, 2006). If individual

events are all stored as exemplars then each new event forms an extra case in the

exemplar dataset and will contribute to its associated categories, while in activation

models each new event contributes to the saliency of an existing exemplar. The

important point here is that either way, every encoded perceptual event slightly modifies
CHAPTER 2 37

the exemplar store and categories in long-term memory. Another important feature that

these models allow for is a production-perception feedback loop (e.g. Pierrehumbert,

2003). I will return to this in more detail later on in this section when Pierrehumbert’s

(2003) model is described in relation to children’s acquisition of phonology, but in the

context of general exemplar theory such a loop allows for produced speech to replicate

fine-grained phonetic detail from perceived speech and to feed back into the exemplar

system. This provides a mechanism for a general production-perception feedback loop

in the speech community in which allophonic variation is retained and acquired by

children learning the language.

As mentioned earlier, evidence supporting exemplar theories of speech

processing has accumulated since at least the early nineties. One phenomenon that

started distinguishing exemplar from abstractionist theories is long-term repetition

priming. In lexical decision tasks repetition priming refers to the facilitation effect of a

brief earlier presentation of a word on the speed and accuracy of identification of words

in a later task. Thus, the first presentation of the stimulus ‘primes’ the second

presentation for identification. Priming effects have been found in a variety of tasks that

involve lexical retrieval (for a review see Tenpenny, 1995). Abstractionist models

explain the prime as temporarily improving the accessibility of the cognitive

representation, which then goes back to base level after a short period of time. On the

other hand, Tenpenny’s (1995) review of repetition priming in word identification tasks

showed consistent findings of a priming effect after relatively long delays, and

furthermore that the effect is enhanced when phonetic detail is matched in both

presentations. These effects suggest that not only are individual perceptual episodes (in

this case the prime) encoded into long-term memory, but also that phonetic detail

remains intact. Tenpenny’s (1995) findings are supported by studies of familiarity

CHAPTER 2 38

effects in recognition tasks, that is that recognition memory of speech is improved when

the prime and the stimulus to be identified (the target) are spoken by the same voice

(Church & Schacter, 1994; Nygaard & Pisoni, 1998; Palmeri, Goldinger & Pisoni,

1993). Again these effects have been found with long delays between the prime and the

target (Goldinger, 1996, 1998), supporting exemplar models of speech processing

whereby speaker-specific acoustic information is retained in long-term memory and

drawn on in recognition tasks.

The studies mentioned above involve typical adult participants, who have had

sufficient time to develop an exemplar store and form generalisations for use in

categorisation tasks. Subsequent research has suggested a hierarchical organisation of

generalisations of at least two levels of abstraction: one in parametric phonetic space,

where perceptual memory traces are distributed along various dimensions, as discussed

earlier in this section, and another level involving broader, less fine-grained

generalisations that can be processed ‘on demand’ as required (Beckman et al., 2007).

Evidence for these two encoding systems comes from research on children’s

phonological processing (Munson, Edwards & Beckman, 2005; Munson, Kurtz &

Windsor, 2005) and supports hierarchical models of phonological development such as

Pierrehumbert’s (2003) model of how children acquire the phonology of their native

language.

Pierrehumbert (2003) posits that the aim of phonological development is to

achieve minimally five levels of representation: parametric phonetics, phonetic

encoding, the lexicon, the phonological grammar, and morphophonological

correspondences, and as these levels are hierarchical they develop in that order

(Pierrehumbert, 2003). In this model categories are initiated through statistical learning

of speech segments, i.e. conditional probabilities are computed from encoded perceptual
CHAPTER 2 39

events (for more detailed accounts of infants’ statistical learning of speech segments see

Anderson, Morgan & White, 2003; Maye Weiss & Aslin, 2008; Werker & Tees, 1999).

Once categories have been initially formed, information from generalisations can be

used to further refine them (Pierrehumbert, 2003). Probability-based information in the

input therefore helps to shape phonological development, which is an ongoing process

as categories are continually refined from both bottom-up processes (i.e. perceptual

experience with new exemplars) and top-down processes – forming generalisations at

different levels of abstraction, at least some of which can feed back down into lower

levels (Pierrehumbert, 2003).

The purpose of this thesis is not to specifically test exemplar models of

phonological development or make a claim as to the exact mechanisms and levels of

representation; rather these theories have framed the current studies as they offer

concise explanations for processes explored in the thesis. The main features of exemplar

models relevant here are:

• Phonetic variation is retained in memory and used in speech processing tasks.

Rather than being filtered out at the encoding stage, fine-grained phonetic detail is

stored in long-term memory and is available for use in identification and

categorisation of linguistic information in the input. Further, this enables a

pathway for perceived variation to be imitated in production, suggesting a

production-perception feedback loop from which a child can acquire the phonetic

variation of their speech community (Pierrehumbert, 2003).

• Exemplars can contribute distributional information to multiple categories

simultaneously. Phonetic detail can, for example, provide information to both

segmental and prosodic generalisations (Hawkins, 2003). More broadly this

CHAPTER 2 40

means that socioindexical information may be encoded simultaneously with

linguistic information (Foulkes & Docherty, 2006).

• Phonological development is an ongoing process. Each perceptual event at least

slightly alters the categories to which it contributes information. Phonetic variants

in the input contribute to the range and distribution of exemplars stored in

memory, which means changes in the input over time influence the distributions

from which categories form.

• Gradient differences in features are accounted for. Exemplars are distributed in

categories based on similarity across that category dimension rather than assigned

‘all or nothing’ category membership. This concept is particularly important to

Chapter 6, which raises the possibility of continual variation in some segments.

In summary, exemplar theories of speech processing and phonological

development provide a useful, evidence-based account of how phonetic variation in

input may be processed and acquired by children. According to this theoretical

framework, in order to understand phonological representations that children develop

and the associated linguistic and socioindexical generalisations that may form from

information contained in the input, it is necessary to understand the patterns of phonetic

variation in the speech input to which children are exposed.

The theories of exemplar-based phonological development discussed here provide

the theoretical background and rationale for investigating phonetic variation in the input

children are exposed to in their home language. The overall purpose of this thesis is to

examine phonetic variation in fricatives in speech input to children in two language

varieties that contain differing phonological variability. The next section contains

summaries of the three research studies contained in the thesis that investigate phonetic
CHAPTER 2 41

variation in maternal Gurindji Kriol and northern Australian English. This is followed

by the final section, a summary of this chapter.

2.6 Summaries of Research Chapters

This thesis has been written in the journal article style format approved by the

University of Wollongong. It contains three research articles (Chapters 4, 5 and 6) that

have been prepared for peer-reviewed academic journals, as well as introduction,

context, methodology and conclusion chapters (Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 7) that have been

written in traditional thesis chapter format. Each research article has its own abstract,

background, methodology, results and discussion sections. The research chapters of the

thesis are summarised in the following paragraphs.

2.6.1 Chapter 4. Fricative Variation in Maternal Gurindji Kriol

The purpose of this study was to describe systematically fricative variation in

Gurindji Kriol maternal speech and analyse the factors that potentially contribute to

variation in fricative production. The literature review discusses influences of linguistic

factors and child age on phonetic variation in maternal speech and how they may

explain fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol. In particular the linguistic process of

lenition and effects of phonological environment on phone realisation are explored.

Sociolinguistic factors discussed include the language situation and social status of

languages spoken in the community, the potential effect of child age, and the situational

context.

In the methodology are details of the Gurindji Kriol corpus (Meakins, 2011), the

procedure of converting existing files to use in Phon (Rose, Hedlund, Byrne, Wareham

& MacWhinney, 2007) to add phonetic transcription and analysis, and the procedure for

constructing a dataset of Gurindji Kriol tokens of Kriol-derived words that could

potentially be pronounced with fricatives, which we termed ‘potential fricatives’ and

CHAPTER 2 42

defined based on fricatives in English cognate words. Words in the dataset containing a

‘potential fricative’ were categorised into three groups: Always pronounced with a

fricative, never pronounced with a fricative, and pronounced variably with a stop or

fricatives.

Results contain four analysis sections. In Analysis 1 we compared the

phonological characteristics of potential fricatives in the three categories of words.

Words that contained stop-fricative variation were more likely to be open-class than

closed-class, and the variable segments were most frequently word-initial and at labio-

dental and alveolar places of articulation. Analysis 2 is a description of the relationships

between potential fricatives in variable Kriol-derived words as pronounced in Gurindji

Kriol maternal speech and fricatives in the English cognate words, in initial, medial and

final word positions. Analysis 3 reports the results of logistic regression models that

were ran to investigate the effects of child age, phonological environment, and speaker

in all tokens and in tokens of variable words, in each word position. In initial position in

all tokens and medial position in tokens of variable words, fricatives the likelihood of

fricatives increased in mothers’ speech as children aged between approximate ages 1;6,

2;0 and 2;6. Analysis 4 describes in more detail the effects of child age on stop-fricative

variation in mothers’ speech.

In the discussion the results are discussed in terms of contributing factors to

stop-fricative variation in maternal Gurindji Kriol. An important factor appears to be

lexical choice, as mothers used more words that can be pronounced variably when

children were older than when they were younger. These results provide support for the

concept of fine-tuning in speech to children, that is, that phonetic variation may change

over time in mothers’ speech as mothers make modifications to the child’s age and

language abilities.
CHAPTER 2 43

2.6.2 Chapter 5. Reduction in Fricatives in Maternal Northern Australian English

This research article focuses on casual speech variation in Katherine English

maternal speech and how it changes over time as children get older. The literature

review for this study includes previous research on the differences in phonological

variation between child-directed speech and adult-directed speech, which overall

suggests that in English variation in maternal speech must change over time as mothers

shift from using child- to adult-directed speech. The literature review also explores the

theory that mothers may not only fine-tune their speech to children’s linguistic

development, but also to their understanding of social categories indexed in speech.

Thus the literature on sociophonetic variation in mothers’ speech is also examined here.

Finally in the literature review there is a brief discussion of the previous research on

phonetic variation in Australian English and casual speech processes that may occur in

regional varieties.

The methods section details how the Katherine English maternal speech

recordings were made and transcribed, and how searches and analyses were performed

using the program Phon (Rose et al., 2007).

The results section is divided into the three analyses conducted for this study,

with a brief discussion following each analysis. Analysis 1 examined the incidence of

phonological reduction in maternal speech over time, focusing on two specific reduction

processes, word-initial /h/ deletion and word-final /v/ deletion. Findings showed an

inverted-v effect: deletion in mothers’ speech was more likely when children were 2;0

than 1;6, but was unexpectedly less likely at 2;6 than 2;0. This change over time effect

was significant for /h/ but not /v/ deletion. Analysis 2 examined the local effects on

these reduction processes and it was found that changes in deletion rates occurred in

lexically specific contexts, usually function words. In Analysis 3 we investigated the

CHAPTER 2 44

effect of speech rate on deletion and found deletion did not appear to be driven by

speech rate, as there was no significant difference in speech rate between child ages 1;6

and 2;0, and between 2;0 and 2;6 speech rate increased while deletion decreased.

The discussion considers possible explanations for the inverted-v effect found

for word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/ deletion in Katherine English maternal speech as

children aged from 1;6 to 2;0 to 2;6. Analyses 2 and 3 show that this effect is not likely

to be an artefact of changing lexical distributions or changes in speech rate over time.

Results are interpreted in terms of fine-tuning: phonetic variation in speech to children

may serve different functions at different stages of linguistic and social development,

and so mothers may fine-tune their speech differentially as children age.

2.6.3 Chapter 6. Investigating Native Speaker Judgements of Phonetic Variation in

Gurindji Kriol Using Visual Analogue Scales

This study arose primarily from methodological questions about how we can

elicit native speaker perceptual judgements of Gurindji Kriol fricatives and use the

information to increase our understanding of phonetic transcription data. The literature

review discusses the use of visual analogue scales in speech perception research and

how they can be used to get continuous judgements of phonetic variation. Also

discussed here are potential biases and other limitations of phonetic transcription, in

particular the influence of the listener’s language background on auditory judgements,

as well as the applied context of the language situation where Gurindji Kriol is spoken

and phonetic variation in Gurindji Kriol as a mixed language.

The methodology describes the four main procedural stages: 1) Non-native

speaker IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcriptions of conversational Gurindji

Kriol; 2) The development of visual analogue scales, including how tokens were

selected and dichotomies determined for the scales, and how the scales were constructed
CHAPTER 2 45

and counter-balanced; 3) Phonological awareness training for the native speakers of

Gurindji Kriol who participated in this study; and 4) Administration of the visual

analogue scales to Gurindji Kriol native speakers. Native speaker responses on the

scales were compared to the phonetic transcriptions made by non-native transcribers.

Results showed both agreements and disagreements between native speakers and

non-native transcribers on different types of judgements in initial, medial and final word

positions. For word-initial stop-fricative judgements, native speakers often responded

towards the stop where transcribers had judged the segment as a fricative. On medial

stop-fricative judgements native speakers sometimes judged the target segment as a stop

and sometimes responded along the continuous scale. For voicing judgements native

speakers tended to judged Gurindji Kriol segments along the continuous scale in each

word position.

In the discussion we explore possible explanations for differences between

native speakers and non-native transcribers, including effects of language background

and lexical expectation. Findings open up further questions and hypotheses about

phonetic variation in maternal Gurindji Kriol speech production.

2.7 Chapter Summary

This chapter provided the empirical and theoretical background of the research

presented in this thesis. First I reviewed the literature on child-directed speech and

contextualised the concept of maternal speech used here. I also discussed the literature

on children’s phonological development as a rationale for investigating phonology of

the input to which children are exposed. The following sections contain the aims,

research questions and subquestions of the three empirical studies that make up

Chapters 4, 5 and 6, and the significance and outcomes of this thesis. I then discussed

exemplar-based models of phonological representations in long-term memory as the

CHAPTER 2 46

theoretical context and rationale for the current research. The final section of this

chapter provided summaries of the three research studies described in the thesis. The

next Chapter (Chapter 3) describes the methodologies used in these studies. The

purpose of Chapter 3 is to provide an account of how the project was conducted as a

whole, and to detail the collection and processing of the Gurindji Kriol and Katherine

English corpora. The methodology chapter also provides a general overview of the third

study’s method. As this study is addressing a methodological question the method is

explained in detail in that specific chapter (Chapter 6).



CHAPTER THREE
Methodology
CHAPTER 3 48

The methodology for the thesis reflects its nature as a corpus study of maternal

speech involving fieldwork in regional and remote locations, working with speakers of

the two language varieties, Gurindji Kriol and Katherine English. Chapters 4, 5 and 6

describe separate research studies that share the overarching aim to examine phonetic

variation in maternal speech in Gurindji Kriol and northern Australian English. The

specific methods used for each study are described in each of these chapters.

This chapter begins with the timeframes of data collection and a brief

description of the activities carried out on the fieldwork for this research. This is

followed by four sections that give further detail of the general methods used in this

thesis: 1) The Gurindji Kriol corpus collected by Meakins (2011) and our addition of

phonetic transcription and analysis, 2) Collection, transcription and analysis of the

Katherine English corpus that was created for this project, 3) Working with speakers of

Gurindji Kriol to get an understanding of the socio-cultural context of the community,

discuss informally their opinions, as Gurindji mothers, of speech to children in Gurindji

Kriol, and elicit their implicit linguistic knowledge of Gurindji Kriol phonology using

Visual Analogue Scales, 4) Using the program Phon to phonetically transcribe and

analyse naturalistic corpora of maternal speech. All data were analysed quantitatively

and the details of analyses are specified in the research papers in Chapters 4 to 6.

3.1 Timeline of Data Collection

Data were collected in a series of four field trips to Katherine and Kalkaringi

between September 2009 and June 2011. Figure 3.2 shows the timeline and the main

activities conducted in each trip. In the first three trips, approximately six months apart,

I recorded families for the Katherine English corpus when children were aged

approximately 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. In trip 3 I also did some phonological awareness

training with community Research Assistants in Kalkaringi in preparation for trip 4. In

CHAPTER 3 49

the fourth trip I revisited the Katherine English families to update them on the research

and check with them my description of Katherine English for Chapter 4. I also worked

with the community Research Assistants in Kalkaringi on the perceptual tasks described

in Chapter 6, to elicit native speaker perceptions of fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol.

The field trips also involved building relationships with the local childcare service

providers, consulting with a steering committee and Kalkaringi community leaders and

working with cultural mentors and the project liaison. Discussions of informed consent

for all participants are ongoing and continued at each trip throughout the project.

A final field trip was undertaken at the end of the project (October 2012). In this

final trip we provided more feedback to the participants and communities about the

results of the research in the form of presentations, booklets, and classroom materials

for the Kalkaringi school.

3.2 Gurindji Kriol Corpus

3.2.1 Design

The Gurindji Kriol recordings used in this project were a subsample selected

from an existing audiovisual database created by Meakins (2011) for the Aboriginal

Child Language Acquisition (ACLA-1) project6. The ACLA-1 project was a

longitudinal investigation of the input to which children are exposed in three

regional/remote northern Australian Indigenous communities. ACLA-1 was a project

about input that examined multilingual environments that comprise traditional

Australian Aboriginal languages and a contact variety of English, with mixing between

language varieties and speech styles (Simpson & Wigglesworth, 2008). Meakins (2011)

created the database of Gurindji Kriol for the Kalkaringi section of the ACLA-1 project

























































6
The ACLA-1 project was funded by Australian Research Council grant DP0343189
through the University of Melbourne (C.I. Gillian Wigglesworth, Jane Simpson and
Patrick McConvell). http://linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/research/projects/ACLA/
CHAPTER 3 50

and for her PhD thesis on the development and function of case morphology in Gurindji

Kriol (Meakins, 2007). The map in Figure 1.1 (from Meakins, 2011, p. xxi) is of the

Victoria River District and shows the Kalkaringi and Daguragu communities in relation

to the nearest town, Katherine, and the Northern Territory capital city, Darwin.

Meakins recorded and transcribed orthographically (using the CHILDES CHAT

format, MacWhinney, 2000) a longitudinal corpus of over sixty hours of naturalistic

family interactions. These recordings were of Gurindji Kriol speaking women and their

older Gurindji family members, and were made between 2003 and 2007 at

approximately 6-month intervals. For the current research we selected a subsample from

this database of three speakers at three timepoints approximately six months apart, when

the target children were aged approximately 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. We converted the

transcripts to use in the CHILDES-compliant phonological transcription and analysis

program Phon (Rose et al., 2007), phonetically transcribed the tokens of interest and

their phonological environments using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and

exported the relevant data into SPSS for further analysis. In this section I describe the

subsample from the Meakins (2011) corpus of Gurindji Kriol used in the current

research as well as our procedure for processing and transcribing the data and

consulting community members about the project and our use of the data.
CHAPTER 3 51

Field trip 1 September – October 2009

• Establish relationships with Katherine organisations and childcare
centres
• Informed consent discussions with Katherine English speakers
• Katherine English recordings at child age 1;6
• Work with Aboriginal cultural mentor
• Meet with project steering committee

Field trip 2 March – April 2010

• Katherine English recordings at child age 2;0
• Project update meetings with Katherine organisations
• Informed consent discussions with all speakers
• Discussions with Kalkaringi and Daguragu community leaders and
project liaison
• Establish relationships with Gurindji Kriol speaking mothers and
community Research Assistants

Field trip 3 October – December 2010

• Katherine English recordings at child age 2;6
• Interviews with Katherine English mothers
• Project update meetings with Katherine organisations and cultural
mentor
• Informed consent discussions with all speakers
• Discussions with Kalkaringi and Daguragu community leaders and
project liaison
• Conduct phonological awareness training with community
Research Assistants

Field trip 4 May – June 2011

• Revisit Katherine English mothers for project updates and
information checking
• Project update meetings with Katherine organisations and cultural
mentor
• Informed consent discussions with all speakers
• Discussions with Kalkaringi and Daguragu community leaders and
project liaison
• Conduct Visual Analogue Scales task with community Research
Assistants

Figure 3.1. Stages of fieldwork and timeframes of data collection

CHAPTER 3 52

3.2.2 Participants

Participants in the subsample used in these studies were three Gurindji mothers

and their children who are speakers of Gurindji Kriol. The three women were mothers

of focus children in ACLA-1 and agreed to participate in the current project. These

speakers were selected because there was longitudinal conversational data when their

children were aged on average 1;5, 1;11 and 2;5, which are the approximate child ages

under investigation in this thesis, and because they were available in the community for

consultation and discussions about our use of their recordings and transcripts for this

research. The three mothers were recontacted and, in the presence of an interpreter,

were invited to give informed consent for us to use their speech data collected by

Meakins (2011) for this project.

The children’s ages in the recordings selected for this research are displayed in

Table 3.1. From this point forward I refer to the three timepoints of data collection in

the current subsample as Stages 1, 2 and 3, though note these do not correspond to the

field trips in the Meakins dataset (in which there are trips both preceding and following

this subsample). The recording length and number of mothers’ utterances at each stage

are shown in Table 3.2

Table 3.1
Gurindji Kriol Speaking Mothers and Age of the Focus Children

Child’s age
Mother Child’s gender
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

SS male 1;7 2;0 2;6

CE female 1;4 1;9 2;3

AR male 1;4 1;9 2;3

Table 3.2

Total amounts of recording and number of mothers’ utterances in the Gurindji Kriol subsample at each stage

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Total

recording recording recording recording

N N N N
length length length length
utterances utterances utterances utterances
hh:mm:ss hh:mm:ss hh:mm:ss hh:mm:ss

SS 01:20:13 362 00:54:00 212 01:21:31 482 03:35:44 1,056

CE 00:30:28 327 00:16:33 52 00:22:31 215 01:09:32 594

AR 00:44:13 256 00:52:38 188 00:43:04 22 02:19:55 466

Total 02:34:54 945 02:03:11 452 02:27:06 719 07:05:11 2,116

CHAPTER 3 54

3.2.3 Procedure

The sample selected for the current research comprised audiovisual recordings

of naturalistic family interactions in free play or natural outdoor settings. Meakins

(2011) was sometimes present in recording sessions and sometimes left the area to

allow speakers to interact as naturally as possible (see Meakins, 2011, pp. 45-54 for

further detail on recording methods).

Activities. Common activities in Meakins’s (2011) recordings were playing with

toys provided by Meakins, which included dolls, picture books, drawing and puppets.

Recordings also took place outside at the river, which included activities such as

swimming, fishing and informal story-telling.

Equipment. Speakers in the Meakins (2011) corpus wore a lapel microphone

that recorded at 44Ghz 16 bit, to a minidisc recorder, which was carried by the speaker

in a bumbag. A video camera with a shotgun microphone was also used to record

sessions.

3.2.4 Phonetic Transcription

The transcription procedure for this project involved converting Meakins’s

transcript files from CHAT format to Phon (Rose et al., 2007) with the use of

conversion tools created for this purpose7. We then phonetically transcribed in IPA the

tokens containing the phonological characteristics being investigated and their

phonological environments (see Chapter 3 for further detail), facilitated by a dictionary

of common IPA transcriptions of Gurindji Kriol words that was imported into Phon.

7
Chatter converts files from CHAT to xml formats and vice-versa
(http://www.talkbank.org/software/chatter.html), and Phontalk converts files from xml
to Phon formats and vice-versa (http://phon.ling.mun.ca/phontrac/wiki/PhonTalk). Both
tools were created for the Phon project (Rose et al., 2007), which is a part of CHILDES
(MacWhinney, 2000), and are freely available.

CHAPTER 3 55

Phon’s search function was then used to export the transcription data into SPSS for

further analysis.

3.2.5 Ethical Considerations Relating to the Gurindji Kriol Corpus

There were several ethical considerations involved with building on the data in

the Gurindji Kriol corpus for the current project. These included consultation with

community leaders and the speakers about the direction of the project, ongoing

permission from participants to use recordings and transcripts, who to work with as

community Research Assistants, and dissemination of findings. Informed consent was

discussed with speakers during each visit to the community in the presence of an

interpreter, and throughout the project speakers were given opportunities to discuss and

update their decisions about how their data would be used and stored. The consent form

for Daguragu mothers in Appendix A shows the options participants had for our use and

storage of their data. Participants generally consented to data storage at other facilities

(e.g. the language centre in Katherine, at national archives) if future researchers have to

get their permission to access the data. Participants also allowed us to print parts of

transcripts in academic publications and to use video clips and photos for conferences

and the project website, with varying degrees of permissions. The speakers did not wish

to use pseudonyms in academic reports – these women are proud of their language

variety and agreed to their names being associated with work on it. Speakers,

interpreters, community leaders and other community members involved in the project

were all paid for their time and gave informed consent to be a part of the research,

where they were able to discuss and choose the levels of anonymity they wished for the

various formats and uses of data.

CHAPTER 3 56

3.3 Katherine English Corpus

3.3.1 Design

The Katherine English corpus is a longitudinal audiovisual database of

naturalistic northern Australian English maternal speech, recorded in homes and local

outdoor settings in family interaction. I recorded this corpus between July 2009 and

December 2010 (see Figure 3.1 for data collection process) in the town Katherine,

Northern Territory, which is about 300km south of Darwin and about 500km northeast

of Kalkaringi and Daguragu (Figure 1.1). This corpus was designed to be comparable to

the Gurindji Kriol maternal speech sample described above (section 1.5.1), and

therefore recordings are of naturalistic family interactions made at approximately the

same child ages between 1;6 and 2;6. The Katherine English corpus comprises over 30

hours of audiovisual recordings at three timepoints at about six-month intervals, when

the target children were aged approximately 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. The mothers’ speech was

phonetically transcribed and analysed in Phon (Rose et al., 2007). Table 3.3 displays the

length of recording and number of mothers’ utterances of each speaker at each stage of

recording.

3.3.2 Participants

Participants were recruited through the Katherine childcare centres and other

local businesses and were paid for their time. The five mothers who participated were

monolingual Australian English speakers who lived and had grown up in Katherine,

with the exception of one mother (Erin) who grew up in a small regional town

(population approx. 3,000) in northwest Queensland, Australia. As shown in Table 3.3,

four of the mothers had a child aged 1;5-1;7 at Stage 1 of data collection (the target

child); the fifth mother’s child (Cullen) was 2;0 at Stage 1. The characteristics of the

mothers and the target children are displayed in Table 3.4, followed by a brief
CHAPTER 3 57

description of each dyad and the other people present in recording sessions. Mothers

were given the choice of having pseudonyms for themselves and their families in

academic manuscripts; thus pseudonyms are used throughout this thesis for the mothers

who chose that option.

Table 3.3

Characteristics of Katherine English speaking mothers and the focus children

Child’s Child’s age

Child’s Mother’s
Mother Child family
gender education
position Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

Bachelor
Cathy Lucy female only child 1;5 1;11 2;5
degree

Secondary youngest
Kim George male 1;5 1;11 2;5
school of three

Secondary
Kellie Tyson male only child 1;7 2;1 2;7
school

Bachelor oldest of
Erin Grace female 1;6 2;0 2;8*
degree three

Secondary oldest of
Eva Cullen male 2;0 2;6 3;0
school two

* The age difference between Stages 2 and 3 is greater for Grace than the other
children because Erin and Grace’s Stage 3 sessions were recorded later due to
participant circumstances

Cathy and Lucy. Lucy was Cathy’s only child. Lucy’s father occasionally

participated in recordings, but he was not usually home during recording and sessions

generally consist of Cathy and Lucy playing together.

Kim and George. George had two older siblings, a boy and girl aged 6;3 and

3;0 respectively at Stage 1. One or both of the siblings participated in most of the

sessions. Kim was asked to focus on George in the sessions, so generally the siblings
CHAPTER 3 58

played together while Kim played with George. The children’s father participated

occasionally, but usually he was not home when recordings took place.

Kellie and Tyson. Tyson was an only child. Tyson’s grandmother (Kellie’s

mother) was present in most of the sessions. Other adult family members were

sometimes in the vicinity but did not participate in sessions.

Erin and Grace. Grace had two younger brothers: one aged 0;5 at Stage 1 and

another born between Stages 2 and 3. Sessions were generally held when the younger

children were sleeping and the majority of interactions were between Erin and Grace.

Two adult males who work for Erin and her husband were occasionally present in some

of the sessions.

Eva and Cullen. Cullen was an only child at the first two stages, and then had a

younger brother born between Stages 2 and 3. Cullen’s father participated sometimes

when he was home during sessions. Cullen refused to wear the microphone in all

sessions, accordingly there is only audio of Eva’s speech at each stage. As Cullen was

six months older than the other children, Eva’s data were not used for the longitudinal

analyses of changes between the three child ages to ensure a simple and complete

dataset.
Table 3.4

Total amounts of recording and number of mothers’ utterances in the Katherine English corpus at each stage

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Total

recording recording recording recording

N N N N
length length length length
utterances utterances utterances utterances
hh:mm:ss hh:mm:ss hh:mm:ss hh:mm:ss

Cathy 02:05:31 1,751 02:00:18 1,863 02:44:58 2,181 06:50:47 5,795

Kim 02:11:37 1,584 01:38:00 1,513 02:28:12 1,844 06:17:49 4,941

Kellie 02:41:54 1,595 03:07:20 1,888 02:24:54 1,515 08:14:08 4,997

Erin 01:39:48 1,041 00:47:53 487 02:06:13 1,506 04:33:54 3,034

Eva 01:37:30 1,388 01:22:20 891 01:57:58 1,316 04:57:48 3,595

Total 10:16:20 7,359 08:55:51 6,642 11:42:15 8,361 30:54:26 22,362

CHAPTER 3 60

3.3.3 Procedure

Mothers were asked to interact with their children as they normally would and to

focus on the target child if siblings were present. Settings for the recordings were the

family home, both inside and in the backyard, and at a local park, with care taken to

choose locations with minimal background noise. Mothers were told that the project

was about their everyday speech to children and were debriefed on the details after the

final recording session. I made all the Katherine English recordings, and spent time

before and after sessions building rapport with the families and familiarising the

children with the recording equipment. I was usually present in the sessions operating

the video camera, although sometimes when the participants appeared nervous or very

aware of my presence I secured the camera to the tripod and left the area.

Activities. The content of the recordings is the mothers and children engaging in

free play. They played with their own toys and games as well as those brought by the

researcher, and generally the same types of activities were carried out across families

and stages of recording: playing with coloured blocks, toy cars, dolls, puzzles and

playdough, free drawing and painting, and playing on playground equipment such as

swingsets and slides. Originally an effort was made to keep the materials as similar as

possible to those in the Gurindji Kriol recordings; however, participants were more at

ease choosing their own activities and materials. This was therefore allowed as a more

naturalistic speech sample was elicited when participants were comfortable, and as we

were interested in the speech the children were typically exposed to it was valid for

them to engage in their typical activities. Between one and three sessions were

conducted with each family at each stage, generally between half an hour and an hour in

length, depending on the participants’ schedules and the children’s compliance (refer to

Table 3.4 for total amounts of recording).

CHAPTER 3 61

Equipment. The microphones were wireless, cardioid, condenser lapel

(Sennheiser ME104) that recorded at 48kHz, 24 bit via bodypack transmitter to a

receiver with XLR connection to a hard disk recorder (Edirol R-44). The mother and

child wore a microphone each and recorded on separate audio tracks. The mother’s

track was used for transcription. The microphone was positioned upwards at the top

centre of the mother’s shirt, and the children wore adjustable aprons with the transmitter

clipped on the back and the microphone at the top centre. The video camera (Sony

AVCHD HDR XR-500V) filmed in high definition and had an external microphone

attached. Figure 3.2 is a photo of a typical session setup, taken at Stage 2.

Figure 3.2. Photo of a typical recording session. The mother and child (2;0) are both
wearing lapel microphones and play together in the garden at the child’s grandmother’s
house. The grandmother participates in the background and the researcher is present
behind the camera.
CHAPTER 3 62

3.3.4 Ethical Considerations Relating to the Katherine English Corpus

Creation of the Katherine English corpus involved several ethical considerations

that informed how the research was conducted, so I will briefly discuss these and how

they were addressed in the procedure.

Participants were recruited through Katherine childcare services and other local

businesses. This recruitment procedure allowed me as the researcher to consult with the

community and to build relationships with the local organisations that have an interest

in the research. Before starting the Katherine English corpus I attended several childcare

centres in operation and observed adult childcare providers interacting with children

aged about 1;0 to 5;0, and spoke casually with parents and staff about the experiences of

caring for children in Katherine. I also attended staff meetings of an organisation that

provides early childhood and parenting programs to communities in and around

Katherine and gained awareness of common issues faced by families in the region.

These organisations also provided a channel for disseminating our findings to the

community.

As the research involved collecting, analysing and storing audiovisual

recordings of the families’ everyday lives, it was critical to ensure the mothers had an

in-depth understanding of what we were doing with the recordings and transcripts, how

they would be stored and who could access them, and that we complied with the

families’ wishes. I discussed the information sheet and consent forms (Appendix A) in

detail with mothers before the first session and during each of the subsequent fieldtrips

to check if they had changed their minds on the consent options. These included various

options for the storage of data, its current and future use, and levels of de-identification

for each of the data formats (audio, video, photos and transcripts). Some mothers chose

to give full permission for all options of our use and storage of all forms of their data
CHAPTER 3 63

without any anonymity, for themselves and their children. The other mothers chose de-

identified options for online data storage and access (i.e. on the TalkBank website), and

for pseudonyms to be used in reports and publications.

Families were sent DVDs compiled of the video recordings overlaid with the

audio from the lapel microphones (with assistance from a technical research assistant on

the project), as these were the raw data we processed and analysed for the research.

Mothers could then check if there was anything they would like deleted from the stored

recordings. This occurred once when a mother requested deletion of a telephone

conversation (usually the recording was stopped or the mother’s microphone muted for

phone calls but it had kept recording in this case). Participation was voluntary and

mothers were reminded at the start of each session that they could stop the recording at

any time. They were paid $25 an hour for their time and were aware they would be paid

regardless of whether sessions ended early or if they withdrew consent.

3.3.5 Phonetic Transcription

The mothers’ audio tracks were transcribed in the phonetic transcription and

analysis program Phon (Rose et al., 2007). Phon was used to segment the tracks into

utterances based on conversational turn-taking and pause boundaries (see Table 3.4 for

the number of utterances per mother at each child age). Phonetic transcription of the

audio recordings was performed by me, a native speaker of Australian English from

regional Tasmania. I transcribed mothers’ actual pronunciation in the ‘IPA Actual’ tier

in Phon as well as the standard Australian English forms in the ‘IPA Target’ tier. This

allowed us to compare the mothers’ pronunciation with the standard forms and to search

for phonological processes that involve systematic differences between the two, such as

elision (the process investigated in Chapter 4). Further detail of the procedure of using
CHAPTER 3 64

Phon (Rose et al., 2007) for this purpose is in Buchan (2011), reprinted in the last

section of this chapter (pp. 59-70).

For the phonetic transcription we used the transcription system recommended by

Harrington, Cox and Evans (1997) for phonetic transcription of Australian English,

which is based on acoustic analyses of vowels from a large sample (N=132) of

Australian English speakers recorded as part of the Australian National Database of

Spoken Language (ANDOSL). A second transcriber, who has a Masters in Speech

Science and is experienced in Australian English transcription, separately transcribed a

subset of the data for reliability analyses, which showed over 95% agreement.

Disagreements were resolved through consensus discussions between myself and the

second transcriber, and where consensus could not be reached a third transcriber, the

primary supervisor of this thesis (trained in phonetics and phonology and a researcher in

child language), was consulted and a decision was reached.

Transcription was an ongoing process and was done in several settings (field

locations and at the university), and the same set of high quality headphones

(Sennheiser HD 280 Pro) was used for all transcription with the second and third

transcribers using identical sets. Further detail of the quality of the audio recordings and

the reliability analyses are in Chapter 5 (pp. 136-137).

3.4 Working with Gurindji Community Members

Community Research Assistants (RAs) were also employed to contribute to this

project. Community RAs were seven young women in Kalkaringi and Daguragu who

were native speakers of Gurindji Kriol and recommended by the traditional owners and

the community project liaison. Two of the three Gurindji Kriol speakers mentioned in

the above description of the Gurindji Kriol subsample were also community RAs. The

third speaker was away from the community during the times the research for this thesis
CHAPTER 3 65

was carried out, but we were able to contact her in Katherine and when she visited

Kalkaringi to discuss consent and to ask her permission to use recordings and

transcripts of her. The community RAs were involved in a variety of tasks. They

familiarised me with the community, the social context and their perspective on the

language situation, and taught me some Gurindji Kriol as well as some traditional

Gurindji words. Community RAs also participated in the phonological awareness

training and Visual Analogue Scale tasks described in Chapter 4, and through these

procedures provided data on their perceptions as native speakers of fricatives in the

Gurindji Kriol corpus.

The study in Chapter 5 involved us developing a new method for using the

Visual Analogue Scales with native speakers of Gurindji Kriol to add to our phonetic

transcription of Gurindji Kriol, and so the method is described in some detail in that

research article.

3.5 Phonetic Transcription and Analysis in Phon8

3.5.1 Overview

Phon is an open-source program for the transcription and analysis of

phonological and phonetic data. It was designed to help systematise research in

children’s phonological development, but many functions in Phon, particularly the

powerful search function, can be used for a wide range of investigations in phonetics

and phonology. Phon is compatible with other language processing programs and is not

8
This section is a refereed published paper: Buchan, H. (2011). Phon: Free software for
phonological transcription and analysis. Language Documentation and Conservation, 5
81-87. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank my supervisors Caroline Jones
(University of Wollongong) and Felicity Meakins (University of Queensland) for their
valuable suggestions. I am also very grateful to Yvan Rose (Memorial University) for
his helpful feedback.
CHAPTER 3 66

just limited to English, making it a useful tool for documenting and analysing the

phonological system of any spoken language.

The program has a user-friendly interface that makes transcription and analysis a

relatively straightforward process. The layout is easily customised, as each major

feature opens in a new view panel and so can be displayed as needed. Phon supports

blind transcription, allowing multiple transcribers to work on the same file

independently, and a validation feature allows the multiple transcriptions to be

displayed together for consensus discussions and transcription validation. The media

player supports both audio and video files, and media files can be segmented to link to

sections of the transcription. Each transcript section is called a record, and once linked

to the media the waveform of each record can be displayed. Phon uses Unicode fonts,

and there are built-in dictionaries for some languages which facilitates transcription of

the target phonological form. Although the built-in dictionaries are only of major

languages, there is also a dictionary utility that allows user-defined dictionary input that

will show the IPA transcription of target phonological forms. There is also an automatic

syllabification feature that can be adapted for other languages. Perhaps most impressive

are the program’s search capabilities. The search function permits systematic searches

of phones and meta-phones, and the program developers have created PhonEx (Phon

Expressions), a language that allows for complex searches using common linguistic

terms. PhonEx is logical and easy to learn from the manual, especially for researchers

already familiar with linguistics terminology. The ability to search phonetic

transcriptions for feature classes in specific phonological environments makes Phon a

very useful program for describing and analysing phonetic features and phonological

systems of spoken language.

CHAPTER 3 67

Another very useful feature of Phon is that transcripts can be imported and

exported in CSV and XML formats. This makes it easy to archive transcripts, and to use

Phon in conjunction with other language documentation software. For example users

can download the program Chatter, which is freely available online, to convert CHAT

(the CHILDES transcription format) transcripts into XML, and then use another freely

available script, xml2phon, to import these into Phon for phonetic and phonological

analysis9.

Phon is a good primary transcription tool, especially for phonetic transcription

as the IPA dictionary function can substantially speed up transcription time. However,

transcripts can also be converted to be compatible with programs like Transcriber and

ELAN. This means if a corpus has previously been transcribed in one of these programs

it can then be imported into Phon for phonetic transcription and analysis10.

Similarly, search results can be exported in a variety of formats including

Microsoft Excel and Word, OpenOffice Calc and Writer, as well as more general PDF,

HTML and CSV formats, the latter especially suited for transporting Phon data into

other applications and statistical analysis programs. In this way Phon’s unique search

function can be used in conjunction with functions offered by other programs.

Phon was developed by a team led by Yvan Rose and Greg Hedlund as a part of

the PhonBank project, a recent expansion of the CHILDES project (Child Language

Data Exchange System), an international database that supports research in language

acquisition. Coordinated by Brian MacWhinney (Carnegie Mellon University), the

system facilitates data sharing across the field of child language research. CHILDES is

a component of TalkBank, a multilingual corpus containing shared databases from

9
Chatter and xml2phon can both be downloaded for free from http://talkbank.org/
10
Prof. Trevor Johnston at Macquarie University identified the potential use of Phon in
this way.
CHAPTER 3 68

several subfields of human and animal communication research. Within this larger

database, PhonBank offers corpora documenting phonological development in a number

of languages. PhonBank data are compatible with the Phon and CLAN software

programs.

Good support is available for Phon users. A PDF version of the manual is

available online and in the program’s help menu. Users can ask for help and post feature

requests in an online forum11 that is checked regularly by the developers, and there is

also a Google discussion group for PhonBank12.

Phon has very recently been released in a new version (v1.4). This version is a

substantial improvement on Phon 1.3, particularly in the layout and navigation. User

feature requests have been incorporated into v1.4, and existing functions have been

updated. There is a simple tool within the program for converting project files from v1.3

to v1.4. This review is of the newest version, Phon 1.4b975.

3.5.2 Getting Started

Projects are organised hierarchically, with each project made up of one or more

corpora, and each corpus containing one or more sessions. At this stage the user needs

to decide whether to work in the Editor’s mode or the Blind mode, the former being the

default. Transcription done in Editor’s mode will not appear in the Blind mode, so it is

important to make the decision about which mode to work in at the beginning of the

project. The Blind mode enables blind transcription from multiple transcribers and

should be checked at the start of the project if you would like to compare the phonetic

transcription of two or more transcribers. This feature is useful when discussing

11
http://phon.ling.mun.ca/phontrac/discussion
12
phon-subscribe@googlegroups.com
CHAPTER 3 69

transcript discrepancies as part of a validation procedure, and also for documentation as

it is a way to keep track of changes made through consulting with native speakers.

Transcription is done in the Session Editor. The layout here can be organised

according to the user’s needs at the time. The displays (view panels) for different

functions (e.g., media segmentation, automatic IPA lookup, search, search results) can

be opened and moved around and docked or undocked as needed. Customisation of the

layout is one of the strong points of Phon, as you only need to display the functions

relevant to the specific task at hand (e.g. you can have a different configuration of view

panels for transcribing, validating transcriptions, or searching). Figure 3.3 is an

example setup for transcribing in Phon. The Record List on the left makes it easy to

navigate between records, which are portions of the transcript that are useful for

research, typically consisting of single utterances. The Session Information and Record

Data in the middle display the participants’ details and the record transcript,

respectively. The IPA Lookup on the right displays the dictionary IPA transcription of

the Record Data.

Figure 3.3. Example of a customised session editor display in Phon.

CHAPTER 3 70

3.5.3 Media

The media player in Phon supports a range of audio and video formats and can

handle high quality recordings (I use 24 bit 48 kHz audio files, which work well in this

version). Media files can be added by locating the file in the Session Information view

panel, and played by opening the player from the Media menu. Media can be segmented

to create records (though data records can also be created in the absence of recorded

media.) The segmentation feature is simple to use. After entering in the participant

information, the user can decide to segment media from the beginning of the recorded

media file or from the end of the last record segmented. To segment, simply use either

the keyboard shortcuts or click on a participant in media segmentation view panel, as

shown in Figure 3.4. This will automatically create a record for that participant that

links to the media segment. The default segment window (timeframe of an

automatically-created segment) is 3000ms, and can be changed just by typing in another

timeframe. I found the default 3000ms window to work generally well for naturalistic

interactions between mothers and children. Segment times can also be easily adjusted in

the segment tier of each record or by moving the boundaries in the waveform. The

segmentation tool is also useful in that it allows the user to export individual media

clips as separate files. This is good for storing soundbites, and is also very helpful when

audio in the segment is unclear, as the user can then quickly open the individual

segment in a speech analysis program such as PRAAT for closer inspection.

CHAPTER 3 71

Figure 3.4. Using the segmentation tool to create a record that is linked to the media.

3.5.4 Transcription

Once a record has been created, the associated utterance(s) can be transcribed.

The Record Data window in the example in Figure 3.5 shows the default transcript

tiers. The Tier Management function allows the user to re-order and show or hide tiers,

and to create new tiers. There is an IPA chart, available from the Tools menu, for

insertion of phonetic characters, suprasegmentals and diacritics.

At this stage the user should decide on how to group words. Word groups in

Phon refer to user-defined boundaries and are useful for defining boundaries of a lexical

word, e.g., should, or a prosodic word, e.g. oughta. Word groups are represented by the

square brackets and can be created in the Orthography tier, which then automatically

creates groups in the IPA Target tier (transcription of the model or standard utterance

form) and the IPA Actual tier (transcription of the produced utterance form), and any

user-defined tiers that have been created to align with word groups. This feature is a

way in which the transcript structure can be adapted to specific requirements of the

research as it allows utterances to be segmented at any level, so groups can be made for

prosodic phrases, or morphemes, etc., depending on the level of analysis.

CHAPTER 3 72

The IPA target refers to the model phonological form, and the search function in

Phon can make systematic comparisons between target and actual phonological forms.

This is a very useful feature that can be applied, for example, to compare phonemic and

phonetic transcriptions, standard and colloquial pronunciations, adult forms with actual

child pronunciations, or standard and baby-talk words.

The target phonological forms can be looked up in a built-in dictionary and

inserted into the transcript. Dictionaries are already built-in for some major languages

(American English, Catalan, German, French, Icelandic, Dutch, Italian and Spanish),

and can be imported for other languages. A fieldworker could therefore create a word

list with IPA transcriptions of the most frequent words in a corpus and build it into Phon

as a basic dictionary. The phonological word forms can then be displayed in the

dictionary look-up view panel and inserted into the transcript simply by clicking on

each word form. If a word in the dictionary look-up has more than one IPA entry then

the arrow keys can be used to scroll through the possible alternatives (for example you

can choose between [ət] and [
t] for the English word it). Combined with the waveform

feature, which allows the user to isolate segments in an utterance, this feature is an

efficient way for a fieldworker to check transcriptions with native speakers – the user

can play a segment and go through potential phonological forms for that segment

simultaneously.

Phon also has tiers for target and actual Syllabification and Alignment, which

offer syllable-level data annotation as well as systematic phone alignment between the

IPA Target and IPA Actual tiers (see Figure 3.5 for an example). Syllable information is

automatically labelled and displayed graphically in the transcript with boxes around

each syllable and different colours to represent syllable constituents. The automatic

syllabification can be edited manually by simply clicking on a syllable constituent and

CHAPTER 3 73

selecting the correct label from a drop-down list. The syllabification feature does not

require the use of stress symbols in transcription, and provides a quick and easy way of

seeing how utterances are segmented into syllables and the alignment between the IPA

Target and IPA Actual tiers.

Figure 3.5. Example of Phon’s syllabification and alignment feature.

3.5.5 Search

The search function in Phon is excellent and allows for advanced queries. While

this is just an overview of the main search features, searching in Phon can be adapted to

be as complex and detailed as necessary. Searches can be performed both within and

across transcripts, and results can be filtered by speaker. Tiers can be queried

individually using the Data Tiers search (e.g., to search for all instances of a particular

word in the Orthography tier), or multiple tiers can be queried at once (e.g., to compare
CHAPTER 3 74

segments in the IPA Target and IPA Actual tiers). Phon also allows for searches of

stress patterns and syllable types, i.e. consonant, vowel and glide combinations. The

results can be exported in the variety of formats listed above, making it easier for

further analysis. For example, CSV report exports are useful for data post-processing in

statistical analysis programs.

The search function is so good because it has been specifically designed for

phonological analysis. There are tools for searching vowel and consonant harmony and

consonant metathesis, in which the user can select the type of harmony and list the

features and directionality of the process. As well as using plain text and regular

expressions, complex queries can also be made using PhonEx, a language built for Phon

using common linguistic terms. The structure of and terms in PhonEx are described in

detail in the manual and it does not take long to learn how to create queries. PhonEx

allows search expressions to be as broad or specific as needed. For example you can

search for all instances of word-initial [k], all vowels in unstressed syllables, dorsal

sonorants in primary stressed syllables in onset position, one or more phones that are

not in coda position and occur at the end of a word group, etc. The output of searches

gives summaries of the total number of instances in a transcript as well as a detailed

report with the record numbers for each instance (if you search within a session you can

even click in the results box to bring up the records in which each instance occurs). The

advanced search system is what really sets Phon apart from other phonetic transcription

software. It is not as complicated as it may appear at first, results are easy to navigate,

and it allows for a very wide range of complex searches depending on the researcher’s

needs.
CHAPTER 3 75

3.5.6 Conclusion

Phon is a very effective program for transcription and analysis of phonological

and phonetic data. Transcribing in Phon is straightforward, and the media segmentation

and dictionary IPA look-up features help to speed up the transcription process. The

powerful search capabilities make it possible to describe the phonological system of a

language variety in great detail. Phon would be a good asset to a great variety of

investigations in phonetics and phonology. The range of useful features and

customisable layout make Phon a very handy tool for fieldworkers interested in

describing phonology of underdocumented languages.

Primary function: Transcription and analysis of phonological and phonetic data

Pros: Useful interface for phonetic transcription (includes support

for blind transcriptions) and annotation; support for media

segmentation and transcript linkage; powerful search

function for complex searches of many transcripts at once;

importing and exporting functions makes it compatible with

other transcription and analysis programs; compliance with

Unicode font encoding; good support is available from

program developers

Cons: None significant

Platforms: Mac OS X 10.4 and higher, Windows XP and higher

(Java 1.6 compatibility required on all platforms)

Open Source: Yes, Phon is licensed under the GNU General Public License

Version 2. Phon can be downloaded for free from

http://phon.ling.mun.ca/phontrac/wiki/Downloads
CHAPTER 3 76

Proprietary: Users can use Phon under the GNU-GPL license.

Reviewed version: Phon 1.4b975

Application size: Mac OS X: 41M; Windows XP/Vista/7: 95M (includes VLC

1.10 for the media player)

Documentation: http://phon.ling.mun.ca/phontrac/wiki/

3.6 Chapter Summary

This chapter provided an overview of the methodology used for the empirical

research in this thesis. It included descriptions of how the project was conducted, the

Gurindji Kriol and Katherine English corpora, and how data were processed, transcribed

and analysed in the program Phon (Rose et al., 2007). There were three main aims of

the field trips to Kalkaringi and Katherine in the Northern Territory, Australia, that I

undertook between 2009 and 2011: 1) Recontact three Gurindji Kriol mothers whose

families were part of the Meakins (2011) corpus and discuss our use of their audiovisual

recordings and transcripts for this project, and consult with Kalkaringi community

leaders and traditional owners about the project; 2) Create a comparable longitudinal

audiovisual corpus of family interactions from native speakers of Australian English in

Katherine; 3) Conduct phonological awareness training with community Research

Assistants, and use Visual Analogue Scales to elicit their native speaker judgements of

Gurindji Kriol fricatives.

Phonological analyses of corpus data conducted at the level in this research are

possible due to advanced computer programs for phonetic transcription and analysis.

For this project we used the software Phon (Rose et al., 2007), which is a component of

CHILDES and compatible with the CHAT transcription format (MacWhinney, 2000).
CHAPTER 3 77

The last section in this chapter (previously published, see Buchan [2011]) provided a

review of Phon and a guide for using it in the context of this research.

The next three chapters describe three empirical research studies and are written

in the format of journal articles. Study 1 (Chapter 4) is an investigation of fricative

variation in Gurindji Kriol maternal speech to children at three child ages,

approximately 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. In Study 2 (Chapter 5) we investigated fricative

variation in the form of phonological reduction in Katherine English maternal speech to

children at approximately the same ages, 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. Study 3 (Chapter 6) offers a

further interpretation of the Study 1 findings, by examining native speaker perceptions

of fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol.

 CHAPTER FOUR

Fricative Variation in Maternal Gurindji Kriol

CHAPTER 4 79

4.1 Abstract

The majority of traditional Australian languages have relatively few contrastive

manners of articulation and lack phonemic fricatives (Butcher, 2006). In Kriol varieties

fricative production is highly variable and many Kriol words that have fricatives in their

English cognates can be pronounced variably with a fricative or stop (Sandefur, 1991).

Speakers therefore often have multiple phonetic forms of words to choose from, and in

child-directed speech adults may either consciously or unconsciously choose forms that

support children’s language acquisition.

This study investigated fricative variation in mothers’ speech in Gurindji Kriol,

a mixed language variety in northern Australia that contains lexical forms from both the

traditional language Gurindji and Kriol. We phonetically transcribed and analysed data

from the Meakins (2011) longitudinal Gurindji Kriol ACLA corpus to examine stop-

fricative variation in Kriol-derived words. Speakers were three Gurindji women at three

timepoints, when their children were aged approximately 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. To quantify

environments in which fricatives could occur in Kriol-derived words, we searched the

transcripts for words that had fricatives in the English cognates. Words were categorised

and analysed according to whether they always contained a fricative, were never

pronounced with a fricative, or contained stop-fricative variation. We analysed the

characteristics of words in each category, and the relationships between fricatives in

English cognates and corresponding pronunciation in Gurindji Kriol. Logistic

regression models were performed for word-initial, -medial and -final positions to

investigate the relative effects of child age and phonological environment on stop-

fricative variation.

Results showed that words containing stop-fricative variation were more likely

to be open-class (88%) than closed-class, and the variable segments were most
CHAPTER 4 80

frequently word-initial (49%), then word-medial (32%) and word-final (19%). The most

frequent places of articulation were labio-dental (44%) and alveolar (32%). Cross-

tabulations of fricatives in English cognates and corresponding pronunciation in Kriol-

derived Gurindji Kriol words showed variability across place, manner and voicing, and

differences by word position. Logistic regression results indicated that in initial and

medial positions fricative variation in mothers’ speech changed with child age, taking

into account phonological environments and inter-speaker variation. Across all words,

word-initial fricatives in mothers’ speech were significantly more likely at child age 2;6

than 1;6. In words containing stop-fricative variation, word-medial fricatives were

significantly more likely at 2;6 than 2;0 and 1;6. Results suggest stop-fricative variation

changed in Gurindji Kriol maternal speech as children aged, partly due to changes in

lexical choice. Findings are discussed in relation to lenition processes and fine-tuning in

child-directed speech.
CHAPTER 4 81

4.2 Background

Gurindji Kriol is the main language spoken by children and adults under the age

of 40 in Kalkaringi, an Aboriginal community in northern Australia, and is the language

of acquisition. It is a mixed language that systematically combines grammatical

structures and lexical items from the traditional Aboriginal language Gurindji, and from

Kriol, an English-lexifier creole spoken across northern Australia (Meakins, 2011,

p.12). The grammar of Gurindji Kriol has been examined in detail (Meakins, 2009,

2010, 2011) and the phonological inventory has been briefly described (Meakins, 2007;

Meakins, in press). The current study contributes to the systematic quantitative

description of the phonetics and phonology of a corpus of Gurindji Kriol maternal

speech13, with the overarching aim of investigating the phonology of the speech input

Gurindji children are exposed to at Kalkaringi. In this study we analysed segmental

fricative variation in family interactions and examined possible factors that may affect

fricative variation and whether it changes over time in mothers’ speech as their children

get older. Speakers were young Gurindji Kriol speaking women.

Most Australian languages do not have a manner contrast between stops and

fricatives and lack phonemic fricatives (Butcher, 2006). Lenis stops will sometimes

have fricative allophones, particularly voiced stops following long vowels, and in

languages that do contain phonemic fricatives they are generally voiced and contrast

with voiceless stops (Dixon, 2002). Phonetic fricatives are often dorsal and/or labial,

and common word positions are initial and medial (Dixon, 2002). Traditional Gurindji

does not contain a stop-fricative contrast and has allophonic fricatives (e.g. the

13
The Gurindji Kriol corpus analysed in this study was made by Meakins (2004-07) for
the Aboriginal Child Language (ACLA-1) project, funded by Australian Research
Council grant DP034189 through the University of Melbourne (C.I. Gillian
Wigglesworth, Jane Simpson and Patrick McConvell).
http://linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/research/projects/ACLA/
CHAPTER 4 82

intervocalic velar stop in tarukap ‘swim’ is sometimes pronounced as a voiced velar

fricative). The nature and extent of fricative production in Gurindji and Gurindji-

derived words in Gurindji Kriol has not been investigated. The current study focuses on

the fricatives in Gurindji Kriol that are in Kriol-derived words. The production of these

fricatives is highly variable. They are known to occur at three places of articulation –

bilabial, alveolar and palatal – and are used in variation with stops (Meakins, in press).

There are no previous systematic quantitative descriptions of fricatives in Gurindji Kriol

or other Australian contact language varieties. In the present study we focus our

analyses on fricatives in Kriol-derived words in Gurindji Kriol that have fricatives in

their English cognate words, as a basis for quantifying fricative variation.

In this study we examine whether fricative variation in manner of articulation is

influenced by lexical and phonetic environments, and also how variation in mothers’

speech changes as their children get older. Evidence from the child-directed speech

literature (mostly on standard language varieties) suggests that mothers make segmental

modifications in their speech to children, and that modifications may change as children

get older and their receptive and productive language develops. Cross-linguistically

fricatives tend to be acquired by children later than stops or glides, and it has been

suggested that this is due to the greater articulatory difficulty involved in producing

fricatives (Dinnsen, 1992, pp.196-199; Kent, 1992, pp.75-76). Thus if mothers make

phonetic modifications to ‘fine-tune’ their speech to children’s language development,

there may be an effect of child age on fricative variation in mothers’ speech. Qualitative

reports from Gurindji women suggest that fine-tuning may contribute to phonetic

variation in their speech to children. They have reported using more stops than

fricatives when speaking to children as fricatives are considered more difficult sounds

(Jones & Meakins, 2012b). There are, however, no previous quantitative descriptions of
CHAPTER 4 83

fricatives in Gurindji Kriol and it is unknown if these impressions are actually realised

in mothers’ speech and at what child ages the effect may appear.

The following section provides some background on the context of Gurindji

Kriol, which is followed by more detail on how child age may affect phonetic variation

in maternal speech. We then discuss linguistic factors that may contribute to fricative

variation in Gurindji Kriol, in particular lenition processes.

4.2.1 Gurindji Kriol

Gurindji Kriol is spoken by Gurindji people in Kalkaringi in northern Australia.

It developed from code-switching between Gurindji and Kriol in the 1970s (McConvell

& Meakins, 2005; McConvell, 2008; Meakins, pp.109-53) and contains a structural split

between the noun phrase system, which is mostly from Gurindji, and the verb phrase

system, mostly from Kriol (Meakins, 2011, pp.12-13). The lexicon contains nouns and

verbs derived from both languages and Gurindji Kriol contains phonology of both

Gurindji and Kriol (Meakins, in press). Gurindji Kriol is the main language of Gurindji

people, though the speech community is multilingual. Traditional Gurindji is spoken by

some older people, and Kriol is spoken with Kriol-speaking visitors to the community.

The neighbouring language Warlpiri is also spoken by some people. English is the

language of the school, government services and media and is spoken with English-

speaking visitors. English is also occasionally present in code-switches, particularly in

phrases that often occur in the school context (Meakins, 2008; Meakins, 2011, p.65),

but Gurindji Kriol is the children’s home language and they generally do not hear much

English in the years before school. See Meakins (2008; 2011, pp.58-70) for more

information on the language context and ecology in the region.

The current study is part of a larger project investigating the phonetics and

phonology of maternal Gurindji Kriol. The aim of the project is to investigate the sound
CHAPTER 4 84

patterns that children are exposed to in their home language Gurindji Kriol, and

involves phonetic analyses of a large longitudinal audiovisual corpus made by Meakins

between 2004 and 2007 as part of ACLA-1 (see footnote 1). Acoustic analyses of

mothers’ speech from this corpus and analyses of minimal pair contrasts in Kriol-

derived words suggests Gurindji Kriol may have a 5 vowel system, /ɪ, ɛ, ɐ, ɔ, ʊ/ (Jones,

Meakins & Buchan, 2011; Jones, Meakins & Muawiyath, 2012), and voicing variation

in stop consonants depending on word position and place of articulation (Jones &

Meakins, 2012a). Fricatives in Gurindji Kriol have not previously been studied in detail.

The fricatives under investigation in this study are in Kriol-derived words.

Research on the phonology of Kriol has found that fricative production is highly

variable. Sandefur (1991) suggests that when Kriol was developing, speakers produced

English-derived words with traditional language phonology, which did not contain

fricatives, and as speakers remained in contact with English some Kriol words started to

be pronounced with the original English sounds. He also suggests that the newer

English-like pronunciations were produced in addition to the older pronunciations rather

than replacing them, which is why Kriol words often have several pronunciations

(Sandefur, 1991) and accounts for the high variability in fricatives, which are present in

the phonology of English but not traditional languages in the region.

Impressionistically, Kriol-derived words in Gurindji Kriol are also highly variable, and

Meakins (2007, p.358) notes that there is variation in manner of articulation between

stops and fricatives.

Fricative variability in Gurindji Kriol may be affected by a number of factors,

including situational contexts and linguistic factors such as word position and

phonological environment. The settings of the current dataset are family interactions, as

the broad aim is to investigate the phonology of the input that children acquiring
CHAPTER 4 85

Gurindji Kriol are exposed to. Thus the data in the current study is maternal speech in

Gurindji Kriol. Maternal speech is defined here as mothers’ speech spoken in the

presence of their children and includes child-directed speech, that is speech directed

specifically to the child (see Soderstrom, 2007, for a discussion of maternal speech as

linguistic input to children). In the next section we discuss previous research on

phonetic variation in child-directed speech and how fricative variation in maternal

Gurindji Kriol may be affected by child age.

4.2.2 Phonetic Variation in Child-Directed Speech

Caregiver speech to children (termed infant- or child-directed speech) contains

phonological differences to interadult speech, including slower tempo, more variability

in pitch contours, longer pauses, and higher fundamental frequency (Snow, 1977, p.36;

Fernald et al., 1989; Katz, Cohn & Moore, 1996). Cross-linguistic evidence suggests

that phonetic variation in speech input to children may be ‘fine-tuned’ (consciously or

not) to children’s receptive and productive language development.

Longitudinal studies show that the phonological modifications mothers make to

their speech change as children get older. For example, in Mandarin acoustic

exaggeration in vowels, i.e. larger vowel space, longer durations, and increased tone

range, was greater in adult speech to younger children (aged 0;7-1;0) than to older

children (aged 5;0), and vowel exaggeration in speech to the older children was still

greater than in adult-directed speech (Liu, Tsau & Kuhl, 2009). Similarly in a regional

variety of English from northern England, segmental phonetic variants associated with

non-standard or vernacular speech were found to gradually increase in child-directed

speech between child ages 2;0 to 4;0 (Foulkes, Docherty & Watt, 2005). Phonological

reduction in mothers’ speech related to casual speech processes has also been found to

change with a child's age in northern Australian English, with mothers proportionately
CHAPTER 4 86

increasing segmental deletion as children aged 1;6 to 2;0 and then decreasing deletion

between 2;0 and 2;6 (Buchan & Jones, in press), suggesting mothers may fine-tune their

speech differentially as their children age, possibly to children’s receptive and

productive language development.

Mothers’ fricative production may also vary between child- and adult-directed

speech, due to either lexical choice or mothers fine-tuning to children’s productive

language. Distributional differences between child-directed and adult-directed speech in

manner of articulation have been found in English (Lee, Davis & MacNeilage, 2010)

and Korean (Lee & Davis, 2008). English child-directed speech to children aged 1;0

contained proportionately more stops and glides, and fewer fricatives, affricates, liquids

and nasals than adult-directed speech, partly due to different lexical items used in each

register. In Korean fricatives were also significantly less frequent in child-directed

speech compared with interadult speech. These results were interpreted to suggest that

mothers may ‘match’ their speech to their child’s language capabilities, scaffolding

children according to the sounds they are acquiring (Lee et al., 2010). The difference in

lexical items used in child-directed and adult-directed speech further suggests that the

difference in fricative distributions is at least partly due to mothers avoiding words

containing fricatives and/or favouring words containing stops and glides.

Fricatives are more difficult to produce and tend to be acquired later than stops

and glides (Dinnsen, 1992, pp.196-199; Kent, 1992, pp.75-76), therefore if mothers

modify their speech according to the sounds children are acquiring (Lee & Davis, 2010)

we would expect a relationship between child age and fricative variation in mothers’

speech. Gurindji Kriol is an ideal variety in which to investigate fricative variability as

it occurs both within and between lexical forms. Speakers may have a choice of
CHAPTER 4 87

alternate phonetic forms and opportunity to avoid fricatives in speech to children and/or

promote ‘easier’ manners of articulation such as stops and glides.

The current study is an investigation of input children are exposed to, thus the

data consists of maternal speech, which is a broader term than child-directed speech

(Soderstrom, 2007) that includes mothers’ speech in family interactions when the child

is present rather than only speech directed to the child. Studies on English suggest that a

substantial proportion of speech young children are exposed to is not necessarily

directed specifically to them (van de Weijer, 2002) and that exposure to third party

conversations may facilitate children’s lexical development (Akhtar, 2005). Gurindji

children are part of large extended family groups and the speech input they are exposed

to consists of general family interactions. Child age is one factor that may contribute to

fricative variation in maternal Gurindji Kriol, but variability is also high in interadult

speech and in this study we also examined linguistic factors that potentially affect

fricative variation.

4.2.3 Lenition Processes and Fricative Variation

The focus of this study is on fricative manner variability, particularly stop-

fricative variation. Spirantization, a lenition process whereby the manner of a sound

changes into a fricative (e.g. [t]  [θ]), may play a role in this type of variation.

Lenition is a sound change process involving consonant ‘weakening’, but exactly what

constitutes weakening is debated in the literature (e.g. Bauer, 2008; Honeybone, 2008;

Kingston, 2008; Kirchner, 2005). Traditional definitions are based on hierarchies or

trajectories of sounds from strong to weak (e.g. Escure, 1977; Hock, 1986), and focus

on the acoustic and articulatory features of the sound change such as sonority (i.e.

changing from less sonorous to more sonorous), or a decrease in resistance to airflow

between articulators.
CHAPTER 4 88

One explanation of lenition is that it is a reduction in the speaker’s articulatory

effort whereby the phonetic target is not reached (e.g. Kirchner, 2004). In spirantization

the reduced effort leads to frication of stops, that is, allowing turbulent airflow through

the articulators rather than stopping it (Bauer, 2008). Kirchner (2004, p.316) suggests

certain contexts are more susceptible to lenition, in particular fast/casual speech and

intervocalic segments, because in these contexts greater articulatory effort is required to

produce a constriction. Stop-fricative variability may therefore be affected by

articulatory effort, which is in turn influenced by the speech context and phonological

environment.

The reduced articulatory effort explanation is debatable. While fricatives are

considered ‘weaker’ sounds than stops in that there is more airflow between the

articulators, they are also more difficult to articulate in that producing fricatives requires

more precision and muscular control than stops (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996, p.137).

As mentioned in the section above, the articulatory difficulty of fricatives is reflected in

children’s acquisition as they are generally acquired later than ‘easier’ manners of

articulation (Dinnsen, 1992, pp.196-199; Kent, 1992, pp.75-76). Further, difficulty of

articulation may vary with the position of the segment within a word. Sole’s (2010)

aerodynamic study of English speakers found that coda fricatives were articulatorily

more difficult to produce than onset fricatives, and suggests this may account for word-

final fricative weakening or elision of syllable-final fricatives that is found across many

languages.

Lenition processes may be further influenced by perceptual factors. Kingston

(2008) found that the immediate phonological environment, that is segments either side

of the lenited phone, influenced consonant lenition. He posited lenition may be driven

by the speaker modifying the perceptual saliency of the segment and those surrounding
CHAPTER 4 89

it. A perceptual explanation of lenition was also examined by Kaplan (2011), who

suggests one of the speaker’s goals in lenition is minimal perceptual salience of the

sound change. Kaplan (2011) found that intervocalically the distinction between voiced

and voiceless stops was more perceptually salient than the distinction between voiced

stops and voiced fricatives, suggesting listeners may be less sensitive to intervocalic

stops being lenited to fricatives. The magnitude of the effect, however, was smaller for

labials than dorsals and coronals, despite labial being a common place of articulation for

frication across languages (Kaplan, 2011). Perceptual factors may therefore account for

some but not all lenition processes, and both perceptual and articulatory factors may

contribute to some phonetic variation.

Among Australia languages lenition processes can explain some continuant-stop

variation, for example in Yolngu varieties Gaalpu (Chong, 2011), Djambarrpuyngu

(Wilkinson, 1991) and Djapu (Morphy, 1983). In a recent study of Gaalpu, Chong

(2011) found phonological context was a factor in the conditioning of lenition. Suffix-

initial stops were lenited to semi-vowels preceding a vowel and following a liquid,

semi-vowel or vowel.

4.2.4 The Current Study

The high variation in fricatives in Gurindji Kriol may be due to a number of

potentially interacting factors. In addition to lenition processes, the input that children

are exposed to is dynamic and may also contain variability as a result of mothers

avoiding or promoting fricatives differentially over time as they fine-tune to children’s

productive and receptive acquisition. The aim of this study is to quantitatively describe

stop-fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol maternal speech and to examine the nature of

variation, particularly how it changes over time in mothers’ speech as their children age.

The current study investigated three research questions: 1) What is the nature and extent
CHAPTER 4 90

of fricative variation within Gurindji Kriol lexical forms in maternal speech? 2) Within

lexical forms containing stop-fricative variation, what are the relationships between

fricatives in English cognates and their pronunciation in Gurindji Kriol words? 3) How

does fricative variation within and between Gurindji Kriol lexical forms change in

mothers’ speech as children get older, taking into account phonological environment

and word position?

4.3 Method

4.3.1 Design

The data in this study is a subsample from a longitudinal corpus of family

interactions in Gurindji Kriol collected by Meakins (2011, pp. 45-47) for the Aboriginal

Child Language (ACLA-1) project. From the subsample we selected all tokens of words

that could contain a fricative and analysed the IPA transcription of these tokens and

their phonological environments.

To analyse fricative variation in naturalistic data we first had to determine the

environments in which fricatives could occur. As there are no ‘standard’ pronunciations

or known phonological targets in Kriol words and therefore no model forms to which

actual pronunciation could be compared, fricatives in English cognates were used as a

basis for quantifying where fricatives could potentially occur in Kriol based words in

Gurindji Kriol. From hereon we use the term ‘potential fricative’ to refer to segments in

Gurindji Kriol words that are pronounced as fricatives in the English cognates and can

therefore be pronounced as fricatives or as something else in Gurindji Kriol. This

approach allowed us to examine not only the environments where fricatives and stop-

fricative variation occurred, but also the environments where fricatives did not occur,

i.e. where there were only stops despite the English cognate containing a fricative,

providing further insight into the factors that may be influencing variation. The current
CHAPTER 4 91

dataset contains tokens of ‘potential fricatives’. The dependent variable was manner of

articulation of the potential fricative: fricative or stop.

4.3.2 Speakers

Speakers in the subsample used in this study were three young Gurindji mothers

who are native speakers of Gurindji Kriol. We selected recordings from the larger

audiovisual database (Meakins, 2011, pp.45-47) that were made at three timepoints:

when the mothers’ children were aged on average 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. The children were

two boys and one girl.

4.3.3 Recordings

The audiovisual recordings contain conversational maternal speech. Recordings

are of family interactions in naturalistic settings, that is in natural outdoor settings or

engaging in free play. Speakers wore a lapel microphone that recorded at 44 kHz 16 bit

to a minidisc recorder that was worn by the speaker. Sessions were also recorded with a

video camera that had a shotgun microphone. Further detail on the corpus and recording

procedures are in Meakins (2011, pp.45-49).

4.3.4 Analysis

The mothers’ speech was phonetically transcribed in Phon (Rose, Hedlund,

Byrne, Wareham & MacWhinney, 2007) using IPA. Phonetic transcription was done by

the first and second authors and two research assistants, all native speakers of

Australian English trained in phonetic transcription. We then queried Phon for the

lexical items whose English cognate words contain fricatives and exported all tokens of

these words spoken by the three mothers along with the immediate phonological

environments and indexical information.

A total of 2,070 tokens were exported from Phon. Words containing [h] in their

English cognates were then excluded (N=474), as in Australian languages [h] behaves
CHAPTER 4 92

differently to other fricatives and would have skewed the results: in the current dataset

only 9 of the potential [h] tokens (0.02%) were transcribed as being pronounced with a

[h]. For the purpose of analysing variation between stops and fricatives we also

excluded cases where the potential fricative was pronounced as a glide (N=92), most of

which were word-initial (N=72). Excluded glides generally occurred intervocalically in

unstressed words, for example dat ‘the, <that’ was sometimes pronounced [jɐt] when

the previous word ended in a vowel. A further 2 tokens were excluded because the

potential fricative segment was unclear. After the exclusions, 1,502 total tokens were

analysed.

4.3.5 Coding

Characteristics of the potential fricatives in tokens were coded for further

analysis. Data included the IPA transcription, corresponding sound in the English

cognate, word position, within-word phonological environment in IPA, and flanking

segments from adjacent words (i.e. the phones preceding word-initial potential

fricatives and the phones following word-final ones). Binary logistic regression

analyses were performed separately for each word position, initial, medial and final. For

all three models the actual pronunciation of the potential fricatives was dichotomized

into two categories, fricative or stop. Phonological environments of segments were

coded separately for each word position according to their sound class.

There were a small number of cases (3 word-medially, 12 word-finally) where

phones in the phonological environment were ‘absent’ as compared to the English

cognate. These are all cases of consonant clusters in the cognate where the ‘potential

fricative’ in Gurindji Kriol is pronounced as a fricative but the other consonant is

absent. Where this occurred the whole cluster was represented as the cognate segment.

This was done so that differences in consonant clusters between the cognate and
CHAPTER 4 93

Gurindji Kriol pronunciation could be examined while the actual pronunciation of the

phonological environment was still accurately represented.

Some potential fricative phones were also coded as ‘absent’ for the purpose of

comparison with fricatives in English cognates. Because target forms in Gurindji Kriol

are unknown, ‘absent’ in this case does not refer to elided segments but rather phones

that are not present in relation to the corresponding segment in the English cognate,

particularly where a consonant cluster in the cognate is pronounced as a single

consonant in the Gurindji Kriol form. For example the word-initial cluster [st] is

generally pronounced as a cluster in some Gurindji Kriol words, e.g. stori ‘story’ [stɔɹɪ]

and as the alveolar stop in other words, e.g. dop ‘stop’ [dɔp]. In the latter case the

potential fricative initial [s] was coded as absent for comparison purposes.

4.3.6 Transcription Reliability

To check transcription reliability a second transcriber who is experienced with

Kriol blind-transcribed 10% (N=202) of tokens and the phonological environments of

these tokens. Tokens in the reliability analysis were a stratified sample of the dataset,

randomly selected from each word position and place of articulation of potential

fricatives. The second transcriber listened to the whole utterance and transcribed in IPA

the token indicated on a spreadsheet, as well as the preceding phone for word-initial

potential fricatives and the following phone for word-final ones. Percentage agreement

between the two transcriptions was calculated for features of the potential fricatives and

class of preceding and following phonological environments.

The breakdown of agreements and disagreements for transcription of potential

fricatives is in Table 4.1. There was 92% agreement (N=185/202) on whether a phone

was a stop or a fricative. In four of the 17 stop-fricative disagreements the second

transcriber had noted uncertainty about whether the phone was a stop or a fricative. The
CHAPTER 4 94

other manner of articulation discrepancies were between palatal stops and affricates,

intervocalic stops and glides, and word-initial deletions, which generally reflected

differences in transcribing assimilation with the preceding phone. ‘Full feature

agreement’ (63%) refers to when both transcribers used the same IPA symbol for the

potential fricative, that is both transcribers agreed completely on all features of the

phone including voicing, manner and place.

There was also high agreement on transcription of phonological environments:

93% agreement on the preceding phone and 98% on the following. Phonological

environment disagreements generally involved pause boundaries, that is, whether the

environment was coded as a pause or a phone. There was one stop-fricative

disagreement, for a following phone.

Table 4.1
Number and percentage of feature agreement on ‘potential fricative’ segments between
two transcribers

%
N agree N disagree
agreement
Full feature agreement 128 74 63%

Voicing 186 16 92%

Place 196 6 97%

Manner 153 49 76%

stop-fricative 185 17 92%

palatal stop-affricate - 20 -

stop-glide-deletion - 12 -

Unclear token - 3 -
CHAPTER 4 95

4.4 Results

4.4.1 Analysis 1: Fricative Variation Within Gurindji Kriol Lexical Forms

To examine the nature and extent of fricative variation within Gurindji Kriol

lexical forms, we analysed the Kriol-derived words in the sample that contained

fricative variation in manner of articulation (i.e. variability between fricatives and stops

or affricates) and compared them to the words where the potential fricative was not

pronounced with stop-fricative variation. Words were categorised into four groups

according to the Gurindji Kriol pronunciation of the potential fricative: 1) only

pronounced as a stop or affricate, 2) only pronounced as a fricative, 3) pronounced

variably as a stop/affricate or a fricative, 4) only one token in the dataset and variability

could not be determined. The latter group (N=57) were excluded from the current

analysis. The list of words in each of the three groups analysed is in the appendix.

Tokens that were English code-switches were included in these analyses as they form

part of the linguistic input children are exposed to. Words involving code-switches are

in bold in the appendix, which shows that code-switched words containing potential

fricatives were nearly always pronounced with a fricative.

Words containing multiple potential fricatives were coded for each word-

position. For example dij ‘this’ was coded twice, for word-initial and -final positions.

There were 28 types of ‘all stop’ words where the potential fricative was always

pronounced as a stop or affricate in the sample, 41 types of ‘all fricative’ words where it

was always pronounced as a fricative, and 58 types of ‘variable’ words containing stop-

fricative variation. These three lexical form categories were then analysed by word

class, word position and place of articulation of the potential fricative, and by overall

word frequency. In these categories some cells had few (< 5) observations, therefore

inferential statistics were not run and these results are presented descriptively.
CHAPTER 4 96

Word class. Words were broadly classified into open-class and closed-classed

words. Figure 4.1 shows the proportions of open and closed class words within the ‘all

stops’, ‘all fricatives’ and ‘stop-fricative variation’ words. In words where the potential

fricative was always a stop or affricate, just over half of them were closed-class words

(54%), such as dat ‘the <that’ and ‘jarran ‘that one’, while words where it was always a

fricative were nearly all open-class (95%), such as faitim ‘fight’ and stirimraun ‘stir’.

The majority of words containing stop-fricative variation were open-class words (88%)

such as baldan ‘fall’and juka ‘sugar’.

100%

90%
Percentage pronounced in each word class

80%

70%

60%

50%

40% closed-class
open-class
30%

20%

10%

0%
all stops all fricatives stop-fric
variation
Pronunciation of 'potential fricative' within lexical forms

Figure 4.1. Proportions of closed-class and open-class words within lexical form
categories
CHAPTER 4 97

Word position. Figure 4.2 shows the proportions of the word position of the

potential fricatives in words where it was always pronounced as a stop, always as a

fricative, and words where there was stop-fricative variation. In words that were never

pronounced with fricatives, i.e. the potential fricative was always a stop or affricate,

32% of potential fricatives were word-initial, 39% word-medial, and 29% word-final. In

words that were always pronounced with a fricative, the fricative was most frequently

word-initial (62%), followed by word-medial (24%), and then word-final (14%). In

words containing stop-fricative variation, 49% of the potential fricatives were in word-

initial position, 32% were word-medial, and 19% were word-final. Thus stop-fricative

variation within lexical forms occurs in all word positions, though it appears to be most

frequent word-initially and least frequent word-finally.

100%

90%
Percentage pronounced in each word position

80%

70%

60%

50%
final
40% medial
30% initial

20%

10%

0%
all stops all fricatives stop-fric
variation
Pronunciation of 'potential fricative' within lexical forms

Figure 4.2. Proportions of word positions of potential fricatives within lexical form
categories
CHAPTER 4 98

Place of articulation. The proportions of places of articulation of the fricatives

in the English cognates across the three categories of lexical items are shown in Figure

4.3. This description is of the place of the fricative in the cognates, as several of the

variable words involved place of articulation variation. More detail on the place of

articulation of fricatives pronounced in Gurindji Kriol is given in Analysis 2. In words

where the potential fricative was always pronounced as a stop or affricate, the cognate

place of articulation was most frequently dental (46%) e.g. the medial stop in jamting

‘something’, and labio-dental (36%) e.g. abim ‘have’, with some alveolars (18%) e.g.

mawuji ‘mouse’ and no palato-alveolars. In words where the potential fricative was

always pronounced as a fricative, the fricatives in the cognates were most frequently

alveolars (67%) e.g. stori ‘story’, followed by labio-dentals (21%) e.g. fait ‘fight’, with

few palato-alveolars (10%) e.g. shade ‘shade’ and just one dental (2%), three, which is

an English code-switch. Words containing stop-fricative variation had the highest

proportion of labio-dentals (44%), e.g. baind ‘find’. Within word stop-fricative

variation was also frequent in sounds that in cognates were alveolars (32%) e.g. medial

consonant in dijei ‘this way’, and also occurred in palato-alveolars (17%) e.g. medial

consonant in machine and dentals (7%), e.g. medial consonant in najan ‘another one’.

Note that fricatives in Gurindji Kriol are not always at the same place of articulation as

in the English cognate (see Analysis 2).

Overall, stop-fricative variation within words occurred most frequently when the

fricative in the cognate was labio-dental and least frequently when it was dental.

Cognate dentals, which were present due to their occurrence in words like that and this,

were most likely to be pronounced invariably as a stop or affricate within Gurindji Kriol

words, while alveolars were more likely to always be pronounced as a fricative within

words and palato-alveolars were either always a fricative or varied with a stop.
CHAPTER 4 99

100%

Percentage pronounced in each place of articulaton

90%

80%

70%

60%

50% palato-alveolar
40% alveolar
dental
30%
labio-dental
20%

10%

0%
all stops all fricatives stop-fric
variation
Pronunciation of 'potential fricative' within lexical forms

Figure 4.3. Proportions of places of articulation of fricatives in English cognates within

Gurindji Kriol lexical form categories

Analysis 1 provided information about the lexical forms in which stop-fricative

variation was occurring and the nature of these forms. The lexical forms analysed were

selected based on the occurrence of fricatives in their English cognates. In the following

analyses we use the term ‘variable words’ to refer to the Gurindji Kriol words that

contained stop-fricative variation in the current dataset. ‘All stops’ refers to the words

that have fricatives in their English cognates but were always pronounced with a stop of

affricate in the data, and ‘all fricatives’ are the words that were always pronounced with

a fricative. In the next analysis we examined all tokens of words containing stop-

fricative variation, i.e. the ‘variable words’, and analysed the relationships between the

Gurindji Kriol pronunciation and fricatives in the English cognates.

CHAPTER 4 100

Analysis 2: Relationships Between Fricatives in English Cognates and

Pronunciation in Gurindji Kriol Words that Contain Stop-Fricative Variation

The following analyses are of tokens the ‘variable words’, where the potential

fricative was pronounced variably as a fricative or stop in the sample, and their

relationships with the corresponding fricatives in the English cognate words. Cross-

tabulations are presented of the fricatives in English cognates and the corresponding

segments in Gurindji Kriol in word-initial, -medial and -final positions. To reiterate the

terminology used for the purpose of this study: the Gurindji Kriol phones that are the

focus of investigation are referred to as ‘potential fricatives’, and these are in Kriol-

derived words whose English cognates contain fricatives. The corresponding segments

of Gurindji Kriol potential fricatives in the English cognate words are referred to here as

‘cognate fricatives’, and are part of the analyses as a basis for calculating proportional

variation.

Word-initial. Table 4.2 shows the frequency counts of fricatives in English

cognates and corresponding segments in Gurindji Kriol variable words in word-initial

position. Gurindji Kriol potential fricatives in word-initial position most frequently

corresponded to labio-dental fricatives [f, v] in their English cognates (43%,

N=156/366), for example the initial consonant in bijin ‘fish, <fishing’. They were

pronounced variably as labio-dental fricatives (N=63) and bilabial stops [p, b] (N=91).

Gurindji Kriol potential fricatives also frequently corresponded to word-initial alveolar

fricative [s] in English cognate words (28%, N=101/366), for example ji ‘see’. These

were pronounced as palatal stops [c, ɟ] (41%, N=41/101), affricates [ʧ, ʤ] (12%,

N=12/101) and were also often pronounced as the fricative [s] in Gurindji Kriol words

(36%, N=36). ‘Absent’ [s] is represented by the symbol [Ø] (N=9), and word-initially

refers to segments that are the cluster [st] in English words pronounced as a stop
CHAPTER 4 101

without the fricative in Gurindji Kriol words (e.g. Gurindji Kriol top 'to be', English

cognate stop).

The frequency of cognate dental fricatives is due to their presence in English

closed-class words, particularly demonstratives e.g. dat ‘the, <that’, jeya ‘there’, which

have high frequencies in conversational speech. As Table 4.1 shows, dental fricatives in

English cognates have a range of pronunciations in Gurindji Kriol – most frequently

these words are pronounced with a palatal stop [c, ɟ], the voiced alveolar stop [d], or an

affricate [ʧ, ʤ]. Word-initial dental fricatives in English cognates were rarely

pronounced as fricatives in Gurindji Kriol variable words (N=3/366). The voiceless

palato-alveolar fricative [ʃ] in cognate words is also pronounced with a range of phones

in corresponding Gurindji Kriol words: as palatal stops and affricates (N=9/19) and as

palatal fricatives [ʃ, ʒ] (N=10/19), for example juka (sugar).

Overall in Kriol-derived words that contained stop-fricative variation, 113 out of

366 (31%) word-initial potential fricatives were pronounced as fricatives in Gurindji

Kriol. The most frequent pronounced fricatives were [f] (N=44/113), [s] (N=36/113)

and [v] (N=19/113). Palatal fricatives also occurred (N=11), and there were some rare

cases of dental fricatives [θ, ð] (N=3).

Word-medial. Table 4.3 shows that most word-medial fricatives in English

cognate words are pronounced with a voiced palatal stop [ɟ] in corresponding Gurindji

Kriol variable words (N=62/143). These included words where the cognate fricative was

alveolar, e.g. dijei (this way), dental e.g. nojing (nothing) and palatal e.g. wajing

(washing). The most frequent corresponding phones in English cognates of medial

Gurindji Kriol potential fricatives were [s] (27%, N=39/143), [ð] (24%, N=34/143), and

[ʃ] (19%, N=27/143). The alveolar cognate fricative [s] was pronounced variably as a

stop (N=22/39) and a fricative (N=14/39). Dental cognate fricatives [θ, ð] were mostly
CHAPTER 4 102

pronounced as stops (N=36/49) in the corresponding Gurindji Kriol words, and when it

was a fricative it was mostly voiced palatal [ʒ], e.g. nojing (nothing) [nɐʒ ŋ]. The

voiceless palatal fricative [ʃ] in cognates was pronounced most frequently as the voiced

palatal fricative [ʒ] (56%, N=15/27), for example majin (machine) [mɐʒ n]. Labio-

dental fricatives in cognate words, for example libim (leave) were more often

pronounced medially as stops (N=18/28) than fricatives (N=8/28) in Gurindji Kriol

variable words.

Overall, 48 out of the 143 (34%) potential word-medial fricatives in Gurindji

Kriol words containing stop-fricative variation were pronounced as fricatives, with the

most frequent being palatal [ʒ] (69%, N=33/48).

Word-final. Frequencies of word-final fricatives in English cognates and

pronunciation in corresponding Gurindji Kriol words with stop-fricative variation are

shown in Table 4.4. The most frequent cognate fricative, word-final alveolar [s] e.g.

pleis (place) was most frequently pronounced in Gurindji Kriol as a voiceless palatal

stop [c] (48%, N=21/44), followed by other stops or affricates (N=18), and then

alveolar fricatives [s, z] (N=5). A similar pattern was found for cognate palatal

fricatives [ʃ], e.g. word-final consonant in binij ‘finish’, which was also most often

pronounced with a palatal stop [c, ɟ] in Gurindji Kriol (75%, N=18/24), with a few cases

of palatal fricatives (17%, N=4/24). Word-final phones that correspond to labio-dental

fricatives [f, v] in English cognates were usually pronounced with bilabial stops in

Gurindji Kriol variable words (78%, N=18/23). There were only 4 cases of final [st]

clusters, but these were pronounced variably as stops [c] in bej ‘first’ and bust-im-ap

‘bust’, a fricative [s] in bust, and the cluster [st] in bej.

CHAPTER 4 103

Overall, in word-final position potential fricatives in Gurindji Kriol were rarer

than in initial and medial positions, and they were also less frequently pronounced as

fricatives (N=17/103, 17%).

Summary. Analysis 2 examined the relationships between potential fricatives in

Gurindji Kriol words that contain stop-fricative and the corresponding fricatives in their

English cognate words. Results gave further insight into the characteristics of segments

that vary in the words described in Analysis 1. Findings of the first two analyses open

up the question of what factors might influence whether a phone is pronounced as a

fricative or a stop. To address this question, in the Analysis 3 we examined the relative

contributions of phonological environment and child age to fricative variation in

maternal Gurindji Kriol, and also described inter-speaker differences.

The next analyses were performed separately on tokens of words that contain

stop-fricative variation and on all tokens in the dataset. In both cases the potential

fricatives were coded according to whether they were pronounced as a fricative or other

sound. To provide information on the characteristics of all potential fricatives (not just

those in variable words as in Analysis 2), Figure 4.4 shows the proportions of potential

fricatives pronounced as fricatives and other phones. The figure displays the differences

in word positions, particularly that fricatives were more likely word-initially. It also

shows that alveolar and palato-alveolar fricatives, and to a lesser extent voiceless labio-

dentals [f], in English cognates were more likely to be pronounced as fricatives in

Gurindji Kriol than other places of articulation. Conversely, dental fricatives in English

cognates were the least likely to be fricatives in Gurindji Kriol words, though as shown

in Analysis 1 this was mostly lexically driven.

Table 4.2

Frequencies of word-initial fricatives in English cognates and corresponding phones in Gurindji Kriol variable words

Corresponding phone as pronounced in Gurindji Kriol words

Phone in
English b ɟ c f s p d v ʤ t Ø ʃ ʧ ʒ ɡ j w θ ð Total
cognate
f 59 - - 44 - 27 - 19 - - - - - - - - 2 - - 151

s - 29 12 - 36 - - - 10 - 9 - 2 1 2 - - - - 101

ð - 22 31 - - - 5 - 2 1 - - - - - 2 - - 1 64

θ - - - - - - 14 - 1 9 - - - - - - - 2 - 26

ʃ - 2 3 - - - - - - - - 8 4 2 - - - - - 19

v 3 - - - - 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - 5

Total 62 53 46 44 36 29 19 19 13 10 9 8 6 3 2 2 2 2 1 366
Table 4.3

Frequencies of word-medial fricatives in English cognates and corresponding phones in Gurindji Kriol variable words

Corresponding phone as pronounced in Gurindji Kriol words

Phone in
English ɟ ʒ b ʤ s f v Ø p j w d ð t Total
cognate
s 16 8 - 4 6 - - 3 - - - 1 - 1 39

ð 23 9 - - - - - - - 2 - - - - 34

ʃ 10 15 - 2 - - - - - - - - - - 27

f - - 7 - - 4 1 - 3 - - - - - 15

θ 13 1 - - - - - - - - - - 1 - 15

v - - 8 - - - 3 - - - 2 - - - 13

Total 62 33 15 6 6 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 143
Table 4.4

Frequencies of word-final fricatives in English cognates and corresponding phones in Gurindji Kriol variable words

Corresponding phone as pronounced in Gurindji Kriol words

Phone in
English c p t ɟ b s ʧ ʤ ʃ f z Ø st v ʒ Total
cognate
s 21 - 9 4 - 4 4 1 - - 1 - - - - 44

ʃ 14 - - 4 - - - 2 3 - - - - - 1 24

v - 3 - - 7 - - - - 1 - - - 1 - 12

f - 8 - - - - - - - 2 - 1 - - - 11

ðz 3 - - - - - - - - - 1 - - - - 4

st 2 - - - - 1 - - - - - - 1 - - 4

ð 1 - - - - - - - - - 1 - - - - 2

Total 41 11 9 8 7 5 4 3 3 3 3 1 1 1 1 103
 100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%
stop
30% fricative

20%

10%

0%

Percentage pronounced as a fricative or stop in Gurindji Kriol

final
final
final
final
final
final
final

initial
initial
initial
initial
initial
initial
initial

medial
medial
medial
medial
medial
medial
medial

s z f v ð θ ʃ
Phone in English cognates
Figure 4.4. Relationships between fricatives in English cognates and corresponding pronunciation in Gurindji Kriol words.
CHAPTER 4 108

4.4.3 Analysis 3: Factors affecting fricative variation in maternal Gurindji Kriol

This analysis was performed to investigate factors influencing fricative variation

in maternal Gurindji Kriol. The relative contributions of child age and phonological

environments on fricative variation were analysed by performing binary logistic

regression models for each word position. The outcome variable was pronunciation of

‘potential fricatives’ in Gurindji Kriol (fricative, stops) and the predictor variables were

approximate child age (1;6, 2;0, 2;6) and phonological environment. For each word

position analyses were first performed on all tokens in the dataset to analyse the global

effect of child age on whether or not mothers pronounced ‘potential fricatives’ as

fricatives or stops. The same model was then run just on the tokens in the words that

were found to contain stop-fricative variation in the current dataset (see Analysis 1), to

investigate whether within these words there was an effect of child age on the form used

(i.e. with the fricative or stop). Cell counts were too low to include speaker as a

predictor, thus speaker was included as a random factor in all analyses and inter-speaker

differences are described separately.

Word-initial regression. Word-initial phonological environment refers to the

phone preceding word-initial potential fricatives. These were classified into fricatives,

stops, nasals, liquids, vowels, and utterance boundary or pause. There were no

preceding glides in this data. Two cases were excluded from the following analysis

because the preceding phone was ambiguous.

All tokens. Table 4.5 shows the results of the logistic regression for word-initial

position. Results indicate a significant effect of child age 2;6, Wald χ2 (1) = 6.897,

p=0.009. The likelihood of a fricative occurring in mothers’ speech is significantly

higher at child age 2;6 than 1;6 (odds ratio 0.630). There was also a significant effect of

phonological environment when the preceding phone was a fricative, Wald χ2 (1) =
 CHAPTER 4 109

5.210, p=0.022, vowel, Wald χ2 (1) = 17.075, p<0.001, and pause or utterance boundary,

Wald χ2 (1) = 6.109, p=0.013. The likelihood of a potential fricative being pronounced

as a fricative rather than a stop increased when the preceding phone was a fricative

(odds ratio 0.185), vowel (odds ratio 0.385), and pause or utterance boundary (odds

ratio 0.551), compared to when the preceding phone was a stop.

Table 4.5
Logistic regression results for word-initial fricative variation in all words

95% C. I. for
Exp (B)
B s.e. Wald df p Exp(B)
Lower Upper

Child Age

2;0 0.301 0.219 1.882 1 0.170 1.351 0.879 2.076

2;6 -0.462 0.176 6.897 1 0.009 0.630 0.447 0.889

Preceding Phone

Fricative -1.688 0.739 5.210 1 0.022 0.185 0.043 0.788

Nasal 0.125 0.275 0.208 1 0.648 1.134 0.661 1.943

Liquid -0.927 0.564 2.703 1 0.100 0.396 0.131 1.195

Vowel -0.954 0.231 17.075 1 0.000 0.385 0.245 0.606

Pause or
-0.597 0.242 6.109 1 0.013 0.551 0.343 0.884
Boundary
The reference group for Child Age is 1;6 and for Preceding Phone is Stop

Tokens in variable words. A logistic regression model with the same variables

as used in the above model was also performed on word-initial potential fricatives that

only occurred in variable words. Results are shown in Table 4.6. The were no
 CHAPTER 4 110

significant effects of child age, although the pattern was consistent with the analysis

above as the odds ratios were in the same direction (compared to age 1;6 odds ratio

1.585 for age 2;0, 0.713 for age 2;6). Results for phonological environment were also

consistent; however the only significant effect was when the preceding phone was a

vowel, Wald χ2 (1) = 6.185, p=0.013. Compared to when the preceding phone was a

stop, a fricative was more likely when the preceding phone was a vowel (odds ratio

0.363).

Table 4.6
Logistic regression results for word-initial fricative variation in variable words

95% C. I. for
Exp (B)
B s.e. Wald df p Exp(B)
Lower Upper

Child Age

2;0 0.461 0.404 1.304 1 0.253 1.585 0.719 3.496

2;6 -0.338 0.269 1.576 1 0.209 0.713 0.421 1.209

Preceding Phone

Fricative -0.508 1.296 0.153 1 0.695 0.602 0.047 7.637

Nasal 0.219 0.452 0.234 1 0.629 1.245 0.513 3.020

Liquid -1.079 0.899 1.439 1 0.230 0.340 0.058 1.981

Vowel -1.014 0.408 6.185 1 0.013 0.363 0.163 0.807

Pause or
-0.560 0.434 1.665 1 0.197 0.571 0.244 1.337
Boundary
The reference group for Child Age is 1;6 and for Preceding Phone is Stop
 CHAPTER 4 111

Word-medial regression. Word-medial phonological environments were

categorised into four groups: intervocalic (V_V) e.g. pijinglain 'fishingline', consonant

cluster preceded by a vowel (V_C) e.g. laswan 'last', consonant cluster followed by a

vowel (C_V) e.g. insaid 'inside', and triple consonant cluster (C_C) e.g. dragonflai

'dragonfly'. To test the hypothesis that word-medial fricatives would be more frequent

in intervocalic environments, V_C was used as the reference group, as fricatives and

other phones occurred almost equally in this environment (N= 26 fricatives, 27 other).

All tokens. The results for the word-medial logistic regression are shown in

Table 4.7. There were no significant effects of child age or phonological environment

on medial stop-fricative variation in all tokens.

Table 4.7
Logistic regression results for word-medial fricative variation in all words

95% C. I. for
Exp (B)
B s.e. Wald df p Exp(B)
Lower Upper

Child Age

2;0 0.149 0.361 0.171 1 0.679 1.161 0.572 2.355

2;6 -0.408 0.292 1.951 1 0.163 0.665 0.375 1.179

Environment

V_V 0.535 0.329 2.647 1 0.104 1.707 0.896 3.250

C_V -0.776 0.574 1.826 1 0.177 0.460 0.149 1.418

C_C -0.589 0.770 0.585 1 0.444 0.555 0.123 2.509

The reference group for Child Age is 1;6 and for Environment is V_C
 CHAPTER 4 112

Tokens in variable words. The results for the word-medial logistic regression of

tokens in variable words are shown in Table 4.8. Results indicate a significant effect of

child ages 2;0 and 2;6 compared to age 1;6, Wald χ2 (1) = 5.646, p=0.018 and Wald χ2

(1) = 4.530, p=0.033, respectively. The likelihood of a fricative occurring over a stop

medially in variable words was higher at child age 2;0 (odds ratio 0.250) and 2;6 (odds

ratio 0.368) than 1;6. There was no significant effect of phonological environment

medially in tokens of variable words (note there were not enough C_C cases in variable

words to include the C_C environment in this model).

Table 4.8
Logistic regression results for word-medial fricative variation in variable words

95% C. I. for
Exp (B)
B s.e. Wald df p Exp(B)
Lower Upper

Child Age

2;0 -1.388 0.584 5.646 1 0.018 0.250 0.079 0.784

2;6 -0.999 0.469 4.530 1 0.033 0.368 0.147 0.924

Environment

V_V -0.740 0.676 1.198 1 0.274 0.477 0.127 1.795

C_V -1.419 1.369 1.073 1 0.300 0.242 0.017 3.544

The reference group for Child Age is 1;6 and for Environment is V_C

Word-final regression. Word-final phonological environment refers to the

phone following word-final potential fricatives. These were classified into fricatives,

stops, nasals, glides and liquids, vowels, and utterance boundary or pause.
 CHAPTER 4 113

All tokens. Table 4.9 shows the results of the logistic regression for word-final

position. There were no significant effects of child age or phonological environment on

word-final fricatives in all tokens. Phonological environment approached significance

for nasals, Wald χ2 (1) = 3.593, p=0.058, indicating fricatives decreased in likelihood

word-finally when the following phone was a nasal (odds ratio 3.094).

Table 4.9
Logistic regression results for word-final fricative variation in all words

95% C. I. for
Exp (B)
B s.e. Wald df p Exp(B)
Lower Upper

Child Age

2;0 0.211 0.520 0.164 1 0.685 1.235 0.446 3.421

2;6 0.043 0.461 0.009 1 0.927 1.043 0.423 2.577

Following Phone

Fricative -0.291 0.812 0.128 1 0.721 0.748 0.152 3.675

Nasal 1.129 0.596 3.593 1 0.058 3.094 0.962 9.946

Liquid
-1.635 0.968 2.855 1 0.091 0.195 0.029 1.299
or Glide

Vowel 0.337 0.753 0.200 1 0.654 1.401 0.320 6.130

Pause or
0.132 0.476 0.077 1 0.782 1.141 0.448 2.902
Boundary
The reference group for Child Age is 1;6 and for Following Phone is Stop

Tokens in variable words. Table 4.10 shows the results of the logistic regression

for word-final position. There were no significant effects of child age or phonological

environment on word-final stop-fricative variation in variable words.

 CHAPTER 4 114

Table 4.10
Logistic regression results for word-final fricative variation in variable words

95% C. I. for
Exp (B)
B s.e. Wald df p Exp(B)
Lower Upper

Child Age

2;0 -0.418 0.764 0.300 1 0.584 0.658 0.147 2.940

2;6 -0.310 0.692 0.201 1 0.654 0.733 0.189 2.848

Following Phone

Fricative -1.420 1.472 0.930 1 0.335 0.242 0.013 4.332

Nasal 0.100 0.828 0.015 1 0.904 1.105 0.218 5.602

Liquid
-1.904 1.589 1.435 1 0.231 0.149 0.007 3.356
or Glide

Vowel -0.668 1.026 0.424 1 0.515 0.513 0.069 3.827

Pause or
-0.529 0.757 0.488 1 0.485 0.589 0.134 2.599
Boundary
The reference group for Child Age is 1;6 and for Following Phone is Stop

Inter-speaker differences. The proportions of potential fricatives pronounced

as fricatives for each speaker across child ages are displayed in Figure 4.5. This

included all tokens and indicates individual speaker variability in fricative production.

The same analysis performed just on tokens of words containing stop-fricative variation

showed the same pattern for each speaker, indicating the interspeaker differences in

Figure 4.7 are the same for both within-word and between-word stop-fricative variation.

The increase in fricatives when children are 2;6 appears to be driven by SS and CE, as

AR’s fricatives decrease from 2;0 to 2;6 (although note there were fewer tokens across

all ages for AR than the other two speakers). From child ages 1;6 to 2;0 CE’s use of
CHAPTER 4 115

fricatives decreases, while SS’s remains about the same and AR’s increases. At age 2;6

SS and CE are using proportionately similar amounts of fricatives, while AR is using

less.

0.40

0.35
Proportion of fricatives to stops

0.30

0.25

0.20 SS
0.15 CE
AR
0.10

0.05

0.00
1;6 2;0 2;6
Average child age

Figure 4.5. Proportions of 'potential fricatives' pronounced as fricatives across child

ages by each speaker in all tokens

The previous analyses revealed an effect of child age on fricative variation,

accounting for phonological environment and word position. Results suggested that

word-initially there is an effect of child age on all potential fricatives as well as just in

those in words that contain stop-fricative variation in the current dataset. Word-medially

the child age effect was only found in words containing variation. In the fourth and final

analysis we further investigated the change in variation across child age by examining

proportions of each word category as well as the proportions of pronounced fricatives in

mothers’ speech across child ages.

CHAPTER 4 116

4.4.4 Analysis 4: Effect of Child Age

First we examined the proportions of each word category described in Analysis

1 across child ages, displayed in Figure 4.6. Between child ages 1;6 and 2;0 the words

with stop-fricative variation (‘variable words’) and the words invariably pronounced

with fricatives (‘all fricatives’) proportionately decreased, while words where the

potential fricative was always pronounced with a stop or affricate (‘all stops’)

proportionately increased. Between child ages 2;0 and 2;6 the ‘all fricatives’ words

remained proportionately low, while the proportions of the ‘all stops’ words decreased

and the ‘variable words’ increased. Thus mothers were using relatively more words

containing stop-fricative variation when children were 2;6 than when they were 2;0 or

1;6.

0.70

0.60
Proportions of each word category

0.50

0.40
all stops
0.30
all fricatives
variable words
0.20

0.10

0.00
1;6 2;0 2;6
Average child age

Figure 4.6. Proportions of word categories at each child age

CHAPTER 4 117

Figure 4.7 further illuminates the change in variation as children aged, showing

the proportions of potential fricatives pronounced as fricatives across child ages in

tokens of words containing stop-fricative variation, tokens of all other words, and all

tokens together (note the y-axis is of a different scale to that in Figure 4.6). Between

child ages 1;6 and 2;0 the overall proportions of fricatives decreased, however the

proportions of fricatives within words containing stop-fricative variation increased.

Taken with the proportional decrease in the frequency of variable words between 1;6

and 2;0 shown in Figure 4.5, this indicates that although mothers use relatively fewer

variable words when children are 2;0 compared with 1;6, they are more likely to

pronounce the variable words with fricatives at 2;0 than at 1;6.

0.40

0.35
Proportion of fricatives to stops

0.30

0.25
tokens of variable
0.20 words
tokens of other words
0.15
all tokens
0.10

0.05

0.00
1;6 2;0 2;6
Average child age

Figure 4.7. Proportions of 'potential fricatives' pronounced as fricatives across child

ages in variable words, other words, and the total sample
CHAPTER 4 118

Between child ages 2;0 and 2;6, Figure 4.7 shows a proportional increase in

fricatives in both variable words and in other words. Thus when children are 2;6,

mothers are both more likely to use words containing stop-fricative variation and are

more likely to pronounce those words with fricatives compared to when children are 2;0

or 1;6. Fricatives in other words are also relatively more frequent at age 2;6 than 2;0 and

1;6. This is not due to an increase in words that are always pronounced with fricatives,

as Figure 4.6 indicates these words remain proportionately low across all three time

points. Rather, it is due to an increase in words pronounced with fricatives that were not

coded as either variable words or ‘all fricatives’ words as there was only one token in

the sample (and were also low frequency).

4.5 Discussion

Fricative production in Gurindji Kriol is highly variable. In addition to variation

from the variable lexical forms of Kriol-based words, children are exposed to stop-

fricative variability that changes differentially in mothers’ speech as children age from

approximately 1;6 to 2;0 to 2;6, due to changes in mothers’ choice of both lexical forms

and phonetic forms of variable words.

In the first analysis we investigated how much stop-fricative variation occurs

within lexical forms and the nature of this variation. Words with multiple tokens in the

dataset were grouped according to whether the potential fricative was always a fricative,

always a stop or affricate, or pronounced variably as a stop or fricative. Findings

showed that each group of words had different characteristics. Overall the ‘all stops’

words tended to be relatively high frequency with a near even split between open and

closed class words. The ‘potential fricative’ (the corresponding segment in the English

cognate word is a fricative) in these words was fairly evenly distributed across word
CHAPTER 4 119

positions and the highest proportion of them were dentals, followed by labio-dentals

and then palato-alveolars. The ‘all-stops’ group of words contained most of the Kriol-

derived closed-class words that have fricatives in their English cognates, including the

high frequency articles and demonstratives. It remains unclear, however, exactly which

factors or interactions contribute to lexical items always being pronounced with a stop

rather than a fricative, as it is not possible to isolate each factor. For example, dentals

are rare in open-class words but have very high frequency due to the high frequency of

closed-class words, so we cannot separate effects of place of articulation and word

frequency. It is interesting to note that some of these words contained two potential

fricatives where one was always pronounced as a stop and the other was variable, for

example the initial and medial consonants in dijan 'this': the word-initial phone was

always pronounced with a stop, while the word-medial phone was variable between a

stop and a fricative. However this did not occur the other way round (i.e. the initial

phone variable and the medial phone always a stop) so it could also be a word-position

effect. Whether potential fricatives are always pronounced with stops or contain stop-

fricative variation is also likely related to the length of time that they have been in the

Gurindji Kriol lexicon and the time it takes for conventional pronunciations of words to

develop.

In contrast, words where fricatives were not variable with stops or affricates

were nearly all open-class words. Fricatives occurred in all word positions, most

frequently initial and least frequently final. They occurred in all places of articulation,

although the majority were alveolar. Word-initial [s] thus occurred in a relatively large

proportion of the ‘all fricatives’ words. Most of the words in this group (see appendix)

were nouns and included some consonant clusters, e.g. flai ‘fly’, verbs e.g. stirimraun
CHAPTER 4 120

‘stir’, recent borrowings e.g. fens ‘fence’, and some English code-switches e.g. swim

‘swim’.

Words containing stop-fricative variation tended to fall between the ‘all stops’

and ‘all fricatives’ words in most categories. Variable words were mostly open-class

words, though there were more closed-class words in the variable category than the all

fricatives category. The proportions of word-position of the potential fricative for the

words containing variation were also in-between those for the ‘all stops’ and ‘all

fricatives’ words, with the majority of stop-fricative variation occurring word-initially.

For place of articulation there were more labio-dentals and palato-alveolars in the words

containing variation than in the non-variable (all stops or all fricatives) words. Words in

the variable group contained relatively common nouns such as bijinlain ‘fishingline’

and jinek ‘snake’, verbs, e.g. libim ‘leave’, lijan ‘listen’, and closed-class words, e.g.

dijei ‘this way’, abta ‘after’.

Impressionistically it is possible that these findings are associated with the time

at which words were adopted into Gurindji Kriol, with target phone in early adopted

words more likely to always pronounced with a stop, in the more recent words to

always be a fricative, and in the variable words to be in-between, but the data does not

exist to investigate this possibility systematically.

The second analysis addressed the relationship between fricatives in English

cognates and pronunciation in Gurindji Kriol. Overall results demonstrated there is no

one-to-one correspondence between Gurindji Kriol pronunciation and fricatives in

cognates, accounting for word position. Analysis 2 findings suggested that while some

words may be pronounced with the English manner of articulation it is not necessarily

same phone in the cognate word that is produced. For example the medial sound in

najan ‘another’ is a dental fricative in the English cognate. In Gurindji Kriol it is

CHAPTER 4 121

pronounced variably with a palatal stop [nɐɟæn], but when it is a fricative it is palato-

alveolar [nɐʒæn] rather than dental. These findings open up avenues of further research

to analyse fricatives in Kriol and phonetic (allophonic) fricatives in Gurindji, to

examine if and how traditional Gurindji phonology may be influencing the

pronunciation of fricatives in Kriol-based words in Gurindji Kriol.

In analyses three and four we analysed the effect of child age on fricative

variation in mothers’ speech. Accounting for phonological environment and

interspeaker variation, the effect of child age was greatest in word-initial position, and

the effect was also significant word-medially in tokens of words that contain stop-

fricative variation. It is unknown whether the differences between word positions is a

real effect, for example mothers modifying word-initial segments due to the greater

perceptual saliency of segments in this position for acquisition (Bent, Bradlow & Smith,

2007; Vihman, Nakai, DePaolis & Hallé, 2004), or simply an analysis artefact, as there

were many more tokens with potential fricatives in word-initial position than in medial

or final positions. With a much larger sample it may be possible to randomly sample a

comparable number of target segments from each word position, however, in the current

corpus this was not possible and we would still not be able to make direct comparisons

of word position because of the differing effects of phonological environment.

In these results we found fricative variation in mothers’ speech changed

according to the children’s age14. This was partly due to lexical choice. Tokens of words

in which the potential fricative was always pronounced as a fricative remained

proportionately low across the three child ages, which was not surprising given these

14
The apparent effect of change over time may be within lexical items or due to the
mothers' use of different items as the children get older. This is an analysis which we
will include in the published version of the article. Interested readers are encouraged to
look up and should cite the published version of this paper as a journal article, rather
than this chapter.
CHAPTER 4 122

words had a lower than average frequency. In contrast, tokens of words containing no

fricatives and stop-fricative variation did not change much in proportion between child

ages 1;6 and 2;0, with a greater proportion of ‘all stops’ words in mothers’ speech at

both ages, while between ages 2;0 and 2;6 the proportion of ‘all stops’ words decreased

as the words containing variation increased. Thus compared to age 1;6 and 2;0, when

children were 2;6 mothers were using proportionately more words that could be

pronounced variably with a stop or a fricative. The change in lexical choice may be

driven by differences in discourse topic. A recent study of frequency variation in

manner of articulation in English child-directed speech suggested segmental frequency

variation is largely due to topic differences (Daland, 2013).

The total proportions of fricatives to stops in mothers’ speech also changed over

time but followed a different pattern to the change in use of words containing stop-

fricative variation, suggesting the effect of child age is only partly due to changes in the

types of words mothers used. At 1;6 the proportions of fricatives to stops was about the

same in tokens of variable words and other words. Between child ages 2;0 and 2;6 the

proportion of fricatives to stops increased within 29 variable words, as well as in other

words. In the other words the increase was likely due to the inclusion of words that only

had one token in the dataset as many of these were low frequency words that were

pronounced with a fricative. The increase of fricatives in the variable words indicates

that not only were mothers using more words containing stop-fricative variation at 2;6

than at the earlier child ages, but also that they were more likely to use a fricative in

these variable words at 2;6.

In terms of the fine-tuning concept, these results suggest mothers make

differential segmental modifications according to child age and the change between

approximate ages 1;6 to 2;6 may be in response to the child’s own language
CHAPTER 4 123

development. Previous research on English varieties has found segmental phonetic

variation in child-directed speech gradually changes over time to become like adult-

directed speech, possibly to introduce children to the variation typical in adult speech in

the community (Foulkes et al., 2005; Smith, Durham & Fortune, 2009). Recent studies

have found variation in mothers’ speech may change differentially over time, with

mothers possibly fine-tuning their speech to the child’s age and language abilities

(Buchan & Jones, in press; Ko, 2012). This is a plausible explanation for the child age

effect in the current study, which found that word-initially and -medially the likelihood

of mothers using fricatives over stops increased as children got older. These findings

support previous studies on English and Korean child-directed speech (Lee & Davis,

2008; Lee et al., 2010), which found proportionately more stops and fewer fricatives in

child-directed speech compared with adult-directed speech. Cross-linguistically

fricatives tend to be acquired later by children than stops, as fricatives are relatively

difficulty to articulate and require precise motor coordination (Dinnsen, 1992; Kent,

1992). Thus when children were younger mothers may have chosen (consciously or not)

to increase their use of phonetic forms containing fricatives as children got older and

their language abilities developed.

The interpretations here are tentative, as there are limitations to this study and

further research is needed to find out what is causing these effects. The current findings

are only based on data from three speakers and there was interspeaker variation,

although this is consistent with the child-directed speech literature showing relatively

large individual differences in language development (e.g. Ko, 2012). It would be useful

for future studies to compare segmental distributions in adult-directed speech with those

in child-directed speech at different child ages. This is difficult in naturalistic samples

involving family groups; however, it would provide further insight into whether the
CHAPTER 4 124

effect of change over time in mothers’ speech found here represents a change toward

adult-directed speech, thus serving the function of exposing children to the type of

fricative variation typical in the speech community.

 CHAPTER FIVE

Fricative Reduction in Maternal Northern

Australian English15

15
This chapter has been published as a journal article. To cite, please look up and use the following
citation:
Buchan, H. & Jones, C. (2013). Phonological reduction in maternal speech in northern Australian
English: Change over time. Journal of Child Language, doi: 10.1017/S0305000913000123.
All material in this chapter (Chapter 5) is copyright of Cambridge University Press.
CHAPTER 5 126

5.1 Abstract

Segmental variation in maternal speech to children changes over time. This

study investigated variation in non-citation speech processes in a longitudinal, 26-hour

corpus of maternal northern Australian English. Recordings were naturalistic parent-

child interactions when children (N=4) were 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. The mothers’ speech was

phonetically transcribed and analysed. Based on previous sociophonetic research

showing proportional changes in speech variants in maternal speech as children get

older, it was predicted that deletion of word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/, processes

common in non-citation speech, would increase over time. Instead results showed a

non-linear change in deletion within a stable set of lexical items. Deletion

proportionately increased between 1;6 and 2;0 and decreased between 2;0 and 2;6.

Further analysis indicated that increased deletion was not accounted for by changes in

speech rate, which only marginally increased over time. Findings suggest mothers fine-

tune differentially over time as children’s receptive and productive language knowledge

develops.
CHAPTER 5 127

5.2 Background

Children’s phonological knowledge is shaped by their exposure to spoken

language, and their phonological development includes learning the systematic phonetic

variation that is a part of everyday speech. Variation in the speech input that children

are often exposed to, known as infant- or child-directed speech, differs from that in

interadult speech (adult speech directed to other adults) in lexical and syntactic

structures as well as in phonetic features such as tempo, pitch and frequency (Fernald,

Taeschner, Dunn, Papousek, de Boysson-Bardies & Fukui,1989). Phonetic variation in

infant-directed speech changes systematically over time, as caregivers’ speech to their

children becomes more like interadult speech as children get older. For example it has

been found cross-linguistically that mothers tend to use hyperarticulated vowels when

talking to their infants aged 0;2-0;5 compared with their speech to other adults (Kuhl,

Andruski, Chistovich, Chistovich, Kozhevnikova, Ryskina, Stolyarova, Sundberg &

Lacerda, 1997). A longitudinal study on child-directed speech found that, compared

with interadult speech, Mandarin-speaking mothers used hyperarticulated vowels when

children were prelinguistic, aged 0;7-1;0, and at age 5;0-5;9 (Liu, Tsao & Kuhl, 2009).

Further, vowels were more hyperarticulated to children at 0;7-1;0 than at 5;0-5;9, in that

they were longer, had a higher pitch, and the vowel space was larger so vowels were

more distinct from one another, suggesting mothers modify their speech differently as

their children get older (Liu et al., 2009).

Few studies have examined segmental variation and changes in maternal speech

after infancy and even fewer have used longitudinal data. Much of the literature on

speech input to children has focussed on the first year of life, as this is a crucial period

for children’s language development (Jusczyk, Cutler & Redanz, 1993; Jusczyk,

Friederici, Wessels, Svenkerud & Jusczyk, 1993; Jusczyk, Luce & Charles-Luce, 1994;
CHAPTER 5 128

Kuhl, Williams, Lacerda, Stevens & Lindblom, 1992). Research has found differences

in segmental distributions between mothers’ speech to children aged 1;0 and to adults

(Lee & Davis, 2010; Lee, Davis & MacNeilage, 2008), indicating segment patterns in

maternal speech change sometime after the first year of life to eventually develop into

adult-directed speech.

Further research is needed in order to understand how child-directed speech

develops into adult-directed and at what ages the changes take place. Early research on

segmental differences between child- and adult-directed speech suggests that the period

between child ages 1;0 and 2;6 is a time of extensive variability in the input, and

longitudinal analysis could be useful in elucidating how variability in mothers’ speech

changes around these ages. Findings of these early studies were mixed in regards to the

type of variation and the nature of the phonological differences in speech directed to

children and to adults. However, the age of the children varied between studies and

relatively large age ranges were used within studies. Bernstein-Ratner (1984a, 1984b)

for example found more vowel lengthening, which is a feature of hyperarticulation (Liu

et al., 2009), in child-directed speech to children aged 0;9-2;3 than in adult-directed

speech, and more consonant reduction in adult-directed than child-directed speech.

Vowel hyperarticulation is a clarification process while consonant reduction refers to

reduced or deleted consonants, so these studies suggested mothers modify their speech

to pronounce segments more carefully and clearly when speaking to children.

Other early research, however, found that reduction was more frequent in speech

to children than speech to adults (Shockey & Bond, 1980), and that isolated segments

were less intelligible in child-directed than interadult speech (Bard & Anderson, 1983).

A discussion of these early studies by Cruttenden (1994) argued that children’s own

language development may be a mediating factor, as the clarification processes were

CHAPTER 5 129

found in speech to children who were prelinguistic or starting to produce single words

while more reduction and less intelligibility than interadult speech was found in speech

to older children, generally over 2;0. A recent study on speaking rate in child-directed

speech also found that age 2;0 is associated with a shift in mothers’ speech. Ko (2012)

analysed mothers’ speech rate in longitudinal data from 25 speakers in the CHILDES

database (MacWhinney, 2000). Ko (2012) performed a break-point analysis and found

that in general a non-linear function fit the data significantly better than a linear model,

and that the break-point tended to occur around age 2;0 to 2;5. Results showed large

individual differences in the direction of the pattern; however the non-linear shift in

mothers’ speech around child age 2;0 was consistently significant. It is possible that the

mixed findings in the early child-directed speech studies are due to linear or non-linear

changes in mothers’ speech over time, as mothers change their speech depending on

their children’s age and/or communicative development.

The phonology of adult speech to children also varies as a function of speech

style. In a corpus of caregiver-child speech recorded in Scotland, Smith, Durham and

Fortune (2007) found that caregivers’ use of variable phonetic forms changed

depending on their speech style. The timing of children’s acquisition of stylistic

variation in relation to their acquisition of linguistic (phonological and grammatical)

constraints appears to vary depending on the type of variable being acquired (Labov,

1989; Roberts, 1997; Youssef, 1991). Kerswill and Williams (2000) suggest that

children gradually acquire stylistic variation over time as they gain sociolinguistic

competence, and Labov (2001) suggests that stylistic variation in caregiver speech plays

a key role in children’s acquisition of variable forms.

Cruttenden (1994) suggests phonetic modifications made in speech to children

may serve different functions at different child ages and stages of language
CHAPTER 5 130

development. For example exaggerated prosodic features in mothers’ speech peak in the

first six months (Stern, Spieker & Barnett, 1983), and this may function to help infants

attend to the speech signal and develop sensitivity to affect expressed in speech

(Cruttenden, 1994). Similarly the apparent peak in hyperarticulation when children start

to produce intelligible words may function to clarify segments to ease perception

(Cruttenden, 1994). This explanation relates to the concept of fine-tuning: that mothers

modify their speech according to their perceptions of their child’s receptive and

productive language.

In addition to fine-tuning to children’s linguistic development, there is evidence

that mothers may also fine-tune to children’s understanding of social categories indexed

in speech, such as age, sex, region and socioeconomic status. Variation in phonetic

segments due to socioindexical variables is termed sociophonetic variation (Foulkes &

Docherty, 2006), and in speech to children this type of variation introduces children to

phonetic forms associated with speakers’ identities and social groups in the speech

community. The few studies that have examined sociophonetic variation in caregiver

speech suggest that it does change as children age. Smith, Durham and Fortune (2009)

analysed mothers’ speech to children aged 2;11 to 3;11 in a Scottish dialect of English.

They examined t/d deletion in word-final consonant clusters, a reduction process

common in non-citation inter-adult speech across English dialects that has been studied

widely as a sociolinguistic marker (for a review see Tagliamonte & Temple, 2005).

Findings showed that rates of t/d deletion tended to be higher in speech to the older than

the younger children, suggesting sociophonetic modifications in maternal speech may

also vary with child age.

Sociophonetic variation associated with regional vernacular has also been shown

to change over time in mothers’ speech to children after infancy. Foulkes, Docherty and
CHAPTER 5 131

Watt (2005) analysed a cross-sectional sample of mothers’ speech to children aged

between 2;0 and 4;0 in a non-standard variety of English from Tyneside in northeastern

England. The phonetic segments analysed were variants of /t/ in word-medial

intersonorant and word-final prevocalic positions, as the realisation of /t/ in these

contexts is a sociolinguistic marker in Tyneside English (Foulkes et al., 2005).

Pronunciation of the segment as [t] was considered standard, while [
] and glottals in

these contexts were considered non-standard variants that are characteristic of the

region and may not be held in high regard outside the speech community. Foulkes et al.

(2005) found that overall, child-directed speech contained a higher proportion of the

standard [t] variant compared with interadult speech. Standard [t] was relatively less

frequent in speech to older than younger children while the non-standard variants were

relatively more frequent in speech to the older children. It is suggested that phonetic

variation in mothers’ speech changes over time to gradually familiarise children with

the alternate phonetic forms common in interadult non-citation speech, and that

socioindexical variation functions to facilitate children’s learning of the social meanings

associated with phonetic variants as well as phonological category boundaries (Foulkes

& Docherty, 2006; Foulkes et al., 2005). These studies on sociophonetic variation in

speech to children indicate that mothers may fine-tune their speech to their perceptions

of children’s socioindexical as well as linguistic knowledge.

An explanation of how children may learn systematic phonetic variation from

speech input can be found in exemplar-based models of phonological development,

such as Pierrehumbert’s (2003) model. According to this approach all tokens contain

both linguistic (e.g. acoustic) and socioindexical information, which is encoded

concurrently for each exemplar and associated with frequency distributions (Foulkes &

Docherty, 2006; Pierrehumbert, 2003). Munson, Edwards and Beckman (in press)
CHAPTER 5 132

suggest that learning to map sociophonetic variation involves developing another level

of representation for socioindexical information. This level may provide another source

of top-down information for children to draw on when interpreting phonetic variability

in the speech signal (Munson et al., in press). The strength of representations may

depend on the frequency and recency of exemplars (Pierrehumbert, 2003), that is the

stored memories of tokens, and so variable input over time during early childhood could

shape representations at different levels of mapping. Usage-based models of

phonological acquisition are supported by studies on children’s acquisition of liaison

consonants in French. Liaison is a phonological process that occurs variably in French

connected speech, depending on linguistic factors and social economic status (SES)

(Chevrot, Dugua & Fayol, 2009; Chevrot, Nardy & Barbu, 2011). SES differences in

children’s productions of liaison consonants reflect those in adult speech and increase as

children age from 2;0 to 6;0 (Chevrot et al., 2011). Chevrot et al. (2009) suggest that

children acquire variation by first encoding multiple exemplars of the variable lexical

forms in the input and then abstracting information from the exemplar store to form

schemas.

In addition to social meanings of segmental variation, children are exposed to

variation associated with speech acts and social interactions. Phonetic variation can be

associated with style shifting, which is learned throughout childhood and related to

caregiver usage (Kerswill & Williams, 2000). Mothers’ use of either standard or local

vernacular variants has been found to be constrained by situation in a Scottish dialect of

English, with more vernacular variants used in the informal contexts of play and routine

speech than the formal contexts of discipline and teaching (Smith et al., 2007).

Introducing children to situational variation may be another function of modifications

made in speech to children.

CHAPTER 5 133

In summary, children are exposed to systematic phonetic variation from early on

in life. Phonetic modifications made in maternal speech change over time as child-

directed speech develops into interadult speech, but there is relatively little literature on

how and when this happens as children get older. There is some evidence that infant-

and child-directed speech has different functions depending on the age and linguistic

development of the child, and this may drive changes in variation in the input over time

as mothers fine-tune their speech to their perceptions of children’s receptive and

productive language. The few studies that have examined variation in maternal speech

to children after infancy suggest mothers may also shape modifications in their speech

to their perceptions of children’s knowledge of socioindexical factors, and there are also

likely to be situational constraints on mothers’ use of non-standard phonetic forms. In

the current study we investigated how variation in non-citation speech changes in

mothers’ speech to children from ages 1;6 to 2;6 in a regional variety of Australian

English. To get a clearer understanding of when mothers might start using more

processes in non-citation speech, this study started with children of a younger age than

those in the Foulkes et al. (2005) study, in which children were aged 2;0 to 4;0, and the

Smith et al. (2009) study, in which children were aged between 2;11 and 3;11. In the

current study we started with children aged 1;6.

5.2.1 Phonetic Variation in Australian English

The phonological system of standard Australian English is well established,

although regional dialects have generally not been studied in detail. Standard Australian

English differs from other standard English varieties in realisation of many of the

vowels, prosodic patterns, lexical items and paralinguistic characteristics (Harrington,

Cox & Evans, 1997). In a recent description of the main phonological features of

Australian English, Standard Australian English is described as, ‘the dominant dialect
CHAPTER 5 134

used by the vast majority of speakers’ (Cox & Palethorpe, 2007, p. 341) in Australia

today. Being a multicultural country there are many other dialects spoken, which have

previously been broadly grouped into ‘Aboriginal English’ and ‘Ethnocultural

Australian English’ categories (Cox & Palethorpe, 2007). There may also be varieties

differing on other dimensions such as geographic region, but this has not been studied

in depth owing to a historical perception that there is relatively low regional variation in

Australian English.

However, recent research has found some regionally distributed vowel

characteristics (Cox & Palethorpe, 2004) as well as variation in vowel ‘broadness’ by

region and other socioeconomic factors (Cox & Palethorpe, 2010). Relatively less

research into Australian English has focused on consonants (Ingram, 1989; Tollfree,

2001). Sociolinguistic studies of consonant variation include Horvath (1985) and

Ingram (1989); both found significant effects of sociolinguistic variables on consonant

processes. Horvath’s (1985) study included ‘h dropping’ (/h/ deletion) and Ingram’s

(1989) study investigated connected speech processes. In Australian English, /h/

deletion is considered a sociolinguistic feature which correlates with socioeconomic

status and gender; connected speech processes (assimilation, elision) are also socially

correlated and were one of five variables differentiating the ‘classical’ accent classes in

Australian English: broad, general, and cultivated (Mitchell & Delbridge, 1965).

Horvath (1985) analysed consonant variants in Australian English speech from

117 speakers in Sydney, New South Wales. Data were from the Sydney Urban Dialect

Survey, a sociolinguistic survey which involved interviews conducted with a stratified

sample of Australian English speakers from Sydney, including speakers of English as a

second language. Horvath (1985) conducted principal components analyses to identify

four main ‘sociolects’ based on sex, age, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity, and
CHAPTER 5 135

analysed the frequency of six consonant processes to compare the incidence of these

processes in the ‘sociolect’ subgroups. One consonant process she examined was word-

initial /h/ deletion (1).

(1) go get him → go get ‘im

Along with other consonant processes considered typical of ‘broad’ Australian English

speakers, word-initial /h/ deletion was generally more frequent in males, teenagers, and

speakers from ‘lower working class’ backgrounds (Horvath, 1985). In dialects of

English in England, ‘h dropping’ is also a known sociolinguistic marker (Tollfree, 1999;

Wells, 1982; Williams & Kerswill, 1999).

Ingram (1989) examined connected speech processes according to

socioeconomic status in adolescent speakers from Brisbane, Queensland. One type of

connected speech process is the articulatory simplification that often occurs in fast non-

citation speech, leading to phonetic assimilation and reduction (2). The frequency of

connected speech processes account for much of the phonological differences between

citation and non-citation speech, and vary with speech rate, register, and ‘broadness’

(Ingram, 1989).

(2) I don’t know about him → I dunno ‘bout ‘im

One consonant process that Ingram (1989) analysed was cluster reduction, and it

was noted that cluster reduction largely affected word-final /nt/, /nd/ and /st/ clusters.

Ingram (1989) found that the frequency of consonant cluster reduction was relatively

high in both working class and middle class adolescents, and there was no significant

difference between the two groups. There was however a significant difference between

working class and middle class adolescents in the frequency of other speech processes.

Deletion of /h/ occurred significantly more often in speech of the working class than the

middle class participants, and was most common in third person pronoun forms. The
CHAPTER 5 136

working class group were also significantly more likely to delete schwas (e.g. ‘bout for

about) and word-initial interdental fricatives (e.g. ‘em for them). These findings show

sociolinguistic factors affect connected speech processes among Australian English

speakers. In the present study we consider word-initial /h/ deletion and the speech

process word-final /v/ deletion in a little described variety of northern Australian

English. In the absence of sociolinguistic evidence for this dialect, we refer to these as

non-citation speech processes henceforth.

5.2.2 Katherine English

Katherine is a small regional town in the Northern Territory, Australia, located

about 317 kilometres south of Darwin, the Northern Territory capital. The English

spoken in Katherine, which we term Katherine English, was sampled for the current

study as a variety of regional Australian English. This language variety has been the

subject of just one previous study (Jones, Meakins, & Buchan, 2011), and no

sociolinguistic research, so we offer comments from speakers to characterise the

sociolinguistic setting. Terms that speakers used to describe Katherine English included

‘very casual’, ‘relaxed’, ‘slang’, ‘country-sounding’, ‘not as refined’, ‘rough’ and

‘ocker’ (slang for a stereotypically uncultivated Australian), Speakers also say – we lack

objective data – that their words tend to be simpler and not as long, and that the speech

of Southerners (people from outside the Northern Territory or city people) is ‘fuller’ in

that they use longer words, more words, and fewer shortened versions. Overall speakers

suggest that Katherine English may be considered a casual or relaxed variety of

Australian English with a relatively high use of vernacular in everyday non-citation

speech.
CHAPTER 5 137

5.2.3 The Current Study

The aim of this study was to examine how phonetic variation related to non-

citation speech processes in regional Australian English maternal speech changes as

children age. We collected and analysed a corpus of naturalistic speech from mothers

when their children were aged 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. This study is part of a larger project on

fricative variation in maternal speech in northern Australia (Buchan, in prep.), which

involves a comparison of the similarities and differences in fricative variation in

Katherine English and an Aboriginal contact language variety in the region, Gurindji

Kriol. Gurindji Kriol contains extensive fricative variation in Kriol-derived words, i.e.

of English historical origin (Meakins, 2011). Because fricative variation is the focus of

the larger project, in this study we examined variants in fricatives that are related to

processes in non-citation speech. Word position effects are also being investigated in

the Aboriginal language variety, and so in this study we analysed a word-initial and a

word-final fricative.

The phonetic variants we chose to measure were word-initial /h/ deletion (3a, b)

based on the previous findings from Horvath (1985) and Ingram (1989), and word-final

/v/ deletion (4a, b), which are regarded as processes that occur in non-citation speech

(or lexical alternatives, depending on the analysis adopted):

standard form

(3a) Go get her!

(4a) Get out of there.

containing deletion

(3b) Go get ‘er!

(4b) Get outta there.

CHAPTER 5 138

We analysed deletion across function and content words. Previous research has

found that phonological information is important for classifying word class, and that

phonological reduction is more likely to occur in function than content words (Cutler,

1993; Monaghan, Chater & Christiansen, 2005). It was therefore expected that overall

deletion would be more frequent in function words.

In this study maternal speech is the main source of speech input for the target

children and is defined as all speech spoken by the mother around the target child. This

is based on Soderstrom’s (2007) definition of speech input to children and studies that

have found children learn from overhearing interadult speech as well as speech directed

specifically to them (Akhtar, 2005; Au, Knightly, Jun & Oh, 2002; Martinez-Sussman,

Akhtar, Diesendruck & Markson, 2011).

Based on recent studies showing child-directed speech to older children

gradually changes to be more like interadult speech over time (Foulkes et al., 2005;

Smith et al., 2009), it was predicted that mothers would be more likely to use the

reduced variants as children got older.

5.3 Method

5.3.1 Participants

Four mothers and their children participated in the recording sessions, which

were conducted at three stages six months apart when the children were aged

approximately 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. Exact ages are shown in Table 5.1. A fifth mother

participated but her child was six months older than the others so her data are not

included in this study, as she was only recorded at two of the timepoints under

investigation here and therefore cannot be analysed longitudinally.

Mothers were monolingual Australian English speakers living in Katherine,

Northern Territory, Australia. Three mothers had grown up in Katherine, while the
CHAPTER 5 139

fourth had grown up in a small regional town in northwestern Queensland, Australia.

The highest educational attainment was a Bachelor degree (two mothers) and secondary

school (two mothers). Mothers were recruited through local childcare centres and other

local businesses, and were paid for their time.

Two of the target children had siblings, and there was also some participation in

the sessions from other family members and visitors. Mothers were instructed to focus

on the target child, so mothers’ interactions with other people were generally minimal.

Table 5.1 shows the target children’s sex, their ages at each stage and the mothers’

education levels, and is followed by a brief description of the dyads and other people

present in recording sessions. Only the mothers’ speech was analysed for this study.

Informed consent was obtained from or on the behalf of all participants.

Cathy and Lucy. Lucy was Cathy’s only child. Lucy’s father occasionally

participated in recordings, but in the majority of the sessions Cathy and Lucy were the

only participants.

Kim and George. George had two older siblings, a boy and girl aged 6;3 and

3;0 respectively at Stage 1. One or both of the siblings participated in most of the

sessions. Kim was asked to focus on George in the sessions, so generally the siblings

played together while Kim played with George. The children’s father participated

occasionally.

Kellie and Tyson. Tyson was an only child. Tyson’s grandmother was present

in most of the sessions. Other adult family members were sometimes in the vicinity but

did not participate in sessions.

Erin and Grace. Grace had two younger brothers: one aged 0;5 at Stage 1, and

another born between Stages 2 and 3. Sessions were held when the younger children

were mostly sleeping, so the majority of interactions were between Erin and Grace. Two
CHAPTER 5 140

adult males who work for Erin and her husband were occasionally present in some of

the sessions.

Table 5.1

Participant Characteristics

Target Target Mother’s Family Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

Mother
child child’s sex education position child age child age child age

Bachelor only
Cathy* Lucy* female 1;5 1;11 2;5
degree child

Secondary youngest
Kim George male 1;5 1;11 2;5
school of three

Secondary only
Kellie Tyson male 1;7 2;1 2;7
school child

Bachelor oldest of
Erin* Grace* female 1;6 2;0 2;8†
degree three
* pseudonyms used at mother’s discretion

† the age difference between Stage 2 and 3 is greater for Grace than the other target

children because these sessions were recorded later due to participant circumstances

5.3.2 Procedure

Speech samples were recorded to make a corpus of naturalistic maternal speech

for the analysis of sound patterns that the children are typically exposed to. Audiovisual

recordings were made in a natural setting, with each mother and child recorded at their

home or at a local park, with care taken to choose quiet environments with minimal

background noise. All the recordings were made by the first author, who spent time

before and after each recording session talking with the participants about both the

research project and unrelated subjects to build rapport. Mothers were aware that the

project was about their speech, and were debriefed on the details after the final

recording session.
CHAPTER 5 141

Before each recording mothers were asked to do free play with their children

and reminded that they could stop the session at any time. Participants played with

materials brought by the researcher and their own toys and games. The most common

activities across children and stages were drawing and painting, and playing with

coloured blocks, toy cars, dolls, and playdough. Other activities included swingsets and

other playground equipment, and general outside activities such as feeding pets.

The mother and target child each wore a wireless, cardioid, condenser lapel

microphone (Sennheiser ME104) that recorded high quality audio (at 48kHz, 24 bit) via

bodypack transmitter to a receiver with XLR connection to a hard disk recorder (Edirol

R-44), in separate audio tracks for mother and child. The mother’s audio track was used

for transcription. The acoustic quality of the recordings was high, and with the cardioid

lapel microphone positioned upwards at the top centre of the mother’s shirt her speech

was recorded clearly on her audio track. As recordings were made in busy naturalistic

environments, occasionally a background noise was too loud to clearly hear the speech.

In these cases speech was marked as unclear in the transcripts and was not analysed. A

spectrogram of an utterance from a typical recording is shown in Figure 5.1. This

example was recorded outdoors in a park by a river and has a dynamic range of 52 dB.

The researcher also filmed sessions with a video camera (Sony AVCHD HDR XR-

500V) that had a camera-mounted microphone. Several recording sessions were

conducted with each mother at each stage over one to three weeks, to produce in total

between 8 and 11 hours of recording time at each stage as detailed in Table 5.2. The

amount of recording depended on mothers’ availability and the children’s compliance.

Most sessions went for half an hour to an hour in length, and usually ended when the

child or children got tired.

CHAPTER 5 142

Figure 5.1. Spectrogram of utterance "There we go, we'll just leave him there, shall

we?"

Table 5.2

Total and Mean Lengths of Recording Sessions, hh:mm:ss

Mother child age 1;6 child age 2;0 child age 2;6 Total

Cathy 02:05:31 02:00:18 02:44:58 06:50:47

Kim 02:11:37 01:38:00 02:28:12 06:17:49

Kellie 02:41:54 03:07:20 02:24:54 08:14:08

Erin 01:39:48 00:47:53 02:06:13 04:33:54

Total 08:38:50 07:33:31 09:44:17 25:56:38

Mean 02:09:43 1:53:23 02:26:05

CHAPTER 5 143

Mothers’ speech was transcribed from the audio using the phonological analysis

and transcription software Phon (Rose, Hedlund, Byrne, Wareham & MacWhinney,

2007). Phonetic transcriptions were made of the mothers’ actual pronunciation as well

as the standard Australian English form. Transcription was done by the first author, a

native Australian English speaker, using the transcription system recommended by

Harrington et al. (1997) for phonetic transcription of Australian English. To check

transcription reliability, a second transcriber separately transcribed one hour of

recording at Stage 1 and one hour at Stage 2, made up of a random selection from each

session. The second transcriber was a native Australian English speaker who has a

Masters degree in speech science and is trained in phonetic transcription of Australian

English. Reliability analyses showed 95.63% agreement between transcribers at Stage 1

and 96.88% at Stage 2. The majority of disagreements were about vowel quality, in

particular between the schwa and full vowels (making up 45.93% of total disagreements

at Stage 1 and 49.24% at Stage 2). The two transcribers held consensus discussions to

make decisions about how to transcribe disagreements. Where consensus could not be

reached, a third transcriber (the second author) was consulted to make a decision.

5.3.3 Analysis

The search tool in Phon was used to perform frequency counts of fricatives by

word position. Consonant deletion was quantified by searching for differences in the

standard and actual IPA transcriptions. The transcripts were then searched manually to

determine whether the differences between fricatives in the IPA Actual and IPA Target

tiers were due to speech errors or the mother using a different lexical form (e.g. the

child-directed speech form horsie for horse would show up as a difference in the Target

and Actual word-medial and word-final [s]), or whether it was an apparent systematic

process in the sample. The exclamation hey was excluded from the /h/ deletion analyses.
CHAPTER 5 144

To test whether the frequency of specific speech processes increased over time, the

processes word-initial /h/ deletion and word-final /v/ deletion were analysed further in

SPSS using binary logistic regression. To explore local effects on the processes we

analysed the number and types of lexical items in which deletion occurred, in both

function and content words, using frequency counts at each child age.

Speech rate was measured to investigate whether changes in rates of deletion

over time were related to changes in speech rate. Speech rate in words per second was

analysed for the entire sample at each timepoint, following the procedure outlined and

validated by Ko (2012). A more detailed analysis of speech rate was also performed on

a subset of the data by calculating syllables per second in a random selection of sixty

utterances from each mother at each child age: thirty in which deletion occurred and

thirty in which it did not.

5.4 Results

5.4.1 Analysis 1: Incidence of Word-Initial /h/ and Word-Final /v/ Deletion in

Maternal Speech Over Time

Word-initial /h/ deletion. It was hypothesised that the proportion of word-

initial /h/ deletion in maternal speech would increase at each time point. Table 5.3

shows the frequencies of word-initial /h/ deletion out of possible contexts at each

average child age, and percentages of deletion for each speaker are in Figure 5.2.

Descriptively there was a proportional increase in deletion between child ages 1;6

(24.65%) and 2;0 (35.11%), and a proportional decrease between 2;0 and 2;6 (24.62%).
CHAPTER 5 145

Table 5.3

Raw Frequencies of Word-Initial /h/ Deletion Out of Possible Contexts by Each Speaker

at Each Average Child Age

Proportion of deletion (N deleted/N contexts)

1;6 2;0 2;6 Total % deletion

Erin 18/169 24/112 20/162 14.00

Cathy 56/306 83/327 42/340 18.60

Kim 86/211 87/252 91/210 39.23

Kellie 102/377 201/434 105/336 35.57

Total N 262/1063 395/1125 258/1048 915/3236

Total % deletion 24.65 35.11 24.62 28.28

CHAPTER 5 146

Figure 5.2. Percentage word-initial /h/ deletion out of word-initial /h/ contexts by child

age and speaker

To test the hypothesis that word-initial /h/ deletion is influenced by child age we

performed a binary logistic regression. The outcome variable was word-initial /h/

deletion and the predictor variables were child age and speaker. Child age (1;6, 2;0 and

2;6) was entered as a repeated contrast making age 2;0 the reference group. Table 5.4

shows the results of logistic regression analysis. The model has good fit to the data χ2

(11)=295.36, p<.001, and accounts for some of the variance (Nagelkerke R2 = 0.10).

Results indicate a significant effect of child age, Wald χ2 (2) = 16.08, p <.001. The odds

of /h/ deletion are lower at child age 1;6 than 2;0 (odds ratio 0.67), and higher at 2;0

than 2;6 (odds ratio 1.42). The hypothesis that deletion would increase as child got older
 CHAPTER 5 147

was supported between child ages 1;6 and 2;0, while the decrease in deletion between

ages 2;0 and 2;6 was unexpected.

Table 5.4

Logistic regression for word-initial /h/ deletion: Child age and speaker

B s.e. Wald df p Exp(B) 95% C. I. for Exp (B)

Lower Upper

Child Age

1;6 -0.40 0.11 13.15 1 <0.001 0.67 0.54 0.83

2;6 0.35 0.11 9.91 1 0.002 1.42 1.14 1.76

Speaker

Erin -1.34 0.15 81.36 1 <0.001 0.26 0.20 0.35

Cathy -1.07 0.10 111.45 1 <0.001 0.34 0.28 0.42

Kim 0.02 0.09 0.05 1 0.82 1.02 0.85 1.23

Child Age x Speaker

1.6 x Erin -0.02 0.36 0.00 1 0.96 0.98 0.48 1.99

2.6 x Erin 0.15 0.35 0.17 1 0.68 1.16 0.58 2.32

1.6 x Cathy 0.63 0.23 7.30 1 0.01 1.88 1.19 2.97

2.6 x Cathy -0.03 0.25 0.01 1 0.91 0.97 0.60 1.58

1.6 x Kim 1.22 0.23 29.08 1 <0.001 3.39 2.18 5.29

2.6 x Kim -1.15 0.23 25.59 1 <0.001 0.32 0.20 0.50

The reference group for Child Age is 2;0 (repeated contrast) and for Speaker is Kellie.

There is also a significant effect of speaker on /h/ deletion, Wald χ2 (3) = 191.21,

p <.001. The speaker Kellie was the reference group (total deletion 35.57%), and results
CHAPTER 5 148

show that the odds of deletion were lower for Erin (odds ratio 0.26) and Cathy (odds

ratio 0.34). There was no significant difference in the odds of deletion for Kim (odds

ratio 1.02) compared with Kellie.

Interactions between child age and speaker were tested in the logistic regression

model to test whether the main effect of age was found across all speakers. Results

show a significant interaction effect, Wald χ2 (6) = 46.80, p <.001. As shown in Table

5.4 there were three significant interactions: Cathy by age 1;6, Kim by age 1;6, and Kim

by age 2;6. Figure 5.2 shows that Kim displays a v-pattern of deletion over time, a

decrease in deletion from 1;6 to 2;0 followed by an increase from 2;0 to 2;6, while

Kellie, Cathy and Erin display an inverted v-pattern, that is an increase from 1;6 to 2;0

followed by a decrease from 2;0 to 2;6. Between child ages 1;6 and 2;0 /h/ deletion was

significantly more likely to increase for the reference group Kellie than for Kim (odds

ratio 3.39). Between child ages 2;0 and 2;6 the odds of /h/ deletion were significantly

more likely to decrease for Kellie than Kim (odds ratio 0.32). The interaction of Cathy

by child age 1;6 shows that the increase in the odds of /h/ deletion between ages 1;6 and

2;0 was significantly higher for Kellie than Cathy (odds ratio 1.88).

Word-final /v/ deletion. It was hypothesised that the speech process word-final

/v/ deletion would proportionately increase in mothers’ speech at each time point. Table

5.5 shows the frequencies of word-final /v/ deletion out of possible contexts at each

average child age. The percentage of word-final /v/ deletion for each speaker is shown

in Figure 5.3. This process was not as frequent as word-initial /h/ deletion, so there were

fewer possible contexts and fewer tokens in which the process occurred16. Overall there

was a slight increase in word-final /v/ deletion between child ages 1;6 and 2;0, from

16
Searches were performed in Phon for word-final [v] contexts that precede a word-initial labio-dental
fricative [v, f] in the following word. This environment is extremely rare in the corpus, with one case at
child age 1;6 (Cathy), none at 2;0, and four at 2;6 (1 Cathy, 3 Kim).
CHAPTER 5 149

16.15% to 21.95%, and a decrease between ages 2;0 and 2;6 to 16.74%. This inverted v-

pattern resembles that for word-initial /h/ deletion and was partially consistent with the

hypothesis: word-final /v/ deletion changed in mothers’ speech over time but not in the

expected direction as children aged from 2;0 to 2;6.

Table 5.5

Raw Frequencies of Word-Final /v/ Deletion Out of Possible Contexts by Each Speaker

at Each Average Child Age

Proportion of deletion (N deleted/N contexts)

1;6 2;0 2;6 Total % deletion

Erin 5/70 7/50 8/74 10.31

Cathy 22/96 32/132 33/178 21.43

Kim 13/49 9/42 19/82 23.70

Kellie 7/76 24/104 15/114 15.65

Total N 47/291 72/328 75/448 194/1067

Total % deletion 16.15 21.95 16.74 18.18

CHAPTER 5 150

Figure 5.3. Percentage word-final /v/ deletion out of word-final /v/ contexts by child

age and speaker

To test the hypothesis that word-final /v/ deletion is influenced by child age we

performed another binary logistic regression. Table 5.6 shows the results of the analysis

using child age and speaker as predictors of word-final /v/ deletion. The model fit to the

data approached significance, χ2 (11) = 18.66, p = 0.067 (Nagelkerke R2 = 0.02).

Results indicate no significant effect of child age, Wald χ2 (2) = 2.18, p = .336. The

hypothesis that word-final /v/ deletion would increase as children got older was not

supported. In this model the effect of speaker approached significance, Wald χ2 (3) =

7.75, p = .052. The speaker with the highest total /v/ deletion was the reference group

(Kim, total /v/ deletion 23.70%) and results show that the odds of deletion were

marginally lower for Erin (odds ratio 0.64).

 CHAPTER 5 151

Table 5.6

Logistic Regression for Word-Final /v/ Deletion: Child Age and Speaker

B s.e. Wald df p Exp(B) 95% C. I. for Exp (B)

Lower Upper

Child Age

1;6 -0.34 0.23 2.08 1 0.15 0.71 0.45 1.13

2;6 0.09 0.21 0.17 1 0.68 1.09 0.73 1.63

Speaker

Erin -0.44 0.30 2.24 1 0.14 0.64 0.36 1.15

Kellie 0.27 0.25 1.18 1 0.28 1.31 0.81 2.14

Cathy 0.23 0.21 1.22 1 0.27 1.26 0.83 1.91

Child Age x Speaker

1.6 x Erin 0.40 0.76 0.28 1 0.60 1.50 0.34 6.58

2.6 x Erin -0.06 0.65 0.01 1 0.93 0.94 0.26 3.36

1.6 x Kellie 1.57 0.65 5.90 1 0.02 4.81 1.36 17.14

2.6 x Kellie -0.71 0.56 1.59 1 0.21 0.49 0.17 1.48

1.6 x Cathy 1.04 0.54 3.68 1 0.06 2.81 0.98 8.12

2.6 x Cathy -0.09 0.44 0.04 1 0.84 0.91 0.38 2.18

The reference group for Child Age is 2;0 (repeated contrast) and for Speaker is Kim.

There was no significant interaction effect, Wald χ2 (6) = 7.48, p = .279. Figure

5.3 suggests, however, that the pattern of /v/ deletion over time depends on speaker.

Kellie, Cathy and Erin display an inverted v-pattern as they are less likely to delete at

child age 2;0 than at 1;6 or 2;6, while Kim displays the opposite pattern as she is more

likely to delete at 2;0 than 1;6 or 2;6. The interspeaker patterns for word-final /v/
CHAPTER 5 152

deletion over time resemble those found for word-initial /h/ deletion and show that

within speakers there was consistency across both processes.

Analysis 1 discussion. It was predicted that the likelihood of deletion in

mothers’ speech would increase over time to reflect a gradual change from child-

directed speech to interadult speech. The hypothesis was partially supported: word-

initial /h/ and word-final /v/ deletion were more likely to occur in mothers’ speech when

children were 2;0 than 1;6, but were unexpectedly less likely at 2;6 than 2;0. The

change over time was significant for /h/ deletion but not for /v/ deletion, likely because

word-final /v/ contexts were rarer in the corpus. Results also show interspeaker

differences, which is consistent with Ko’s (2012) finding of individual variation in

developmental paths of speech rate in child-directed speech. In this study the presence

of siblings may have contributed to interspeaker variation, as the mother who did not

have the inverted-v pattern of deletion also had two older children who were present in

many of the sessions, while with the other three mothers the target child was generally

the only child in the recordings. The inverted-v effect was also stronger in one of the

speakers, Kellie, than in the other two speakers who displayed the pattern. Future

research on more speakers would be beneficial to examine possible causes of

interspeaker variation: a possible contributing factor is the gender of the child, as Erin

and Cathy, who were mothers of girls, displayed similar patterns of a relatively shallow

inverted-v while Kim and Kellie were mothers of boys and displayed greater variation.

Possible effects of the children’s gender is discussed further in Analysis 2.

It was found that the two mothers with less formal education, Kim and Kellie,

displayed the highest rates of /h/ deletion at all timepoints. We cannot draw any

conclusions here due to the small number of speakers, but it would be interesting to

further explore this effect in future research.

CHAPTER 5 153

The finding of an inverted-v pattern in three of the four speakers is surprising in

light of previous studies that have found consonant deletion in clusters is more likely in

mothers’ speech to children aged 3;11 than 2;11 (Smith et al., 2009), and that non-

standard variants become more frequent as children age from 2;0 to 4;0 (Foulkes et al.,

2005). This could be due to the different indexical natures of the speech variables

investigated in these studies, i.e. cluster reduction in the Smith et al. (2009) study, [t]

variants in Foulkes et al. (2005), and /h/ and /v/ deletion in the current study. A possible

interpretation of our findings in Analysis 1 is that /h/ and /v/ deletion are non-citation

speech processes in Katherine English, and mothers increase their use of these processes

between child ages 1;6 and 2;0 and decrease them as children age from 2;0 to 2;6,

perhaps in relation to the children’s speech production. To explore this interpretation

further analyses are needed to arrive at a more detailed, lexically-specific understanding

of the deletion processes.

Another possible explanation for the findings in Analysis 1 is that there is a

change over time in the distribution of lexical items in which deletion occurred, and/or

in the distribution of function words, which are more susceptible to reduction processes

(Cutler, 1993) than content words. It raises the question, are mothers changing their

pronunciation in a specific set of words? If so then is the frequency of these words

changing over time, resulting in an apparent effect of change in deletion as children get

older? Thus we conducted a more fine-grained second analysis to investigate the

question of how widespread /h/ and /v/ deletion are across lexical items and word class.

In Analysis 2 we calculated frequencies and percentages of word-initial /h/ and word-

final /v/ deletion in all the lexical items in which it occurred in the corpus.
CHAPTER 5 154

5.4.2 Analysis 2: Exploration of Local Effects on Casual Speech Processes

Deletion in lexical items. Table 5.7 shows the proportion of word-initial /h/ and

word-final /v/ deletion across ages for each word that displayed the process. Words are

listed in order of highest to lowest frequency of deletion (see ‘Total n deleted/contexts’

column in Table 5.7). Word-initial /h/ deletion occurred across a range of words at all

timepoints, while word-final /v/ deletion only occurred in of, have and give. The /h/

items are separated by word class to examine the distributions of deletion in function

and content words. At all child ages deletion was more frequent in function than content

words (30.18% and 5.91% total deletion respectively). The inverted-v pattern of

deletion over time is apparent in the function words for /h/ deletion. In content words /h/

deletion decreased slightly between timepoints, and /v/ deletion only occurred in three

lexical items. Note that in both /h/ deletion in content words and /v/ deletion the N for

deleted consonants in most lexical items is very low. In particular /h/ deletion was

frequent in pronouns, the adverb here, and the verb have (as a main verb and an

auxiliary verb). The words displaying the highest frequencies of deletion are relatively

frequent overall at each time point, indicating that changes in rates of deletion are not

due to the mothers introducing or removing words from their speech as children get

older.

Within Table 5.7 it is clear that there are approximately seven words that are

high frequency and involve considerable word-initial /h/ deletion and that the inverted-

pattern of deletion over time is mostly driven by function words rather than content

words. The seven words are the same words at each child age and account for 94.53%

of /h/ deletion at age 1;6, 94.09% at age 2;0, and 94.57% at age 2;6. It is therefore of

interest to examine how /h/ deletion changes over time for these words. Figure 5.4

shows the percentage of /h/ deletion over time for each word. Five of the seven words
CHAPTER 5 155

display an increase in deletion between 1;6 and 2;0 and a decrease between 2;0 and 2;6

and are therefore contributing to the inverted v-pattern of deletion found in Analysis 1.

The two words that do not follow this pattern are him and have. Deletion in him is the

highest of all words, between 80.00% and 83.17%, and the lack of change may be due

to a ceiling effect. /h/ deletion in have increases slightly at each timepoint.

The three words containing word-final /v/ deletion are of, have and give.

Deletion in of is relatively stable over time, between 30.00% and 31.45% while /v/

deletion in have displays the inverted v-pattern. Deletion in give displays the opposite

pattern, although note that deletion in give has a very low number of occurrences at

each time point and must be interpreted with caution. The inverted-v pattern of word-

final /v/ deletion therefore appears to be driven primarily by the lexical item have.

Figure 5.4. Most frequent lexical items containing word-initial /h/ deletion at each

timepoint
 CHAPTER 5 156

Table 5.7

Lexical Items Containing Word-Initial /h/ and Word-Final /v/ Deletion at Each Stage
1;6 2;0 2;6 TOTAL
n % n % n % n deleted/ %
deleted/ deletion deleted/ deletion deleted/ deletion contexts deletion
contexts contexts contexts
/h/ deletion: function words
he 52/178 29.21 73/144 50.69 55/113 48.67 180/435 41.38
him 84/101 83.17 55/65 84.62 41/51 80.39 180/217 82.95
have 25/145 17.24 37/158 23.42 53/208 25.48 115/511 22.50
he’s 23/121 19.01 67/154 43.51 22/78 28.21 112/353 31.73
here 21/260 8.08 52/259 20.08 30/250 12.00 103/769 13.39
his 28/44 63.64 39/52 75.00 35/71 49.30 102/167 61.08
her 15/35 42.86 49/92 53.26 8/36 22.22 72/163 44.17
has 0/9 0.00 5/21 23.81 4/8 50.00 9/38 23.68
haven’t 2/11 18.18 4/10 40.00 2/10 20.00 8/31 25.81
himself 3/4 75.00 3/3 100.00 0/4 0.00 6/11 54.55
he’ll 2/6 33.33 1/7 14.29 0/1 0.00 3/14 21.43
how 0/46 0.00 2/67 2.99 1/81 1.23 3/194 1.55
had 1/12 8.33 0/13 0.00 1/24 4.17 2/49 4.08
hasn’t 0/2 0.00 2/4 50.00 0/1 0.00 2/7 28.57
herself - - 2/3 66.67 - - 2/3 66.67
who - - - - 1/20 5.00 1/20 5.00
Total 256/974 26.28 391/1052 37.17 253/956 26.46 900/2982 30.18
/h/ deletion: content words
hang 1/30 3.33 1/32 3.13 1/33 3.03 3/95 3.16
head 1/14 7.14 0/21 0.00 2/17 11.76 3/52 5.77
hop 2/37 5.41 1/4 25.00 0/20 0.00 3/61 4.92
Heather 2/3 66.67 0/11 0.00 0/7 0.00 2/21 9.52
hit 0/5 0.00 2/5 40.00 - - 2/10 20.00
hold - - - - 2/15 13.33 2/15 13.33
Total 6/89 6.74 4/73 5.48 5/92 5.43 15/254 5.91
/v/ deletion
of 35/112 31.25 39/124 31.45 66/220 30.00 140/456 30.70
have 8/145 5.52 31/158 19.62 7/208 3.37 46/511 9.00
give 4/34 11.76 2/46 4.35 2/20 10.00 8/100 8.00
Total 47/291 16.15 72/328 21.95 75/448 16.74 194/1067 18.18
 CHAPTER 5 157

Gender differences in lexical items. Gender differences in the use of male and

female pronouns were also analysed. Table 5.8 shows the number of tokens and

percentage of deletion in male and female pronouns used by caregivers of boys (N=2)

and of girls (N=2). Relevant male pronouns are much more frequent overall than female

pronouns. Male pronouns in mothers’ speech to boys had a higher rate of deletion than

in speech to girls (52.30% and 40.06% deletion respectively). However, for male

pronouns, the inverted-v pattern of /h/ deletion occurred in speech to both boys and

girls. Female pronouns were more frequent in speech to girls but had a higher rate of

deletion in speech to boys (58.49%) than to girls (38.05%). The inverted-v pattern of /h/

deletion occurred in female pronouns in speech to girls, while in speech to boys the

opposite pattern occurred in female pronouns (though note the small number of tokens

at child ages 1;6 and 2;6).

Table 5.8

/h/ Deletion in Male and Female Pronouns by Mothers of Boys (N=2) and Girls (N=2)

at Each Child Age

1;6 2;0 2;6 Total

n n n n
deleted/ % deleted/ % deleted/ % deleted/ %
contexts contexts contexts contexts
Speech to
Boys
Male
137/306 44.77 192/325 59.08 126/239 52.72 455/870 52.30
pronouns
Female
12/16 75.00 15/32 46.88 4/5 80.00 31/53 58.49
pronouns
Speech to
Girls
Male
58/148 39.19 46/100 46.00 27/79 34.18 131/327 40.06
pronouns
Female
3/19 15.79 36/63 57.14 4/31 12.90 43/113 38.05
pronouns
CHAPTER 5 158

Analysis 2 discussion. In Analysis 1 we found an inverted v-pattern of /h/ and

/v/ deletion as children aged from 1;6 to 2;0 to 2;6, and Analysis 2 was performed to

examine /h/ and /v/ deletion in lexically specific contexts. Results showed changes in

deletion occurred across a specific set of function words. The words containing the

highest frequencies of deletion were function words and were the same across each

child age. These words accounted for most of the deletion (94%) at each timepoint. This

finding suggests overall changes in deletion were not due to mothers introducing new

words or removing other words from their speech as children aged.

Analysis 2 also indicates most deletion occurred in function words. In English

conversational speech function words tend to be unstressed and contain reduced vowel

forms compared with content words (Cutler, 1993), so it is unsurprising that consonants

are also reduced, or in this case deleted, in function words. Function words are also high

frequency in child-directed speech relative to content words (Shi, Werker & Cutler,

2006), and the finding that phonetic variation is high in these words has implications for

children’s word learning that will be returned to in the general discussion.

Possible gender differences were also revealed. Overall there was

proportionately more /h/ deletion in mothers’ speech to boys than to girls in both male

and female pronouns. The inverted-v pattern of deletion over time was found in male

pronouns in all speakers, but in female pronouns it occurred in speech to girls but not

boys. With only four speakers these findings cannot be generalised, but they do appear

to support the Tyneside English study (Foulkes et al., 2005) which found that caregiver

speech to boys contained more vernacular variants of [t] than speech to girls, which

contained more standard variants. Foulkes et al. (2005) suggested that these gender

differences may be due to mothers fine-tuning their speech to children’s developing

gender identities, as in adult speech males tend to use more non-standard phonological
CHAPTER 5 159

variants than females. Horvath’s (1985) study on adult Australian English speakers

from Sydney did find that /h/ deletion generally occurred more in male than female

speech so the gender identity explanation could apply to the current findings, although

more data are needed to explore this further.

5.3.3 Analysis 3: Effect of Speech Rate

A second possible explanation for the finding of change in deletion over time is

that it is a function of speech rate, and the rate of deletion changes because mothers

modify their rate of speech as children age. If this were the case we could expect to find

an association between more deletion and faster speech, and that mothers’ speech rate

across child age follows the same pattern as deletion, i.e. an increase between ages 1;6

and 2;0 and a decrease between 2;0 and 2;6.

To investigate this we calculated speech rate in words per second in each

utterance, following the method used and validated by Ko (2012). Transcripts were

segmented by utterance in Phon, where utterances were units of speech with pause

boundaries at each end, and speech rate was calculated from the segmentation time

stamps. Following the procedure of Ko (2012), paralinguistic notations (e.g. crying,

laughter) were omitted and utterances were excluded when the duration was longer than

10 seconds (N=12), as these were likely to contain pauses that had not been segmented,

and where they contained unintelligible speech and phonological fragments (N=396).

This left 5,856 utterances at age 1;6, 5,613 at 2;0 and 6,685 at 2;6.

A one-way ANOVA indicated a significant effect of child age on speech rate,

F(2, 18,151)=61.35, p<.001. Games-Howell post-hoc comparisons revealed mothers’

speech rate at child age 2;6 was significantly higher than 1;6 (M=0.20, 95% CI [0.15,

0.25]) p<.001), and 2;0 (M=0.18, 95% CI [0.13, 0.23]), p<.001. There was no

significant difference between 1;6 and 2;0 (M=0.02, 95% CI [-0.03, 0.07]), p=.557.
CHAPTER 5 160

Thus, mothers’ speech rate did not significantly change as children aged from 1;6 to

2;0, and significantly increased between 2;0 and 2;6.

A more detailed analysis of speech rate in syllables per second was performed

on a subset of 682 utterances in which word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/ deletion

occurred. These are referred to here as deletion utterances (deletion occurred) and non-

deletion utterances (containing word-initial /h/ or word-final /v/ contexts but with no

deletion occurring). Overall there was little difference in mean speech rates between

utterances containing deletion and no deletion, M = 3.26 and 3.06 syllables per second

respectively. An independent samples t-test confirmed that the difference was not

significant, t(681) = -1.354, p = .176.

In this subset of utterances, mean speech rate increased slightly at each

timepoint (child age 1;6 M = 2.88, child age 2;0 M = 3.11 child age 2;6 M = 3.43). A

one-way ANOVA showed a significant difference between child age for adults’ speech

rate, F(2, 680) = 9.58, p<.001, adjusted R2 = 0.025, indicating child age contributed to

only 2.5% of the variance in speech rate. A REGWQ post-hoc test indicated that speech

rate was significantly faster at child age 2;6 than at 1;6 (p<.001) and 2;0 (p = .031). The

difference between 1;6 and 2;0 was not significant (p = .156). Thus the results from the

more fine-grained analysis of the subset were the same as those found in the analysis of

speech rate in the whole sample: mothers’ speech rate did not significantly change as

children aged from 1;6 to 2;0, and got slightly faster between 2;0 and 2;6.

5.5 General Discussion

The present study is the first to examine phonetic variation in maternal speech in

a longitudinal corpus of Australian English. Two non-citation speech processes were

analysed in mothers’ speech when their children were aged 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6. Based on

the few studies that have investigated phonological variation in input to children after
CHAPTER 5 161

the first year of life, it was expected that variants containing consonant deletion would

become more frequent in mothers’ speech as their children got older. Overall findings

suggest that word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/ deletion are phonological processes in

Katherine English that occur across a set of lexical items. Mothers increase deletion as

children age from 1;6 to 2;0 and decrease deletion as children age from 2;0 to 2;6, and

these changes do not appear to be driven by speech rate. Results also showed

interspeaker variation: the inverted-v effect over time appeared in three of the four

speakers and was stronger in one of the speakers who displayed the pattern relative to

the other two. The effect is therefore a preliminary finding and will need to be

interpreted with caution.

The increase in the proportion of /h/ and /v/ deletion between child ages 1;6 and

2;0 is consistent with literature suggesting mothers use more non-citation speech

processes and correspondingly fewer standard phonetic variants as children get older.

There was, however, an unexpected decrease in both /h/ and /v/ deletion in mothers’

speech between 2;0 and 2;6, although the results for /v/ deletion were not statistically

significant at either interval. Previous research suggests that phonetic variation in

speech input to children exposes them to socioindexical variation, and change over time

is due to mothers’ gradually shifting their speech style to become more like interadult

speech (Foulkes et al., 2005). While this may explain the current finding of an increase

in deletion between 1;6 and 2;0, the question remains of why did deletion

proportionately decrease in maternal speech between 2;0 and 2;6? The current findings

suggest that mothers change their speech style as children get older, using more non-

citation speech processes between 1;6 and 2;0 and then shifting back to using fewer

processes at 2;6. Before interpreting these results in reference to mothers’ style-shifting,

CHAPTER 5 162

however, it was important to consider whether changes in deletion over time were due

to changing lexical distributions in the corpus, or were a function of speech rate.

When we examined the distribution of /h/ and /v/ deletion across lexical items

we found that deletion occurred in the same set of words at each timepoint, and that

most of these words displayed the inverted-v pattern of deletion over time. The results

provide evidence that /h/ and /v/ deletion are phonological processes occurring in a set

of words, or one particular item (have) in the case of /v/ deletion, and not simply due to

changing distributions of words with word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/ contexts.

Interestingly this analysis also showed that deletion was most frequent in

function words rather than content words, and that the significant changes in /h/ deletion

over child age were due to changes in function words. This is consistent with the

literature on phonological differences in content and function words in English. At the

prosodic level function words are frequently unstressed and at the segmental level they

are likely to be realised with weak vowels, usually schwa (Cutler, 1993). The current

study suggests that in addition to vowel reduction, function words contain high

variation in consonants, relative to content words. Function words also have a high

token frequency relative to content words in English, in both interadult and child-

directed speech (see Shi et al. [2006] for calculations of type-token ratios in function

and content words in corpora from CHILDES [MacWhinney, 2000]).

According to exemplar-based models it is possible that children may have more

robust information about high frequency words in long-term memory, as a greater

number of perceived tokens may result in a child having more distributional information

about the word. It is, however, not known whether the frequency of tokens in the input

is proportionately represented in the exemplar store. Phonological information in high

frequency words in the input may in fact be less likely to be perceived and thus
CHAPTER 5 163

represented in memory because they are more phonetically reduced more often and

contain fewer phonological cues than low frequency words (Cutler, 1993; Monaghan et

al., 2005). Low frequency words might also have an advantage in novelty and saliency

of new information.17 It would be interesting for future studies to examine

longitudinally children’s perceptions and use of phonological cues in high and low

frequency items to investigate any relationship with the current finding of variation in

the input at different child ages.

We tested another alternative explanation for change in deletion in maternal

speech over time by analysing the mean speech rate of each speaker at each time point.

It is well-known that speech rate is related to segmental deletion, with deletion more

likely in faster speech (e.g. Koreman, 2006). It is therefore possible that the inverted-v

pattern of deletion found in the current study was a result of mothers using faster speech

at child age 2;0 than at 1;6 or 2;6. Speech rate may also play a subtler role as a

component of style. Both high speech rate and segmental deletion are features of

hypoarticulation, or non-citation speech, where reduction is the result of a trade-off

between production ease for the speaker and perception ease for the listener (Lindblom,

1990). If change in speech rate was accounting for the change in deletion found in the

current study then we expected speech rate would display a similar inverted-v pattern

over the three timepoints. Instead we found that overall speech rate did not significantly

differ between1;6 and 2;0 and increased between 2;0 and 2;6, although the latter effect

was small at less than half a syllable per second difference. Further, there was no

significant difference in speech rate between utterances containing /h/ and /v/ deletion

and utterances where /h/ and /v/ were fully realised. These findings indicate changes in

deletion over time were not due to changes in speech rate, as deletion and speech rate

17
We thank an anonymous reviewer for raising these issues for us.
CHAPTER 5 164

both displayed different patterns of change over the three timepoints. The lack of

difference in speech rate between utterances with and without /h/ and /v/ deletion

provided further evidence that in this sample deletion is not, or at least not primarily,

driven by speech rate changes.

It appears that the change in deletion over time found in this study was not an

artefact of changing distributions of lexical items, nor could it be accounted for by

mothers’ speech rate. We thus return to the possibility that rates of /h/ and /v/ deletion in

maternal speech change with the age of the child. There are at least two plausible

explanations for this: 1) that mothers are modelling forms differentially as children age,

and 2) that deletion rates vary with types of speech acts (e.g. questions, recasts, and

repetitions, which could be frequent as children become more verbal) and social

interactions (e.g. play, teaching, behaviour management) and the distributions of these

shift with child age. Note that these are not mutually exclusive explanations and both

may be components of fine-tuning – mothers (consciously or not) adjust phonetic

variation over time as children develop knowledge of the phonology of their home

language as well as across the different speech acts and social contexts in which

variation is used. Because there is so little previous research on sociolinguistic markers

in regional Australian English, it is not clear whether /h/ and /v/ deletion contain

socioindexical information beyond being non-citation speech processes, and further

research on this is needed to draw any strong conclusions on the indexical information

children may acquire from being exposed to this variation.

Recent studies on phonetic variation in caregiver speech examined different

indexical variables to those in the current study. They found a slow linear increase in

mothers’ use of non-standard variants over time as their speech gradually became more

like interadult speech (Foulkes et al., 2005; Smith et al., 2009). However, the mixed
CHAPTER 5 165

findings in older studies on clarification and reduction processes in child-directed

speech did suggest that the different findings may be due to the different ages of the

children in the studies (Cruttenden, 1994). Vowel clarification was found mostly in

speech to children who were pre-linguistic or producing single words (Bernstein-Ratner

1984a), while speech to older children was found to contain more consonant reduction

and unintelligible segments than speech to adults (Bard & Anderson, 1983; Shockey &

Bond, 1980). The non-linear change over time found in the present study is consistent

with Cruttenden’s (1994) argument that the apparent mixed findings of these early

studies may be explained by the different functions of child-directed speech at different

ages. The current finding of an inverted-v pattern in deletion may indicate that mothers

follow clarification modifications with a period of reduction modifications as children

start producing multi-word utterances (by around 2 years of age), and then revert to

clarification (by 2;6). Further research is needed to investigate whether the current

finding of the inverted-v pattern over time is specific to the phonological processes of

/h/ and /v/ deletion or whether it is also found in other phonological variables in speech

to children ages 1;6 to 2;6.

If phonetic variability in speech to children serves different functions at different

times then we might expect mothers to fine-tune differentially as their child’s language

develops. Mothers’ use of more standard clarified forms may be particularly important

when frequency distributions of exemplars are relatively newly formed in children’s

memories, and use of deleted or reduced forms may be more important when children

are learning the alternate phonetic forms common in non-citation interadult speech and

the socioindexical associations. Full standard forms may then become important again

as children start producing multi-word utterances and mothers become aware of their

child’s pronunciation. This may explain the decrease in deletion after 2;0, as this is
CHAPTER 5 166

when most of the children start producing multi-word utterances and could indicate that

mothers are starting to fine-tune to children’s productive language.

Another possibility is that mothers’ use of phonetic variation is related to types

of speech acts and social interactions, and that there was less deletion in more formal

contexts. Previous research has found relationships between mothers’ use of

sociolinguistic markers and speech style, with standard phonetic variants more frequent

in formal contexts and the local vernacular variants more frequent in informal contexts

(Smith et al., 2007). It would be of interest to do further research with the current corpus

to investigate whether /h/ and /v/ deletion is related to speech style, interaction contexts

and sentence types, and whether the distributions of these change in mothers’ speech as

children get older.

The results of this study reveal a non-linear change in deletion in maternal

speech over time; further research is needed to understand why mothers make

differential segmental modifications as their children age. The current study is limited

by the relatively small number of participants, and studies with more speakers are

needed in order to understand the nature and extent of individual differences in

phonological variation. These findings open several avenues for further investigation.

For example future studies could examine the phonological modifications mothers make

when they are specifically modelling speech for children, such as through repetition and

explicit teaching which may involve hyperarticulation, and how this changes as children

progress from producing single-word to multi-word utterances. Further research could

also investigate the relationship between deletion and speech rate in maternal speech, as

the current finding that speech rate increases as deletion decreases between 2;0 and 2;6

in mothers’ speech was unexpected. In particular it would be useful to have more

timepoints to examine how speech rate and deletion change over time and whether
CHAPTER 5 167

deletion ‘catches up’ to speech rate, or vice-versa, in relation to children’s productions.

Further timepoints and more speakers are also needed in order to understand

interspeaker variation and whether there are different trajectories of phonological

modifications in maternal speech over time, and again how these may relate to the

child’s language development. Further investigation of children’s productions over time

is needed to test different theoretical explanations for the pattern of adult speech found

here. Experimental investigation of children’s receptive knowledge of phonetic

variation at different ages would also be relevant to help elucidate how their

phonological representations are shaped by phonetic variation in the input.





CHAPTER SIX

Investigating Native Speaker Judgements of

Phonetic Variation in Gurindji Kriol Using Visual
Analogue Scales
CHAPTER 6 170

6.1 Abstract

Phonetic transcription is primarily a perceptual task and can be subject to

perceptual biases. Native speakers bring implicit linguistic knowledge that can be useful

for understanding the sound system of the language, and for checking the reliability of

phonetic transcription. In field linguistics, however, it is often not feasible to train

native speakers to the technical level required for IPA transcription. In this study we

investigated the use of Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) for eliciting perceptual

judgements on phones from native speakers of Gurindji Kriol, an Australian Aboriginal

contact language variety.

Recordings of conversational Gurindji Kriol made by Meakins (2011) for the

ACLA-1 project were phonetically transcribed by non-native speaking transcribers.

Tokens for this study were selected from words that potentially contained a fricative or

affricate across a range of places of articulation in initial, medial and final word

positions. Tokens were selected where the non-native transcribers had both agreed on

the target segment and disagreed and/or marked the target segment as ambiguous. 73

visual analogue scales were constructed in total for the target segments in each token.

Community research assistants (RAs) who were native speakers of Gurindji Kriol

participated in phonological awareness training and completed the VAS task.

RA responses on the scales were compared to the non-native transcriber IPA

transcriptions for each token. Results showed both agreements and discrepancies

between RAs and transcribers on different judgements in each word position. These

findings provided possible explanations for ambiguities in the phonetic transcription

and suggest several hypotheses for further research on phonetic variation in Gurindji

Kriol.
CHAPTER 6 171

6.2 Introduction

Phonetic transcription is a useful tool clinically and in the field, however it does

have limitations, particularly when the transcribers are non-native speakers of the

language being analysed. Native speakers have implicit linguistic knowledge that is

beneficial to analyses and interpretation of phonetic variation in the language, but often

in field linguistics it is not practical to train speakers in IPA to the level required to

contribute to the phonetic transcriptions. IPA transcription also requires categorical

judgements of speech sounds, which may limit our understanding of phonetic variation

that is potentially continuous. The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper

understanding of phonetic variation in a language that is an L2 for the analysts by

eliciting native speaker judgements of phonetic variability using a continuous scale.

Visual analogue scales have been used in previous studies to elicit continuous

perceptual judgements on speech segments for the purpose of examining fine phonetic

detail. For example this method has been used to investigate adults’ sensitivity to

within-category variation in stops and fricatives (Skorniakova & Ito, 2011) and stop

voicing contrasts (Kong & Edwards, 2011), as well as adult perceptions of covert

contrasts and phonetic accuracy in children’s speech (Julien, Munson & Edwards, 2012;

Munson, Edwards, Schellinger, Beckman & Meyer, 2010; Schellinger, 2008; Urberg-

Carlson, Munson & Kaiser, 2009). In the current study we explore the use of visual

analogue scales in fieldwork to obtain native speaker judgements of speech segments in

Gurindji Kriol, a phonetically and phonologically underdescribed mixed language

spoken by Gurindji people in northern Australia. The purpose of eliciting native speaker

perceptions was to add information to our phonetic transcription in order to gain a

deeper understanding of phonetic variation in adult conversational speech.

CHAPTER 6 172

The current research is part of a larger investigation of the phonology of

maternal speech in Gurindji Kriol. Gurindji Kriol is the everyday language of

traditionally Gurindji speaking communities in the Northern Territory, Australia, and an

overarching aim of the project is to examine phonetic variation in the input that Gurindji

children are exposed to. One particular kind of variation we are investigating is in

fricatives, which contain variability in voicing, manner and place of articulation. The

data for the larger project came from an existing longitudinal corpus of conversational

Gurindji Kriol maternal speech (Meakins, 2011, pp. 45-47), to which we added phonetic

transcription and analysis. Phonetic transcription was conducted by native Australian

English speaking linguists because it was not practical to train native speakers of

Gurindji Kriol to the technical level required for IPA transcription. Consideration of

native speaker phonological judgements was an important part of our methodology and

theoretical understanding of variation in Gurindji Kriol, and this formed the basis of the

present study.

The background section is structured as follows. First we discuss previous

studies that have used visual analogue scales to measure perception of speech sounds.

We then consider some limitations of phonetic transcription and potential biases,

including transcriber language background. We finish up this section with more detail

about the current applied context and the rationale for examining fricative variation in

Gurindji Kriol.

6.3 Background

6.3.1 Measuring Speech with Visual Analogue Scales

Eliciting perceptual judgements using visual analogue scales involves asking

listeners to indicate their perception of a speech stimulus on a horizontal line with two

different sounds at the endpoints. Differentiation of the endpoint sounds depends on the
CHAPTER 6 173

process being investigated; for example the endpoints can differ acoustically within a

phonological category to test listener sensitivity to within-category detail (e.g. Kong &

Edwards, 2011; Skorniakova & Ito, 2011), or they can represent different phonological

categories to test continuous variation between segments or intermediate productions

(e.g. Munson et al., 2010).

The visual analogue scale is useful as a methodological tool because it is

appropriate to use with naïve listeners. Recent research on children’s speech

productions found it to be an effective way to measure naïve listeners’ perceptions

along a continuous scale. Urberg-Carlson et al. (2008) found that adult listener ratings

of children’s productions using visual analogue scales were generally well correlated

with acoustic measures, and Munson et al. (2010) found naïve listeners reliably

distinguished between correct and intermediate productions and between correct

productions and substitutions by responding on the scales for /s/-/θ/ and /d/-/ɡ/ contrasts.

It is important to note that phonetic training and experience is still advantageous to the

transcription process. A recent study found that experienced speech-language

pathologists had greater reliability and sensitivity to acoustic properties of segments

than naïve listeners in their visual analogue scale judgements of children’s productions

(Munson et al., 2012).

Visual analogue scale responses are reliable measures of perceptions of gradient

voicing changes. Kong and Edwards (2011) used visual analogue scales and eye-

tracking to examine changes to stop consonant voicing, and found that adult listeners

were sensitive to gradient changes in VOT and fundamental frequency in stop

consonants (Kong & Edwards, 2011). Within-category variation in stop consonant

voicing has also been analysed using the scales in a goodness-rating task, which found

listeners made intermediate judgements of stop and fricative VOT contrasts when
CHAPTER 6 174

stimuli were acoustically intermediate, though overall fricatives were perceived more

continuously than stops (Skorniakova & Ito, 2011).

Visual analogue scales were used in the current study for two main reasons: first,

they allow for continuous judgements of speech sounds, which may provide further

insight into variation of fricatives in Gurindji Kriol; second, they are effective in

eliciting judgements of speech sounds from naïve listeners who do not necessarily have

high literacy or technical knowledge of IPA transcription. Using visual analogue scales

with native speakers may add another dimension of information to that gained through

phonetic transcription and analysis.

6.3.2 Limitations of Phonetic Transcription

Phonetic transcriptions are records of a transcriber’s perception of auditory

events and involves the transcriber identifying speech segments and assigning each

perceived phone a category using IPA notation. It has long been recognised that there

are many different factors that can compromise validity and reliability in phonetic

transcription. Early studies in the field have shown that validity can be affected by the

transcriber’s language background and transcribing experience, as both of these

influence perceptual expectation effects (Oller & Eilers, 1975). The effect is not

necessarily negative – Oller and Eilers (1975) found that transcription accuracy was

generally improved when the transcriber knew the ‘correct’ meaning of the utterances

and suggested that knowing the target form (i.e. what to expect perceptually) may help

transcribers to direct their attention to relevant phonetic features.

By the very nature of phonetic transcription IPA judgements are categorical,

although fine phonetic detail can be represented in IPA with the use of diacritics. If

variation in production is potentially continuous, for example as voicing (Jones &

Meakins, 2012a) and possibly stop-fricative continuancy variation may be in Gurindji

CHAPTER 6 175

Kriol, then transcribing using IPA categories could be somewhat artificial. The potential

artificiality of transcription underlies some of the issues in discrepancies between

multiple transcribers. Reasons for transcription discrepancies include systematic

perceptual differences and ambiguous productions, which may be influenced by the

transcriber’s background. Transcription discrepancies thus raise the question of whether

disagreements are due to errors or whether the segment is an intermediate production

and influenced by the transcriber’s own expectations and phonological categories, in

turn leading to the question of whether native speakers categorise these segments more

reliably (Edwards & Beckman, 2008).

Reliability in phonetic transcription refers to the consistency with which IPA

categories are applied, both within and between transcribers. It is commonly measured

by checking agreement between multiple blind transcriptions. In a review study of

phonetic transcription reliability, Shriberg and Lof (1991) analysed phonetic

transcriptions of five teams of trained transcribers and described a heuristic of four main

sources of variance that can be addressed to improve reliability: 1) Participants factors,

or characteristics of the speaker. These include the amount and type of speech errors

made (Kearns & Simmons, 1988), intelligibility (Shriberg & Lof, 1991), and canonicity

of speech sounds (Ramsdell et al., 2007). 2) Analysis factors, such as the level of detail

in the transcript, specific agreement criteria and type of agreement (Cucchiarini, 1996;

Shriberg & Lof, 1991). 3) Linguistic contexts, including structural, grammatical and

stress forms (Shriberg & Lof, 1991), stylistic factors (Goddijn & Binnenpoorte, 2003),

and immediate phonetic environment and word-position (Hardison, 2003). 4) Phonetic

and phonological units such as class, features, sounds and diacritics (Shriberg & Lof,

1991).
CHAPTER 6 176

Although there are a range of potentially interacting factors that can affect

reliability and validity, phonetic transcription remains a useful tool clinically and in the

field. Reliability can be tested by assessing intertranscriber agreement, where a second

person transcribes a portion of the recording and the percentage of segments agreed on

is calculated. Cucchiarini (1996) points out that this approach assumes that all

disagreements are equal, i.e. a disagreement based on one feature is treated the same as

a disagreement based on several features. Another concern is with how disagreements

are treated – whether they are excluded or discussed among transcribers to reach a

consensus, or whether they represent informative systematic differences (Edwards &

Beckman, 2008). In addition, high reliability does not indicate high validity. Even if

transcribing blind, that is without knowledge of each other’s transcriptions, multiple

transcribers may be subject to the same perceptual biases, resulting in a transcription

that has high intertranscriber reliability but that is not necessarily an accurate

representation of the speech data.

6.3.3 Language Background Affects Phonetic Transcription

Phonetic transcription reflects the transcriber’s perception of auditory events and

involves the transcriber identifying categorical speech segments. Variation in speech

production, however, is gradient and categorical perceptual judgements depend to some

extent on the listener’s own language-specific phonological categories (e.g. Coussé et

al., 2004; Hardison, 2003; Strange & Jenkins, 1978). Native speaker transcriptions are

therefore considered valid, as phones are judged using the phonological categories of

the speech community (Edwards & Beckman, 2008). Where phonological contrasts of a

language are undetermined, as is often the case with underdocumented languages,

phonetic transcription may be somewhat artificial and cannot necessarily be interpreted

in terms of native speaker phonological categories.

CHAPTER 6 177

Factors that influence auditory perception can influence categorical perception

of speech segments and thus also phonetic transcription, for example linguistic context

(Hardison, 2003), sentence context (Warren & Warren, 1970), and listener expectations

(Oller & Eilers, 1975; Ralston & Johnson, 1990). The listener’s phonological categories,

determined by his or her language background, also influence these factors, so language

background potentially has both direct and indirect biases on phonetic transcription.

Indeed, research shows that a transcriber’s own language background and

experience can affect phonetic transcription (Coussé et al., 2004), and that it takes

training and practice to become sensitive to non-native contrasts (Pollock & Hinton,

2001). For example, Pruitt et al. (2006) compared native American English speakers’

and native Japanese speakers’ perceptions of dental and retroflex stop consonants in

Hindi. These sounds do not phonemically contrast in either language; however Japanese

has a similar contrast between /d/ and flapped /r/, which is sometimes produced as a

retroflex. it was found that Japanese speakers identified the Hindi contrast more

accurately than American English speakers (Pruitt et al., 2006). These findings suggest

that distinguishing non-native contrasts may be easier when the categories are

comparable to those in the listener’s native language.

The effect of language background can also be seen by analysing inter-

transcriber agreement for phonetic transcription of native and non-native speech.

Ramsdell et al. (2007) compared phonetic transcription agreement of infant

vocalisations across eight transcribers who were native American English speakers.

Agreement was significantly higher (r=0.64) for sounds found in American English

(including allophones) than for sounds outside the phonetic range of American English

(r=0.44). Thus reliability was lower for transcriptions of non-native than native

segments, demonstrating the effect of phonetic familiarity on transcription reliability.

CHAPTER 6 178

Language background can also affect transcription through lexical expectation effects,

as knowing the target word causes the listener to perceive the phonetic features they

expect to hear, even in some contexts where those features are not acoustically present

(Louko & Edwards, 2001; Oller & Eilers, 1975).

In summary, although phonetic transcription in IPA is useful for many purposes,

it does have limitations and should be supplemented with other types of analysis where

possible. Visual analogue scales have been used in the child language literature to gain

further understanding of continuous variation in child speech and adult sensitivity to

covert contrasts. In the current study we tested whether visual analogue scales could be

used to record native speaker judgements of fricatives in Gurindji Kriol, and examined

how these data could further our analyses and interpretation of our phonetic

transcription data.

6.3.4 Current Applied Context

The current study is part of a larger research project on maternal speech in

Gurindji Kriol, a mixed language spoken by Australian Aboriginal people in Kalkaringi

and Daguragu communities in northern Australia. Gurindji Kriol is a relatively new

language, emerging in the 1970s from code-switching (McConvell & Meakins, 2005).

Gurindji Kriol speakers are fluent and literate in varying degrees in English, which is

the language of the local school and administration in the community. Many speakers

are also fluent in Kriol and other Aboriginal languages spoken in the region.

Gurindji Kriol combines lexical items and grammatical structures of Gurindji,

which is a traditional Australian Aboriginal language, and Kriol, which is an English-

lexifier creole spoken across northern Australia. Lexically, 36.6% of vocabulary in

Gurindji Kriol is derived from Kriol, 35% from Gurindji, and the remaining 28.4% are
CHAPTER 6 179

synonymous forms from both languages (Meakins, 2011, p.19)18. There are both

similarities and differences in sounds compared to Australian English, which is the

researchers’ language background. The phonology of Gurindji is similar to many

traditional Australian languages, in that the consonant system contains many contrasting

places of articulation and relatively few contrasting manners (Butcher, 2006). For

example there are palatal and retroflex places of articulation for stops, but no contrast

between stops and fricatives. There also does not appear to be evidence of a voicing

contrast in Gurindji Kriol stops (Jones & Meakins, 2012a). Traditional Gurindji does

not contain phonemic fricatives, although stops may be realised as fricatives in some

contexts due to lenition processes. In Gurindji Kriol fricatives are highly variable in

Kriol-derived words, both within fricatives (voicing and place of articulation variation)

and with stops. In Kriol-derived words most fricatives are labio-dental and alveolar, and

occur in word-initial position, followed by medial with proportionately fewest in word-

final position (Buchan et al. in preparation). These observations are consistent with the

consonant inventory of Gurindji Kriol proposed in Jones and Meakins (2012a), adapted

from Meakins (in press) and shown in Table 6.1.

18
This count is based on a 200 word Swadesh list.
CHAPTER 6 180

Table 6.1

Proposed Gurindji Kriol consonant inventory (Jones & Meakins, 2012b; Meakins, in

press)

Bilabial Apical Apical Alveo- Velar

alveolar post- palatal
alveolar
Stop p t ʈ ɟ k

Fricative f s ʃ

Nasal m n ɳ ɲ ŋ

Lateral l ɭ ʎ

Rhotic r ɹ ɻ

Glide j w

The phonetic transcribers of the data in this study are native Australian

English speakers with varying degrees of first-hand experience with Gurindji Kriol. In

the current study one transcriber (the first author) has visited the community several

times, and the second transcriber was not familiar with Gurindji Kriol before starting

transcription. We refer to these transcribers here as ‘non-native transcribers’. The

community Research Assistants employed to work on the project are native Gurindji

Kriol speakers and are also fluent English speakers. The community RAs do not have

technical expertise in IPA transcription and their phonological awareness is likely to be

variable but relatively low at the phoneme level, that is, the ability to segment phones in

words. The specific focus for this study is on the transcription of fricatives in maternal

Gurindji Kriol.
CHAPTER 6 181

The aim of the current study was to investigate native speaker perceptions of

fricatives in conversational Gurindji Kriol maternal speech by eliciting native speaker

judgements on continuous visual analogue scales. Research questions were:

• Methodologically, how can we use visual analogue scales in the field

to record native speaker perceptions of fricatives in Gurindji Kriol?

• How do native speaker judgements relate to non-native transcriber

categorical judgements, and do they differ depending on word position

and type of judgement?

6.4 Method

6.4.1 Non-Native Speaker IPA Transcriptions

The corpus. The recordings were from a longitudinal corpus of conversational

maternal Gurindji Kriol made by Meakins (2003-2007) for the Aboriginal Child

Language Acquisition (ACLA-1) project (Meakins, 2011, pp. 45-47). For the current

project a subset of the Meakins corpus was selected. These were recordings of three

mothers, SS, AR and CE, at three time-points when their children were aged around 1;6,

2;0 and 2;6.

Non-native transcribers. Phonetic transcriptions were made by the first author

and a Research Assistant who has formal training in phonetic transcription. Both

transcribers are native Australian English speakers. The first author has had direct

experience with Gurindji Kriol.

Procedure. First, orthographic transcripts made by Meakins were imported into

the phonetic transcription and analysis program Phon (Rose, Hedlund, Byrne, Wareham

& MacWhinney, 2007). Phon was used to search the orthography of all transcripts for

words that may be pronounced with a fricative in Gurindji Kriol, that is Kriol words that

have a fricative in the English cognate word. The orthographic transcription of Gurindji
CHAPTER 6 182

Kriol is not phonetic. The orthography was developed over a long period of time in

close consultation with community members. It uses English letters and does not have

one-to-one correspondence with Gurindji Kriol phonology. Thus the orthography was

searched by the authors, who had prior knowledge of Kriol words and their English

meanings, rather than searching for letters or letter combinations in the orthographic

transcription. All tokens of these words were transcribed phonetically by the first

author and the Research Assistant. These transcriptions were used to select the tokens

and judgements for the visual analogue scales.

6.4.2 Visual Analogue Scale Development

Token selection. A sample of transcribed tokens was selected for checking with

Gurindji Kriol native speakers. The sample comprised tokens that contained the target

segment (fricative or potential fricative) at four places of articulation (labial, dental,

alveolar, palato-alveolar) in each word position (initial, medial, final). Also included

were word-initial and word-medial affricates, and word-initial /h/. Two tokens in each

of these conditions were randomly selected for each of the three speakers: one where

the two initial non-native transcribers agreed on the phonetic transcription, and one

where there was a discrepancy. The tokens selected for checking were rated for

difficulty on a scale of 1 (easy) to 3 (hard). Some positional segments are rarer than

others and were not found for some speakers, for example word-final th. In total 73

tokens were selected to validate with native speakers.

Judgements. Generally, uncertainties and discrepancies in the phonetic

transcription involved ambiguity between two sound categories, for example [v] and [b].

Visual Analogue Scales were set up so that native speakers could judge where the target

segment lies on a continuum between two sound categories. A scale was created for

each target segment of the 73 tokens with each one having two sound categories as
CHAPTER 6 183

anchors, one at each extreme of the scale. For the tokens where the two non-native

transcribers disagreed on the phonetic transcription of the target segment these anchors

were the IPA transcriptions of each on-native transcriber. For example, for a token of

the word binij 'that's it! <finish' one non-native transcriber phonetically transcribed the

word-final consonant as the palatal stop [c] while the other transcribed the same

segment as the palato-alveolar fricative [ʃ]. This case was a stop-fricative judgement

type where the anchors on the Visual Analogue Scale were [c] and [ʃ]. Where the non-

native transcribers agreed on the transcription, the alternative anchor was based on the

sound in the English cognate or the nearest sound to that transcribed, selected by one of

the non-native transcribers. Listeners also had the option of saying that the token

represented another sound (i.e. not one of the anchors). The judgement types created for

the 73 tokens are described in Table 6.2.

Table 6.2

Number of each type of judgements in the Visual Analogue Scales (N = 73)

judgement type example n

stop – fricative [c] – [ʃ] 32

voiced – not voiced [z] – [s] 17

affricate – stop [dʒ] – [ɟ] 12

affricate – fricative [tʃ] – [ʃ] 2

other [ð] – [z] 10

Table 6.2 shows that the largest number of judgements were stop – fricative,

followed by fricative voicing judgements. Included in the ‘other’ category were place of

articulation judgements, sound pairings that differed by more than one feature (e.g. [ʃ] –
CHAPTER 6 184

[ɟ]), and the word-initial [h] judgements. With the latter the judgement was whether [h]

was present or not; in these scales the alternative anchor to [h] was the first vowel sound

in the corresponding token. The positioning of each type of sound on either the left or

the right of the scale was counter-balanced to avoid any right-side bias. For example in

the twelve affricate-stop judgements the affricate appeared six times on the left of the

scale and six times on the right. The specific judgements and frequencies for each

judgement type are shown in Table 6.3 for word-initial sounds, Table 6.4 for word-

medial and Table 6.5 for word-final. See Figures 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4 for the lexical items

associated with each judgement.

Table 6.3

Word-initial judgement type frequencies

affricate-
stop-fricative voicing affricate-stop other
fricative

judgement n judgement n judgement n judgement n judgement n

b–v 2 f–v 4 c – tʃ 1 tʃ – s 1 θ–s 1

c–s 1 θ–ð 1 ɟ – dʒ 5 ʃ – dʒ 1 h–Ø 6

d–ð 2 z–s 2

ʃ–c 2

ʃ–ɟ 1

t–s 1

θ–c 1

θ–t 1

Total 11 7 6 2 7
CHAPTER 6 185

Table 6.4

Word-medial judgement type frequencies

stop-fricative voicing affricate-stop other

judgement n judgement n judgement n judgement n

ɟ–ʒ 1 z–s 3 dʒ – ɟ 6 z–ɟ 1

ɟ–ð 2 ʃ–s 2

d–ð 1

ʃ–ɟ 2

v–b 5

Total 12 3 6 3

Table 6.5

Word-final judgement type frequencies

stop-fricative voicing

judgement n judgement n

b–v 1 f–v 2

c–ʃ 5 z–s 5

ɟ–ʃ 1

d–ð 1

f–p 2

Total 10 7
CHAPTER 6 186

Scale order. First, tokens were grouped into three blocks by word position.

Tokens with the target segment in word-initial position appeared first, as word-initial

sounds were easier for RAs to isolate. The second block contained word-final target

segments, and the third word-medial. Within each block the scales were ordered so that

the same sound pairings were together. Within pairings they were then ordered by the

difficulty ratings that were assigned during token selection.

Scale construction. The scales were constructed in PowerPoint. Audio tokens

of each IPA target phone were downloaded from the UCLA phonetics website

(Ladefoged, last accessed 12/12/2011) and embedded into the PowerPoint slides as

anchors. Each of the 73 scales were on separate slides. Each sound was also associated

with a colour, as in the phonological awareness training Research Assistants were

trained to isolate sounds in words by identifying each sound with a colour. Using

colours in combination with the audio files also helped the researcher avoid both

spelling the sounds and producing the sounds in her Australian English accent. Sounds

could instead be referred to by the associated colour, e.g. [b] was ‘the yellow sound’,

and kept constant between presentations. Colours were displayed as a gradient to

represent the potential continuum between sound categories. Each scale had a light 7-

point graph-type background to assist coding and analysis of responses. An example

scale is shown in Figure 6.1. The anchors on this scale were [b] (yellow) and [v] (red).

The audio files for these sounds were played by clicking on the speaker symbols.
CHAPTER 6 187

Figure 6.1. Example Visual Analogue Scale for [b] and [v]

6.4.3 Phonological Awareness Training

Research Assistants. Three women in the community participated in

phonological awareness training. The women were recommended by traditional owners

and the community project liaison, and were paid as research assistants. Two of the

Research Assistants, Kirsty and Trisha, were young women (age 20 and 22 years

respectively) and the third, Rosemary, was an older woman who works as an interpreter

in the community. Rosemary had taken several interpreter training courses and has

higher literacy than the other two women.

Materials. A set of 108 picture cards measuring 3”x4” were used as stimuli. The

set contained commonly used words and most had Gurindji counterparts. English words

for the pictures contained CVC minimal pairs, words with consonant digraphs, words

with consonant clusters, words with vowel digraphs, and multisyllabic words. Other
CHAPTER 6 188

materials used were a set of small coloured blocks. There were about one hundred

blocks in total of five different colours that were used to represent segments in words.

Procedure. Training was conducted over two sessions, each three to four hours

in length. Session 1 consisted of an introductory discussion about sounds in speech,

syllable segmentation, sound isolation, and sound matching tasks. In Session 2 the

sound isolation tasks were extended using coloured blocks to represent different sounds

in words. For example bag was represented as red-green-yellow and bat as red-green-

blue. Using minimal CVC pairs this task helped RAs to separate sounds from spelling

and to attend to and discriminate different sounds. Difficulty progressed from English

CVC words to words with consonant clusters and vowel diagraphs, and Gurindji words.

These tasks were precursors to the Visual Analogue Scale task, where sounds from

conversational recordings of Gurindji Kriol were represented using colours.

6.4.4 Scale Administration

Research Assistants. The visual analogue scale task was administered in a

separate trip following the one in which the phonological awareness training was

conducted. Three young Gurindji women were paid as RAs to do the task although they

did not undertake the training. Rosemary, the interpreter who participated in the training,

did not participate in the task. Thus in total five young women who were native

speakers of Gurindji Kriol participated in the visual analogue scale task. The women

who participated in the phonological awareness training assisted the women who did

not; although it is a limitation of the procedure that not everybody did the training.

Procedure. The PowerPoint slides were printed in colour and bound into

booklets, with one scale per page. The Research Assistants were given a booklet each

while the researcher had the PowerPoint version open on a laptop with external speakers.

Before each word position block, Research Assistants were reminded how to isolate
CHAPTER 6 189

sounds in that word position, as they were taught in the earlier phonological awareness

training. RAs who participated in the training helped the three who did not. For each

scale the audio files of the anchors were played. To parallel the IPA transcription

context, the utterance containing the corresponding token was then played after RAs

were told which word to listen for in the utterance. Anchors and utterances were played

as many times as needed. RAs were instructed to mark on the scale in their booklets

where they thought the target segment lay between the two sounds on the scale. They

were asked to tell the researcher if they thought the target segment was something

different to the two sounds in the scale, in which case the researcher noted the

alternative sound. RAs were also asked to say if they thought a scale was too hard or if

the target segment was unclear.

RAs did the task over several sessions in groups of two to five. Often there was

discussion among the group and some group decisions were made, however RAs also

made individual responses, which are apparent in between-RA response discrepancies.

Analysis. RA responses were measured from the 1-7 scale to two decimal places.

Box and whisker plots were made to display collated responses to each judgement type

in each word position. These were then overlaid with the scale anchors and the non-

native transcriber transcriptions to compare the RAs’ continuous responses on the scales

with the transcribers’ categorical IPA judgements.

6.5 Results

Data were split by word position and analysed separately for initial, medial and

final positions. Based on discussions during the visual analogue scale judgment sessions

with the RAs, mid-point responses are interpreted to mean that RAs perceived the sound

as midway between the two anchors; ‘other’ and ‘don’t know’ responses were recorded

separately. Figures 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4 were constructed to show the RA responses and the
CHAPTER 6 190

non-native speakers’ IPA transcriptions (henceforth ‘non-native transcriptions’). The

box and whisker plots in the figures represent the pooled RA responses to each

judgement pair, and the dots represent the categorical judgement of each sound as

transcribed in IPA by the non-native listeners. Green dots show that both non-native

listeners agreed on the transcription, and purple dots represent non-native transcriber

disagreement or ambiguity (i.e. one or both transcribers were uncertain).

6.5.1 Word-Initial

Word-initial judgements are shown in Figure 6.2. The first eight judgements

along the x-axis are the stop-fricative judgements, and the next three are voicing,

followed by four stop-affricate judgements, and then [h] present or absent and one

fricative place judgement. For the first two pairings, [b, v] and [c, s], there was close

agreement among RAs who all judged the sounds as stops, and disagreement between

RA judgements and the non-native transcriptions. The purple dots indicate there was

also disagreement between the two non-native transcribers on both of the fricative

transcriptions, [v] and [s] (baldan ‘fall’ and jeya ‘there’, respectively). For [d, ð] RA

judgements agreed with those of the non-native transcribers. For [c, ʃ] RAs tended to

agree with non-native transcribers on the palatal stop although their responses were

continuous, indicating that RAs did not judge the sound as being entirely like the stop

endpoint. RAs also gave continuous responses for the [ʃ, ɟ] sound. RAs responded

closer to the stop than the fricative as they also did for the initial sound in jouim; non-

native transcribers judged it as a fricative although also noted it as ambiguous.

The next judgement involved the [st, t] judgement. There was non-native

transcriber disagreement about whether the initial sound was [st] in the word top ‘be,

<stop’. RAs judged it as a stop with no fricative. For [θ, c] there was agreement

between RAs and non-native transcribers in favour of the stop. For [θ, t] in ting
CHAPTER 6 191

‘whatchamacallit, <thing’, again there was high agreement among RAs that it was a

fricative. Non-native transcribers instead perceived the sound as an ambiguous stop.

The next three word-initial judgements involve voicing distinctions. For the [f,

v] pairing RAs gave both categorical (indicated by the whiskers extending to the

endpoints) and continuous responses. In judging dental fricative voicing, [θ, ð], non-

native transcribers disagreed and RAs all gave mid-point responses. For [s, z] non-

native transcribers both judged the fricatives as voiceless, while RAs judged them as

voiced.

RAs perceived stops for the voiced stop-affricate judgements [ɟ, ʤ] with one

midpoint response, disagreeing with non-native transcribers who perceived the English-

based affricate. For the voiceless stop-affricate judgement [c, ʧ] in jinek ‘snake’, RAs

judged the sound as the palatal stop and there was disagreement between non-native

transcribers. There was general agreement between RAs and transcribers on the

fricative-affricate judgements [ʧ, s] and [ʃ, ʤ] that these sounds were affricates.

Word-initial [h] judgements involved six tokens: non-native transcribers

perceived [h] as present in three tokens and absent in the other three tokens. With one

endpoint as [hV] and one as the following vowel in the word with no [h], RAs all

responded strongly towards the [h] endpoint. The final word-initial judgement was [θ, s]

in a token of ‘three’, an English code-switch. While non-native transcribers perceived

[s], RAs judged the sound as [θ].

Overall word-initially, the RA responses on the visual analogue scales provided

insight on the transcriptions that were ambiguous and/or where non-native transcribers

disagreed. Where these sounds involved stop-fricative distinctions, the native speaking

RAs generally judged them as stops. For two of the three voicing pairings RAs tended

to give continuous responses. Judgements involving palatal stops and affricates were
CHAPTER 6 192

generally perceived as palatal stops by RAs, but as affricates by non-native transcribers.

Initial [s] was always judged as being present by the RAs while non-native transcribers

sometimes found it ambiguous. There were two judgements on word-initial sounds in

English code-switches, [z, s] circle and [θ, s] three, in which RAs disagreed with the

non-native transcribers. Both non-native transcribers agreed with each other on these

sounds.

6.5.2 Word-Medial

Figure 6.3 displays RA and non-native transcriber responses for word-medial

sounds arranged by judgement type. The first five pairings along the horizontal axis are

stop-fricative distinctions, the sixth is voicing followed by an affricate-stop pairing, and

the last two involve place differences in fricatives. Again the green dots indicate the

sound perceived by non-native transcribers when they were in agreement with each

other, and the purple dots where there was ambiguity or transcribers disagreed with

each other.

The first judgement shows there was a non-native transcriber disagreement as to

whether the sound was a palatal stop [ɟ] or palato-alveolar fricative [ʒ]. RAs judged the

sound as a palatal stop. The next pairing shows agreement that the sound was a stop

between RAs and both non-native transcribers on the [ɟ, ð] judgement. For the [d, ð]

pairing, non-native transcribers perceived one sound as fricative and the other as stop,

with transcribers disagreeing on the stop in the first consonant in ajasaid ‘other side’.

RAs judged these sounds as the fricative [ð] and between the fricative and the mid-point

of the scale. For the [ʃ, ɟ] pairing the average RA response was around the mid-point,

with some responses at either end, agreeing with non-native transcribers who also

judged these sounds in both categories. The [v, b] responses show that all four of the

sounds were perceived by non-native transcribers as the stop [b], but non-native
CHAPTER 6 193

transcribers disagreed on two of them, gibit ‘give’ and libim ‘leave’. RAs judged them

between the stop and the fricative with the mean response at the mid-point.

The voicing pairing [z, s] shows that non-native transcribers agreed that one

sound was voiced and the other was voiceless. RAs judged both sounds on the

continuous scale between the endpoints. For the affricate-palatal stop pairing, non-

native transcribers perceived three as [ɟ] and three as [ʤ], with some disagreement.

RAs judged most of these as closer to the palatal stop and one as the affricate, indicated

by the long whisker extending out to [ʤ]. The voiceless place judgement [ʃ, s] shows

that non-native transcribers perceived the sound as [ʃ] and had some disagreement. RAs

judged it between both sounds but closer to [s] than [ʃ]. The results for [z, ɟ] indicate

that non-native transcribers perceived an ambiguous palatal stop for the second

consonant in bijinbat ‘fish’, and RAs perceived a palatal stop.

Overall word-medially RAs generally agreed with the judgements of the non-

native transcribers. The main differences between RAs and non-native transcribers were

in the stop-fricative judgements [d, ð] and [b, v]. These sounds were transcribed by non-

native transcribers as stops, though for half of (1 out of 2 [d, ð] and 2 out 4 [b, v]) there

were disagreements among non-native transcribers between the stop and fricative. On

the continuous scale RAs judged some of these sounds toward the fricative. There was

also a difference between the non-native transcribers’ judgements and RAs’ judgements

for the place pairing [ʃ, s]. Non-native transcribers perceived the sound as [ʃ], but RAs

responded at the [s] endpoint and on the continuum between the two points.

6.5.3 Word-Final

The results for word-final sounds are shown in Figure 6.4. The first four pairings

involve stop-fricative judgements and the last two voicing. Sounds in the first

judgements, [b, v] in lub ‘love’, were perceived as an ambiguous stop by non-native

CHAPTER 6 194

listeners and RAs generally perceived a stop. The sounds in the [c, ʃ] judgements for the

final consonants in binij 'that's it!, <finish' were perceived as fricative by non-native

transcribers with some inter-transcriber disagreement. RAs judged these between the

fricative [ʃ] and the mid-point. For the [ɟ, ʃ] judgement RAs perceived a fricative, as the

non-native transcribers did. For the [f, p] judgements RAs perceived stops, as the non-

native transcribers did.

The next pairings involved voicing judgements. For sounds in [f, v] judgements

non-native transcribers perceived [v], and on the scale RAs made judgements between

the voiced and voiceless endpoints with a mean around the midpoint. For the [z, s]

pairing RAs judged the sounds between the two endpoints but generally closer to the

voiceless fricative [s]. The whisker extending out to [z] corresponds with the sound that

non-native transcribers also judged as [z].

Overall for the word-final sounds there was generally agreement between non-

native transcribers and RAs. The main discrepancy was for [f, v], which involved an

English code-switch five and a borrowing giraffe. While the final sound in these words

was perceived by non-native transcribers as the voiced fricative [v], there was inter-

transcriber disagreement for one token, five, which was an English code-switch, and

RAs responded along the full scale.







CHAPTER 6 198

6.6 Discussion

In this study native speakers of Gurindji Kriol used visual analogue scales to

make judgements of Gurindji Kriol sounds that had been transcribed phonetically as

fricatives or were ambiguous to transcribers. The phonetic transcriptions of Gurindji

Kriol were made by native Australian English speakers, one of them with direct

experience with Gurindji Kriol. To investigate the relationships between perceptions of

native speakers and nonnative transcribers on Gurindji Kriol segments, native speaker

judgements were then compared with the transcriber judgements in initial, medial and

final word positions. The transcribers are referred to here as ‘non-native transcribers’, as

they were not native speakers of Gurindji Kriol.

The aim was twofold: 1) to investigate how visual analogue scales can be used

in the field to elicit native speaker perceptions of sounds in a phonologically or

phonetically underdocumented language, and 2) to further our understanding of fricative

variation in Gurindji Kriol by analysing native speaker judgements across a range of

types of judgements and word positions. We found that the methodology used here was

successful at eliciting judgements of sounds from native speakers who had no technical

IPA training, with some limitations that could be addressed in future studies. From the

native speaker responses we gained further insight into transcription ambiguities. Word-

initially, ambiguities involving stop-fricative distinctions tended to be judged as stops

by native speakers, and ambiguities between palatal stops and palato-alveolar affricates

were in general judged as palatal stops by native speakers. Word-medial stop-fricative

ambiguities were often judged toward fricatives by native speakers when transcribers

had judged them as stops. In all word positions voicing judgements were often judged

along the continuous scale by native speakers. Results also indicated agreement
CHAPTER 6 199

between native speakers and non-native transcribers for many judgements, particularly

those in medial and final word positions.

Visual analogue scales have been used previously to measure adult perceptions

of covert contrast, accuracy, and ambiguous sounds in child speech (Julien & Munson,

2012; Munson et al., 2010; Schellinger, 2008; Uberg-Carlson et al., 2009), judgements

of disordered speech (Kempster et al., 2009), and to investigate perceptual sensitivity to

within-category phonetic detail in synthetic speech (Kong & Edwards, 2011;

Skorniakova & Ito, 2011). The previous research suggested visual analogue scales

would be beneficial in speech-language pathology contexts for measuring children’s

productions and in analysing speech of multilingual children (Edwards & Munson,

2012; Munson, Schellinger, Urberg-Carlson, 2012). The current study indicates visual

analogue scales can additionally be used in an adult L2 context for the purpose of

checking phonetic transcription of non-native transcribers (i.e. not native speakers of the

language being transcribed) with judgements of native speakers who have not been

trained in the technical aspects of transcription. The visual analogue scales enabled us to

elicit and analyse the implicit linguistic knowledge of native speakers, which provided

information about discrepancies and ambiguities in the phonetic transcriptions made by

non-native transcribers.

The current method may be particularly useful in contexts such as phonetically

underdocumented languages, where it is often impractical to train native speakers to the

technical level required for IPA transcription. Further, in a language like Gurindji Kriol

the sound system is highly variable and the sound categories of native speakers are

unknown. Using continuous scales for sound judgements therefore provided additional

information for interpreting the categorical IPA transcriber judgements, particularly

ambiguous transcriptions and inter-transcriber discrepancies.

CHAPTER 6 200

The two major advantages of the current design were its ease of use with the

native speaker RAs and that the visual analogue scales allowed for both continuous and

categorical judgements. That is, RAs could respond along the scale for a continuous

judgement or at the endpoints for categorical judgements. There were also some

limitations, however. In particular the endpoints on the scales and the time demands

required by this design should be carefully considered for future research. Here we will

discuss the study results and specific information that native speaker scale responses

provided about phonetic transcription and fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol. We then

consider the limitations of the current design, particularly the time demands in relation

to the extra information that was gained from carrying out this study.

6.6.1 Effects of Language Background

RAs were native speakers of Gurindji Kriol and were also bilingual in English.

Phonetic transcribers were native Australian English speakers who were trained in

phonetic transcription and had varying levels of experience with Gurindji Kriol – one

transcriber was not familiar with Gurindji Kriol prior to this study, the other (the first

author) had some experience listening to the language gained throughout the research.

Language background may have affected the results differentially for RAs and

transcribers, and different levels of familiarity with Gurindji Kriol could explain some

of the inter-transcriber discrepancies.

Language background may have directly affected the results if perceptual

judgements of Gurindji Kriol sounds were influenced by the listener’s L1 phonological

categories (Coussé et al., 2004; Hardison, 2003; Strange & Jenkins, 1978). Effects

would be seen in native speaker and transcriber judgements of sounds that occur in one

language and not in the other. The sounds in the current study that occur in Gurindji

Kriol and are not present in Australian English are the voiced and voiceless palatal stops,
CHAPTER 6 201

[ɟ ,c]. These sounds occur in traditional Gurindji words, and in Gurindji Kriol are also

pronounced in some Kriol-derived words in variation with fricatives, e.g. the initial

sound in jinek ‘snake’ is sometimes pronounced with a palatal stop [ɟ] and sometimes a

voiceless alveolar fricative [s]. When palatal stops are pronounced with frication they

sound very similar to the palato-alveolar affricates [ʧ, ʤ], and there were several inter-

transcriber discrepancies between palatal stops and affricates.

The results show that in initial and medial positions there were differences

between RAs and transcribers in judgements between palatal stops and affricates (there

were no palatal stop-affricate judgements for word-final sounds). In initial position

there were six sounds transcribed as the affricates [ʧ] or [ʤ], and the mean RA

response was a categorical palatal stop [c] or [ɟ]. There was one mid-point RA response

for a [ɟ, ʤ] judgement suggesting the Gurindji Kriol sound was perceived as in-

between the two endpoints, and this was in a token of jeya ‘there’ that transcribers had

disagreed on. Word-medially there were three [ʤ, ɟ] sounds transcribed as the palatal

stop and three as the affricate. Again the mean RA response was closer to the palatal

stop endpoint, although more of the scale was used than for the word-initial judgements

of this type. Overall these findings suggest it may be difficult to distinguish between

palatal stops and palato-alveolar affricates and that listeners tend to judge them in terms

of their native language phonology. Future research could involve acoustic analyses of

controlled recordings to investigate the acoustic variability of these sounds.

Some of the native speaker judgements were unexpected because they differed

from non-native transcriber judgements, with the RA responses tending toward the

phonology of English, in which they are bilingual. For example initial and medial

interdental fricatives [θ, ð] are present in English but do not occur in Gurindji and are

extremely rare in Gurindji Kriol. RAs judged an initial sound as a voiceless dental
CHAPTER 6 202

fricative [θ] rather than the alveolar stop [t], and two medial sounds toward the voiced

dental fricative [ð] rather than the alveolar stop [d]. In these cases language background

may have had indirect effects, as RAs and transcribers may have been differentially

influenced by English spelling interference and lexical expectation effects. The

phonological awareness training and visual analogue scale procedure were designed so

that RAs would not rely on either English or Gurindji Kriol spelling to complete the

task. However, the words involved in these judgements (e.g. smuth-wan ‘smooth’) are

phonologically similar to the corresponding words in English, in which the RAs are

bilingual. Their knowledge of English spelling may have interfered with perceptual

judgements of the more difficult sounds such as dental fricatives.

The word-initial [h] judgements also appear to have been affected by language

background. Non-native transcribers had judged half the [h] words as being pronounced

with an initial [h] and the other half as having no pronounced [h], while native speakers

judged all the words as being pronounced with an initial [h]. Word-initial [h] appears to

occur variably in Gurindji Kriol and may be a form of hypercorrection when it occurs in

vowel-initial Kriol-derived words, e.g. [hæpʊl] apple. The current results may be a

reflection of the hypercorrection of initial [h] in production. It is also possible that [h] is

a covert contrast in Gurindji Kriol, that is, a phonetic contrast that is only apparent at a

subphonemic level. If there were a covert contrast with [h] in Gurindji Kriol this would

mean it may be more readily perceived by native speakers than non-native speakers.

While it is difficult to analyse [h] reliably in acoustic analyses, further controlled

perceptual studies would be useful to examine the variable occurrence of [h] in Gurindji

Kriol.

Non-native speaker transcribers and native speaker RAs may have both been

influenced by lexical expectation effects. For example for the initial sound in the
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English code-switch word circle transcribers agreed on the voiceless alveolar fricative

[s], as that is the expected pronunciation in English. RAs however judged this sound

toward the voiced alveolar fricative endpoint [z]. On the other hand there were words

like giraffe, another English code-switch, in which transcribers judged the final

consonant as the voiced fricative [v] and RAs judged the voiceless fricative [f], which is

the expected sound from the spelling and usual English pronunciation. To elucidate

these effects further research and acoustic analyses of controlled recordings would be

beneficial; however these results indicate a starting point for the types of perceptual

differences that may occur.

A final effect of language background may explain some of the inter-transcriber

disagreements. While both transcribers were trained in phonetic transcription, one had

no prior experience with Gurindji Kriol and the other had some familiarity with the

language and had learned some of it directly from native speakers. As Oller and Eilers

(1975) found, language background effects are not necessarily negative and familiarity

with the language being transcribed can improve the accuracy of transcription. Knowing

the ‘target’ meaning of words and utterances can help direct transcriber attention toward

the relevant phonetic detail (Oller & Eilers, 1975). Half the tokens in the current study

were chosen for the visual analogue scale judgements because there was transcriber

discrepancy or the sounds were ambiguous, and so the proportions of disagreement in

the current data are higher than in the full dataset. At least some of these disagreements

are likely due to familiarity with Gurindji Kriol, which changes even throughout the

transcription process as transcribers listen to more of the speech data.

In sum, the differing language backgrounds of both native speakers and

transcribers may explain some of the judgement differences in the current data.

Disagreements between the two transcribers may be due to their different levels of
CHAPTER 6 204

exposure to Gurindji Kriol conversational speech. Effects of L1 phonological categories

are shown in the different judgements of native and non-native speakers between palatal

stops and palato-alveolar affricates. Interference from English spelling and lexical

expectation effects may account for some differences between RA and transcriber

judgements where RAs unexpectedly judged sounds as ‘toward’ endpoints that were

rarer sounds in Gurindji Kriol.

6.6.2 Word Position Effects

Results showed differences by word position in agreement between RAs and

transcribers, and in inter-RA agreement. In particular word-initial responses appeared to

differ overall from responses to medial and final sounds. In general, RA judgements of

initial sounds showed more inter-RA agreement but also more discrepancies between

RAs and transcribers than medial and final word positions. In the phonological

awareness training, RAs found the initial sounds easier to isolate and identify than the

medial and final sounds, which is consistent with previous research as in early literacy

development, initial sounds are easier to segment and reflect on (Gillon, 2004).

Additionally, the consonants in the endpoints were in onset positions (CV), which may

have made for an easier comparison with the word-initial judgements as these were also

mostly in onset CV contexts.

For word-medial sounds, the mean RA responses were often along the scale (i.e.

not categorical judgements at the endpoints) for stop-fricative judgements such as [d, ð],

[ʃ, ɟ] and [v, b]. This may be due to lenition occurring in medial position, particularly as

most of these sounds were in intervocalic environments. This context is susceptible to

lenition, as greater articulatory effort is arguably required to produce a constriction

relative to other contexts (Kirchner, 2004). Future research using acoustic analyses and

more controlled perceptual testing would be useful to determine whether these sounds,
CHAPTER 6 205

or some of them, are produced along a continuum, that is stops may be produced with

varying amounts of frication until they are indistinguishable from fricatives. Further

studies using acoustic analyses would have to involve controlled recordings of speech

production, which may affect stylistic influences on pronunciation by eliciting more

formal speech. The current data was from naturalistic conversational recordings, thus

transcription and other perceptual judgements are more reliable than acoustic analyses

due to background noise, overlapping speech, low recording levels and clipping.

Overall, the current study using the continuous visual analogue scales with

native speakers of Gurindji Kriol helps to explain some of the ambiguities and inter-

transcriber discrepancies in the phonetic transcription that are likely due to differences

in language background. Some sounds, such as fricative voicing and word-medial stop-

fricative continuancy, may vary along a continuum while others such as the presence of

word-initial [h] may indicate possible hypercorrection or covert contrasts in Gurindji

Kriol. Further research involving acoustic analyses of controlled recordings that also

control for phonetic environments and perceptual experiments are needed to investigate

the relative contributions of the possible effects suggested here.

It is also important to note that the RA judgements, and thus our interpretations

of them, are restricted by the endpoints provided in the visual analogue scales. A major

advantage of the scales is that they allowed for continuous judgements; however, this

was a trade-off in that there were only two categorical endpoints and these were decided

by a transcriber. RAs did have the option of responding with ‘other’ if they thought the

Gurindji Kriol sound was something different to the endpoints provided, and sometimes

they did use that response. The endpoints may still have biased RAs toward making an

assumption that the Gurindji Kriol sound ‘belonged’ to one of the two endpoints. The

endpoints may have been problematic in other respects as they required certain
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decisions to be made in advance by the researchers. These are discussed in further detail

in the following section.

6.6.3 Limitations

There are two main limitations to the current design and, by way of

recommendation for future research, it is important to make decisions about these early

on. One relates to the endpoints used in the scales – what to use as endpoints, how

listeners may represent them in relation to the sounds being rated, and how they may

affect the results. The second important consideration is the limited number of RAs in

the current study and that not all of them undertook the phonological awareness training.

We then consider whether the quality of information gained from the visual analogue

scale task is advantageous enough to add another time-consuming process to phonetic

transcription.

The endpoints used in the current study were IPA segments in CV contexts from

the UCLA phonetics website and were spoken by an American male speaker trained in

phonetics. In the scale tasks the native speakers heard the consonants of interest in CV

endpoints, and the Gurindji Kriol sound in the context of the whole utterance. This

allowed for comparison with the transcriber IPA judgements, as transcribers also judged

the sounds in the context of the whole word and utterance. Native speakers and

transcribers were therefore all exposed to linguistic context and sentence cues. The

rationale for using the UCLA IPA segments as endpoints was that in Gurindji Kriol

fricatives are highly variable (Buchan et al., 2012) and the native speaker target forms

are unknown. To use whole words or any kind of Gurindji Kriol categories as endpoints

would raise a new set of issues around how speakers represent those categories and may

not capture the full variability of the segments being judged.

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The UCLA segments were used because they are clear typical examples of IPA

categories produced by a trained phonetician. The consonants of interest were in CV

contexts in the UCLA segments, which may have limited the study as the endpoints did

not indicate the actual range of the Gurindji Kriol sounds that were judged. Rather, the

endpoints represented approximations to which RAs could respond. The phonological

awareness training was designed to address some of the issues with the endpoints by

focusing on sound segmentation and isolating sounds in different word positions. One

aim of the training was to develop RAs’ phonological awareness skills so that they

could compare the consonants in the endpoints to Gurindji Kriol sounds in initial,

medial and final word positions in the tokens. Knowing more about the variation in

sounds and how they are typically pronounced in the language being studied would

allow for a closer approximation of the sounds used in the endpoints of a visual

analogue scale study.

A further limitation of the current study is that a relatively small number of RAs

participated, and not all of them completed the phonological awareness training that was

conducted in a previous visit. The native speakers who underwent the training assisted

those who did not do it, but these differences in the phonological awareness training

may have contributed to some of the inter-RA disagreements in judgements. Future

research using the current method would benefit from recruiting more RAs and

retaining the same people throughout the study, that is for both the training and the

administration of the visual analogue scales.

6.6.4 Conclusion

Visual analogue scales are useful tools for eliciting linguistic knowledge about

phonology from native speakers who do not have technical training in phonetic

transcription. Comparing native speaker judgements on fricatives in Gurindji Kriol with

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the categorical IPA judgements made by non-native speaker phonetic transcribers

provided insight into inter-transcriber disagreements and alerted us to sounds that may

vary over a continuum rather than being categorical, such as voicing, and possible

covert contrasts.

Methodologically, using visual analogue scales with native speakers of Gurindji

Kriol in the field was generally successful. Native speakers have implicit linguistic

knowledge of their language, and the visual analogue scales allowed us to elicit their

knowledge of the sound system to compare with non-native transcriber IPA judgements.

Results suggested that ambiguities and discrepancies in phonetic transcriptions may not

always be due to random error but may be more systematic, with factors such as

language background and phonological variation in the language being transcribed

explaining some transcriber disagreements.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Conclusion
CHAPTER 7 210

Phonetic variation in the speech to which children are exposed plays an

important role in children’s language development. Children’s processing of sound

structures in the input forms the basis of much of their linguistic knowledge. According

to exemplar-based models of phonological development, acquisition of the native

language phonology is an ongoing process and the input continually influences the

organisation of phonological representations in memory (Hawkins, 2003;

Pierrehumbert, 2003). Across languages the input contains phonetic variability

associated with linguistic and socioindexical information. There is a large literature on

phonological variation in speech input to infants (e.g. Cristià, 2010, 2011; Davis &

Lindblom, 2001; Fernald et al., 1989; Grieser & Kuhl, 1988; Katz, Cohn & Moore,

1996; Kirchhoff & Schimmel, 2005; Kuhl et al., 1997; Snow, 1977; Stern, Spieker,

Barnett & MacKain, 1983). The phonology of the input continues to change after the

first year of life as child-directed speech develops into adult-directed speech. There are,

however, relatively few longitudinal studies of how and when this happens.

The purpose of this thesis was twofold. The main aim was to investigate how

phonetic variation in fricatives in mothers’ speech to children changes as children age in

two language varieties in northern Australia – Gurindji Kriol and Australian English. A

subsidiary aim was to investigate methodological issues with IPA transcription of a

phonologically underdescribed language, which involved eliciting perceptual

judgements from native speakers of Gurindji Kriol to compare with phonetic

transcriptions. Gurindji Kriol is a mixed language spoken at Kalkaringi, an Aboriginal

community in northern Australia. The phonology is highly variable, particularly in

fricatives in Kriol-derived words. The Australian English corpus collected and analysed

for this thesis was from Katherine, a regional town in the same geographic region as

Kalkaringi. In both language varieties we analysed maternal speech longitudinally as

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children aged from approximately 1;6 to 2;0 to 2;6. This is considered an important

time in children’s language acquisition as their knowledge of phonological processes in

the native language continues to develop and their receptive and productive

vocabularies expand (e.g. Nelson, 1973; Swingley, 2007).

This thesis consisted of three empirical research studies to address three main

research questions: 1) Study 1, Chapter 4 – What is the nature and extent of variation in

fricative production in Gurindji Kriol maternal speech? 2) Study 2, Chapter 5 – How

does phonetic reduction in fricatives change as children age in northern Australian

English maternal speech? 3) Study 3, Chapter 6 – How can we elicit native speaker

perceptions of fricative variation in Gurindji Kriol using Visual Analogue Scales

(VAS), and what information does this add to non-native transcribers’ phonetic

transcriptions? In this chapter I discuss the main findings and conclusions across all

three studies, the implications and limitations of this research, and directions for future

research.

7.1 Core Findings

The overall results of the studies in this thesis show that children are exposed to

considerable phonetic variation at a segmental level in fricatives in both language

varieties, and that variation changes in maternal speech over child ages 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6.

Fricative variation is complex and different types were found in each language variety,

likely associated with different kinds of linguistic and socioindexical information.

In Gurindji Kriol maternal speech we found that although fricatives in Kriol-

derived words were highly variable, at least some of the variability was systematic.

Manner of articulation variation between stops and fricatives was more likely to occur

in word-initial position (rather than medial or final), at labio-dental and alveolar places

of articulation, and in lexical items that were open- rather than closed-class. In all
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tokens that could potentially be pronounced with a fricative (defined as words whose

corresponding English cognates contain fricatives), in word-initial position fricatives

were significantly more likely in mothers’ speech when children were approximately

2;6 than when they were 1;6. In tokens of words that were found to contain stop-

fricative variation, word-initial fricatives (with the exception of /h/, which did not occur

frequently enough to be analysed) were again more likely at 2;6 than 1;6. In these

tokens fricatives were also significantly more likely in medial position at child age 2;0

and 2;6 than at 1;6. These results took into account both phonological environment and

interspeaker variation. Mothers used proportionately more fricatives as children got

older partly due to lexical choice, as mothers also proportionately increased their use of

words that could be pronounced with fricatives as children aged. Findings can be

interpreted in terms of fine-tuning, the concept that mothers make adjustments to their

speech differentially as children age in response to children’s own receptive and

productive language development. The proportionate increase in fricatives over time

may serve to gradually introduce children to the variable phonetic forms that are

inherent in adult speech in the community.

In northern Australian English a different type of variability in fricatives in

maternal speech was investigated. We analysed word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/

deletion as examples of phonological reduction due to connected speech processes that

are frequent in casual speech. It was found that deletion occurred in a stable set of

lexical items that were mostly function words. In mothers’ speech deletion

proportionately increased between child ages 1;6 and 2;0, and decreased between 2;0

and 2;6. The effect was significant for /h/ deletion and approached significance for /v/,

which had fewer occurrences in the corpus. Further analysis showed that the effect of

child age on deletion was not likely to be caused by changes in speech rate. The non-
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linear change over time was unexpected, as the few previous studies that have examined

sociophonetic variation in speech input to children after infancy suggested a gradual

linear change from child-directed to adult-directed speech style (Foulkes, Docherty &

Watt, 2005; Smith, Durham & Fortune, 2009). Possible explanations for the Australian

English maternal speech findings also relate to fine-tuning, as mothers may have

modelled speech to promote children’s language acquisition.

There are several mechanisms that could lead to a non-linear change in deletion,

in particular changes in the distributions of speech acts and types of social interactions,

which are associated with different speech styles along a continuum of casual to careful

speech. For example, Smith, Durham and Fortune (2007) found that in the informal

speech contexts play and routine, child-directed speech was more likely to contain a

non-standard phonetic variant than in the more formal contexts of teaching and

discipline. Speech acts at different points on a careful-casual or formal-informal

continuum, such as questions, recasts and repetitions, may become more frequent in

mothers’ speech as children start consistently producing more words. Relative

frequencies of different types of interactions between mothers and children, e.g. play,

explicit teaching, behaviour management, may also shift over time with children’s

social and cognitive development. Further research is needed to examine whether there

are stylistic changes over time in maternal speech and how it relates to changes in

phonetic variability. As with Gurindji Kriol, in northern Australian English one function

of changing phonetic variability in input to children over time may be to introduce them

to the variation that is characteristic of the adult speech community.

This thesis also considered phonetic transcription methodology. In Study 3

(Chapter 6) we elicited native speaker judgements of Gurindji Kriol segments using

VAS and compared these to IPA transcriptions made by non-native transcribers. This
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methodology provided further insight into variation in Gurindji Kriol, and elucidated

possible reasons behind ambiguities and inter-transcriber discrepancies in the

transcriptions. Language background had an effect as native speakers and non-native

transcribers tended to judge ambiguous sounds, such as palatal stops/palato-alveolar

affricates, in terms of their native language phonology. Differences between native

speaker and non-native transcriber may have been due to several effects on perception

of Gurindji Kriol phones, including lexical expectation, orthographic influence and

perceptual hypercorrection. Findings also showed agreement between native and non-

native speakers on many segments, particularly those in medial and final word

positions.

7.2 Implications

The findings of this thesis show that fricatives in speech input to children are

variable and change over time in Gurindji Kriol and northern Australian English. More

generally, the findings indicate that theoretical models of phonological acquisition need

to account for a variable and dynamic input. As discussed in the theoretical framework

in section 2.4, exemplar-based theories are well positioned to do this as they propose

mechanisms for how children process and store variable phonetic detail and associated

information in long-term memory (Beckman, Munson & Edwards, 2007; Hawkins,

2003; Pierrehumbert, 2003). The current studies were not designed to test the various

theoretical models, rather exemplar-based models form the theoretical rationale for

describing variation in the input. Exemplar models account for phonetic variation in the

input including phonetic variation related to fine-tuning, which was explored in Studies

1 and 2. According to exemplar theories perceptual events contribute to the formation of

categories in memory, and phonetic variants in the input influence the distributions of

exemplars from which categories form. Fine-tuning in the form of differential

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phonological modifications in the input would therefore also contribute to fine-tuning of

exemplar distributions in children’s long-term memories.

This research has practical implications for language professionals in northern

Australia, particularly for teachers at the school in Kalkaringi and neighbouring

communities where similar language varieties are spoken. Although Gurindji Kriol is

the home language of children in Kalkaringi, English is the language of the school, and

children are taught in English when they start going to school. Prior to the larger project

that this research is a part of there were no detailed systematic descriptions of the

phonology of Gurindji Kriol and thus there was little information for teachers to use as

a basis for teaching English language and literacy. Information about sounds in Gurindji

Kriol and the similarities and differences to Australian English could help guide

teachers’ explicit teaching of sounds and words in English. In particular the current

findings suggest that Gurindji children may benefit from explicit teaching of

pronunciation in English as an L2, particularly in manner of articulation distinctions in

English between fricatives and stops in different word positions. For example the results

of Study 1 suggest that children are exposed to fricatives in word-initial position, with

the majority being labio-dental and alveolar in open-class words. English also contains

word-initial labio-dental dental and alveolar fricatives, but in contrast to Gurindji Kriol

English also has a relatively high frequency of interdental word-initial fricatives, largely

due to their presence in English closed-class words (the, this, that, then, there, etc.). The

corresponding Kriol-derived words in Gurindji Kriol were nearly all pronounced with

word-initial stops, and children may need special instruction to help them perceive and

produce these sounds in English.

Children are also exposed to word-medial fricatives in Gurindji Kriol. Some

medial fricatives in Kriol-derived words alternate frequently with stops, which means
CHAPTER 7 216

words may sometimes sound quite similar to the corresponding English word and

sometimes different, depending on whether it is pronounced with a fricative or stop (e.g.

the medial consonant in neba ‘never’). If teachers hear children producing fricatives

they may assume that the children have a command of English phonology, without

necessarily realising that they are producing Gurindji Kriol phonology where stops and

fricatives are variable in some phonological and lexical contexts.

The rarest position for fricatives in Kriol-derived words was word-final. Again,

Gurindji children may require explicit instruction in word-final fricatives in English.

Many word-final fricatives in English are morphological /s/ denoting plurals,

possession, and present tense. Therefore in addition to phonological instruction children

may also need further teaching of English morphology as part of learning word-final

fricatives. The results from the Visual Analogue Scales with adults in Study 3 suggested

that it may also be difficult to distinguish fricative voicing in word-final position.

Further research is needed to examine voicing in Gurindji Kriol fricatives; however, the

present research does suggest variability in voicing. This is important when it comes to

teaching English, which has fricative voicing contrasts.

Overall, the findings of these studies have practical implications for teachers at

the school in Kalkaringi and neighbouring areas. They can also be used in the same way

for teaching traditional Gurindji, for example starting with the sounds that children have

already learned from Gurindji Kriol input and then later teaching the words that sound

relatively different. The different distributions of fricatives in each word position have

pedagogical implications, as it is important for teachers to know that learners will likely

be more familiar with some fricatives in particular positions. For example, relative to

other fricatives, word-initial [s] was common in Kriol-derived words in maternal

speech. Being familiar with the initial [s] sound from their home language may make it
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easier to learn [s] in medial and final positions in English words if teachers can make

students aware that they are the same sounds.

In the feedback trip to Katherine and Kalkaringi conducted at the end of the

project, we presented these findings to teachers at Kalkaringi school. This involved

providing information and sound charts to teachers about Gurindji Kriol phonology

described in the current studies and studies in the larger project. Information included

brief descriptions of Gurindji Kriol fricatives and stop-fricative variation from the

studies in this thesis, as well as stop consonant voicing variation (Jones & Meakins,

2012a), the vowel system (Jones, Meakins & Buchan, 2011; Jones, Meakins &

Muawiyath, 2012), and baby-talk phonology (Jones & Meakins, 2012b). The focus of

the information provided to teachers was on similarities and differences between sounds

in Gurindji Kriol and Australian English, with the aim of developing teachers’

knowledge about Gurindji mothers’ speech to children, sounds that children may have

difficulty with, and sounds that they are likely to be familiar with.

7.3 Limitations

As the limitations of each study have been identified in the discussion sections

in Chapters 4, 5 and 6, the wider limitations of the thesis as a whole will now be

discussed. First, both the Katherine English corpus and the subsample of the Gurindji

Kriol corpus analysed for these studies consisted of a small number of speakers (four

Katherine English speaking mothers, three Gurindji Kriol speaking mothers). Small

speaker numbers is a common issue in many child speech studies involving corpus

analyses, due to the large demands on time and resources that it takes to create a corpus.

A relatively small number of speakers was built into the current design as it allowed for

in-depth analysis of naturalistic data, that is, analysis of occurrences of segments and

processes in naturalistic conversational speech; but it does limit the generalisability of

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results and further research is needed to determine how widespread the current findings

are.

A second methodological issue to consider when interpreting these findings is

that the data were not specifically child-directed but included all speech spoken by

mothers in the presence of the target children. This was again by design, based on

previous conceptualisations of input to children in the literature (see Chapter 2 pp. 19-

21). There may, however, be differences between speech directed specifically to

children and other speech in their presence that would not be revealed by the analyses in

this thesis.

Another broader limitation inherent in the design of this study is that the data

were from phonetic transcription, which is primarily a perceptual activity and may be

subject to perceptual biases. Potential problems with phonetic transcription data are

discussed extensively in the background section of Chapter 6. The disadvantages of

phonetic transcription as a data analysis tool formed part of the rationale for Study 3

(Chapter 6), where we addressed reliability issues by comparing phonetically

transcribed segments with native speaker judgments. As well as checking the phonetic

transcriptions with native speaker judgements in Study 3, to address potential biases

reliability checks were also undertaken for the transcription data analysed in Studies 1

and 2. Future research could involve acoustic analyses of Gurindji Kriol speech

recorded in a controlled and quiet environment, which may reveal finer-grained

variation than transcription based analyses will allow. Acoustic analyses of fricatives

was not feasible for the data in these studies, as they are from naturalistic recordings

that contain varying amounts of background noise and were not controlled for context.

Also, the Gurindji Kriol conversational data were originally recorded for the purpose of

morphological analyses rather than detailed acoustic processing and some audio
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recordings of Gurindji Kriol were made on mini-discs, which compress audio data.

Phonetic transcription in conjunction with reliability analyses were therefore more

appropriate methods for analysing fricatives in the current data than acoustic analyses.

7.4 Directions for Future Research

The empirical research in this thesis was largely exploratory, as to our

knowledge it is the first quantitative description of fricatives in an Australian contact

language, and the Katherine English corpus is the first phonetically transcribed

longitudinal corpus of mother-child interactions in Australian English for toddlers. The

findings of this research therefore open up several broad avenues for future research.

The present studies examined fricatives in a defined set of Kriol-derived words.

Investigating fricatives more broadly and using acoustic analyses and perceptual testing

could be done to investigate whether or not there are any fricative contrasts in Gurindji

Kriol, as well as to examine the relative contributions of specific processes (e.g.

lenition, socioindexical and stylistic factors) to fricative variation. These findings can

also be used as a basis for researching fricatives in Kriol and other Australian contact

language varieties.

In both Gurindji Kriol and northern Australian English it would be interesting to

analyse children’s receptive and productive language longitudinally over the preschool

years. Such research would provide information about the developmental trajectories of

children’s acquisition of phonetic variation in the input, and the specific effects that

change over time in maternal speech has on children’s language acquisition. We have

longitudinal data of the Australian English speaking children’s productions as the target

children in the Katherine English corpus did wear microphones for most of the sessions.

Future research on this data may provide further insight on the relationships between

input and children’s language production.

CHAPTER 7 220

Another question for future research on both language varieties is how much

variation is related to speech styles and the types of interactions? We suggested changes

in these factors as a possible contributor to the effect of child age on phonological

reduction in maternal Katherine English (Chapter 5). Further study is needed to

investigate possible effects of situational factors on phonological variation in mothers’

speech and their influence on children’s language.

Also raised in the Katherine English study was a question about sociolinguistic

markers in regional Australian English, or linguistic variables that carry information

about social groups and/or speech styles. Research to identify these variables would

require a sociolinguistic investigation of Katherine English and other varieties of

Australian English spoken in different regions and social groups. Studies of change over

time in identified sociophonetic markers in varieties of Australian English maternal

speech would allow for comparisons with previous studies in other English varieties (in

particular Foulkes, Docherty and Watt’s (2005) study of Tyneside English child-

directed speech), and further insight into children’s acquisition of phonetic variation

related to socioindexical factors.

The methodological study in Chapter 6 also highlights areas for further research.

Findings indicated that Visual Analogue Scales could be used successfully in the field

to elicit perceptual judgements on phonetic segments from adult speakers with no

technical training in transcription. More generally it suggests that visual analogue scales

can be used in adult L2 contexts to compare the effects of different language

backgrounds on perceptual judgements of sounds in different word positions. Future

studies could investigate the application of this to other contexts. For example in adult

L2 language learning visual analogue scales could be used to compare learner and

native speaker judgements for the purpose of providing specific feedback to L2 learners
CHAPTER 7 221

about their perceptual knowledge of native-like sounds in specific phonological

contexts.

The pedagogical implications of the research also open avenues for further

research. The larger study included analyses of phonetic variation at acoustic and

segmental levels of vowels and consonants, which applied to a teaching context is a lot

of information to get through in a classroom. It would be beneficial for teachers to know

which sounds to prioritise and the contrasts that are important for intelligibility and

comprehension. The relative importance of phonological features in understanding an

L2 learner’s speech is referred to as functional load. There is no single standard measure

of functional load, but it typically involves a combination of factors such as frequencies

of phonemes, distributions of phonemes within syllable structures, the number of

minimal pairs and their lexical frequency, and the frequency of particular phones within

minimal pair words (Brown, 1988; King, 1967; Munro & Derwing, 2006; Surendran &

Niyogi, 2006). Phones that have high frequencies and distinguish a number of minimal

pairs have high functional load (such as many vowels in English), while low frequency

phones that distinguish relatively few pairs (such as [ʃ, ʒ] in English) have low

functional load. Speech errors involving high functional load sounds affect

comprehensibility and intelligibility of L2 speakers to a greater extent than errors

involving low functional load sounds (Munro & Derwing, 2006). Empirical information

about functional load would therefore be useful to teachers, who could use it to

prioritise teaching high functional load sound contrasts.

For functional load information to be useful to teachers in Kalkaringi and

surrounding areas, further research needs to be done on children’s productions. This

thesis is an analysis of the sounds children are likely to be familiar with through

exposure to speech in their home language. Future studies of children’s speech would
CHAPTER 7 222

provide information about the sounds they have difficulty producing, which could then

be used by teachers in conjunction with functional loads to determine the relative

importance of the difficult sounds (Brown, 1988). Further questions raised in the

Katherine English study (Chapter 5) and the Visual Analogues Scales study (Chapter 6)

could also be studied from a functional load approach. For example, are phonological

reduction and other casual speech processes more likely to occur in low than high

functional load segments? What are the relationships between functional load, phonetic

variation and perception of Gurindji Kriol sounds?

7.5 Conclusion

In conclusion, this thesis has provided analyses of fricative variation in speech

that children are exposed to in two language varieties in northern Australia, Gurindji

Kriol and northern Australian English. Further, variation changes in mothers’ speech as

children age between approximately 1;6, 2;0 and 2;6 in some processes and

phonological environments. This research highlights the value of longitudinal research

into the language input to children after infancy, and of systematic descriptions of

variation in contact language varieties. Results indicate the need for models of language

acquisition to account for a dynamic phonology in the input.

REFERENCES 223

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APPENDIX A
Participant Information

and Consent Forms

APPENDIX A 246

15 July 2009

INFORMATION SHEET FOR DAGURAGU PARTICIPANTS

Research Project: Sounds in Speech to Children

Dear

You are invited to participate in a study being conducted by Dr Caroline Jones and
Heather Buchan (University of Wollongong). Between 2004 and 2007 you participated
in the ACLA research project with Felicity Meakins who made video and audio
recordings of you talking to your children and other people around you. We are inviting
you to help us write down the sounds in these recordings for a new project. This project
is to find out about the sounds you use talking to children in Daguragu and Katherine.

INVESTIGATORS
Dr Caroline Jones Heather Buchan
Faculty of Education Faculty of Education
carjones@uow.edu.au hb307@uow.edu.au

WHAT WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO DO

If you choose to participate we will ask you to sit down at a computer with us and go
through the recordings a bit at a time. We will show you how we wrote it down, and ask
you to say bits slowly and some words clearly so we can get it right. We will also ask
you to tell us about when you are talking to your child. We are happy to work in short
sessions when you are free.

If you agree, we would like to record these sessions on video and audio. We would also
ask you about how we should use and store recordings of you talking about the videos.

If you choose to take part you will be paid at $30.70 an hour before tax. We do not think
there are risks for you. You can choose if you want to do it or not. You can stop
whenever you like. You don’t have to tell us why and nothing bad will happen. Just let
us know, and we can delete the recordings of you talking about the videos.

This project is funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council. There is no
direct benefit to you. The project can be used to help teachers and community members
with teaching traditional languages and English.

WHO WILL SEE MY INFORMATION?

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 247

No-one will be able to identify you or your child from the results of the study. Only the
researchers will have access to this information. If you agree, we might use some photos
or recordings when we present the information (for example at a conference).

All information will be stored securely at the University of Wollongong for at least 5
years and only the researchers will have access to it. You can choose to store your
information at NCI and/or AIATSIS, or not.
-NCI (National Computational Infrastructure) used to be called APAC
(Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing). It stores the information you gave
to Felicity Meakins for the ACLA (Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition) project.
-AIATSIS is a national collection of audio and visual records of
Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and histories.

If you would like to check that you are OK with the information or recordings from the
study, you need to contact Dr Caroline Jones on (02) 4221 4905.

When you have read this information sheet, Dr Caroline Jones and Heather Buchan are
free to talk about any questions. We will be happy to talk to you at any time in the
project if you think of something later, or if any problems come up.

ETHICS REVIEW AND COMPLAINTS

This study has been looked at by the Human Research Ethics Committee (Social
Science, Humanities and Behavioural Science) of the University of Wollongong. If you
have any problems with how the project has been done, you can contact the UoW Ethics
Officer on (02) 4221 4457.

Thank you for your interest in this study.

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 248

CONSENT FORM FOR DAGURAGU PARTICIPANTS

Research Project: Sounds in Speech to Children

Researchers’ Names: Dr Caroline Jones and Heather Buchan

1. I have read the participation information sheet and have been able to ask the
researchers any questions.

2. I have discussed with the researchers how my data is going to be used and stored
and I am happy with how the study has been explained to me.

3. I understand that my participation in this research is voluntary (I can choose)

and I may withdraw at any time from the study without having to give a reason
and without affecting my treatment in the community or at school in any way.

4. I understand that this study does not have any known risk for me, and I have
read the information sheet and asked any questions about risks.

5. I understand that I will watch and listen to audio and visual recordings of me
speaking to my children. These recordings are some of the ones that were made
by Felicity Meakins between 2004 and 2007 for the ACLA project. I understand
that I will help to write down my speech in the recordings.

6. I agree to be audio and video recorded while I help the researchers write it down.
The researchers will delete anything I want them to.

7. I agree that I will get copies of all the recordings.

8. If I have any concerns or complaints about way the research is or has been
conducted I can contact the Ethics Officer, Human Research Ethics Committee,
Office of Research, University of Wollongong on 4221 4457.

Signed Date

....................................................................... ......./....../......
Name (please print)

.......................................................................

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 249

On this page you can tell us how the recordings can be used, and
who can access the recordings. Please circle what you agree to:

Storing the videos and making sure you can get copies:

I would / would not like a video file of the recordings to be kept at Diwurruwurru-
jaru (Katherine regional Aboriginal language centre).
Tick one:

anyone can access
only me and my family

anyone with my permission
only me

I do / do not allow for the data I give to this study to be stored at NCI with the
data I gave to the ACLA project.

Tick what you agree to:

Future researchers can access:
transcripts
audio
video

future researchers have to contact me first, explain the research, and

send me a copy when it’s done

future researchers have to contact me first and get my permission,
explain the research, and send me a copy when it’s done
If I am not available, the researcher must contact:
______________________________________

In five years time, I would / would not like to have recordings stored at AIATSIS.

other researchers can access

other people have to get my permission to access

Use in public (e.g. in books, conferences):

I do / do not give my permission for the researchers of this project to print parts of
transcripts in books / journals and other printed reports.

names must be changed

I do / do not give my permission for the researchers to show short clips of video at
conferences and meetings.

no names in the audio

faces in video blurred

I do / do not give my permission for the researchers to print photos for academic
publications and reports / show photos at conferences and meetings / put photos
on website.

any

check with me first

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 250

Signed

....................................................................... ......./....../......
Name (please print) date

.......................................................................

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 251

15 July 2009

INFORMATION SHEET FOR AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH PARTICIPANTS

Research Project: Sounds in Speech to Children

You are invited to participate in a study being conducted by Dr Caroline Jones and
Heather Buchan (Education, University of Wollongong). The purpose of this project is
to look at sound patterns in adults’ everyday speech to children in regional northern
Australia.

INVESTIGATORS
Dr Caroline Jones Heather Buchan
Faculty of Education Faculty of Education
carjones@uow.edu.au hb307@uow.edu.au

WHAT WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO DO

If you choose to participate we will ask if we can record you in normal conversation to
your child and other people around you during a normal day. To do this we will use a
video camera, microphones and audio recorder.

We will ask to come back to make recordings every 6 months for a year and a half. We
would like to make 3 to 4 hours of recordings each time. We will transcribe and do
acoustic analyses of speech in the recordings and analyse the sound patterns.

We would also like to talk with you about how you want recordings of you and your
child to be used and stored, and record these discussions.

If you choose to take part you will be paid $25 an hour to reimburse you for your time.
We do not think there are risks for you or your child. You are free to decide if you want
to be involved in this project or not and you can stop participating at any time. You do
not need to give a reason for changing your mind, and there won’t be any negative
effects for you if you choose to stop participating even if the study has started. All you
have to do is let the researcher know, and any information we already have about you
will be destroyed.

This project is funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council. Your
participation will not directly benefit you. Participating will help us describe the sound
patterns of speech to children in regional Australian English, and this information can
be used to help teachers in northern Australia with teaching language to children.

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 252

WHO WILL SEE YOUR INFORMATION

No-one will be able to identify you or your child from the results of the study. Only the
researchers will have access to this information. If you agree, we might use some photos
or recordings when we present the information. But we will only use them if you allow
us, and you do not have to agree to this to participate.

All information will be stored securely at the University of Wollongong for at least 5
years and only the researchers will have access to it. In the attached consent form we
ask you to tell us how you would like your data to be used and stored.
If you would like to check that you are OK with the information or recordings from the
study, you need to contact Dr Caroline Jones on (02) 4221 4905.

When you have read this information sheet, Dr Caroline Jones and Heather Buchan are
free to talk about any questions you might have. They will be happy to talk to you at
any time in the project if you think of something later, or if any problems come up.

ETHICS REVIEW AND COMPLAINTS

This study has been reviewed by the Human Research Ethics Committee (Social
Science, Humanities and Behavioural Science) of the University of Wollongong. If you
have any concerns or complaints regarding the way this research has been conducted,
you can contact the UoW Ethics Officer on (02) 4221 4457. Alternatively you can
approach the Project Manager at Diwurruwurru-jaru Aboriginal Corporation or your
local language centre representative.

Thank you for your interest in this study.

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 253

CONSENT FORM FOR AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH PARTICIPANTS

Research Project: Sounds in Speech to Children

Researchers’ Names: Dr Caroline Jones and Heather Buchan

9. I have read the participation information sheet and have been able to ask the
researchers any questions I may have had.

10. I have discussed with the researchers how my data is going to be used and stored
and I am happy with how the study has been explained to me.

11. I understand that my participation in this research is voluntary and I may

withdraw at any time from the study without having to give a reason and without
affecting my treatment in the community in any way.

12. I understand that this study does not have any known risk for me, and I have
read the information sheet and asked any questions I may have about the risks.

13. I understand that I will be recorded on video and audio in everyday

communication with my child and other people around me who I would
normally communicate with.

14. I understand that the researchers will contact me and ask to make recordings
every 6 months for a year and a half, and each time they will make 3 to 4 hours
of recordings.

15. I understand that I will be asked regularly to look at the recordings to make sure
they are okay. I may also be asked to clarify to the researchers what I am saying
in some of these recordings.

16. I understand that all of my work with the researchers will be video and audio
recorded.

17. If I have any concerns or complaints regarding the way the research is or has
been conducted I can contact the Ethics Officer, Human Research Ethics
Committee, Office of Research, University of Wollongong on (02) 4221 4457.

Please sign on the next page if you agree to these terms.

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
 APPENDIX A 254

To choose how and where we will keep the recordings, please circle whether you do
or do not give permission for these things:

Storing the videos and making sure you can get copies:

I would / would not like a DVD copy of the recordings of my family.

TalkBank is a collection of videos, audio and transcriptions on the internet

(http://talkbank.org/). It is accessed by researchers in child development.

I do / do not give my permission for my audio recordings to be stored on the TalkBank

database, where it will be available to other researchers once this project has finished.

If you agree to storage on TalkBank please select your preferences:

What material would you like stored on TalkBank? (Please tick all that apply)

audio

transcript

video
Do you want to be anonymous? (Please tick all that apply)

no, you can use my and my child’s real name

yes, by changing last names only

yes, by changing first names and last names

yes, by removing names from audio recordings

yes, by blurring faces in video recordings

Printing parts of the transcripts and showing videos and photos at conferences and
language meetings:

I do / do not give my permission for the researchers of this project to print parts of transcripts in
books / journals and other printed reports.

only with pseudonyms

I do / do not give my permission for the researchers to show short extracts of video at
conferences and meetings.

only if the audio contains no name

only if the video blurs faces

I do / do not give my permission for the researchers to print photos for academic publications
and reports / show photos at conferences and meetings / display photos on a project website

any

ask me about specific photos before using them

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 255

Signed

....................................................................... ......./....../......
Name (please print) date

.......................................................................

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 256

15 July 2009

PARTICIPANT INFORMATION SHEET FOR AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH

CHILDREN

Research Project: Sounds in Speech to Children

Your child is invited to participate in a study being conducted by Dr Caroline Jones and
Heather Buchan (Education, University of Wollongong). The purpose of this project is
to look at sound patterns in adults’ everyday speech to children in regional northern
Australia.

INVESTIGATORS
Dr Caroline Jones Heather Buchan
Faculty of Education Faculty of Education
carjones@uow.edu.au hb307@uow.edu.au

WHAT WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO DO

If you choose to participate we will ask if we can record you in normal conversation
with your child and other people around you during a typical day. To do this we will use
a video camera, microphones and audio recorder.

At the start of each recording session we will explain to your child in a simple way what
we are doing and why, and we will ask your child if he or she would like to take part.
You are welcome to help us with this.

We will ask to come back to make recordings every 6 months for a year and a half. We
would like to make 3 to 4 hours of recordings each time. We will transcribe and do
acoustic analyses of speech in the recordings and analyse the sound patterns.

We do not think there are risks for your child being involved in this study. You are free
to decide if you want your child to be involved in this project or not, and you can take
them out of the study at any time. You do not need to give a reason for changing your
mind, and there won’t be any negative effects for you if you choose to withdraw your
child even if the study has started. All you have to do is let the researcher know, and any
information we already have about your child will be destroyed.

This project is funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council. Participation
will not directly benefit your child. Participating will help us describe the sound patterns
of speech to children in regional Australian English, and this information can be used to
help teachers in northern Australia with teaching language to children.

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 257

WHO WILL SEE YOUR CHILD’S INFORMATION

No-one will be able to identify you or your child from the results of the study. Only the
researchers will have access to this information. If you agree on behalf of your child, we
might use some photos or recordings when we present the information. But we will only
use them if you allow us, and you do not have to agree to this for your child to
participate.

All information will be stored securely at the University of Wollongong for at least 5
years and only the researchers will have access to it. In the attached consent form we
ask you to tell us how you would like your child’s data to be used and stored.

If you would like to check that you are OK with the information or recordings from the
study, you need to contact Dr Caroline Jones on (02) 4221 4905.

When you have read this information sheet, Dr Caroline Jones and Heather Buchan are
free to talk about any questions you might have. We will be happy to talk to you at any
time in the project if you think of something later, or if any problems come up.

ETHICS REVIEW AND COMPLAINTS

This study has been reviewed by the Human Research Ethics Committee (Social
Science, Humanities and Behavioural Science) of the University of Wollongong. If you
have any concerns or complaints regarding the way this research has been conducted,
you can contact the UoW Ethics Officer on (02) 4221 4457.

Thank you for your interest in this study.

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 258

CONSENT FORM FOR AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH CHILDREN PARTICIPANTS

TO BE READ AND SIGNED BY THE CHILD’S PARENT OR LEGAL

GUARDIAN

Research Project: Sounds in Speech to Children

Researchers’ Names: Dr Caroline Jones and Heather Buchan

1. I have read the participation information sheet and have been able to ask the
researchers any questions I may have had.

2. I have discussed with the researchers how my child’s data is going to be used
and stored and I am happy with how the study has been explained to me.

3. I understand that my child’s participation in this research is voluntary and I may

withdraw my child at any time from the study without having to give a reason. I
understand that this will not affect my child’s treatment in the community in any
way.

4. I understand that this study does not have any known risk for my child, and I
have read the information sheet and asked any questions I may have about the
risks.

5. I understand that my child will be recorded on video and audio in everyday

communication with me and other people around me who we would normally
communicate with.

6. I understand that the researchers will contact me and ask to make recordings
every 6 months for a year and a half, and each time they will make 3 to 4 hours
of recordings.

7. I understand that I will be asked regularly to look at the recordings to make sure
they are okay. I may also be asked to clarify to the researchers what my child or
I are saying in some of these recordings.

8. I understand that the video and audio recorder will be recording all the time the
researchers are with my child and myself.

9. If I have any concerns or complaints regarding the way the research is or has
been conducted I can contact the Ethics Officer, Human Research Ethics
Committee, Office of Research, University of Wollongong on (02) 4221 4457.

Please sign on the next page if you agree to these terms.

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 259

To choose how and where we will keep the recordings, please circle whether
you do or do not give permission for these things as your child’s legal guardian:

Storing the videos and making sure you can get copies:

I would / would not like a DVD copy of the recordings of my family.

TalkBank is a collection of videos, audio and transcriptions on the internet

(http://talkbank.org/). It is accessed by researchers in child development.

I do / do not give my permission for audio recordings to be stored on the TalkBank database,
where it will be available to other researchers once this project has finished.

If you agree to storage on TalkBank please select your preferences:

What material would you like stored on TalkBank? (Please tick all that apply)

audio

transcript

video
Do you want your child to be anonymous? (Please tick all that apply)

no, you can use my and my child’s real name

yes, by changing last names only

yes, by changing first names and last names

yes, by removing names from audio recordings

yes, by blurring faces in video recordings

Printing parts of the transcripts and showing videos and photos at conferences and
language meetings:

I do / do not give my permission for the researchers of this project to print parts of transcripts in
books / journals and other printed reports.

only with pseudonyms

I do / do not give my permission for the researchers to show short extracts of video at
conferences and meetings.

only if the audio contains no name

only if the video blurs faces

I do / do not give my permission for the researchers to print photos for academic publications
and reports / show photos at conferences and meetings / display photos on a project website

any

ask me about specific photos before using them

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au
APPENDIX A 260

I give permission for my child _________________________________ (please insert your

child’s name) to participate in this research.

Parent/ Guardian Signature _________________________________________

Date___________ Name (please print) _______________________________

Faculty of Education University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

Telephone: (61 2) 4221 4905 Facsimile: (61 2) 4221 4657
carjones@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au


APPENDIX B
List of Gurindji Kriol Words Containing

Potential Fricatives
APPENDIX B 262

List of words containing ‘potential fricatives’ that were variable, always a fricative, and
always a stop. Words in bold are English code-switches. Underlined words are recent
borrowings.

Variable All fricatives All stops

abta PREP accident N abim V
baind V atsaid DIR ajan DET
biksim
baldan V V bif N
(medial)
bej (initial) ADV disko N dat DEM
bej (final) ADV dragonflai N den CONG
bidio N fait V dens V
fence
bijin (initial) V N dey PRO
(initial)
fence
bijin (medial) V N dij (initial) DEM
(final)
bijinlain
N fij (final) N dijan (initial) DEM
(medial)
bijinlain
N filim V dijei (initial) DEM
(initial)
ebriting
biksim (initial) V flai N PRO
(medial 1)
ebriting
binij (initial) DIS fon N PRO
(medial 2)
binij (final) DIS giraffe N eniting PRO
bo PREP is V hab V
jamting jamting
bolouim V N N
(initial) (medial)
brom PREP klosim V jarran DEM
bust V laswan ADJ jeya DEM
but N live ADJ jumok N
clothes N pressure N knife N
sausage
dij (final) DEM N lab V
(initial)
sausage
dijan (medial) DEM N labta AUX
(medial)
dijei (medial) DEM separet ADJ lipt V
drib V shade N mousey N
elephant N shirt N naja DEM
fij (initial) N sign N neba AUX
APPENDIX B 263

Variable All fricatives All stops

flour N singlet N neks ADV
flower N sirkul N oji N
futbal N skipping V tilip N
gib V skirt N

gibit V so CONJ

hawuj N sori V

inside DIR square N

jarrei DEM star N

ji V stat-im V

jidan V stik N

jinek N sting V

jingat V stirimraun V

jouim V stori N

juka N swim V

jutim V telafon N

juwing N three ADV

libim V

lijin V

machine N

mub V

najan N

nes N

nojing EXCLAM

pleis N

pujim V

raifol N

said DIR

stop V

ting N

waip N

wajim V






APPENDIX B 264

Variable All fricatives All stops

washing N

yestadei N