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Allophonic patterns of variation in English laterals have been well studied in phonetics and phonology for decades, but establishing broad generalizations across varieties has proven challenging. In this study, a typology of onset/coda lateral distinctions in English is advanced using crowdsourced recordings from 95 speakers across twelve dialects of Anglo (UK) English. Results confirm the existence of dialects with and without onset/coda distinctions, and conditional inference trees are used to identify three main patterns in the data: (1) clear onsets and dark codas; (2) intermediate/dark onsets and dark codas, but with a positional distinction intact; and (3) dark onsets and dark codas, with minimal or no distinctions between positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has revealed substantial between-speaker variation in speech rhythm, which in effect refers to the coordination of consonants and vowels over time. In the current proof-of-concept study, the hypothesis was investigated that these idiosyncrasies arise, in part, from differences in the tongue's movement amplitude. Speech rhythm was parameterized by means of the percentage over which speech is vocalic (%V) in the German pronoun "sie" [ziː]. The findings support the hypothesis: all else being equal, idiosyncratic %V values behaved proportionally to a speaker's tongue movement area. This research underlines the importance of studying language-external factors, such as a speaker's individual tongue movement behavior, to investigate variation in temporal coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between-speaker variability of acoustically measurable speech rhythm [%V, ΔV(1n), ΔC(1n), and Δpeak(1n)] was investigated when within-speaker variability of (a) articulation rate and (b) linguistic structural characteristics was introduced. To study (a), 12 speakers of Standard German read seven lexically identical sentences under five different intended tempo conditions (very slow, slow, normal, fast, very fast). To study (b), 16 speakers of Zurich Swiss German produced 16 spontaneous utterances each (256 in total) for which transcripts were made and then read by all speakers (4096 sentences; 16 speaker x 256 sentences). Between-speaker variability was tested using analysis of variance with repeated measures on within-speaker factors. Results revealed strong and consistent between-speaker variability while within-speaker variability as a function of articulation rate and linguistic characteristics was typically not significant. It was concluded that between-speaker variability of acoustically measurable speech rhythm is strong and robust against various sources of within-speaker variability. Idiosyncratic articulatory movements were found to be the most plausible factor explaining between-speaker differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]