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Article published In:
English World-Wide
Vol. 41:2 (2020) ► pp.162–192

The inconspicuous substratum

Indigenous Australian languages and the phonetics of stop contrasts in English on Croker Island

| Western Sydney University
| Western Sydney University
| The University of Melbourne | The University of Auckland
Descriptions of Australian Aboriginal English list the neutralisation of the Standard English contrast between so-called voiced and voiceless stops as one characteristic feature. This paper reports on the results of an acoustic analysis of data collected in a production task by monolingual speakers of Standard Australian English in Sydney, of Aboriginal English on Croker Island, Northern Territory, and bilingual speakers of Iwaidja/Aboriginal English and Kunwinjku/Aboriginal English on Croker Island. The results show that average values for Voice Onset Time, the main correlate of the “stop voicing contrast” in English, and Closure Duration collected from Aboriginal speakers of English do not significantly differ from that of speakers of Standard Australian English, irrespective of language background. This result proves that the stop contrast is not neutralised by these Aboriginal speakers of English. However, it can be shown that phonetic voicing manifesting itself in Voice Termination Time is a prevalent and characteristic feature of Aboriginal English on Croker Island. This feature aligns Aboriginal English on Croker Island with local Aboriginal languages and differentiates it from Standard Australian English.
Keywords: Australian Aboriginal English, VOT, closure duration, lenition, Iwaidja, Kunwinjku
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Stops in Englishes, Iwaidja and Kunwinjku
    • 2.1The stop contrast in English: Phonetics and variation
    • 2.2Stops in Iwaidja and Kunwinjku
  • 3.Research questions and hypotheses
  • 4.Data and method
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Stimuli
    • 4.3Method
      • 4.3.1Procedure
      • 4.3.2Acoustic analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1VOT and CD
    • 5.2Voice termination time (VTT) and voicing
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.00045.mai
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2024. Sociophonetic Variation in Vowel Categorization of Australian English. Language and Speech 67:3 ► pp. 870 ff. DOI logo
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2024. Production and perception of stop voicing in Central Australian Aboriginal English: A cross-generational study. Australian Journal of Linguistics 44:1 ► pp. 69 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2023. Review of Mailhammer (2021): English on Croker Island: The Synchronic and Diachronic Dynamics of Contact and Variation. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 44:1 ► pp. 146 ff. DOI logo
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