Joshua Penney(Macquarie University), Felicity Cox(Macquarie University) and Anita Szakay(Macquarie University)
Abstract:
Glottalisation of coda stops is a recent change in Australian
English. Previous studies have shown that speakers use
glottalisation to signal coda stop voicelessness in production,
and that listeners interpret glottalisation as cueing coda stop
voicelessness in perception. As is to be expected for a recent
change, younger speakers glottalise more than older speakers,
but in perception both age groups appear to use glottalisation
similarly. This study examines whether links between the
production and perception of glottalisation exist at the level of the
individual. We determined how frequently individuals used
glottalisation in production, and analysed this against how
heavily the same individuals weighted glottalisation in
perception. Although differences have previously been found at
the age group level, at the level of the individual we found no
correlation between how heavily listeners weighted glottalisation
in perception and how frequently they used glottalisation in
production for either the younger or the older listeners.
Nevertheless, we did find a small number of individuals who
exhibited an alignment of their production and perception
repertoires, which may suggest that only a small proportion of
individuals exhibit a strong production-perception link, and we
propose that these individuals may be important for driving the
progression of change.