The phoneme /ou/ normally manifests itself with a consistent difference as between Non-Broad and Broad Australian English but yields before /I/ an allophone that is common to both speech varieties. The spectrographic investigation described below indicates that the starting-point of this allophonic glide has been retracted and lowered to about the / / position. A perception test has revealed a marked disinclination on the part of speakers of Australian English to accept the glides in such words as so and soul as the same "sound" i.e. to respond in the normal fashion to allophonic variation. Nonetheless economy in procedure seems to preclude a resultant phonemic re-writing of Australian English.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
O'Connor, J.D., Gerstman, L.J., Liberman, A.M., Delattre, P.C. and Cooper, F.S. ( 1957). Acoustic cues for the perception of initial /w, j, r, 1/ in English. Word, 13, 24.
2.
Lisker, L. ( 1957). Minimal cues for separating /w, r, 1, y/ in intervocalic position. Word, 13, 256.
