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- Title
Apparent-time evolution of /l/ in one African American community.
- Authors
van Hofwegen, Janneke
- Abstract
In the wake of numerous analyses of vowels in African American English (AAE), this study examines acoustically the phonetic production of a consonant—the word-initial lateral /l/—across several generations of speakers from a long-standing African American community in central North Carolina. The results of the study show that /l/ is darker in younger AAE speakers than in older ones, independent of phonetic context. Comparisons with ex-slave recordings suggest that a light variant of /l/ may be a substrate feature of AAE that has changed in recent decades. Additional comparisons with regional European Americans suggest that the darkening may be due to convergence with majority American English dialects.
- Subjects
NORTH Carolina; UNITED States; VARIATION in language; FREEDMEN; AMERICAN English language; ENGLISH consonants; ENGLISH language; ENGLISH dialects; BLACK English; PHONEMICS
- Publication
Language Variation & Change, 2010, Vol 22, Issue 3, p373
- ISSN
0954-3945
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0954394510000141