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This article was downloaded by: [Universiti Putra Malaysia] On: 01 December 2014, At: 18:44 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Asian Englishes Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reng20 Voiceless Stop Consonants in Malaysian English Toshiko Yamaguchi a & Magnús Ptursson b a University of Malaya Department of English Language Faculty of Languages and Linguistics 50603 Kuala Lumpur MALAYSIA b University of Hamburg Institute für Phonetik Allgemeine Sparchwissenschaft und Indogermanistik, Bogenalle 11 20144 Hamburg GERMANY Published online: 11 Mar 2014. To cite this article: Toshiko Yamaguchi & Magnús Ptursson (2012) Voiceless Stop Consonants in Malaysian English, Asian Englishes, 15:2, 60-79, DOI: 10.1080/13488678.2012.10801330 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2012.10801330 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions
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This article was downloaded by: [Universiti Putra Malaysia]On: 01 December 2014, At: 18:44Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Asian EnglishesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reng20

Voiceless Stop Consonants in MalaysianEnglishToshiko Yamaguchia & Magnús Pḗturssonb

a University of Malaya Department of English Language Faculty ofLanguages and Linguistics 50603 Kuala Lumpur MALAYSIAb University of Hamburg Institute für Phonetik AllgemeineSparchwissenschaft und Indogermanistik, Bogenalle 11 20144Hamburg GERMANYPublished online: 11 Mar 2014.

To cite this article: Toshiko Yamaguchi & Magnús Pḗtursson (2012) Voiceless Stop Consonants inMalaysian English, Asian Englishes, 15:2, 60-79, DOI: 10.1080/13488678.2012.10801330

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2012.10801330

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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Voiceless Stop Consonants in Malaysian English:

Measuring the VOT Values1

Toshiko YAMAGUCHI & Magnús PḖTURSSON

Abstract: This paper studies the nature of voiceless stop consonants with a special focus on a change from [θ]/[ð] to [t] at the word-initial position in Malaysian English (ME). Drawing on the acoustic phonetic measurement of stop consonants produced by 12 speakers, we maintain that ME is creating a new system of stop consonants. More precisely, we state the following: First, the new alveolar stop [t] originating from voiced and voiceless dental fricatives (e.g., that, think) is always shorter than the original [t] (e.g., teach) in terms of the voice onset time (VOT) values. That is to say, ME possesses two acoustically different alveolar stops. Second, because of the presence of the new [t], the generally agreed phonetic values of VOT for [p] and [t] are reversed. Third, although ME is often characterised by the speakers’ ethnic differences, the acoustic quality of the new [t] is consistent independent of the first language. Fourth, the use of the new [t] is, overall, less frequent than the standard pronunciation of dental fricatives. Fifth, the occurrence and frequency of the new [t] is sporadic, partly because it is speaker specific.

1. Introduction

When foreign people visit Malaysia and listen to Malaysian English (ME), it is relatively easy to perceive some evident differences compared to Standard English.2 For example, final stops are frequently deleted and syllable final consonant clusters are simplified, and occasionally, the frication of stops is heard and the dental fricatives [θ] and [ð] are replaced by an alveolar stop. While it is far beyond our capacity to characterise this stop consonant relying on our causal observation, our growing enquiry was whether this replaced sound is phonetically identical to the original alveolar [t]. There has been no systematic study on stop consonants in ME to answer this question, and this lack of information intrigued us and led us to examine this problem more closely. This study presents the results of acoustic measurements of ME and an account of two types of [t] in conjunction with the other voiceless stop consonants.

In this paper, we examine the voiceless stop consonants [p t k] at the word-initial

1 Our heartfelt thanks go to Dr. Michael Jessen for the generosity he showed in reading earlier versions of the paper and making invaluable comments. All remaining errors are our own.

2 For the definition of Standard English, we quote Preisler (1995), who introduces the notion of “common core English” that embraces “those structural and cultural properties of the language which are shared by native speakers” (p. 343). Common core English has two main varieties, British and American English. The term “Standard English” as we are using it in this paper refers to these two varieties of English, which “for historical reasons have an equal claim to the designation of Standard English” (Preisler, 1995, p. 341).

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Voiceless Stop Consonants in Malaysian English: Measuring the VOT Values

position in ME based on speech samples elicited from educated Malaysians, placing special emphasis on a change from [ð]/[θ] to [t]. This study considers what we call a new alveolar stop [t] (also signalled as [th>t]), which indicates that ME has four physically distinct sounds for voiceless stops, namely, [th>t], [t], [p], and [k] (Figure 6). As shown from our speech samples, ME features three salient characteristics of stops which are also shared by some other New Englishes and Australian English3: (1) the deletion of final stops, (2) the realisations of dental fricatives as alveolar stops, and (3) the frication of stops. The first two characteristics have often been mentioned in connection with Singapore English, which ME resembles in many respects because of the geographical proximity of the two countries and the shared history of the rise of these varieties (see Platt & Weber, 1980). Today, these first two features are frequently discussed to illustrate the two languages (Baskaran, 2005; Deterding, 2010; Gut, 2005; Low & Brown, 2005; Moorthy & Deterding, 2000; Schneider, 2003a, 2003b, among others). The third feature is studied with respect to Australian English (Jones & McDougall, 2009; Loakes & McDougall, 2010).4 Although these three features have often been interpreted with reference to sociolinguistic characteristics such as regional, register-specific, or ethnic variations (except for the studies on Australian English cited above), this combined picture is not salient in our study. On one hand, we observe that the distribution of individual sounds is not regular as it bears on the performance of individual speakers, but on the other hand, the acoustic quality of the new [t] and the coherent relative voice onset time (VOT) durations of the four stops are clear examples of the emergence of a new system of stop consonants (Figures 1 and 6).5

The next section defines sporadic change following Lehmann (1992) and looks closely at the sporadic realisations of a change in [th>t] in ME. Drawing upon measurements of VOT (voice onset time) in the speech samples of 12 speakers (S1, S2, S3, etc.), the main part of this study then describes and interprets the nature of voiceless stops in word-initial position. The final section presents our conclusions, where we discuss our two main findings. The first finding is that the two-category distinction that is valid for Standard English does not operate in the same way in

3 We are aware that Australian English is not a variety of New Englishes. We refer to the studies mentioned in this paper for two reasons. First, all the subjects who participated in these studies have Australian English as their first language but they frequently used fricated stops. Second, fricated stops are phonetically peculiar and hence worth mentioning.

4 This third feature has not been studied as frequently as the other two. Platt and Weber (1980, p. 172) briefly refer to a case where the dental fricative [ð] in they is realised as [d] with a slight friction such as [dzɛ].

5 Maddieson (1997, pp. 619-621) claims that there are two patterns of human-language sounds: One is “learned” and the other is “universal”. As far as we understand his proposal, the data we have at our disposal support the “learned” pattern. The sheer difference between his and our proposals lies where in his study the learned pattern focuses more on language-specific differences (such as the distribution of aspiration) but rarely concerns social or individual aspects.

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ME; aspiration is not an important variant but voicing is. The second finding is that although ME yields irregularity caused by factors specific to speakers (such as expression of emotions and different speaking rates),6 it also displays “language inherent systematicity”, giving rise to the emergence of a new sound inventory.

2. Sporadic Realisations of [th>t]

We assume that ME is undergoing a sound change that is markedly “sporadic” in the sense defined by Lehmann (1992). As Lehmann rightly claims (1992, p. 183), sound change refers to the modifications of a phoneme that lead to realignments of old elements. As he goes on to say (1992, pp. 201-203), sporadic change refers to sound changes that happen irregularly (see also Campbell, 2004, p. 27), do not affect all speakers, and do not happen in all environments. As an example of sporadic change, the modern English word seven has three realisations, [sévn], [sévm], and [sébm], all of which may be used by one speaker. But pronunciations such as [lévm] or [lébm] will be rare or non-existent for the word leaven [lévn],7 even though the phonetic environment for /n/ is the same in both examples. According to Lehmann (1992, p. 203), many sporadic processes are assimilatory and operate by phonemes; sporadic change is crucially different from allophonic change, which brings about regular—that is, predictable—realisations. In Lehmann’s words (1992, p. 202), sporadic changes “involve a direct change from one phoneme to another, with no gradual modification of allophones” and therefore are described “as spontaneous and saltatory—in recognition of the immediate shift from one phoneme to another”. Because of their abrupt change by phonemes, Lehmann continues, these sporadic processes could result from the speaker’s awareness of specific social dialects or styles (1992, p. 203); they are likely to be caused by factors not inherent to language structure.

The focus of our attention here is the substitution of dental fricatives by alveolar stops and their sporadic realisations in our spoken data. As noted earlier, this is a feature often mentioned in relation to the New Englishes spoken in Southeast Asia (Brown & Deterding, 2005; Deterding & Kirkpatrick, 2006; Low & Brown, 2005). Of our 12 participants, 11 showed this feature (Figure 1). A striking fact is that although they replaced dental fricatives with alveolar stops, all of our participants also retained dental fricatives in their sound inventories. Importantly, among our participants, dental fricatives were used more frequently than alveolar stops (Figure

6 According to Allen, Sean, Joanne and DeSteno (2003), differences in speaking rate are responsible for most of the individual differences in VOT. These differences are, according to their view, the essential acoustical elements which permit to a listener to identify a speaker.

7 This is the transcription in the cited text but not a transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

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5). But in recent studies on ME, such as those by Baskaran (2005, 2008) and Bautista and Gonzalez (2009), this substitution has been generalised in a way that omits mention of the use of the standard pronunciation. The realisation of dental fricatives as stops in ME is sporadic in the sense that it does not occur in all speakers and even varies within a single speaker. For example, in our study, the same speaker (S11) realised the initial consonant in thought (W88) as a dental fricative [θ] and as an alveolar stop [t] in the sentence Einstein thought intensively about relativity (Sen59), while another speaker (S2) realised the initial sound in thought as a fricated alveolar stop (Sen5). Other speakers (S1, S9, and S12) always realised the initial consonant in thought as [t] in a word or sentence, whereas one speaker (S10) constantly realised it as [θ] (Figure 5).10 Another speaker (S3), who was a “conscious speaker” of English, very rarely produced [t] for dental fricatives.

Although our participants frequently realised voiceless or voiced dental fricatives with a voiceless stop [t], it rarely happened that a voiced dental fricative was substituted by a voiced stop [d]; for example, the initial sound of words such as the, that, this, or they was pronounced as [t]. This result, however, does not tally with the general views of previous studies (e.g., Baskaran, 2005, p. 26; Brown & Deterding, 2005, p. 12; Deterding & Kirkpatrick, 2006, pp. 395-396; Schneider, 2003b, p. 57). Among our participants, the substitution was quite frequent in the word-initial position but quite rare in other positions. For example, all 12 speakers pronounced the word mouth with [θ] in the sentence Please open the mouth (Sen15). This result again contradicts previous studies that make the following generalisations, namely, that <th> is realised as [f] word finally, particularly in Singapore English (e.g., Bao, 2003, p. 32; Moorthy & Deterding, 2000, p. 26), and that substitution is equally common in the word-initial, word-medial, and word-final positions (Baskaran, 2005, p. 26). Note, however, that S1 consistently pronounced North Wind as [nɔtwɪn], but this case was a rare exception in our samples.

As discussed above, the production of [t] in place of dental fricatives was sporadic in our samples. By contrast, what was consistent was the acoustic quality of the new stop [t]. Among our speakers, this sound was always voiceless and unaspirated even though the underlying dental fricative was voiced [ð] (e.g., this or that) or voiceless

8 W is an abbreviation for Word, referring to one of the words listed in the Appendix. 9 Sen is an abbreviation for Sentence, referring to one of the sentences listed in the Appendix. 10 This participant acquired English while living as a young child in the UK. However, as other features of her

speech, such as her syntax, clearly show that she is a speaker of ME. In general, the replacement of the dental fricative by a stop is of low frequency (Figure 5). But, taken literally, S10’s linguistic attitude is not radically different from that of S3, S5, or S11, who are proficient speakers of English (Figure 1). We thus believe that it is relevant to include S10 as a subject because she proves the hypothesis that Malaysian speakers will eliminate their local accent, when they have greater input of standard pronunciation.

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[θ] (e.g., thing or thought). Many previous studies have shed light on the nature of stops by referring to

some aspects of a speech community or to factors not inherent to language structure. To our mind, previous studies have largely discarded examination of the precise phonetic quality of the sounds that results from sporadic production. Consequently, the wide variability in the realisation of stops has not been sufficiently discussed. Although Moorthy and Deterding (2000) investigated a change from [θ] to [t] in Singapore English, the focal point of their study was the frequency of the occurrence of these sounds. Our intention in the next section, the core of the study, is to fill the lacuna in this area by summarising our findings resulting from measurements of the positive VOT values of stops. We chose to measure VOT on the grounds that although differences exist among individual speakers and within a single speaker, what appears consistent among speakers, and hence reliable, is the VOT, that is, the time lag between the release of the stop closure (when the stop consonant is released) and the onset of the voicing of the following vowel (when the vocal folds begin to vibrate).

3. Voice Onset Time of Voiceless Stop Consonants in Malaysian English3.1. Methodology

We investigated the speech of 12 ME speakers: 8 females (S1, S2, S5, S7, S8, S10, S11, and S12) and 4 males (S3, S4, S6, and S9). All of the speakers were well educated (university students or holders of a master’s degree or PhD and working at a university) and conscious of the social importance of speaking good English. Our speakers can be considered to have a “functional” native command of English, though perhaps not a “genetic” native command (Schneider, 2003a, p. 238). Eight (S1-S4; S6-S9) speakers had a Chinese language background (i.e., they had acquired Chinese as their first language from their parents), two (S10 and S11) had a Malay language background (i.e., they had acquired Malay as their first language from their parents), and one (S12) had a Tamil language background (i.e., she had acquired Tamil as her first language from her parents). Thus, most of the speakers regarded English as a second language, although S5 considered it to be her first language, which she had acquired from her parents and used at home. S7 went to an English-medium school, although her language at home was always Chinese. S10 had acquired English in the UK when she was a child (from the age of 2 to 9) but regarded Malay, which was the major language of communication at home, as her first language. S11 considered herself bilingual (Malay and English). All of the speakers stated that they currently used English actively every day either at their workplace, at university, in their social life, or at home. They all asserted that

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English was a language that they liked to use and that it played a more important role on some occasions (e.g., in communication with colleagues) than their first acquired language. Because Chinese and Indian ethnic groups study Malay in school, they are also fluent in that language, and so we considered Malay as a second language for them in addition to English. In Table 1, the two languages are shown in reverse order for S12 because she felt more fluent in Malay than in English. In our selection of informants, we wanted to have a relatively homogenous group of educated speakers of ME whose data would be representative of consciously spoken ME. Information about the participants’ background was obtained through questionnaires and direct contacts by the first author. Table 1 summarises our discussion above.

Table 1: Linguistic, Social, and Ethnic Information of the 12 Participants

Gender Age First language Second language Ethnicity

S1 Female 33 Chinese English/Malay Chinese

S2 Female 38 Chinese English/Malay Chinese

S3 Male 40 Chinese English/Malay Chinese

S4 Male 32 Chinese English/Malay Chinese

S5 Female 21 English Malay Chinese

S6 Male 21 Chinese English/Malay Chinese

S7 Female 57 Chinese English/Malay Chinese

S8 Female 24 Chinese English/Malay Chinese

S9 Male 19 Chinese English/Malay Chinese

S10 Female 24 Malay English Malay

S11 Female 50 Malay English Malay

S12 Female 26 Tamil Malay/English Indian

For our tests we used three types of text: (1) the fable The North Wind and the Sun, which is a standard text often used in phonetic research11; (2) a list of isolated words; and (3) a list of meaningful sentences (see Appendix for examples). We also added a free speech sample in which each speaker spoke about his or her work, workplace, or studies and which lasted two to three minutes. Because the written texts were provided to the speakers, they helped us to compare the speakers’ use of the language in the same linguistic environment. In contrast, the free speech sample

11 We should note that Text 1 contained only one case of the voiceless dental fricative in the medial position (North Wind). All of the cases of the dental fricative except for one (North Wind) were voiced. Four speakers (S2, S6, S11, and S12) replaced [ð] with [t]. S2 had seven tokens of this case, which was the highest. S5 replaced [ð] with [θ] seven times. We decided to include this text because of the unique variations the speakers produced.

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enabled us to examine each speaker’s individual characteristics. We considered the three types of text to be formal and the free speech sample to be informal. Foulkes and Docherty (2006, pp. 414-415) make a similar distinction; they consider word list reading formal and conversational speech informal.

Lisker and Abramson (1964) showed that different kinds of texts can influence the length of VOT. In their research, the VOT was longer in isolated words than in sentences and in spoken texts. The same tendency was confirmed in our materials. However, it was not relevant for our research to differentiate according to different kinds of texts. We therefore present the results of our measurements as a whole.

3.2. Measurements

Our texts were recorded in a studio at two different points in time (September 2010 and January 2011). To measure the recordings, we had at our disposal an analysis programme used extensively in current phonetic research, namely Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2008). Although Jessen (2001) lists 14 features (e.g., duration of closure, length of the preceding/following vowel) that can be relevant for discriminating stop consonants, we followed the suggestion of an earlier study by Lisker and Abramson (1964), whose findings have been considered reliable and are still currently valid (see Bijankhan & Nourbakhsh, 2009; Cho & Ladefoged, 1999; Klatt, 1975; Maddieson, 1997; Morris, McCrea & Herring, 2008). Thus, in this study, we treated the positive VOT as the justifiable and constant feature that separates the categories of stop consonants. If the VOT was shorter (longer) than 30 msecs, the stop consonant was perceived as unaspirated (aspirated). Aspiration thus implied a long delay (i.e., a long lag) in VOT. This delay is generally represented in a spectrogram as noise after the burst that follows the release of the stop closure. We measured the VOT in the word-initial position followed immediately by a vowel. For this paper, we did not consider other positions in our speech samples.

Standard English distinguishes between two types of stops, namely voiced and voiceless, the latter of which correlates with aspiration (Lisker & Abramson, 1964). In the medial position, stops are realised as voiced or voiceless, whereas in the initial position, the voiced stops [b d g] can be realised as unvoiced and unaspirated and the unvoiced stops [p t k] are realised as unvoiced and aspirated (Lisker & Abramson, 1964, pp. 384-385). ME, however, differs considerably in this regard; the stops [b d g] are fully voiced both word initially and word medially. Our speech samples showed the following two characteristics: (1) in only a few cases were the stops [b d g] unvoiced and unaspirated and (2) not all [p t k] stops were aspirated word initially. These two new criteria applied to all of our speakers, regardless of their first language.

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Another factor that can influence the degree of aspiration is vowel height (Yavaş & Wildermuth, 2006, pp. 260-261); the higher the tongue, the greater the delay in the onset of voicing (see also Morris et al., 2008). Our study, however, did not find vowel height to be significant. We therefore present examples irrespective of the vowels after the stop.

3.3. Results

The average value of our measurements of [p t k] is presented in msecs for each speaker. In the figures, the number in parentheses next to each speaker (S) indicates the number of utterances.

3.3.1. The substitution [th>t]

ME stops cannot be fully described without referring to the alveolar stop that originates from the dental fricatives [θ] and [ð]. In our samples, this new stop [t] was always voiceless. In most cases, the VOT of this new [t] was very short (clearly less than the critical 30 msecs). This corresponds to an unaspirated [t], whereas the original [t] has a much greater variation of VOT. Figure 1 displays the results for our speakers.

Figure 1: VOT [in msecs] of the New [t]12

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The height of the columns and the values on top of the columns represent mean VOT values across all of the measured stop tokens per speaker. The number of

12 The zero (0) for S10 means that she did not produce a single example of an alveolar stop for the dental fricatives. All of her dental fricatives were realised as voiced or voiceless as in Standard English.

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tokens per speaker is given in parentheses after each speaker abbreviation (S1 to S12). For speakers S3 and S11, the average VOT value was just above the critical 30 msecs; for everyone else, it was much less. However, we observed individual cases where this new [t] exceeded the critical 30 msecs; for example, S1 produced one example of an exceptionally long VOT of 86 msecs (thought in Einstein thought intensively about relativity in Sen513), which was the longest VOT for the new [t] in our samples. Other speakers produced the following long VOTs: S3 produced a VOT of 62 msecs (three in The learning will take place as I see at three levels in his free talk)14, S9 one of 52 msecs (thought in Einstein thought intensively about relativity in Sen5), S11 one of 48 msecs (things in I see three things on the table in Sen26), and S12 one of 49 msecs (three in I see three things on the table in Sen26).

The high degree of speaker variability, as presented above, in producing the new [t] could have been influenced by the individual speaker’s internal or emotional condition (see Introduction).15 S5 produced only one instance of the new [t] in her speech sample (Figures 1 and 5). It is intriguing that this speaker produced [θ] and [t] for the same word (thing) within the same context. In her free talk, she said the following: “You can hear people say some things that are quite out of ordinary or when16 you listen back to what people have said, it’s just amusing to see why people say things the way they do [...]”. The <th> in the second thing was realised as a voiceless stop, whereas the first thing retained the voiceless dental fricative. The replacement of [θ] with <t> might result from her empathy with what people talk about. The addition of the evaluative adjective amusing validated her emotional attachment to her own speech.

In general, the new [t] was realised more frequently when speakers read sentences or talked freely. In the word list, all but four speakers tended to pronounce the words as in standard English, the exceptions being S4, S6, S9 (thing in W1), and S12 (thing in W1 and thought in W8), who had a strong tendency to substitute.

3.3.2. The original alveolar [t]

The measurement of the original alveolar stop [t] showed a much longer VOT than did the new [t]. Figure 2 depicts the results for our speakers.

13 It is possible, but hardly possible to prove, that this speaker was thinking of “taught” when she spoke this sentence. This would explain her exceptionally long VOT in this case.

14 This sentence does not make sense grammatically. A grammatical sentence would be “As I see it, the learning will take place on three levels”.

15 Concerning the definition of emotion, Kagan’s (2007, p. 1) summary of the discussion by ancient philosophers dovetails with our observation. Emotion is defined as “an appraisal of a change in feeling”.

16 Alternatively, “and when” would make more sense.

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Figure 2: VOT of the Original [t]

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S1(34)

S2(14)

S3(22)

S4(15)

S5(26)

S6(19)

S7(25)

S8(15)

S9(11)

S10(44)

S11(39)

S12(35)

48.554.4 52.8

26.5

57.162.6

44.2

61.7

5348.1 50.8

28

S4 and S12 had an average VOT value below the critical 30 msecs and therefore produced an unaspirated [t]. Note that, overall, the VOT values for the original alveolar [t] were significantly higher than those for the new [t] (Figure 1). Both types of stop were clearly differentiated by means of VOT. Here, we are witnessing the birth of a new stop in the ME consonant system, that is, an alveolar stop emerging from an underlying dental fricative. Briefly speaking, there are two acoustic phonetically distinct alveolar stops.17

Another point worthy of mention is the unexpectedly great range of individual variation in VOT for the original alveolar [t]. The longest realisations were above 100 msecs (e.g., time carried a VOT of 150 msecs in I have no time in the case of S1 in her free talk), whereas the shortest realisations were around 10 msecs (e.g., to carried a VOT of 15 msecs in Come to London now in the case of S3 in Sen16). There are certainly factors that can explain this wide range of individual variation, such as the expression of emotion noted in the previous section. According to Morris et al. (2008, p. 310), suprasegmental factors such as a fast or slow speaking rate can explain most of the variability in the duration of VOT (see also Allen et al., 2003). Although we did not control the speaking rate, we admit that an explanation based on different speaking rates seems quite probable.

17 An alternative interpretation would be to refrain from speaking of a “new alveolar stop” to avoid postulating a new stop category. We could instead emphasise the gradual durational differences in VOT values between the “new” and “old” alveolar stop. There are several factors that could influence the duration of VOT, some of which would be speaking rate, context, and place of articulation.

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3.3.3. The bilabial [p]

Figure 3 provides the results of the measurements of the bilabial [p].

Figure 3: VOT of [p]

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

speakers and utterances

mse

c

S1(5)

S2(3)

S3(3)

S4(2)

S5(15)

S6(4)

S7(3)

S8(6)

S9(3)

S10(12)

S11(12)

S12(13)

60.3 59.9

67.3

53

37.6

92.5

64

41.6

62

48.242.4 36.2

There were generally fewer examples of [p] than of the other voiceless stops, except in the cases of S5, S10, S11, and S12. The tendency observed among our speakers was to make the VOT of [p] longer than that of [t], a fact that does not accord with the general expectation (Cho & Ladefoged, 1999; Maddieson, 1997). Cole, Kim, Choi and Hasegawa-Johnson (2007, p. 191) show examples of individual differences where the VOTs of alveolars and labials are of the same duration, but the reversed value which we observed in our speakers does not occur in their data. However, this observation was not quite consistently valid in our data. S5, S8, and S11 provided exceptions; that is, the VOT of their [p] had a shorter average value than that of their original [t] (Figure 2). A wide range of VOT variation was also exhibited for [p], ranging from an unaspirated 7 msecs (people in You can hear people say some things in the case of S5 in her free talk) to a strongly aspirated 121 msecs (poor in He was always poor in the case of S6 in Sen20).

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3.3.4. The velar [k]

Figure 4 gives the results of the measurements for the velar [k].

Figure 4: VOT of [k]

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

speakers and utterances

mse

c

S1(17)

S2(10)

S3(18)

S4(10)

S5(29)

S6(17)

S7(10)

S8(24)

S9(10)

S10(16)

S11(20)

S12(19)

65.7 67.3

59.6 61.2

49.4

68.6 66.7

55.6

63.4

67.5

60.2 56.4

In this study, the velar stop had the longest VOT, which accords with the general expectation (Lisker & Abramson, 1964; Maddieson, 1997). Like other stop sounds, the velar stop also showed a wide VOT variation depending on the speaker, ranging from 19 msecs (e.g., confess in […] was obliged to confess that […] in the case of S5 in her free talk) to 140 msecs (e.g., key in The key to the solution in the case of S6 in Sen22). As Figure 4 indicates, S5 had the shortest VOT of all of our speakers. Interestingly, she showed the same tendency when pronouncing [p], producing a very short VOT of 37.6 msecs (see Figure 3). Consequently, S5 formed a sequence of [p k t] whereby [t] and [k] were reversed. This should be regarded as a specific feature ascribed to this speaker, as most of the other speakers had a rather constant VOT duration of around 60 msecs for the velar [k], which produced the longest VOT among the stops (see Point 4 in the next section).

4. Conclusions

The stops in ME mirror the changes that are taking place within the language. Generally speaking, ME reveals a wide range of sporadic variations among speakers and within a single speaker it also exhibits a considerable degree of systematisation. In addition, the fact that our speakers still used a large number of Standard English pronunciations for the dental fricatives (Figure 5) may well indicate that if speakers have more exposure to Standard English, the new system identified in the previous sections should disappear or be minimised (see Point 5 below). Hence, our

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conclusions are as follows:1. A new alveolar stop [t] is emerging in ME. The origin of this new stop is a dental

fricative. In our study, speakers produced the voiceless new [t] regardless of the voicing distinction of an original sound. This stop remained distinct from the original alveolar [t] even for speakers (e.g., S4 and S12) who did not have aspirated alveolar stops (Figure 2). An intriguing fact is that in all of our speech samples, the dental fricatives [ð] and [θ] continued to exist together with the new [t] (Figure 5).

2. The change from [θ] or [ð] to [t] can be explained by drawing upon Fougeron and Keating (1997), who developed the hypothesis of articulatory strengthening. This hypothesis can provide two possible explanations for the change: (1) the stop [t] is articulated more easily than [θ] or [ð] and (2) the voiceless [t] is perceptually more prominent than its voiced counterpart.18 This explanation further clarifies why the change from [ð] to [d] was not frequent and why dental fricatives in word-final and syllable-final positions were less affected.

3. A two-category contrast of stop consonants in the word-initial position may not be valid for ME in the same sense as it is for Standard English. In ME, the voiceless stops [p t k] are not regularly aspirated in the word-initial position. That is to say, in ME, the phonological contrast is in terms of the distinction between voiced vs. voiceless, not in terms of aspirated vs. unaspirated, precisely because aspiration is the factor that “accompanies” voiceless stop consonants. In other words, the distinction between [p t k] and [b d g] is made in terms of voicing only and not in terms of aspiration. Hence, the important point is that [p t k] will remain voiceless with or without aspiration and regardless of their phonetic environment. ME and Standard English pertain to two different systems.

4. The average relative VOT duration of stops in ME is schematised as follows (see Figure 6 for the average value of each sound):

[th>t] – [t] – [p] – [k] (shortest to longest) This differs significantly from the generally observed pattern in languages

(Abelli-Beruh, 2009; Bijankhan & Nourbakhsh, 2009; Cho & Ladefoged, 1999, pp. 208, 218-219; Lisker & Abramson, 1964, pp. 391-394; Maddieson, 1997), as follows:

[p] – [t] – [k] (shortest to longest) In this general pattern, the labial [p] has the shortest VOT and the velar [k] the

18 It is worth mentioning that the hypothesis of articulatory strengthening was already formulated by Straka (1963), but it did not receive the attention it deserved at the time. The research by Fougeron and Keating (1997) now seems to confirm entirely the hypothesis first formulated by Straka, which was based on historical phonetic data from the Romance languages.

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longest (Fischer-Jørgensen, 1968, pp. 78-79; Helgason & Ringen, 2008, p. 623; Morris et al., 2008, p. 316). We presume that the VOT values of [t] and [p] in ME are reversed because of the presence of the new [t], whose VOT is shorter than that of the original [t]. We do not, however, have a principled explanation for this pattern (i.e., why the alveolar [t] should have a shorter VOT than the labial [p]).19 Here, we tentatively state that this happens owing to the presence of the new [t] and that although these sounds are phonetically distinct, they might pertain to the phonologically same sound (cf. Burquest, 2006, pp. 2-3).20

5. In ME, there is no significant VOT difference between the speech of males and females (cf. Morris et al., 2008, p. 316). Neither is there a difference attributable to the first language of the speakers, namely Chinese, Malay, or Tamil. This shows that although what Schneider (2003a, 2003b) calls “nativisation” (which is largely sociocultural in nature) is in place, speakers are developing a new language system. This process may slow down, however, if Malaysia’s language policy in the future seeks to promote Standard English (see footnote 2) or “the standard of English” (as stated in The Star, 10 April, 2011).21 Indeed, this promotion was a genuine interest of the speakers who answered our questionnaire after the recordings; they expressed the hope that such a change would occur in the near future.

6. With regard to Singapore English, it has been stated (Low & Brown, 2005, p. 133; Moorthy & Deterding, 2000) that the dental fricative, which is considered the prestigious pronunciation, is realised more frequently in formal speech. Given that free talk is informal and the reading of sentences formal, the new [t] does not always occur more frequently in free talk. In our study, three speakers (S7, S8, and S9) produced more [t]s in place of dental fricatives when they read sentences. This shows that the distinction between formality and informality was apparently not the most crucial element.22

19 The reverse order is not unique to ME; it also occurs in Danish in a different manner, that is, [p k t]. It is assumed that the reverse order between [t] and [k] is probably due to an additional manner of articulation, that is, the affrication of [t] (Fischer-Jørgensen, 1968, p. 78).

20 Burquest (2006, pp. 2-3) claims that [t] in write and writer in American English are phonetically realised differently (writer with a flap, write with a complete burst) but are the same sound phonologically. Speakers would not perceive the two [t] sounds as being different. Along the same lines, we can assume that [t] in place of a voiceless dental fricative (e.g. thought) might not be perceived by ME speakers as different from the voiceless alveolar stop [t] in taught, despite the considerable differences in positive VOT we measured.

21 As Mesthrie (2008, p. 26) rightly states, “Standard English” should be treated as a “metalanguage” in the sense that many ME speakers have virtually little chance of encountering Received Pronunciation or Standard American English. They normally learn English from local teachers at school or through everyday interactions with local speakers.

22 Moorthy and Deterding (2000) differentiated formal and informal speech by type of conversation, whereby speakers were asked to talk about two different topics. Informal speech dealt with any topic the student participants were passionate about, whereas formal speech dealt with topics concerning the students’ courses or life at university. If we follow these criteria, the recorded free talk from our speakers comes closer to formal speech. But speakers can become passionate about content regardless of formality. The fact that in our samples, the reading of meaningful sentences produced the new [t] as much as in the free talk may prove this.

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7. Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008, p. 126) claim that “all New Englishes varieties treat [θ] and [ð] as something other than an interdental fricative”. It would be meaningful to see exactly how these sounds are realised in other varieties (i.e., in other New Englishes) and to what extent their results approximate or differ from those of ME.

Lastly, although we hope that our findings are valid for ME in general, we must admit that these conclusions are based solely on the speech samples we collected from 12 speakers.

Figure 5: Frequency of Dental Fricatives and th>t

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

speakers

freq

uenc

y

S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 S11 S12

39

28

88

57

95

41 4351

29

83

113

43

9

18

37

1

124 3

15

05

18

[θ] and [ð]

[th>t]

Figure 6: Average Duration of VOT for Stops

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

stops

mse

c

th>t t p k

22.7

48.9

55.4

61.8

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Appendix

The following are the two lists (words and sentences) used for the tests performed in September 2010 and January 2011. Words (in the body of the text, these are indicated as W followed by a serial number: e.g., W8):

1. thing2. dispute3. spade4. time5. them6. key 7. good8. thought9. core10. test11. poor12. buy13. day

The following words were spoken only by the last three speakers (S10, S11, & S12):

14. going15. taught16. button

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17. kitten18. peak19. teach20. past21. task

Sentences (in the body of the text, these are indicated as Sen followed by a serial number: e.g., Sen5):

1. Where are you going?2. Please go in.3. The great thing is interesting.4. We are thinking of this project.5. Einstein thought intensively about relativity.6. The weather is changing every day.7. John took the spade with him.8. We have no time.9. I have no notice of this problem.10. I want to buy a car.11. We will pay tomorrow.12. The price is too high.13. This was a good choice.14. He is an intelligent student.15. Please open the mouth.16. Come to London now.17. We will be staying here.18. The shop is near the station.19. This is a serious problem.20. He was always poor.21. This is a great cure.22. The key to the solution.(This phrase was included in this list even though it is not a complete sentence.)23. We are testing the car.24. Past tense is used in this sentence.25. I can see them over there.

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The following sentences were read only by the last three subjects (S10, S11, & S12). Sentences 27, 29, and 30 contain a nonsense word to see whether this would influence the pronunciation of <th>:

26. I see three things on the table.27. Every thang is a mystery.28. He taught us to describe our thinking.29. Do you see the thungs over there?30. Take the thib with you.31. Mary notified us that yesterday was the thirteenth anniversary of her father’s

death.32. They did not find any past tense in the text.33. Tom said that task was misspelled.

Toshiko YAMAGUCHIUniversity of MalayaDepartment of English LanguageFaculty of Languages and Linguistics50603 Kuala LumpurMALAYSIA

E-mail: [email protected]

Magnús PḖTURSSON University of HamburgInstitute für PhonetikAllgemeine Sparchwissenschaft und IndogermanistikBogenalle 11, 20144 HamburgGERMANY

E-mail: [email protected]

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