• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.19-25
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• 2021

It has been widely recognized that there are two varieties of lateral liquid /l/, which are light /l/ (a non-velarized allophone) and dark /l/ (a velarized allophone). However, this categorical view has been challenged in recent studies, both on articulatory and acoustic aspects. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether to consider /l/ velarization as a continuum in American English and provide supporting data. A spontaneous American English speech database called the Buckeye Speech Corpus was used for the material. The formant frequencies of /l/ in each syllable position were measured and analyzed statistically. The formant frequencies of /l/ in each syllable position, especially F2 values, were significantly different from each other. The results showed that there were other significantly different varieties of /l/ in American English, which support the continuum view on /l/ velarization. Regarding the effect of the adjacent vowel, the backness of the adjacent vowels was shown to affect the degree of /l/ velarization, regardless of the syllable position of the lateral liquid. This result will help provide a solid ground for the continuum view.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.73-78
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• 2015

This study explores the degree of velarization of English word-final /l/ (i.e., /l/-darkness) according to the lexical status. Lexical status is defined as whether a speech stimulus is considered as a word or a non-word. We examined the temporal and spectral properties of word-final /l/ in terms of the duration and the frequency difference of F2-F1 values by varying the immediate pre-liquid vowels. The result showed that both temporal and spectral properties were contrastive across all vowel contexts in the way of real words having shorter [l] duration and low F2-F1 values, compared to non-words. That is, /l/ is more heavily velarized in words than in non-words, which suggests that lexical status whether language users encode the speech signal as a word or not is deeply involved in their speech production.