At this week’s MCQLL meeting, Irene Smith will be presenting Perception of vowel contrasts in the presence of an allophonic merger.

When:
Wednesday, October 9, 12:00–13:00 (Montréal time, UTC-5)
Where:
MCQLL meetings this semester are in hybrid format. We will meet in-person in room 117 of the McGill Linguistics Department, 1085 Dr-Penfield. If you’d like to attend virtually, the Zoom link is here.

All are welcome to attend.

  • Speaker:
    Irene Smith
    Title:
    Perception of vowel contrasts in the presence of an allophonic merger
    Abstract:

    The PIN-PEN merger is a feature of Southern US and African American English, in which the vowels in the words pin and pen are pronounced the same, but are pronounced distinctly in pre-oral contexts, like bid and bed. The existence of full merger in production is well supported by acoustic studies, but it is less clear whether speakers with the merger are merged in perception as well, i.e., whether they can hear the difference between pin and pen words when they are acoustically distinct. This talk will outline the early stages of an experiment targeting the PIN-PEN merger in perception across both merged and non-merged North American populations.