ISCA Archive Interspeech 2023
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2023

Opening or Closing? An Electroglottographic Analysis of Voiceless Coda Consonants in Australian English

Louise Ratko, Joshua Penney, Felicity Cox

In voiceless sounds, the glottis may be spread or constricted. Glottal spreading is associated with breathiness, and constriction with glottalisation. In many dialects of English, glottalisation often occurs with coda /t/ and sometimes with /p, k/, suggesting coda stop voicelessness is achieved through glottal constriction. Conversely, voiceless coda fricatives are associated with breathiness of the preceding vowel, with voicelessness achieved through glottal spreading. However, analyses specifically measuring glottal activity in coda consonant contexts in English are sparse. We conducted an electroglottographic analysis of vowels preceding voiceless codas /p, t, k, s/ to examine how coda voicelessness is achieved in Australian English (AusE). We found that coda /t/ and /p/ show glottal constriction towards vowel offset. Conversely, /k/ patterns with /s/ and exhibits glottal spreading. This suggests that different glottal configurations are used to achieve coda voicelessness in AusE.