A production and perception study of /t/ glottalization and oral releases following glottals in the US

The articulation of /t/ in American English varies according to linguistic and extralinguistic factors. Concerning social factors, word-final /t/ glottalization is seen more among speakers of African American English (Farrington 2018), younger speakers (Partin-Hernandez 2005, Roberts 2006), and women (Byrd 1994, Eddington and Channer 2010). This paper examines the production and perception of /t/ in five US states: Indiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont. For the production study, participants read a letter containing 24 prenasal word-medial /t/s (e.g., kitten) and 28 prevocalic word-final /t/s (e.g., not ever). For the perception study, 22 speakers recorded a unique sentence, each of which was manipulated acoustically in order to yield both oral and nasal releases of prenasal word-medial /t/ (e.g. button [bʌʔən] vs [bʌʔn̩]), as well as tap and glottal stop pronunciations of prevocalic word-final /t/ (e.g. not ever [nɑɾɛvɚ] vs. [nɑʔɛvɚ]). Next, these recordings were presented to participants who rated the speakers in terms of their perceived age, friendliness, pleasantness, rurality, education level, and whether they were from the same state as the participants. The production results for prenasal word-medial /t/ (e.g. button) indicate that younger speakers produced oral releases more often than their older counterparts. Age also was related to the realization of prevocalic word-final /t/ as a glottal stop (e.g., not ever), such that younger speakers and women produced glottal stops more often than older speakers. In the perception study, speakers who used glottal stops were viewed as less educated and less friendly. Speakers who used oral releases were perceived as more rustic and less educated. This paper contributes to the literature documenting the production and perception of /t/ in American English and to the literature that demonstrates the usefulness of using both production and perceptual data to study language variation (e.g., Brown 2015).