LAUSR

While native English speakers are traditionally reported to produce word-initial voiced plosives with short positive VOTs, recent studies suggest sociophonetic variation exists in the production of these sounds. In separate studies, more prevoicing has been reported for men than women, for African American speakers than Caucasian American speakers, and for southern American English speakers than speakers from other regions. The current study investigates the effects of gender, ethnicity, and context on voicing variation in Mississippi by analyzing word-initial /b, d, g/ as read in sentences by forty native speakers of English grouped according to self-reported gender and ethnicity. A significant effect of ethnicity and an interaction between gender and ethnicity were found. African American speakers produced voiced stops with a larger proportion of closure voicing and produced more fully voiced closures than Caucasian American speakers. While African American men and women produced similarly voiced closur...