Allophonic variation of vowels /u/ and /о/ in modern British speech (based on BBC analytical news programs)

The current paper presents an acoustic analysis of the allophonic variation of the phonemes /u/ and /о/ in stressed and unstressed position in the utterance in modern British speech. These phonemes are often said to have undergone noticeable fronting and unrounding as a result of the influence of national accents, such as Scottish and Estuary English. This paper explores the variety of contexts. The subjects were four male native speakers of British English, in their late-forties or early-fifties, who obtained higher education in England. The material of BBC analytical news programs was used for the acoustic study (total duration: 1 hour 30 minutes). The total of 260 uses of /u/ and /о/ was studied: 96 stressed /u/, 55 stressed /о/, 88 unstressed /u/, 21 unstressed /о/. The contexts where these vowels occurred were divided into three types 1) the ones that discouraged fronting (e.g. in labial consonant surrounding), 2) the ones that were neutral (e.g. after /h/), and 3) the ones that encouraged fronting (in fore-lingual and mid-lingual consonant surrounding). Three types of context-dependent allophones were observed for stressed /u/: front, central, and back with 28 %, 57 % and 15 % correspondingly. In unstressed position the same types of allophones were noticed; a significant increase of front allophones (to 41 %) was observed together with a notable decrease of the central type (to 48 %) and a little decrease of the back type (to 11 %). Two types of context-dependent allophones were found for stressed /о/: central and back with 40 % and 60 % correspondingly. In unstressed position the same types of allophones were noticed with a significant increase of central allophones (to 62 %) and decrease of back ones (to 33 %) compared to stressed position. No front-type allophones of /о/ occurred in the material except for one case in the unstressed position. Although fronting was characteristic for both /и/ and /о/ in general, F2 values show that /и/ was much more sensitive to that process. In all the three context types F2 of /u/ demonstrated high variability: central, front, and back realizations could occur in all the three types. F2 transition pattern was another factor that made /u/ and /о/ more distinct acoustically. In the former, F2 moved from higher values to lower ones while in the latter it was vice versa even after fore-lingual consonants that generally encourage higher F2 values. The same tendency of fronting can be observed for /u/ (but not /о/) in American and Australian English where it is expressed even stronger.

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