Dialectal variation in the rising accents of American English

In Pierrehumbert (1980) three rising accents are posited for English, H*, L+H* and L*+H, but this three-way contrast has often been disputed. In the present experiment, Minnesotan and Southern Californian speakers read two dialogs which included four levels of emphasis. Emphasis lengthened segmental duration, raised the scaling of all tones and delayed H alignment in L+H*. Independently of emphasis effects, in both dialects L+H* and L*+H were used in different contexts and were phonetically distinct, with L*+H showing later alignment of both tones, lower scaling of L, and higher scaling of H. In addition, there were phonetic differences between the two dialects, with Southern Californian showing later alignment than Minnesotan English. On the other hand, our data indicate that Minnesotan speakers may lack the H* : L+H* contrast: in one of the dialogs, Minnesotan speakers used L+H* irrespective of emphasis, while Southern Californian speakers switched from H* to L+H* with increased emphasis. These results suggest that Pierrehumbert’s three-way distinction between H*, L*+H and L+H* is essentially correct, though it may not apply to all the dialects of American English.