Pitch accent realization in four varieties of British English

In intonation languages, the realization of pitch accents varies with the application of phonetic e!ects such as &&truncation'' and &&compression''. These e!ects can change the surface form of accents but do not a!ect the inventory of phonological contrasts. Cross-linguistic di!erences in the application of truncation and compression have been attested for the standard varieties of English and German, and cross-varietal di!erences have been shown to apply within Swedish and Danish. This paper provides evidence for cross-varietal di!erences in truncation and compression in four varieties of British English. We show that speakers of Cambridge English and Newcastle English compress rising and falling accents, but in Leeds English, in identical contexts, we "nd truncation. In Belfast English, we "nd rise-plateau patterns in contexts eliciting rises and falls in Cambridge English, Leeds and Newcastle, and these riseplateaux are truncated. Our data show "rstly that di!erent varieties of one language can share intonological speci"cations but di!er in the way these speci"cations are realized in F 0 . Secondly, they show that the reverse is also possible. Di!erent varieties can share a phonetic realization e!ect, but apply this e!ect to di!erent pitch accents. ( 2000 Academic Press