Beyond North American English: modelling vowel inherent spectral change in British English and Dutch

Theories and methods modelling vowel quality in terms of vowel inherent spectral change (VISC) have been developed and tested overwhelmingly on North American English (AE) dialects, which raises the question of their generalisability in non-AE dialects and other languages. The present paper examines VISC as an aspect of vowel quality in Standard Southern British English (SSBE) and Northern Standard Dutch (NSD). Despite markedly different VISC patterns, SSBE vowels are analysable along the same lines as in AE. While the same mostly holds for NSD, VISC is found to be more important for determining SSBE vowel quality, especially for SSBE nominal diphthongs. Additionally, a pair of NSD diphthongs presents a challenge for current theories and methods as they are acoustically similar. In line with studies on AE, theorising vowel quality in terms of VISC aids descriptions of vowels and removes the need to treat nominal monophthongs and diphthongs in different ways.