Riley Stray

Research

My dissertation research examines the actuation and propagation of sound change. Following Harrington's model of misaligned sound change (e.g., 2012), past work has found that a population is often more advanced in perception than in production of language. In other words, individual speaker-listeners may develop innovative perceptual strategies before they reflect that in their own production. My ongoing dissertation work examines whether we see the BAN-BAD split in California following this pattern, and further explores how perception & production each change over time.

• Does BAN raising in California show misalignment, with perception leading change over production?

• For perception: how does speaker-specific perceptual adaptation contribute to sound change? Do listeners adjust their perceptual strategy for different ends of the sound change?

• For production: how might different speaking styles, like clear speech, contribute to initiating the production shift?

My past work has also investigated BEG raising in California. BEG raising is part of the broader sound pattern prevelar raising, in which coarticulation of the vowels in "bad" and "bed" with the following /g/ sound can create phonologically distinct BEG and BAG vowels. Bag-raising is the most studied sound pattern and is most often associated with speech from Canada, Washington State, and the Upper Midwest. My work has examined BEG raising and found that many speakers in California are raising the BEG vowel and some are even merging it with VAGUE. A handful of merged speakers even hypercorrectively lower VAGUE toward the DRESS vowel, rather than raising BEG. Northern Californians may be slightly leading this sound change over speakers from the Central Valley and Southern California, and white speakers might lead over other races.