University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics

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The University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL) are published by the Penn Graduate Linguistics Society, the organization of linguistics graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania. PWPL publishes two volumes per year: * Proceedings of the annual Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC) * Selected Papers from New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) In addition, we publish an occasional volume of working papers written by students and faculty in the department.
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  • Publication
    Pitch Variability Cues Perceptions of Singlish: A Perceptually-guided Approach to Sociophonetic Variation
    (2024-10) Tan, Yin Lin; Lin, Ting; Sumner, Meghan
    Multiple models have been proposed to understand variation in the use of English in Singapore, many of which posit a distinction between Singlish, a colloquial variety of English in Singapore, and standard Singapore English. In contrast, an indexical, feature-based model does not draw such distinctions, but instead requires linguists to identify relevant linguistic features and the social meanings indexed by them. Using a perceptually-guided approach for prosodic features, this paper investigates the prosodic features that are associated with listeners' perceptions of Singlish. In an online study, 132 participants completed a speeded forced-choice task, where they chose which of two audio clips sounded 'More Singlish', and a post-task questionnaire. Listeners' descriptions of more Singlish-sounding speakers and clips were leveraged to identify prosodic features associated with Singlish. The results showed that a clip was more likely to be chosen as 'More Singlish' if it had more local pitch variability, less global pitch variability, and faster speech rate. We argue that pitch variability and speech rate cue perceptions of Singlish and are important for an indexical account of English in Singapore. The present study also underscores the utility of speeded forced-choice tasks in investigating sociophonetic variation. Future work can more precisely control for the features of pitch variability and speech rate, identify the specific social meanings indexed by these features, and disentangle the indexical pathways by which these features and their social meanings are connected.