Sibilant production and perception in the North American West

This paper explores variability in English /s/-/ʃ/ production and perception across the North American West. Although this dialect region has long been considered monolithic, recent work has begun to explore the phonetic diversity within the region. However, much of this work has investigated vocalic variation, and sibilants have remained relatively underexamined. Given reports of /s/-retraction as a change-in-progress in varieties of English around the world (particularly in /str/ clusters), sibilants are of particular interest. In this study, monolingual participants from Oregon, California, and British Columbia provided single word productions and performed a /s/-/ʃ/ perception task. Preliminary results indicate the prevalence of /str/ retraction in the region, with most retraction in speakers from California, followed by Oregon, followed by British Columbia. Region-internal differences in perception of /s/-/ʃ/ were minimal, though a speaker’s /str/ retraction ratio contributed to predicting perception for speakers with smaller distances between /s/ and /ʃ/, consistent with prior work finding more perceptual similarity for speakers for whom two sounds are in an allophonic relationship. Taken together, these results contribute to the description of speech in the western region of North America, as well as add data to ongoing questions about variation in production, perception, and their relationship.