STAR Speech Therapy Animation and imaging Resource

Non-disordered allophonic variation

This page contains ultrasound-tongue-imaging recordings exemplifying typical consonantal phonetic variants found in English speech, exemplified in the speech of children from Central Scotland. It also contains typical examples of the Central Scottish vowel system.

Videos are organised by phonetic descriptive category and contain multiple utterances from different speakers, with examples of each sound category in different syllable positions: syllable-onset, intervocalic and syllable-coda.

Plosives

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Central Scottish non-disordered child speech (ages 7-12).
Phonetic features: coda glottalled /t/; dentilised onset and intervocalic /t/; ejectivised coda /p/ and /k/; devoiced coda /b/, /d/ and /ɡ/.

Fricatives and affricates

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Central Scottish non-disordered child speech (ages 10-11).
Phonetic features: devoiced coda /z/ and /ʤ/.

Laterals

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Central Scottish non-disordered child speech (ages 7-9).
Phonetic features: velarised onset/ intervocalic/ coda /l/; velarised syllabic /l/; pre-/l/ epenthesis.

Rhotics

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Central Scottish non-disordered child speech (ages 7-10).
Phonetic features: examples of retroflex/ tip-up/ bunched/ tapped and labiodental /r/ in onset, intervocalic and coda position; coda derhoticised /r/; /tr/affrication in onset position; pre-/r/ epenthesis.

Vowels

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Central Scottish non-disordered child speech (mostly one speaker, age 7).
Front monophthongs FLEECE, FACE, DRESS, TRAP; back monophthongs STRUT, COT, GOAT, GOOSE; happY vowel; diphthongs PRICE (HIVE, MICE), CHOICE, MOUTH.