Chapter 6 - Discussion

Summary

Chapter 6 discusses both the phonological and the sociolinguistic findings of the study. It underlines that /str/-production is currently encroaching on the phonetic realization of post-alveolar sibilants for many speakers. Phonetically, there is no evidence for an effect of /t/, such that assimilation or coarticulation at a distance is likely. Lexical gradualness was found to be affected significantly be the age of speakers. The data further confirm phonetic gradualness as well as indicators of phonologization. The effect of duration in regression models serves as further evidence for coarticulation. From a sociolinguistic point of view, the chapter discusses the lack of a gender pattern and contrasts this with ethnicity. It further adresses the perception of /str/-clusters in the comments section, which support the assumption that /str/-retraction presents as change from below.