The Journal of Studies in Language ISSN:1225-4770(Print) 2671-6151(Online) 언어연구

American English lateral /l/s often become dark depending on their phonological conditions (Catford,1977, 1992). When they appear in a word-final position, for instance, the lateral approximant /l/s are realized as being darker than the ones in the word-initial. The degree of darkness depends on various factors amongst which the regional (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996) and syntactic (Bermúdez-Otero,2007) factors have been previously suggested. Sociophonetic factors of the variants that are possibly relevant to the degree of darkness, however, has been less explored. The current study is designed to examine the phonetic properties of /l/ with respect to one of the sociolinguistic factors in terms of gender effects. In order to investigate the gradient and dynamic properties of laterals in male and female speeches, both male and female speakers were requested to produce various types of English /l/s. Laterals were placed in the form of CV₁(C)CV₂L words and both male and female speakers were asked to read the words. The experiment result showed that female speakers’ /l/s were significantly darker than those of males’, which suggests that the allophonic realization of female speakers is more likely to be close to the so-called ‘standard’ of the language group.