This research examines pre-/l/ allophones of vowels in five lexical sets—GOOSE, FOOT, GOAT, STRUT, and THOUGHT—in Kansas City. It builds an acoustic profile from 5507 tokens drawn from interviews with 67 Kansas Citians born between 1955 and 1999. Results reveal a variety of overlap patterns among all five vowels, with the most widespread being overlap between the pre-/l/ allophones of FOOT, STRUT, and GOAT. Acoustically, overlap patterns generally do not show a trend of change in apparent time. However, responses to minimal pairs reveal substantial apparent-time increases in judgments of “close” or “same.” Speakers appear to adjust their productions of vowels to match their minimal pair judgments. The interaction of these productions and judgments indicates a different profile for these five vowels than has been observed in other communities and suggests that some of these vowels have become phonemically ambiguous in Kansas City.

中文翻译：

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堪萨斯城 /l/ 之前的后元音重叠

这项研究在堪萨斯城检查了五个词汇组（GOOSE、FOOT、GOAT、STRUT 和 THOUGHT）中元音的前/l/ 同位异音。它从对 1955 年至 1999 年间出生的 67 名堪萨斯花旗人的采访中提取的 5507 个标记构建了声学轮廓。结果揭示了所有五个元音之间的各种重叠模式，其中最普遍的是 FOOT 的前/l/同位异音之间的重叠，支柱和山羊。声学上，重叠模式通常不显示明显时间的变化趋势。然而，对最小对的反应揭示了“接近”或“相同”判断的显着时间增加。说话者似乎会调整他们的元音产生以匹配他们最小的配对判断。