Three realisations of syllable-final /l/ have been described in previous work on Singapore English: vocalised-l (or deleted-l in some phonetic contexts; the local norms), dark-l (a form associated with the exonormative standards), and clear-l (a Malay-derived phonetic trait observed in the speech of some English-Malay bilinguals). This study examined whether, how and why Singaporean English-Malay bilinguals vary their English /l/ in their child-directed speech, and whether the phonetic variation, if any, could be socially-conditioned. The laterals in the English child-directed speech of ten father-mother dyads with their preschoolers were analysed using auditory and acoustic methods. All participants were simultaneous or early English-Malay bilinguals. The findings revealed that in informal contexts, both mothers and fathers used a relatively clearer /l/ in all syllable positions. Contrastingly, in formal contexts that involved teaching and learning, the coda laterals of mothers were significantly darker, thereby exhibiting positional contrast between onset and coda laterals. They also produced significantly more vocalised-l in these contexts. Fathers, however, did not show differentiation in the darkness of the laterals, nor did their laterals show significant positional differences in formal contexts, although some fathers of younger children did produce more vocalised-l than they did in informal contexts. The variation observed was discussed by exploring the potential socio-indexical meanings of these variants of /l/ within the context of variationist accounts of Singapore English and by drawing parallels with socially-conditioned variation in bilectal monolinguals and ethnolect speakers. Differences between maternal and paternal CDS patterns could be attributed to gender roles and cultural expectations of mothers’ dominant role in child-rearing, and may also be a result of and enabled by Malay women’s potentially more complex repertoire range.

之前关于新加坡英语的工作中描述了音节结尾 /l/ 的三种实现方式：发声-l（或在某些语音上下文中删除-l；当地规范）、dark-l（一种与外调标准相关的形式）、和 clear-l（在一些英马来双语者的讲话中观察到的源自马来语的语音特征）。这项研究调查了新加坡英语-马来语双语者是否、如何以及为什么在他们的面向儿童的演讲中改变他们的英语 /l/，以及语音变化（如果有的话）是否会受到社会条件的影响。使用听觉和声学方法分析了 10 位父-母对与他们的学龄前儿童的英语儿童导向演讲中的分词。所有参与者都是同时或早期的英语-马来语双语者。调查结果显示，在非正式环境中，母亲和父亲在所有音节位置都使​​用了相对清晰的 /l/。相比之下，在涉及教学和学习的正式环境中，母亲的尾侧明显更暗，从而表现出起始侧和尾侧之间的位置对比。在这些情况下，他们还产生了明显更多的发声-l。然而，父亲在侧翼的黑暗中没有表现出差异化，他们的侧翼在正式环境中也没有表现出显着的位置差异，尽管一些年幼孩子的父亲确实比在非正式环境中产生了更多的发声-l。通过在新加坡英语变体论的背景下探索 /l/ 的这些变体的潜在社会索引意义，并通过与双语单语者和民族语言使用者的社会条件变体进行比较，讨论了观察到的变体。母亲和父亲 CDS 模式之间的差异可归因于性别角色和对母亲在育儿中占主导地位的文化期望，也可能是马来妇女潜在更复杂的曲目范围的结果和促成。