  The aim of this study is to determine the effect of language varieties on the
spectral distribution of stressed and unstressed sonorants (nasals /m, n/,
lateral approximants /l/, and rhotics /r/) and on their coarticulatory effects
on adjacent sounds. To quantify the shape of the spectral distribution, we
calculated the spectral moments from the sonorant spectra of nasals /m, n/,
lateral approximants /l/, and rhotics /r/ produced by Athenian Greek and
Cypriot Greek speakers. To estimate the co-articulatory effects of sonorants on
the adjacent vowels' F1 - F4 formant frequencies, we developed polynomial
models of the adjacent vowel's formant contours. We found significant effects
of language variety (sociolinguistic information) on the spectral moments of
each sonorant /m/, /n/, /l/, /r/ (except between /m/ and /n/) and on the
formant contours of the adjacent vowel. All sonorants (including /m/ and /n/)
had distinct effects on adjacent vowel's formant contours, especially for F3
and F4. The study highlights that the combination of spectral moments and
coarticulatory effects of sonorants determines linguistic (stress and phonemic
category) and sociolinguistic (language variety) characteristics of sonorants.
It also provides the first comparative acoustic analysis of Athenian Greek and
Cypriot Greek sonorants.
