A study in sociophonetic variation: palatalized vs. non-palatalized [t] followed by “e” in loanwords

This paper studies sociophonetic variation of palatalized vs. non-palatalized [t] followed by [e] in Russian. It is shown that the choice of palatalized vs. non-palatalized [t] depends on the age and gender of the speaker as well as on the speech situation. Our data show that the most salient correlation is with the age of the speaker.