Individual differences in acoustic and articulatory undershoot in a German diphthong – Variation between male and female speakers
This study extends this line of work by investigating potential gender-specific differences in the realization of different accent conditions and more specifically in the degree of undershoot. The reason suggested for these differences is the under-exploitation of the larger male articulatory space during running speech. Differences between male and female speakers in undershoot are investigated (a) by comparing the degree of undershoot in various accent conditions between male and female diphthong productions, and (b) by analyzing the degree of undershoot in relation to a speaker’s maximum articulatory vowel space. Arti...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - August 10, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Cross-linguistic differences in the size of the infant vowel space
This study examined the effects of linguistic environmental input on babbling in cross-linguistic investigations of vowel space. Speech samples were collected from 10- to 18-month-old infants learning Arabic (N = 31). First (F1) and second (F2) formant frequencies were identified in the selected vowels and used to calculate the compact-diffuse (F2 − F1) and grave-acute ([F2 + F1]/2) values for each vowel and the size of the vowel space was calculated for each infant’s vowel space. These vowel space statistics were compared to similar data derived from vowels produced by English-learning infants (N = 20)...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - August 4, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Introducing Parselmouth: A Python interface to Praat
Publication date: November 2018Source: Journal of Phonetics, Volume 71Author(s): Yannick Jadoul, Bill Thompson, Bart de BoerAbstractThis paper introduces Parselmouth, an open-source Python library that facilitates access to core functionality of Praat in Python, in an efficient and programmer-friendly way. We introduce and motivate the package, and present simple usage examples. Specifically, we focus on applications in data visualisation, file manipulation, audio manipulation, statistical analysis, and integration of Parselmouth into a Python-based experimental design for automated, in-the-loop manipulation of acoustic da...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 26, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: September 2018Source: Journal of Phonetics, Volume 70Author(s): (Source: Journal of Phonetics)
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 22, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Using meta-analysis for evidence synthesis: The case of incomplete neutralization in German
Publication date: September 2018Source: Journal of Phonetics, Volume 70Author(s): Bruno Nicenboim, Timo B. Roettger, Shravan VasishthAbstractWithin quantitative phonetics, it is common practice to draw conclusions based on statistical significance alone. Using incomplete neutralization of final devoicing in German as a case study, we illustrate the problems with this approach. If researchers find a significant acoustic difference between voiceless and devoiced obstruents, they conclude that neutralization is incomplete; and if they find no significant difference, they conclude that neutralization is complete. However, such...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 18, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
On visualizing phonetic data from repeated measures experiments with multiple random effects
Publication date: Available online 30 May 2018Source: Journal of PhoneticsAuthor(s): Stephen Politzer-Ahles, Page PiccininiAbstractIn recent years, phonetic sciences has hosted several debates about the best way to statistically analyze data. The main discussion has been about moving away from analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to linear mixed effects models. Mixed models have the advantage both of allowing for including all data points produced by a participant (instead of computing means for each participant) and accounting for both by-participant and by-item variance. However, plotting of data has not always followed this tr...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Analyzing dynamic phonetic data using generalized additive mixed modeling: A tutorial focusing on articulatory differences between L1 and L2 speakers of English
Publication date: Available online 21 June 2018Source: Journal of PhoneticsAuthor(s): Martijn WielingAbstractIn phonetics, many datasets are encountered which deal with dynamic data collected over time. Examples include diphthongal formant trajectories and articulator trajectories observed using electromagnetic articulography. Traditional approaches for analyzing this type of data generally aggregate data over a certain timespan, or only include measurements at a fixed time point (e.g., formant measurements at the midpoint of a vowel). This paper discusses generalized additive modeling, a non-linear regression method which...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Mixed-effects design analysis for experimental phonetics
Publication date: Available online 27 June 2018Source: Journal of PhoneticsAuthor(s): James Kirby, Morgan SondereggerAbstractIt is common practice in the statistical analysis of phonetic data to draw conclusions on the basis of statistical significance. While p-values reflect the probability of incorrectly concluding a null effect is real, they do not provide information about other types of error that are also important for interpreting statistical results. In this paper, we focus on three measures related to these errors. The first, power, reflects the likelihood of detecting an effect that in fact exists. The second and...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: July 2018Source: Journal of Phonetics, Volume 69Author(s): (Source: Journal of Phonetics)
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
A comparison of phonetic convergence in conversational interaction and speech shadowing
Publication date: July 2018Source: Journal of Phonetics, Volume 69Author(s): Jennifer S. Pardo, Adelya Urmanche, Sherilyn Wilman, Jaclyn Wiener, Nicholas Mason, Keagan Francis, Melanie WardAbstractPhonetic convergence is a form of variation in speech production in which a talker adopts aspects of another talker’s acoustic–phonetic repertoire. To date, this phenomenon has been investigated in non-interactive laboratory tasks extensively and in conversational interaction to a lesser degree. The present study directly compares phonetic convergence in conversational interaction and in a non-interactive speech shadowing tas...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Asymmetrical interlingual influence in the production of Spanish and English laterals as a result of competing activation in bilingual language processing
This study examines the phonetic and phonological knowledge of Spanish and English /l/ by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals along a continuum of language dominance. Forty early Spanish-English bilinguals, divided into groups as a function of their immigrant generation (G1.5, G2, G3), and twenty L2 Spanish learners produced word-initial and word-final laterals in three separate sessions: monolingual Spanish session, monolingual English session, and bilingual Spanish/English session. Results indicate that all participants acquired the phonetic and allophonic characteristics of the lateral variants in each language, a...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Prosodic effects on the planning of inserted /ɹ/ in Australian English
Publication date: July 2018Source: Journal of Phonetics, Volume 69Author(s): Ivan Yuen, Felicity Cox, Katherine DemuthAbstractV1.V2 hiatus is disallowed in many languages. In several varieties of English, when V1 is non-high, hiatus may be resolved by glottalization or /ɹ/ insertion. However, it is not well understood why speakers choose one over the other. In addition, questions remain about how foot boundary influences the hiatus-breaking strategy and whether perceived /ɹ/ is a phonetic transition or segmental insertion. Using an elicited production task, we investigated the effect of foot boundary on hiatus resolution...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Phonotactic restrictions condition the realization of vowel nasality and nasal coarticulation: Duration and airflow measurements in Québécois French and Brazilian Portuguese
This study examines the nasal airflow and duration patterns of vowels and nasal appendices in Québécois French (QF) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) in order to determine if phonotactic restrictions on nasal and nasalized vowels have an influence on the realization of nasality contrasts. Results show that QF nasal vowels in syllables with more possible contrastive structures (Ṽ$ vs. VN$) show less variability than nasal vowels in syllables with more limited contrasts (ṼC$ does not contrast with *VNC$). Furthermore, nasal airflow of VN sequences rises earlier in syllable structures in which the distribution of nasal and ...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Discrimination of uncategorised non-native vowel contrasts is modulated by perceived overlap with native phonological categories
Publication date: September 2018Source: Journal of Phonetics, Volume 70Author(s): Mona M. Faris, Catherine T. Best, Michael D. TylerAbstractNon-native vowels perceived as speech-like but not identified with a particular native (L1) vowel are assimilated as uncategorised, and have received very little empirical attention. According to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best, 1995), contrasts where one or both phones are uncategorised are Uncategorised-Categorised and Uncategorised-Uncategorised, respectively. We reasoned that discrimination accuracy for these assimilations should be influenced by perceived phonological...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
What makes a word prominent? Predicting untrained German listeners’ perceptual judgments
We report results from a prosody transcription task which assessed how untrained German listeners are simultaneously affected by gradient signal-based factors such as pitch, intensity and duration, as well as discrete prosodic factors (pitch accent type and placement) and non-prosodic factors (semantic-syntactic, lexical). All 17 linguistic variables tested were reliably associated with listeners’ prominence judgments. We used random forests, a data mining algorithm, to uncover which variables are most important in determining the prominence judgments. This analysis showed that discrete prosodic variables relating to int...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
