Patterns of vowel laxing and harmony in Iberian Spanish: Data from production and perception
Publication date: July 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 63 Author(s): Nicholas Henriksen We investigate the production and perception outcomes of sound changes involving phonological vowel harmony, and how phonetic processes (i.e., /s/ lenition and vowel laxing) bear on these outcomes. Our data come from two varieties of Iberian Spanish: Eastern Andalusian Spanish (EAS), a variety that undergoes lenition of word-final /s/, and North-Central Peninsular Spanish (NCPS), a variety that typically retains /s/. In Experiment 1 we show that EAS (but not NCPS) speakers lax the low and mid vowels /a e o/ (i.e., approximat...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - May 30, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Covariation of nasalization, tongue height, and breathiness in the realization of F1 of Southern French nasal vowels
This study includes results from synchronous nasalance, ultrasound, EGG, and F1 data related to the realizations of the oral–nasal vowel pairs /ɛ/-/ɛ̃/, /a/-/ɑ̃/, and /o/-/ɔ̃/ of Southern French (SF) as produced by four male speakers in a laboratory setting. The aim of the study is to determine to what extent tongue height and breathiness covary with nasalization, as well as how these articulations affect the realization of F1. The following evidence is observed: (1) that nasalization, breathiness, and tongue height are used in idiosyncratic ways to distinguish F1 for each vowel pair; (2) that increased nasalizati...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - May 24, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Voice Onset Time (VOT) at 50: Theoretical and practical issues in measuring voicing distinctions
Publication date: July 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 63 Author(s): Arthur S. Abramson, D.H. Whalen Just over fifty years ago, Lisker and Abramson proposed a straightforward measure of acoustic differences among stop consonants of different voicing categories, Voice Onset Time (VOT). Since that time, hundreds of studies have used this method. Here, we review the original definition of VOT, propose some extensions to the definition, and discuss some problematic cases. We propose a set of terms for the most important aspects of VOT and a set of Praat labels that could provide some consistency for future cross-s...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - May 23, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Segmental cues to intonation of statements and polar questions in whispered, semi-whispered and normal speech modes
Publication date: July 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 63 Author(s): Marzena Żygis, Daniel Pape, Laura L. Koenig, Marek Jaskuła, Luis M.T. Jesus This paper examines how acoustic characteristics of vowels and consonants reflect intonational differences between polar questions and statements in Polish whispered, semi-whispered and normal speech modes, with particular focus on the spectral characteristics of voiceless consonants as a function of intonation, and across speech modes. The results reveal significant differences in spectral properties of both utterance-final vowels and consonants across statement...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - May 10, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Earlier or Higher? Comparing French rising-falling contour with rising contour in a corpus of conversation
Publication date: July 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 63 Author(s): Cristel Portes, Leonardo Lancia In French intonation, a rising-falling contour (RF) has been described by many authors, but the characteristics of its phonetic realization as well at its phonological status remain controversial. Is its f0 movement temporally aligned earlier compared to the f0 movement of the simple rise (R)? Or is it scaled higher in the speaker’s pitch range? Does it convey conviction and obviousness while the simple rise rather announces that the speaker has more to say? Firstly, the present study compared the phonetic im...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - May 10, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Exertive modulation of speech and articulatory phasing
Publication date: Available online 21 March 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics Author(s): Sam Tilsen An articulatory study was conducted to investigate whether fluctuations in exertive mechanisms (attention, effort, motivation, arousal, etc.) have a global effect on articulatory control systems. Participants in the experiment produced an articulatory pattern 400 times, attempting to do so as consistently as possible. Evidence for global exertive modulation was obtained in the form of widespread correlations between variables associated with biomechanically independent systems such as phonation, linguo-labial coordination,...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - April 29, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
The phonetic specificity of competition: Contrastive hyperarticulation of voice onset time in conversational English
Publication date: Available online 23 March 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics Author(s): Noah Richard Nelson, Andrew Wedel Competition between words in the lexicon is associated with hyperarticulation of phonetic properties in production. This correlation has been reported for metrics of competition varying in the phonetic specificity of the relationship between target and competitor (e.g., neighborhood density, onset competition, cue-specific minimal pairs). Sampling a systematic array of competition metrics, we tested their ability to predict voice onset times in both voiced and voiceless word-initial stops of convers...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - April 29, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Erratum to “An acoustic-articulatory study of bilingual vowel production: Advanced tongue root vowels in Twi and tense/lax vowels in Ghanaian English” [J. Phon. 62 (2017) 65–81]
Publication date: Available online 23 April 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics Author(s): Sam Kirkham, Claire Nance (Source: Journal of Phonetics)
Source: Journal of Phonetics - April 29, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Integrating the discreteness and continuity of intonational categories
Publication date: Available online 26 April 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics Author(s): Martine Grice, Simon Ritter, Henrik Niemann, Timo B. Roettger It has already been observed that there is no one-to-one mapping between intonational categories and the pragmatic functions they are used to express. For instance, in German a particular pitch accent (L+H∗) is often used to express contrastive (corrective) focus, but neither is the use of this pitch accent confined to this function nor is this the only pitch accent used to express it. In particular, there are considerable differences across speakers in the use of pit...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - April 29, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
An acoustic-articulatory study of bilingual vowel production: Advanced tongue root vowels in Twi and tense/lax vowels in Ghanaian English
This article investigates the acoustic and articulatory correlates of vowel contrasts in bilingual speakers. We analyse data from bilingual speakers of Twi (Akan) and Ghanaian English, with the aim of examining how the production of the advanced tongue root vowel contrast in Twi relates to the production of the tense/lax vowel contrast in Ghanaian English. These data are compared to tense/lax vowel data from monolingual British English speakers. The acoustic results show that Twi and Ghanaian English mainly rely on F1 for distinguishing [ATR] and [TENSE] vowels, whereas British English uses F1, F2, F3 and duration for the ...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - April 29, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
The direct and indirect effects of the phonotactic constraints in the listener ’s native language on the comprehension of reduced and unreduced word pronunciation variants in a foreign language
This study investigates how the comprehension of casual speech in foreign languages is affected by the phonotactic constraints in the listener’s native language. Non-native listeners of English with different native languages heard short English phrases produced by native speakers of English or Spanish and they indicated whether these phrases included can or can’t. Native Mandarin listeners especially tended to interpret can’t as can. We interpret this result as a direct effect of the ban on word-final /nt/ in Mandarin. Both the native Mandarin and the native Spanish listeners did not take full advantage of the subse...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - April 29, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Gemination and degemination in English prefixation: Phonetic evidence for morphological organization
Publication date: May 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 62 Author(s): Sonia Ben Hedia, Ingo Plag This paper addresses the problem of morpho-phonological variability and the role of phonetic detail in morphologically complex words by investigating the gemination behavior of the English prefixes un- and in-. Traditionally, it is assumed that un- geminates while in- degeminates, but empirical studies are rare and not conclusive. This paper presents the first study that uses data from natural speech (Switchboard Corpus, Godfrey and Holliman 1997). It is shown that both prefixes geminate, contra large parts of the li...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - April 29, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Infant-directed speech in English and Spanish: Assessments of monolingual and bilingual caregiver VOT
Publication date: July 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 63 Author(s): Melanie S. Fish, Adrián García-Sierra, Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, Patricia K. Kuhl It has been shown that monolingual caregivers exaggerate acoustic speech cues in infant-directed speech (IDS), but less is known about the characteristics of IDS in late second-language (L2) bilingual caregivers. Furthermore, there is inconsistency in the literature regarding voice onset time (VOT) of stop consonants in IDS. The present study explores VOT of English and Spanish stops in English monolingual and Spanish-dominant bilingual caregivers, in infant...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - April 29, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Listeners respond to phoneme-specific spectral information when assessing speaker size from speech
Publication date: July 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 63 Author(s): Santiago Barreda Spectral information in speech sounds varies as a function of linguistic content, as well as the vocal-tract length (VTL) of the speaker. It is usually considered that human listeners rely on VTL information when assessing apparent speaker-size. However, a recent experiment (Barreda, 2016) found that listeners respond to the specific spectral-content of speech sounds rather than simply responding to speaker VTL information. This results in biases towards identifying certain phonemes with larger speakers independently of VTL in...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - April 29, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Speech dynamics: Converging evidence from syllabification and categorization
Publication date: Available online 3 March 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics Author(s): Betty Tuller, Leonardo Lancia The present paper explores the dynamics of speech production and perception in the context of syllabification and categorization. The selective review includes empirical work and dynamical models that account for changes in the perception and production of syllable structure as transitions between attractors in a dynamical system and that highlight the role of instabilities as a mechanism for regulating flexibility and change. Different conceptual approaches to changes in perceptual categorization are re...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - March 2, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
