Perceptual category mapping between English and Korean obstruents in non-CV positions: Prosodic location effects in second language identification skills
This study examines the degree to which mapping patterns between native language (L1) and second language (L2) categories for one prosodic context will generalize to other prosodic contexts, and how position-specific neutralization in the L1 influences the category mappings. Forty L1-Korean learners of English listened to English nonsense words consisting of /p b t d f v θ ð/ and /ɑ/, with the consonants appearing in pre-stressed intervocalic, post-stressed intervocalic, or coda context, and were asked to identify the consonant with both Korean and English labeling and to give gradient evaluations of the goodness of eac...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - February 27, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Speech rate effects in Russian onset clusters are modulated by frequency, but not auditory cue robustness
This study presents data on the durational and timing characteristics of Russian onset clusters and their change as a function of speaking rate. The focus is on Russian due to it being known to have relatively less consonant overlap compared to languages like English and due to its unusual range of consonant clusters. Using articulography, we investigate whether these characteristics have implications for the flexibility of clusters under speech rate changes. In particular we ask whether a cluster's signal modulation profile, taken as an index of auditory recoverability, predicts the degree to which the overlap pattern of ...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - February 22, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
A cross-linguistic perspective to the study of dysarthria in Parkinson ’s disease
Publication date: Available online 21 February 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics Author(s): Serge Pinto, Angel Chan, Isabel Guimarães, Rui Rothe-Neves, Jasmin Sadat Cross-linguistic studies aim at determining the similarities and differences in speech production by uncovering linguistic adaptations to specific constraints and environments. In the field of motor speech disorders, such a cross-language approach could be of great interest to understand not only the deficits of speech production that are induced by the pathology, but also the difficulties that are induced by the linguistic constraints specific to the pa...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - February 21, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Assessing the distinctiveness of phonological features in word recognition: Prelexical and lexical influences
Publication date: May 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 62 Author(s): Alexander Martin, Sharon Peperkamp Phonological features have been shown to differ from one another in their perceptual weight during word recognition. Here, we examine two possible sources of these asymmetries: bottom-up acoustic perception (some featural contrasts are acoustically more different than others), and top-down lexical knowledge (some contrasts are used more to distinguish words in the lexicon). We focus on French nouns, in which voicing mispronunciations are perceived as closer to canonical pronunciations than both place and mann...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - February 15, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Prosodic boundary cues in German: Evidence from the production and perception of bracketed lists
This study investigates prosodic phrasing of bracketed lists in German. We analyze variation in pauses, phrase-final lengthening and f0 in speech production and how these cues affect boundary perception. In line with the literature, it was found that pauses are often used to signal intonation phrase boundaries, while final lengthening and f0 are employed across different levels of the prosodic hierarchy. Deviations from expectations based on the standard syntax-prosody mapping are interpreted in terms of task-specific effects. That is, we argue that speakers add/delete prosodic boundaries to enhance the phonological contra...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - February 11, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
The representation and execution of articulatory timing in first and second language acquisition
Publication date: Available online 9 February 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics Author(s): Melissa A. Redford, Grace E. Oh The early acquisition of language-specific temporal patterns relative to the late development of speech motor control suggests a dissociation between the representation and execution of articulatory timing. The current study tested for such a dissociation in first and second language acquisition. American English-speaking children (5- and 8-year-olds) and Korean-speaking adult learners of English repeatedly produced real English words in a simple carrier sentence. The words were designed to elicit d...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - February 9, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Focus marking in Dutch by heritage speakers of Turkish and Dutch L1 speakers
This study explores whether the Dutch prosody of heritage speakers of Turkish in the Netherlands differs from that of L1 speakers of Dutch who do not speak Turkish, and whether observed differences could be attributed to an effect of Turkish. The experiment elicited semi-spontaneous sentences in broad and contrastive focus. The analysis included f0 movements, peak alignment, and duration. Although both participant groups used prosody to mark focus (e.g., time-compressed f0 movements for contrastive focus), there were also differences between the groups. For instance, while the L1 speakers of Dutch showed declination, the b...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - January 23, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Structure in talker-specific phonetic realization: Covariation of stop consonant VOT in American English
Publication date: March 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 61 Author(s): Eleanor Chodroff, Colin Wilson Variation across talkers in the acoustic-phonetic realization of speech sounds is a pervasive property of spoken language. The present study provides evidence that variation across talkers in the realization of American English stop consonants is highly structured. Positive voice onset time (VOT) was examined for all six word-initial stop categories in isolated productions of CVC syllables and in a multi-talker corpus of connected read speech. The mean VOT for each stop differed considerably across talkers, rep...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - January 19, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Prosodically-conditioned fine-tuning of coarticulatory vowel nasalization in English
This study explores the relationship between prosodic strengthening and linguistic contrasts in English by examining temporal realization of nasals (N-duration) in CVN# and #NVC, and their coarticulatory influence on vowels (V-nasalization). Results show that different sources of prosodic strengthening bring about different types of linguistic contrasts. Prominence enhances the consonant׳s [nasality] as reflected in an elongation of N-duration, but it enhances the vowel׳s [orality] (rather than [nasality]) showing coarticulatory resistance to the nasal influence even when the nasal is phonologically focused (e.g., mob- b...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - January 18, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Individual differences in the production of nasal coarticulation and perceptual compensation
Publication date: March 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 61 Author(s): Georgia Zellou The current study investigates correlations between individual differences in the production of nasal coarticulation and patterns of perceptual compensation in American English. A production study (Experiment 1) assessed participants’ nasal coarticulation repertoires by eliciting productions of CVC, CVN and NVN words. Stimuli for two perception tasks were created by cross-splicing oral vowels (from C_C words), nasal vowels (from C_N words), and hypernasal vowels (from N_N words) into C_C, C_N, and N_N consonant contexts. Stim...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - January 4, 2017 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
An evidence accumulation model of acoustic cue weighting in vowel perception
Publication date: March 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 61 Author(s): Gabriel Tillman, Titia Benders, Scott D. Brown, Don van Ravenzwaaij Listeners rely on multiple acoustic cues to recognize any phoneme. The relative contribution of these cues to listeners׳ perception is typically inferred from listeners׳ categorization of sounds in a two-alternative forced-choice task. Here we advocate the use of an evidence accumulation model to analyze categorization as well as response time data from such cue weighting paradigms in terms of the processes that underlie the listeners׳ categorization. We tested 30 Dutch...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - December 23, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Effects of phonetic reduction and regional dialect on vowel production
Publication date: January 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 60 Author(s): Cynthia G. Clopper, Jane F. Mitsch, Terrin N. Tamati Many linguistic factors contribute to variation in vowel dispersion, including lexical properties, such as word frequency, and discourse properties, such as previous mention. Indexical factors, such as regional dialect, similarly contribute to spectral vowel variation in production. A handful of previous studies have further suggested that linguistic and indexical factors interact such that talkers produce more extreme sociolinguistic variants in linguistic contexts that promote phoneti...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - December 16, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
The development of dialect classification across the lifespan
Publication date: January 2017 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 60 Author(s): Zack Jones, Qingyang Yan, Laura Wagner, Cynthia G. Clopper The current study investigated the developmental trajectory of listeners’ ability to perceive regional dialect variation in American English using a free classification paradigm. Listeners ranged in age from 4 years old through late adulthood. In two experiments, listeners sorted a set of talkers into groups based on where the talkers were from. Talkers from four regional dialects of American English (Midland, New England, Northern, Southern) were presented. The results showed ...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - December 1, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
When words don ׳t come easily: A latent trait analysis of impaired speech motor planning in patients with apraxia of speech
Publication date: Available online 18 November 2016 Source:Journal of Phonetics Author(s): Wolfram Ziegler, Ingrid Aichert, Anja Staiger Apraxia of speech (AOS), a speech impairment caused by left hemisphere stroke, is considered as a clinical model to study the organization of speech motor plans. An earlier nonlinear gestural (NLG) model of word production based on AOS speech error data informs about the structure of phonetic plans of words (Ziegler & Aichert, 2015), but with the disadvantage that it does not allow for single case testing. The latent trait approach presented here complements this model by per...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - November 18, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
Acknowledgements for the 2016 Volumes
Publication date: November 2016 Source:Journal of Phonetics, Volume 59 (Source: Journal of Phonetics)
Source: Journal of Phonetics - November 12, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research
