Affricate Consonants Research Articles

Acoustic evaluation of voice signal distortion by videoconferencing platforms and devices used in telepractice for cleft palate.

The usefulness and effectiveness of telepractice have been reported in recent years. Treatment of cleft palate patients with compensatory articulation is based on perceptual identification. Telepractice using videoconferencing platforms causes voice signal distortion and impacts auditory-perceptual perception. This study aimed acoustically examine voice signal distortion and determine the optimal videoconferencing platforms, in addition to the phonemes that can be discriminated with the same quality as in face-to-face interactions. ATR503 with 50 phoneme-balanced Japanese speech sentences was used as a reference corpus. Four videoconferencing platforms, -Zoom, Cisco Webex, Skype, and Google Meet, -and five devices, -iPhone, Android, iPad Air, Windows, and MacBook Pro were used as transmission conditions to examine voice signal distortions with the objective measure log-spectral distortion (LSD). Tukey's test was conducted to evaluate the degree of consonant distortion related to voicings (voiceless and voiced), places of articulation (bilabial, alveolar, alveolo-palatal, palatal, velar, labial-velar, and glottal), and manners of articulation (plosive, fricative, affricate, tap or flap, nasal, and approximant). With statistically significant differences, voiced, bilabial, labial-velar, nasal, and plosive consonants exhibited smaller distortions. In contrast, voiceless, alveolo-palatal, fricative, and affricate consonants exhibited larger distortions. Google Meet exhibited the lowest distortion among videoconferencing platforms and MacBook exhibited the lowest distortion among devices. This study provides significant insights into the telepractice strategies with the appropriate videoconferencing platform and device, and useful settings for cleft palate patients with compensatory articulations with respect to acoustics.

ANALYSIS OF THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION OF PHONETIC SYMBOLS IN ENGLISH

This research aims to analyze the correct pronunciation of phonetic symbols in English by describing the Influence of Sociolinguistic and Cultural Aspects on Pronunciation, Phonetic Symbol Pronunciation, and Analysis of Proper English Phonetic Symbol Pronunciation Based on Types. The study adopts a literature review approach. Data collection involves gathering information from existing sources such as literature, journals, articles, and other relevant academic works related to the research topic. This method is employed to investigate, analyze, and synthesize previously published information on the researched subject. The research findings indicate that the first section highlights the significant impact of sociolinguistic and cultural factors on language pronunciation. It emphasizes how an individual's accent or dialect, stemming from their geographical origin, influences sound articulation. These variations occur not only between American and British English but also among non-native speakers. Their influence extends to communication practices, formal and informal settings, displaying diverse pronunciation patterns shaped by individual backgrounds and contextual influences. The second part encompasses various aspects of sound articulation, such as word stress, rhythm, intonation, and phonetic symbols. It underscores their role in altering word meanings, poetry meter, speech patterns, and emotional expression, thereby shaping communication and message delivery. Finally, English phonetic symbols are categorized and exemplified, showcasing short vowels, long vowels, diphthongs, fricative, explosive, affricate consonants, and nasals. Each category features symbols and examples illustrating the diverse phonetic sounds in English.

上古音에서 中古音에 걸친 舌齒音의 變化

In this study I explored the change of the Alveolar plosive initials and Alveolar sibilant affricate & fricative initials form Old Chinese to Middle Chinese. Findings can be summarized in the following five points.<BR> 1. There were two language groups in Old Chinese. The first group distinguished aspirated and tenuis initials. We call it Language “A”. The second group distinguished voiced and voiceless sounds, We call it Language “B”. It is thought that in Old Chinese, Language “A” was more influential than “B”. “A” was distributed widely in the north whereas “B” was in the south. Middle Chinese distinguished not only aspirated and tenuis sounds but also voiced and voiceless sounds, which was produced after the language contact between “A” and “B”.<BR> 2. Alveolar plosive initials and Alveolar sibilant affricate & fricative initials existed separately in Old Chinese. Postalveolar plosive initials and Alveolo-palatal affricate & fricative initials in Middle Chinese were derived from Alveolar plosive initials in Old Chinese and Postalveolar affricate & fricative initials in Middle Chinese were derived from Alveolar sibilant affricate & fricative initials in Old Chinese. The Cr-type consonant cluster was basically possible in Old Chinese. Alveolo-palatal affricate & fricative initials in Middle Chinese had two different sources form Old Chinese. One was form Tri-type, which we call Group “α” and the other one was from Ti-type, which we call Group “β”. After the disappearance of [r] of Group “α”, Group “α” and Group “β” underwent the palatalization during Northern and Southern Dynasties, and merged to Alveolo-palatal affricate & fricative initials.<BR> 3. The separation of Postalveolar plosive initials from Alveolar plosive initials happened in some areas of the Western Jin Dynasty. However, the separation had not occurred in some areas in the Northern and Southern Dynasties.<BR> 4. In Old Chinese, people who used Language “B” did not distinguish between Alveolar fricative and Sibilant affricate consonants.<BR> 5. Tongue-up sounds and Tooth-up sounds were Postalveolar initials in the Qie-yun system.

Orthognathic speech pathology: impacts of Class III malocclusion on speech.

SummaryIntroductionPatients with dentofacial disharmonies (DFDs) seek orthodontic care and orthognathic surgery to address issues with mastication, esthetics, and speech. Speech distortions are seen 18 times more frequently in Class III DFD patients than the general population, with unclear causality. We hypothesize there are significant differences in spectral properties of stop (/t/ or /k/), fricative (/s/ or /ʃ/), and affricate (/tʃ/) consonants and that severity of Class III disharmony correlates with the degree of speech abnormality.MethodsTo understand how jaw disharmonies influence speech, orthodontic records and audio recordings were collected from Class III surgical candidates and reference subjects (n = 102 Class III, 62 controls). A speech pathologist evaluated subjects and recordings were quantitatively analysed by Spectral Moment Analysis for frequency distortions.ResultsA majority of Class III subjects exhibit speech distortions. A significant increase in the centroid frequency (M1) and spectral spread (M2) was seen in several consonants of Class III subjects compared to controls. Using regression analysis, correlations between Class III skeletal severity (assessed by cephalometric measures) and spectral distortion were found for /t/ and /k/ phones.ConclusionsClass III DFD patients have a higher prevalence of articulation errors and significant spectral distortions in consonants relative to controls. This is the first demonstration that severity of malocclusion is quantitatively correlated with the degree of speech distortion for consonants, suggesting causation. These findings offer insight into the complex relationship between craniofacial structures and speech distortions.

Complex Patterns in L1-to-L2 Phonetic Transfer: The Acquisition of English Plosive and Affricate Fake Geminates and Non-Homorganic Clusters by Polish Learners

This paper analyses the way that Polish learners of English articulate plosive and affricate consonants preceding another obstruent occlusive in both L1 and L2. Considering that English allows unreleased plosives before any stop, that is in a wider range of contexts than Polish, a Polish learner may find it confusing that it is regarded unacceptable to block the affricate release before another (in English always homorganic) affricate. In Polish the first of two homorganic affricates is often reduced to the occlusion phase, while unreleased plosives appear very rarely in non-homorganic contexts. This apparent paradox in the treatment of affricate and plosive consonant clusters may lead to complicated transfer patterns, which we examine by observing the release suppression tendencies in Polish and English phrases and sentences read by phonetically trained and untrained Polish learners of English. The results indicate strong negative transfer tendencies and suggest a connection between gemination patterns and unreleased occlusive distribution in a language.

A Case Study of English Affricate Consonants Realized by a Two-year-old Indonesian Child

In English, the two affricate consonants are not owned by other languages. They are [d?] a voiced affricate like in the word jaguar, garage, and jeep, and [t?] a voiceless affricate like in the word chin, cheap, and check. These sounds are phonetic sequences consisting of a stop with a fricated release. For some EFL learners, especially children, producing those sounds are difficult because they don’t have a similar or same sound in their first or mother language like in Indonesian language. This study is aimed to explore the realization of English two affricate consonants produced by a two-year-old Indonesian child who speaks both English and Indonesian language. This qualitative case study shows a significant result on the voiced and voiceless post-alveolar consonant. The child couldn’t produce [d?] as in GA production in an initial sound of the word. She produced [j] sound instead, but she could pronounce it if the sound is in the final sound of the word. In contrast, she could pronounce [t?] as in GA production in both the initial and final sound of the word with ease. This study contributes helping English teachers to teach their students, especially children in their golden age, to pronounce English words and to contribute to the field of phonetics and phonology, specifically in teaching English pronunciations to EFL learners.

AN OBVERVATIONAL STUDY ON A BATAK ENGLISH LEARNER IN CONSONANT SOUND PRODUCTION

This article reports on the result of a study aiming to describe what difficulties experienced by Batak English learner in consonant sound production and the factors which cause him difficult to produce those sounds. The study was conducted to Batak English learner who is still taking pronunciation course in the first semester in the English study program at one of private universities in East Java, Indonesia. The study used a qualitative case study research design with the data collected from the analysis of students’ English consonants production and interview. The findings showed that all sounds of voiceless dental frecative consonant [θ] in initial position were pronounced into voiceless alveolar stop consonant [t] while the research participant was pronouncing the sound of voiced dental frecative consonant [ð], he mispronounced the sound into voiced alveolar stop consonant [d] in both initial and medial position. The sound of voiced alveolar affricate consonants [dʒ] was pronounced appropriately while voiceless alveolar affricate consonant was pronounced into voiceless alveolar fricative consonant [s]. The factors which cause the participant find it difficult to learn pronunciation were afraid of making mistakes, limited time to repeat it at home, and habit.

Tasting names: Systematic investigations of taste-speech sounds associations

Product names can be developed to effectively convey specific sensory attributes to the consumer. Most of the previous research on crossmodal correspondences has shown that people selectively associate words (e.g., ‘Maluma’, ‘Takete’) with taste attributes. To provide practical insights for naming new products in the food industry, it is important to obtain a more nuanced understanding concerning those properties of speech sounds (i.e., vowels, consonants) influencing people’s taste expectations. In this study, we investigated taste-speech sound correspondences by systematically manipulating the vowels and consonants comprising fictitious brand names. Based on the literature on crossmodal correspondences and sound symbolism, we investigated which vowels/consonants contribute more to the association between speech sounds and tastes (sweet/sour/salty/bitter). Across three experiments, we systematically varied vowels (front: [i][e], back: [a][u][o]), and affricate consonants (e.g., fricative: [f][s], stop: [p][t]) as well as voiced/voiceless consonants (e.g., voiced: [b][d], voiceless: [f][k]). Japanese participants were presented with brand names and had to evaluate the taste that they expected the product to have. The results revealed that: (1) front (back) vowels increased expected sweetness (bitterness), (2) fricative (stop) consonants increased expected sweetness (saltiness/bitterness), (3) voiceless (voiced) consonants increased expected sweetness/sourness (saltiness/bitterness). Moreover, consonants, which were pronounced first in the brand names, exerted a greater influence on expected taste than did the vowels. Taken together, these findings help advance theoretical foundations in sound-taste correspondences research as well as provide practical contributions to the food practitioners to develop predictive product names.

Formal Instruction and Its Effects on the Acquisition of English Affricate Consonants

Abstract: Indonesian and English have some differences dealing with their symbols or phonemes in the points and manner of articulation. On the other hand, they have the same symbols and phonemes in affricate consonants, voiceless alveolar-palatal /ʧ/ and voiced alveolar-palatal /ʤ/.This study therefore aims to find out whether formal instruction improve the acquisition of English fricative consonants by Indonesian learners of English. The study employed quasi experimental design, the onequivalent control group design. It used two groups, one received treatment (formal instruction) and another group was taught conventionally. The population of this study is students of English Literature Study Program Faculty of Languges and Literature Universitas Negeri Makassar Indonesia. There were 64 students participated as subjects of this study. The subjects ranging from 17 – 19 years old attended an English phonology subject in 2016/2017 academic year. The study reveals that formal instruction improves the acquisition of English affricate consonants by Indonesian learners of English. There are two main conclusions of this study. The first one is that the Indonesian learners of English met difficulties in transcribing English affricate consonants [tʃ] and [dʒ] in pretest, either for control group or experimental group. The second main finding as the primary concern of this study is that the formal instruction improved students’ acquisition of English affricate consonants [tʃ] and [dʒ], where the subjects’ answers toward the list of words significantly improved.

Consonant Changes in Korean Singers� Pronunciation

Music industry in Indonesia is now filled with many genres or types of music. One of them that is very famous nowadays is a music genre called K-pop or Korean pop, originating from South Korea. In line with the development of K-pop music that continues worldwide, Korean singers start making English songs. There were two objectives to be discussed in this article: to find out the consonants that are usually changed or replaced by Korean singers and find the phonological patterns found in the consonant changes. Phonological approach was conducted by involving purposive sampling technique to collect the data. Songs by Wonder Girls, Super Junior, Bigbang, and CN Blue were analyzed in terms of the consonant changes that occurred in Korean singers pronunciation. The analysis showed that there were 7 English consonants that underwent changes in Korean singers pronunciation. Fricatives are found as the consonants that usually undergo a change. Furthermore, the phonological processes that were usually found in those consonant changes were the process of changing fricatives into stops or affricate consonants, process of changing [r] into [l], and the last is the process of palatalization.Keywords: consonant change, Korean, phonology

Philological evidence for phonemic affricates and diachronic debuccalization in Early Terena (Arawak)

Abstract This paper argues that early Terena (‘Guaná’) had a contrast between fricative and affricate consonants that has been lost in modern Terena. Evidence for this claim comes from the examination of late 19th century and early 20th century documents on the language. The existence of the relevant phonemic contrast is revealed not only by an analysis of the transcriptions employed in these early sources but, more importantly, by a demonstration that fricatives and affricates were treated differently in the history of the language. It is proposed that, after the early Terena voiceless fricatives were debuccalized, merging with early Terena h, the affricates started to include fricative realizations in their allophonic range. This scenario is consistent with descriptions of modern Terena that stress the ‘archaic’ character of affricate realizations of /ʃ/.

Perceptual Identification and Perception of Sibilants of English Language by Turkish English Majors

Abstract Sibilants of English, /s, z, ʿ, ʿ, tʿ, dʿ/, are a combination of fricative and affricate consonants, produced with an audible hissing /s, z /and hushing / ʿ, ʿ, tʿ, dʿ/ overtones via perceptual intensity in pitches in their articulations. They are louder and their acoustic energy occurs at higher frequencies, which create some perceptual problems to Turkish students in English majors. The aim of this research is to explore whether Turkish English majors are able to perceive the articulatory distinction among English sibilant sounds. The 11 questions of the pre-test included one of the 6 English sibilants as the correct choice. In a soundproof language lab, the pronunciation coach articulated the correct choice three times. The correct answer was placed among the other four alternatives which were all fricatives and affricatives like [f, v, ɸ, β, θ, ð s, z, ʿ, ʿ, tʿ, dʿ, c, j, ɣ] in the same question. The English majors chose one of the alternatives as the correct answer. After the pre-test, the English fricatives and affricative were intensively studied three hours by means of exercises. Fifteen days later, the same pre-test was administrated to the participants as a post test. The students⿿ success rate is 73.83% for the pre-test and for the post-test is 91.60%, this showed that the participants improved their perception of the sibilant sounds of English

On the development of a frequency-lowering system that enhances place-of-articulation perception

Frequency lowering is a form of signal processing designed to deliver high-frequency speech cues to the residual hearing region of a listener with a high-frequency hearing loss. While this processing technique has been shown to improve the intelligibility of fricative and affricate consonants, perception of place of articulation has remained a challenge for hearing-impaired listeners, especially when the bandwidth of the speech signal is reduced during the frequency-lowering processing. This paper describes a modified vocoder-based frequency-lowering system similar to one reported by Posen et al. (1993), with the goal of improving place-of-articulation perception by enhancing the spectral differences of fricative consonants. In this system, frequency lowering is conditional; it suppresses the processing whenever the high-frequency portion (>400 Hz) of the speech signal is a periodic signal. In addition, the system separates non-sonorant consonants into three classes based on the spectral information (slope and peak location) of fricative consonants. Results from a group of normal-hearing listeners with our modified system show improved perception of frication and affrication features, as well as place-of-articulation distinction, without degrading the perception of nasals and semivowels compared to low-pass filtering and Posen et al.’s system.

Burst Onset Landmark Detection and Its Application to Speech Recognition

The reliable detection of salient acoustic-phonetic cues in speech signal plays an important role in speech recognition based on speech landmarks. Once speech landmarks are located, not only can phone recognition be performed, but other useful information can also be derived. This paper focuses on the detection of burst onset landmarks, which are crucial to the recognition of stop and affricate consonants. The proposed detector is purely based on a random forest technique, which belongs to an ensemble of tree-structured classifiers. By adopting a special asymmetric bootstrapping method, a series of experiments conducted on the TIMIT database demonstrate that the proposed detector is an efficient and accurate method for detecting burst onsets. When the detection results are appended to mel frequency cepstral coefficient vectors, the augmented feature vectors enhance the recognition correctness of hidden Markov models in recognizing stop and affricate consonants in continuous speech.

Phonetic vs. Phonological Lengthening in Affricates

Affricate consonants consist of two portions: stop closure and frication. Can these portions play different roles in phonetic and phonological processes? In this study, I address the question by probing the behavior of Hungarian affricates under lengthening. I measure the duration changes that affricates undergo in two types of lengthening processes: first, a phonetic process of final lengthening and second, a phonological process of gemination. I show that these two processes alter the internal structure of affricates in very different ways. The results suggest that the difference between phonetic and phonological processes is in fact deeper than a mere difference between “gradient” and “categorical” effects.

Effects of Vowel Context on the Recognition of Initial and Medial Consonants by Cochlear Implant Users

Scores on consonant-recognition tests are widely used as an index of speech-perception ability in cochlear implant (CI) users. The consonant stimuli in these tests are typically presented in the /alpha/ vowel context, even though consonants in conversational speech occur in many other contexts. For this reason, it would be useful to know whether vowel context has any systematic effect on consonant recognition in this population. The purpose of the present study was to compare consonant recognition for the /alpha, i/, and /u/ vowel contexts for consonants presented in both initial (Cv) and medial (vCv) positions. Twenty adult CI users with one of three different implanted devices underwent consonant-confusion testing. Twelve stimulus conditions that differed according to vowel context (/alpha, i, u/), consonant position (Cv, vCv), and talker gender (male, female) were assessed in each subject. Mean percent-correct consonant-recognition scores were slightly (5 to 8%) higher for the /alpha/ and /u/ vowel contexts than for the /i/ vowel context for both initial and medial consonants. This general pattern was observed for both male and female talkers, for subjects with better and poorer average consonant-recognition performance, and for subjects using low, medium, and high stimulation rates in their speech processors. In contrast to the mean data, many individual subjects demonstrated large effects of vowel context. For 10 of 20 subjects, consonant-recognition scores varied by 15% or more across vowel contexts in one or more stimulus conditions. Similar to the mean data, these differences generally reflected better performance for the /alpha/ and /u/ vowel contexts than for the /i/ vowel context. An analysis of consonant features showed that overall performance was best for the voicing feature, followed by the manner and place features, and that the place feature showed the strongest effect of vowel context. Vowel-context effects were strongest for the six consonants /d, j, n, k, m/, and /l/. For three of these consonants (/j, n, k/), the back vowels /alpha/ and /u/ produced substantially (30 to 35%) higher mean scores than the front vowel /i/. For each of the remaining three consonants, a unique pattern was observed in which a different single vowel produced substantially higher scores than the others. Several additional consonants (/s, g, w, b/, and /d/) showed strong context effects in either the initial consonant or medial consonant position. Overall, voiceless stop, nasal, and glide-liquid consonants showed the strongest effects of vowel context, whereas the voiceless fricative and voiceless affricate consonants were least affected. Consistent with the feature analysis, a qualitative assessment of phoneme errors for the six key consonants indicated that vowel-context effects stem primarily from changes in the number of place-of-articulation errors made in each context. Vowel context has small but significant effects on consonant-recognition scores for the "average" CI listener, with the back vowels /alpha/ and /u/ producing better performance than the front vowel /i/. In contrast to the average results, however, the effects of vowel context are sizable in some individual subjects. This suggests that it may be beneficial to assess consonant recognition using two vowels, such as /alpha/ and /i/, which produce better and poorer performance, respectively. The present results underscore previous findings that poor transmission of spectral speech cues limits consonant-recognition performance in CI users. Spectral cue transmission may be hindered not only by poor spectral resolution in these listeners but also by the brief duration and dynamic nature of consonant place-of-articulation cues.

Effect of placement of a speech appliance on levator veli palatini muscle activity during speech.

The purposes of this electromyographic study were to examine whether levator veli palatini muscle activity during speech can be changed with placement of a speech appliance and to clarify whether or not the change is related to the type of speech appliance used. Electromyography (EMG) was performed during production of speech samples in two conditions: with placement and with removal of a speech appliance. Speech samples were the vowel /omega/ and consonant-vowel (omega) syllables, including nasal, plosive, fricative, and affricate consonants. Division for Oral-Facial Disorders, Faculty of Dentistry, Osaka University Dental Hospital, Japan. Subjects were six patients with repaired cleft palate and velopharyngeal inadequacy (VPI); three routinely wore a palatal lift prosthesis to correct borderline VPI, and the other three wore a speech appliance hybrid that consisted of a pharyngeal bulb and a palatal lift. Each patient was asked to produce each speech sample in both conditions of placement and removal of their respective appliances. Smoothed EMG signals of the levator veli palatini muscle were recorded with and without the appliance during five repetitions of each speech sample. The average value of peak smoothed levator EMG was compared between placement and removal conditions for all subjects and between the two subject groups in each experimental condition. With a speech appliance in place, the range of levator activity was distributed in a portion lower than that in the removed condition for subjects in both appliance groups. In addition, the intervals were smaller in the placement condition than in the removed condition. A speech appliance may prevent hypernasality, nasal emission of air, or both associated with VPI because of mechanical obturation of the velopharynx and an alteration in velopharyngeal function.

Modelling affricate consonants

A model for the aerodynamics and acoustics of affricate consonants is developed. The model is used to predict the changing acoustic pattern that occurs during the 100-odd milliseconds following the release of a palato-alveolar affricate. Appropriate assumptions are made about rates of release and dimensions of cavities in the anterior part of the vocal tract. The calculated acoustic pattern includes an initial transient and an interval in which the frication noise undergoes changes in amplitude and spectrum as the tongue-tip constriction increases in size. Measurements of acoustic spectra following the release of naturally produced affricate consonants show good agreement with spectra predicted from the model.

Peak oral air flow magnitudes associated with affricate and plosive consonant cognate productions in Hindi

Peak values of air flow rate were obtained for the productions of plosive and affricate consonants in CVCVC nonsense utterances embedded in the carrier phrase, “ye-hae” by three normal adult speakers of Hindi. Air flow values for these consonants were found to be generally higher for stressed position when compared to unstressed position. Aspirated stops showed substantially higher air flow rates than their unaspirated counterparts. Magnitudes of air consumption for voiced versus unvoiced stops under unaspirated conditions were quite similar, whereas under aspirated conditions the magnitudes were somewhat variable. These results suggest that the rate of oral air flow for various stop consonants depends on the condition of the glottis at or immediately after the release of articulatory occlusion (assuming that subglottal respiratory activity for these stops is uniform).

An Experimental Approach to the Problem of Articulation in Aphasia

A phonetic analysis was made of speech production in five patients with major residual deficits in articulation following remission of more widespread disturbances of verbal expression. The findings demonstrate major disturbance of speech production at the most molecular level. Maximal difficulty in articulation occurred at the beginning portion of words. Consonant sounds were much more often misarticulated than vowel sounds. Fricative and affricate consonants and certain linked groups of consonants were the most often affected of all sounds of speech. Phonetic simplifications typical of young children were observed less frequently than other errors which are not found in children's speech nor in the speech of adults with defects of the articulatory structures. Systematic observation of speech in phonetic disintegration may well contribute new understanding of the fundamental processes of speech production.