Allophonic Variation Research Articles

The articulation of /ɹ/ in New Zealand English

This paper investigates the articulation of approximant /ɹ/ in New Zealand English (NZE), and tests whether the patterns documented for rhotic varieties of English hold in a non-rhotic dialect. Midsagittal ultrasound data for 62 speakers producing 13 tokens of /ɹ/ in various phonetic environments were categorized according to the taxonomy by Delattre & Freeman (1968), and semi-automatically traced and quantified using the AAA software (Articulate Instruments Ltd. 2012) and a Modified Curvature Index (MCI; Dawson, Tiede & Whalen 2016). Twenty-five NZE speakers produced tip-down /ɹ/ exclusively, 12 tip-up /ɹ/ exclusively, and 25 produced both, partially depending on context. Those speakers who produced both variants used the most tip-down /ɹ/ in front vowel contexts, the most tip-up /ɹ/ in back vowel contexts, and varying rates in low central vowel contexts. The NZE speakers produced tip-up /ɹ/ most often in word-initial position, followed by intervocalic, then coronal, and least often in velar contexts. The results indicate that the allophonic variation patterns of /ɹ/ in NZE are similar to those of American English (Mielke, Baker & Archangeli 2010, 2016). We show that MCI values can be used to facilitate /ɹ/ gesture classification; linear mixed-effects models fit on the MCI values of manually categorized tongue contours show significant differences between all but two of Delattre & Freeman's (1968) tongue types. Overall, the results support theories of modular speech motor control with articulation strategies evolving from local rather than global optimization processes, and a mechanical model of rhotic variation (see Stavness et al. 2012).

Perception of word boundaries in spontaneous speech

Studies of lab speech have identified several acoustic variables that listeners use to identify word boundaries (e.g. allophonic variation, segment duration), however spontaneous speech may not contain the same acoustic signals. Using data from a recent study we tested whether disambiguating information is also available to listeners under more typical conditions. 15 pairs of target phrases only differing in the placement of word boundaries, e.g., grey#day vs. grade#A were elicited under read (146 tokens) and spontaneous speech conditions (316 tokens) from multiple talkers who were not aware of the ambiguities. Phrases were played in isolation to 30 Native English listeners in a 2AFC segmentation task (e.g. grey day vs. grade A). Accuracy was above chance for both read (80.9%) and spontaneous speech (73.1%). Accuracy varied according to the critical consonant type and was highest for voiceless stops followed by nasals, voiced stops, fricatives and clusters. Only two items (pierced ears vs. peer steers and beef eater vs. bee feeder) were at chance for spontaneous speech. Measures of word-initial lengthening were good predictors of performance but listeners outperformed predictions from these measures indicating they weren’t the only cues.

Quasi-phonemic vowels in Ampenan Sasak: An acoustic analysis

Phonological studies on Sasak tend to agree that Sasak has a six-vowel system /i, u, e, o, ə, a/ (Archangeli et al., n.d.; Chahal, 1998; Jacq, 1998). However, in Ampenan Sasak, a dialect spoken in the provincial capital of Mataram, it is difficult to attribute vowel quality differences of tense mid-vowels [e, o] and lax mid-vowels [ɛ, ɔ] to allophonic variation of underlying phonemes /e, o/. While lax mid-vowels tend to appear in heavy syllables and tense mid-vowels appear in light syllables (see also Archangeli et al., n.d.), there are exceptions (e.g., /baɾeh/ late, /əmbong/ reservoir) and several minimal pairs (e.g., /bəɾəmbok/ discuss, /bəɾəmbɔk/ breathe; /koboʔ/ levening, /kɔbɔʔ/ play with water). Further, speakers’ intuitions about these distinctions are unreliable. In order to understand this relationship, we elicited wordlists across 13 female speakers of Ampenan Sasak aged 18 to 48. Wordlists were balanced for syllable weight, coda segment, and syllable position and subjected to acoustic analysis. Preliminary results show that the quality of the vowel is highly affected by the weight of the syllable and the coda segment. This suggests that mid-vowels are quasi-phonemic in Ampenan Sasak (Ladd 2013). While they generally behave as allophones, this paradigm is not strictly followed.Phonological studies on Sasak tend to agree that Sasak has a six-vowel system /i, u, e, o, ə, a/ (Archangeli et al., n.d.; Chahal, 1998; Jacq, 1998). However, in Ampenan Sasak, a dialect spoken in the provincial capital of Mataram, it is difficult to attribute vowel quality differences of tense mid-vowels [e, o] and lax mid-vowels [ɛ, ɔ] to allophonic variation of underlying phonemes /e, o/. While lax mid-vowels tend to appear in heavy syllables and tense mid-vowels appear in light syllables (see also Archangeli et al., n.d.), there are exceptions (e.g., /baɾeh/ late, /əmbong/ reservoir) and several minimal pairs (e.g., /bəɾəmbok/ discuss, /bəɾəmbɔk/ breathe; /koboʔ/ levening, /kɔbɔʔ/ play with water). Further, speakers’ intuitions about these distinctions are unreliable. In order to understand this relationship, we elicited wordlists across 13 female speakers of Ampenan Sasak aged 18 to 48. Wordlists were balanced for syllable weight, coda segment, and syllable position and subjected to aco...

Stop, approximant, and timing slot: The changing faces of the velar stop in Iwaidja

Limited access to speakers and incomplete lexical knowledge are common challenges facing phonetic description of under-documented languages. We address these challenges by taking a multi-dimensional approach, seeking to constrain our phonetic description by covariation across acoustic and articulatory parameters. We demonstrate the approach through an analysis of velar consonsants in the Australian Aboriginal language Iwaidja. Existing accounts contrast a velar stop /k/ with a velar approximant /ɰ/ in word-medial position (Evans 2009). Converging evidence from ultrasound images of the tongue body and acoustic analysis of intensity data reveal that the posited opposition is not consistent across speakers (N = 4) and lexical items. Unsupervised categorization of the phonetic data indicates two phonetic categories, appropriately labelled as [a] and [ɰ], which do not map consistently to dictionary labels in existing descriptions. We conclude that speaker-specific allophonic variation is the result of an ongoing process of lenition of /k/ between sonorant segments which has not yet phonologized. More broadly, integrating phonetic dimensions revealed categories that were ill-defined on the basis of just acoustic or articulatory measures alone. Depth of analysis, characterized by phonetic multi-dimensionality, may support robust generalization where broad analysis (multiple speakers, large corpora) are impractical or impossible.Limited access to speakers and incomplete lexical knowledge are common challenges facing phonetic description of under-documented languages. We address these challenges by taking a multi-dimensional approach, seeking to constrain our phonetic description by covariation across acoustic and articulatory parameters. We demonstrate the approach through an analysis of velar consonsants in the Australian Aboriginal language Iwaidja. Existing accounts contrast a velar stop /k/ with a velar approximant /ɰ/ in word-medial position (Evans 2009). Converging evidence from ultrasound images of the tongue body and acoustic analysis of intensity data reveal that the posited opposition is not consistent across speakers (N = 4) and lexical items. Unsupervised categorization of the phonetic data indicates two phonetic categories, appropriately labelled as [a] and [ɰ], which do not map consistently to dictionary labels in existing descriptions. We conclude that speaker-specific allophonic variation is the result of an ongoi...

Increased exposure and phonetic context help listeners recognize allophonic variants.

This study examines the influence of increased exposure and phonetic context on the recognition of words that are produced with nasal flaps in American English (e.g., the word center produced as cenner). Previous work has shown that despite their high frequency of occurrence, words produced with nasal flaps are recognized more slowly and less accurately compared with canonical pronunciation variants produced with /nt/, which occur less frequently. We conducted two experiments in order to investigate how exposure and phonetic context influence this reported processing disadvantage for flapped variants. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the time to recognize flapped variants presented in isolation decreased over the course of the experiment, while accuracy increased. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed further that flapped variants that were presented in a casually produced sentence context were recognized faster compared with flapped variants presented in a carefully produced sentence context. Interestingly, the effect of context emerged only in late responses and was present only for flapped but not for canonical variants. Our results thus show that increased exposure and phonetic context help listeners recognize allophonic variants. This finding provides further support for the notion that listeners are flexible and adapt to phonetic variation in speech.

Аллофонное варьирование в спонтанной монологической речи (экспериментальное исследование на материале германских языков)

Аллофонное варьирование в спонтанной монологической речи (экспериментальное исследование на материале германских языков)

Perceptual features of intervocalic consonant realizations used for -t-, -tt- (based on British news analytic discourse)

During the last decade, two competing tendencies — globalization and national identity preservation — produced a considerable impact on the English-speaking World. One of the consequences of that process was a series of drastic changes that occurred in British English. It became the leader of instability and variability of pronunciation standard among the Englishes today. Various patterns of allophonic variation of intervocalic /t/ and its substitute with allophones of other phonemes such as tap / flap and sibilants can be named among those changes. The current perceptual study aimed at determining whether tapping / flapping and spirantization cases can lead to phonological changes and variability of the corresponding word phonemic pattern. 37 stimuli in VCV sequences that represented tapping acoustically similar to /d/, flapping similar to /r/ and /l/, sibilants similar to /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /s/, /z/ were segmented from the acoustic material. 8 realizations of the following phonemes /d/, /r/, /l/, /t/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /s/, /z/ were included into the experiment as a control group. Consequently, 45 stimuli were included into the perceptual study. A web-site was constructed to carry out the on-line perceptual experiment and collect and analyze the obtained data automatically. The randomized tokens for listening were uploaded and a questionnaire was published on the web-site. 16 native speakers took part in the experiment performing a discrimination task. 272 answers were received from the subjects to tap-and-flap-containing tokens. Among the responses, voiced consonant interpretations prevailed over voiceless ones (86 % vs 14 %). 63 % out of 86 % were /d/ responses and 13 % and 10 % were /r/ and /l/ responses correspondingly. 288 responses were obtained for 18 tokens that included sibilants. Among them, only 29 % on average accounted for plosives while 71 % accounted for fricative sibilants. Voiceless/voiced phonological feature and consonant loci feature taken separately were discriminated correctly for 72 % of the tokens.

Type of early bilingualism and its effect on the acoustic realization of allophonic variants: Early sequential and simultaneous bilinguals

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions:This study examines the acoustic realization of phrase-initial voiced stops (/b, d, g/) and intervocalic voiced approximants ([β, ð, ɣ]) in Spanish by three groups of Spanish–English bilinguals: simultaneous bilinguals, early sequential bilinguals, and late second language (L2) Spanish learners to investigate if the type of early bilingualism has an effect on the acoustic realization of language-specific phonological processes.Design/Methodology/Approach:Early bilinguals were divided into two groups (simultaneous and sequential bilinguals), and together with late learners (L2 Spanish learners) they were recorded producing words eliciting phrase-initial and intervocalic voiced stops.Data and Analysis:The acoustic analyses examined the difference between the intensity minimum during the consonant and the intensity maximum of the following tautosyllabic vowel (intensity difference). The dataset comprised a total of 3,569 acoustic measurements.Findings/Conclusions:The group of early sequential bilinguals shows a significantly stronger tendency to produce a more lenited intervocalic segment than simultaneous bilinguals and L2 learners, who produce a more constricted realization. These data indicate that simultaneous bilinguals and L2 learners, who were exposed to English since birth, differ from early bilinguals who were exclusively exposed to Spanish for the first years of their life when applying the Spanish allophonic rule governing the distribution of voiced stops and spirants.Originality:This is one of the first studies that investigates the effects of the type of early bilingualism on bilingual phonetic performance in adulthood, especially in terms of bilingual phonetic production. These novel data examine the acoustic realization of Spanish heritage speakers, a largely understudied bilingual population.Significance/Implications:The findings suggest that the type of early bilingualism in language development, even at a very early age, still has consequences on the acoustic realization of allophonic variants in adulthood.

The Arabic of the Islamic conquests: notes on phonology and morphology based on the Greek transcriptions from the first Islamic century

AbstractThis paper attempts to reconstruct aspects of the phonology and morphology of the Arabic of the Islamic conquests on the basis of Greek transcriptions in papyri of the first Islamic century. The discussion includes phonemic and allophonic variation in consonants and vowels, and nominal morphology. The essay concludes with a discussion on possible Aramaic and South Arabian influences in the material, followed by a short appendix with remarks on select Arabic terms from the pre-Islamic papyri.

Improved Arabic speech recognition system through the automatic generation of fine-grained phonetic transcriptions

This paper aims at determining the best way to exploit the phonological properties of the Arabic language in order to improve the performance of the speech recognition system. One of the main challenges facing the processing of Arabic is the effect of the local context, which induces changes in the phonetic representation of a given text, thereby causing the recognition engine to misclassify it. The proposed solution is to develop a set of language-dependent grapheme-to-allophone rules that can predict such allophonic variations and hence provide a phonetic transcription that is sensitive to the local context for the automatic speech recognition system. The novel aspect of this method is that the pronunciation of each word is extracted directly from a context-sensitive phonetic transcription rather than a predefined dictionary that typically does not reflect the actual pronunciation of the word. The paper also aims at employing the stress feature as one of the supra-segmental characteristics of speech to enhance the acoustic modelling. The effectiveness of applying the proposed rules has been tested by comparing the performance of a dictionary based system against one using the automatically generated phonetic transcription. The research reported an average of 9.3% improvement in the system’s performance by eliminating the fixed dictionary and using the generated phonetic transcription to learn the phone probabilities. Marking the stressed vowels with separate stress markers leads to a further improvement of 1.7%.

Palatal click allophony in Mangetti Dune !Xung: Implications for sound change

Click consonants are well known for lacking allophonic variation. This lack of variation has been attributed to the existence of articulatory constraints on the coronal constrictions that are imposed by the existence of a second dorsal constriction. The current study investigates temporal acoustic differences among the four contrastive coronal click types in the /i/ and /u/ contexts in Mangetti Dune !Xung. Clicks have been described as being either non-affricated or affricated. However, when vowel context is taken into consideration, the typology is more complex. The alveolar click is non-affricated in both vowel contexts. The dental and lateral clicks are fricated in both contexts. The palatal click in the /i/ context has two clear anterior and posterior transients, followed by palatal frication, while in the /u/ context it is non-affricated. Results are consistent with an analysis of the palatal click in the /i/ context as involving allophonic secondary palatalization. There are trading relations between the duration of the click burst, frication noise and aspiration noise phases. Results have implications for understanding the synchronic and diachronic phonology of click consonants.

Fricative Debuccalization and Primary Split in Terena (Arawak) Historical Phonology

This paper discusses a set of morphophonemic alternations in Terena, an Arawak language of Brazil. I propose a number of non-alternating Pre-Terena forms and a sound change in a diachronic account of these alternations. Using internal, comparative, and philological (early documentary) evidence, I trace the development of these alternations from its precursors in allophonic variation to its partial morphologization. The proposed change debuccalized the voiceless allophones of the Pre-Terena coronal fricatives, changing them to glottal fricatives while leaving unaffected their voiced allophones, whose occurrence is restricted to nasal contexts related to the exponence of 1psg possessors and subjects. I suggest that the partial merger between the Pre-Terena oral fricatives and h took place gradually rather than abruptly and that this accounts for the existence of a contrast between two glottals, h and hʲ, which existed as separate phonemes but that nowadays appear fully merged as h.

Re-análisis de aspectos controversiales de la fonología del chedungun hablado en alto Biobío: el estatus fonético-fonológico del fono fricativo alveopalatal áfono

This paper focuses on the study of mapudungun segmental phonology in general, and the phonetic-phonological status of the voiceless alveopalatal fricative phone [ʃ] in the ched-ungun spoken in the Alto Bío-Bío, in particular. Thus, in order to determine its occurrence and distribution, an adapted lexical list from Croese (1980) was applied to a total of 30 chedungun and Spanish bilingual adults collaborators belonging to 10 pehuenches villages of this com-mune (3 collaborators of each one). Through quantitative, spectrographic and distributional evidence, it is concluded that such phone occurs with a very low frequency, and in such cases it constitutes an allophonic variant of the voiceless alveopalatal affricate phoneme /t͡ʃ/.

Allophonic variation of Polish vowels in the context of prepalatal consonants

Phonetic studies of Polish mention allophonic variation in Polish vowels, in that there is a systematic effect of the prepalatal consonant context. In particular, [u] is fronted, [ɛ] is raised, [a] is fronted and sometimes raised, and [ɔ] is fronted following a prepalatal consonant. Additionally, phonemic [i] is excluded after non-palatalized consonants, and the phonemic [ɨ] does not occur after prepalatals. Although X-ray data for Polish speech production exists from the 50s and 60s, no X-ray images are available of the contextual variants of vowels adjacent to prepalatal consonants. In this study, we present 3-D tongue shapes of the vowels in neutral and prepalatal contexts. The data show a combination of raising and fronting of the tongue body for all front vowels, and also a consistent effect of tongue root advancement.

Analysis of allophones based on audio signal recordings and parameterization

The aim of this study is to develop an allophonic description of English plosive consonants based on recordings of 600 specially selected words. Allophonic variations addressed in the study may have two sources: positional and contextual. The former one depends on the syllabic or prosodic position in which a particular phoneme occurs. Contextual allophony is conditioned by the local phonetic environment. Co-articulation overlapping in time demands a precise determination of allophonic pronunciation in the context of phonemic transcription. The presented study is focused on creation of speech recordings that may serve for the analysis of allophone variation. Two sets of recordings are prepared. The first one consists of words read by the non-native speakers. Tempo of reading is forced by a teleprompter. In the second case, every word is played back from the recordings of the phonology expert and then the speaker repeats a particular word. The last stage is the assessment of recordings by the same expert. Scores assigned by the expert are included as a reference for signal analysis and parametrization. [Research sponsored by the Polish National Science Centre, Dec. No.2015/17/B/ST6/01874.]

The effect of allophonic variation and phonotactic restriction on categorization

This study presents a case from Korean which demonstrates that allophonic and phonotactic knowledge has an effect on listeners’ categorization choices. In Korean, voicing is generally treated as redundant on consonants since the only voiced consonants are nasals and liquids. However, voiced oral stops can occur intervocalically as allophones of the voiceless lenis counterpart. A further restriction comes from the velar nasal [ŋ], which is restricted to coda position. Two identification experiments, in which Korean listeners were presented with a 10-step continuum from voiced oral to nasal stop in three places of articulation and were asked to decide whether they heard a nasal or not, showed an earlier boundary shift in the nasal responses in the initial position than in the medial position. This finding suggests that Korean listeners do perceive the redundant/allophonic [voice] feature and are likely to interpret a stop containing this feature as nasal in initial position but as an allophonic oral variant in medial position. An effect of place was also observed: Korean listeners were significantly more likely to perceive a nasal segment on the labial/dental continuum than on the velar continuum, suggesting a bias against hearing the phonotactically illegal *ŋ in onset.

Variation and phonological change: The case of yeísmo in Spanish

AbstractIn several studies on sound change, it has been suggested that change is not possible without allophonic variation; indeed, it appears to be the triggering factor in phonetic evolution. This paper examines the process of

Influence of dialect use on speech perception: a mismatch negativity study

ABSTRACTUsing an electroencephalography (EEG)-based mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm, we investigated whether higher familiarity with a dialectal variety of German (Swiss German (CHG) vs. Standard German (StG)) impacted speech perception at the neural and the behavioural level. Specifically, we examined 30 CHG- and StG-native adults, by contrasting a pseudoword containing an allophonic phoneme variant found in both dialects (i.e. standard) with 2 deviant stimuli encompassing allophonic phoneme variants, of which one was more familiar for CHG natives and the other was more familiar for StG natives. The same stimuli were used in a behavioural “same–different” discrimination task. Behavioural pseudoword differentiation was better for more familiar allophonic phoneme variants. MMN measures revealed significant fronto-central and temporal deviance-by-language-group interactions, primarily driven by larger MMN responses for less familiar deviants in StG natives. We conclude that a higher degree of familiarity with allophonic variants seems to impact neural processing efficiency, to the extent that less familiar variants demand more wide-spread activation processes.

Perception of American English alveolar stops and flaps by Japanese learners of English: Does allophonic variation matter?

A lexical decision experiment was conducted with Japanese learners of English with relatively low English proficiency to investigate whether second-language (L2) learners utilize allophonic variation when recognizing words in L2. The stimuli consisted of 36 isolated bisyllabic words containing word-medial /t/, half of which were flap-favored words (e.g., better, city) and the other half were [t]-favored words (e.g., faster, custom). All stimuli were recorded with two surface forms: /t/ as a flap (e.g., better with a flap) or as [t] (e.g., better with [t]). The stimuli were counterbalanced in the lists using a Latin Square design, so that participants only heard one of the two surface forms. The accuracy data indicated that flap-favored words pronounced with a flap (e.g, city with a flap) were recognized significantly less accurately than [t]-favored words with a flap (e.g., faster with a flap) and [t]-favored words with [t] (e.g., faster with [t]). These results suggest that Japanese learners prefer canonical forms over allophonic variants, a result which is inconsistent with Pitt et al.’s (2011) study with native American English listeners. The results’ implications for the role of allophonic variation in L2 learning will be discussed. [Work supported by JSPS KAKENHI 26370508, 15K02492, and 16K02646.]

The articulation of /ɹ/ in New Zealand English

A large number of studies have investigated the articulation of approximant /ɹ/ in American English (AE) (e.g., Delattre & Freeman, 1968). This research has found that a low third formant (F3), the main acoustic cue signaling rhoticity, can be achieved using many different tongue configurations; the two main tongue shapes used for /ɹ/ are “tip-down” (“bunched”) and “tip-up” (“retroflex”) (cf. Hagiwara, 1994). While speakers likely employ various “trading relationships” to maintain a constantly low F3 across production strategies (Guenther et al., 1999), they have access to a pool of variation, which some use to form complex and idiosyncratic patterns of allophony (Mielke et al., 2016). Such patterns may arise during speech acquisition (Magloughlin, 2016). This study focuses on a non-rhotic dialect, New Zealand English (NZE), to test whether dialect rhoticity constrains idiosyncratic allophony. Ultrasound video was collected for 63 speakers articulating 13 words containing tokens of /ɹ/ in different phonetic environments. Analysis aims to determine whether NZE speakers utilize the same tongue gestures as seen in AE, and whether they display similar patterns of allophonic variation. The data include productions from 12 children (under 10) and 13 youth (11-18), allowing examination of /ɹ/ during childhood development.