Alveolar Flap Research Articles

The rhotics of the Salvador, Bahia variety of Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract Brazilian Portuguese has two rhotic phonemes: the alveolar flap /ɾ/ and another variable phoneme. This phoneme has been cited as velar, uvular, and glottal fricatives, as well as alveolar trills and approximants. Variability of surface forms occurs both within and across varieties. This phoneme occurs in simple onsets, codas, and intervocalically. Deletion of the phoneme is common, particularly in word-final position. The goal of this project is to explore the variation in rhotic production in Salvador, particularly with regards to substrate influence. Ten participants read predetermined stimuli of isolated tokens and sentences, with a total of 1409 instances of the phoneme. The findings indicate that the range of possible surface forms is more variable than previously cited, including palatal and uvular fricatives among others. We suggest that the degree of variability of rhotic production in Salvador may be due to past contact between Africans and Portuguese in the city.

Portuguese rhotic variation in the Brazilian cities of Salvador and São Paulo

Brazilian Portuguese has two rhotic phonemes: the alveolar flap /ɾ/ and the historically long version which previous publications call velar, uvular, or glottal fricatives, or alveolar trills and approximants. This variation occurs both within and across dialects. Deletion is also common, most notably in word-final position. For the current project, thirty-five participants from Salvador and ten participants from São Paulo were recorded reading predetermined stimuli of isolated words and sentences, creating 6,383 instances of the rhotic phoneme. Productions were classified as exhibiting deletion or for having voicing, frication, flapping, and place characteristics. The results indicate a range of surface forms of the phoneme more variable than previously cited, with palatal fricatives common in Salvador and several flap + fricative variants common in São Paulo, along with other less frequent forms. In Salvador, glottal fricatives predominate across the board with much higher rates of deletion. In São Paulo, glottal fricatives predominate in onset positions, but alveolar trills and approximants and flap + fricative variants predominate in coda position. While deletion is most common word-finally, it occurs in all environments where the phoneme is found.

Closure duration versus f0 perturbation as a cue to underlying stops for the American English intervocalic flap

Researchers found that there are five main cues for distinguishing the voicing of these intervocalic plosives, preceding vowel duration, following vowel duration, closure duration, semantic context, and f0 perturbation, also known as consonant intrinsic f0. In American English, when /t/ and /d/ occur intervocalically, they are realized as a voiced alveolar flap [ɾ] (e.g., [ɹa͡ɪɾɪŋ] writing/riding, [liɾɚ] liter/leader). The presence of these cues indicates incomplete neutralization of these forms. To address a current gap in the literature, the present study focused on American English native speakers’ perception and use of CF0 and closure duration as independent and combined informative cues for deciding voicing contrast of /t/ and /d/ when neutralized by the flap. Participants engaged in a self-administered online forced-judgement task of a pseudoword in 30 combinations of CF0 and flap closure duration to indicate the underlying representation (/hɑtɑ/ or /hɑdɑ/) of the surface production [hɑɾɑ] they perceived. This study observed that participants are more likely to select /hɑtɑ/ when the CF0 is higher and / hɑdɑ/ elsewhere. These modest findings suggest that CF0 is a useful cue for voicing distinction. The results suggest that models of spoken word recognition and speech perception ought to include CF0 as a cue.

Rhotics in the Salvador, Bahia, dialect of Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese has two rhotic phonemes: the alveolar flap /ɾ/ and another variable phoneme historically identified as the long version of the rhotic. Across publications, this phoneme has been identified as a velar, uvular, or glottal fricative, or as an alveolar trill or approximant. These phones vary within and across dialects. Deletion, especially word-finally, is also common. This paper examines a poorly documented variety, known for deletion of the rhotic, spoken in Salvador. Thirty-five participants read predetermined stimuli of isolated tokens and sentences (total rhotic phones = 5192). Acoustic and auditory analyses indicate the range of possible surface forms of the rhotic phoneme is more variable than previously cited, with the additional surface forms of palatal and velar fricatives as well as the uvular trill being common and a variety of additional, less common surface forms. When followed by a vowel, word-final rhotics are often neutralized with flaps. Among the possible surface forms, however, the glottal fricatives dominate. While deletion is most common word-finally, it occurs in all environments where the phoneme is found. Exploration of variation across speakers and its connection to demographic variation in the speakers is ongoing and will be reported.

Compensatory strategies for the alveolar flap [ɾ] production in the presence of ankyloglossia

ABSTRACT Purpose: to analyze the compensatory strategies used by subjects with ankyloglossia for the production of the consonantal alveolar flap sound /ɾ/. Methods: a cross-sectional analytic observational comparative study was conducted with 88 subjects, 44 being diagnosed with ankyloglossia and 44 with normal lingual frenulum, matched by age and gender. They were asked to repeat the syllable /ra/ five times in a row. Video recordings of the speech were taken. Frame by frame analysis of all recordings were performed to verify tongue, lip, and mandible movements during the production of the alveolar flap. The analysis of the films was performed by two Speech Language Pathologists specialized in Orofacial Myofunctional Disorder. Fisher’s Exact Test was used for statistical treatment (p≤0.05.) Results: the frame by frame analysis of the alveolar flap production of subjects with and without ankyloglossia showed that subjects with ankyloglossia performed several compensatory strategies when producing this sound. There was a statistically significant difference (p=0.001) when subjects with and without ankyloglossia were compared. Conclusion: subjects with ankyloglossia used several lip, tongue, and mandible compensatory strategies to produce the Brazilian Portuguese consonantal alveolar flap /ɾ/.

Buckeye corpus에 나타난 탄설음화 현상 분석

This paper presents an acoustic and phonological study of the alveolar flaps in American English. Based on the Buckeye Corpus, the flapping tokens produced by twenty men are analyzed at both lexical and post-lexical levels. The data, analyzed with Pratt speech analysis, include duration, F2 and F3 in voicing during the flap, as well as duration, F1, F2, F3, and f0 in the adjacent vowels. The results provide evidence on two issues: (1) The different ways in which voiced and voiceless alveolar stops give rise to neutralized flapping stops by following lexical and post-lexical levels, (2) The extent to which the vowel features (height, frontness, and tenseness) affect flapping sounds. The results show that flaps are affected by pre-consonantal vowel features at the lexical as well as post-lexical levels. Unlike previous studies, this study uses the Praat method to distinguish flapped from unflapped tokens in the Buckeye Corpus and examines connections between the lexical and post-lexical levels.

Phonological traits of the Japanese and English spoken by Nikkei speakers in Hawaii

The Japanese and English language varieties spoken by Nikkei speakers in Hawaii show phonological traits which result from language contact and are uncommon in other varieties. Characteristics of the Japanese spoken by Nikkei speakers which differ from native varieties of the language include the following. Non-geminate and geminate consonants are found in variation ([kappamaki] vs. [tekkamaki], [napa]) and speakers do not hear germination as being phonemically significant. The English labiodental fricative [f] is substituted for the Japanese bilabial fricative [ϕ] ([furo], [furikake]). Vowel lengthening is in inconsistent and not phonemically significant ([obatʃan] contrasts with [oba:tʃan], but [zori] has shortened vowel). Characteristics of Hawaiian English spoken by Nikkei speakers (as well as other ethnicities) include the following. The alveolar flap /ɾ/ ([kaɾai] ‘spicy’) is a phoneme contrasted with /l/ and /r/. Phonotactic rules allow for the /ts/ sequence even in the word-initial position (Hawaiian English [tsunami] vs. General American English [sunami]). In this paper, I will use PRAAT acoustical analyses to illustrate these traits.

Does Geographic Relocation Induce the Loss of Features from a Single Speaker’s Native Dialect?

Over the past few years, academics such as Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) and Harrington (2006) have exhibited a marked interest in dialect variation and language change across the lifespan. Though it was acknowledged that individuals could temporarily adapt their language to accommodate to other interlocutors, permanent changes to their underlying grammar were previously thought impossible. What has come to light, however, is that as individuals we have been given increasing opportunities to be much more mobile; and as a result, our language has too. The aim of this study is to provide evidence for the claim that social and geographical mobility (in this case geographical) can cause an individual’s language to change. It was motivated by the belief that language cannot change after an individual has surpassed the critical period. The study focuses on one individual speaker in particular: the musician Ringo Starr. The speaker in question lived in Liverpool until the age of 40, before relocating to America. The data for this investigation were sourced from a number of TV and Radio interviews with Starr, taken from 20 years prior to and 20 years after his geographic relocation. In both cases, the interlocutors were speakers of British and American English varieties. The study examines three stable variables that exist in the speaker’s native dialect of Liverpool English — realisation of /t/ to /r/, non-rhoticity, and NURSE ~ SQUARE merger — and investigates whether these remain stable features, are lost completely, or are altered by geographical relocation. The study found that, although the speaker did not lose any features of his native dialect completely, the salience of the variables was affected by the move to the US. The speaker reduced his levels of /t/ to /r/ realisation and became more rhotic in certain phonological and lexical contexts. He retained the NURSE ~ SQUARE merger, but the results showed that he increased his frequency of F1 of NURSE vowels, articulating them slightly lower. Starr never acquired new, American variables such as the alveolar flap. What these results demonstrate is that an individual is capable of changing their language after the supposed “critical period”; it shows that not all change can be attributed to temporary accommodation. Dialect contact with varieties of American English appears to have resulted in some changes to Starr’s grammar.

Tongue Movement of Healthy Adults who Feel Clumsy Articulating Alveolar Flaps

Tongue Movement of Healthy Adults who Feel Clumsy Articulating Alveolar Flaps

Production of a non-phonemic variant in a second language: Acoustic analysis of Japanese speakers’ production of American English flap

Second-language (L2) learners need to learn the sound system of an L2 so that they can distinguish L2 words. However, it is also instructive to learn non-phonemic, allophonic variations, particularly if learners want to sound native-like. The production of intervocalic /t d/ as an alveolar flap is a prime example of a non-phonemic variation that is salient in American English and presumably noticeable to many L2 learners. Yet, how well such non-phonemic variants are learned by L2 learners is a relatively under-explored subject. In the present study, Japanese learners’ production of alveolar flaps was investigated, to clarify how well learners can learn the phonetic environments in which flapping tends to occur, and how L2 experience affects their performance. Native Japanese speakers who had lived in North America for various lengths of time read a list of words and phrases that contained a potentially flappable stop, embedded in a carrier sentence. Preliminary results indicated that the rate of flapping varied considerably across different words and phrases and across speakers. Furthermore, acoustic parameters such as flap closure duration produced by some speakers showed intermediate values between native-like flaps and regular stops, suggesting that flapping is a gradient phenomenon. [Work supported by JSPS.]

Buccal fat pad for the closure of oro-antral fistula

Oro-antral communication and subsequent formation of an oro-antral fistula (OAF) is a common complication that occurs during extraction of the maxillary molars and also as a result of operative procedure involving maxillary sinus. The incidence of this complication may vary from 0.31% to 3.8% after simple extraction of maxillary posterior teeth. Many procedures have been proposed for the closure of OAF. Local flaps are usually adequate to close minor to moderate size defects; these include buccal or palatal alveolar flaps and their modifications and buccal fat pad. This article describes the closure of an OAF in a 49-year-old male patient with buccal fat pad.

An acoustic and perceptual analysis of /t/ and /d/ flaps in American English

This paper presents an acoustic and perceptual study of alveolar flaps in American English. In the acoustic study, vowel duration differences in disyllabic tokens replicated previous findings in that vowels preceding /d/ were significantly longer than those preceding /t/. Flap frequency was also analyzed based on a method of distinguishing flapped from unflapped stops on a speaker-by-speaker basis. It was discovered that females flapped more often than males and that participants were more likely to flap when they were less aware of the contrast between /t/ and /d/. Contrary to past research, neither word frequency nor morphological complexity affected flap frequency in the present study. In the perceptual study, four naturally produced word pairs were used to manipulate underlying representation (/t/ or /d/), vowel duration preceding the flap, and word frequency. Vowel duration alone did not predict the listeners’ perception of flapped /t/ and /d/; word frequency, where high frequency words were identified correctly more often than low frequency words, and a d-bias, where /d/ flaps were identified correctly more often than /t/ flaps, did prove significant. Unlike previous research, this study uses nonarbitrary values to distinguish flapped from unflapped tokens and draws connections between the acoustic and perceptual results.

Commentary on: Periodontally accelerated osteogenic orthodontics (PAOO) – a clinical dilemma

It is apparent that tooth movement is enhanced by procedures that elevate the remodeling of alveolar bone, and of periodontal and gingival fibrous tissues. The periodontally accelerated osteogenic orthodontics (PAOO) also termed as Wilckodontics, involves full-thickness labial and lingual alveolar flaps accompanied with limited selective labial and lingual surgical scarring of cortical bone (corticotomy). Most of the authors suggest that the RAP is the major stimulus for alveolar bone remodeling, enabling the PAOO. However, we propose that detachment of the bulk of dentogingival and interdental fibers from coronal part of root surfaces by itself should suffice to stimulate alveolar bone resorption mainly on its PDL surfaces, leading to widening of the periodontal ligament space which largely attributes to accelerated osteogenic orthodontics. Moreover this limited fiberotomy also disrupts transiently the positional physical memory of dentition (PPMD), allowing accelerated tooth movement. During retention period, a new biological and physical connectivity is generated that could be termed as new positional memory of the dental arch.

The role of prosody in a case of foreign accent syndrome (FAS)

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a rare disorder characterized by the emergence of a perceived foreign accent following brain damage. The symptomotology, functional bases, and neural substrates of this disorder are still being elucidated. In this case study, acoustic analyses were performed on the speech of a 46‐year old monolingual female who presented with FAS of unknown aetiology. The patient had a pseudo‐accent frequently described as ‘Swedish’ or ‘Eastern European’. Stop consonant VOT, consonant burst spectra and duration, vowel durations, formant frequencies, and trajectories were analysed, along with prosodic cues for lexical stress assignment and sentence‐level intonation. Results indicated VOT values were generally preserved, while there was a strong tendency to realize the English alveolar flap as a full stop, and to produce flaps that had greater‐than‐normal closure durations. The spectral properties of the patient's vowels resembled those of normal talkers (with the possible exceptions of decreased F1 values for /i/ and slight differences in formant dynamics for /u/, /o/, /i/, and /ϵ/). However, vowel durations were relatively long, contributing to exaggerated tense/lax contrasts. Token‐to‐token variability in vowel production was slightly higher than normal for duration, but not for formant frequency values. Lexical stress assignment was inaccurate and highly variable (with similar problems noted for non‐speech materials), and sentence level intonation showed occasional deviations from typical American English patterns. For this patient, an underlying timing/rhythm difficulty appeared responsible for the range of segmental and suprasegmental changes leading to the impression of a foreign accent.

The role of prosody in the foreign accent syndrome: A single-subject study

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is an unusual motor speech disorder involving a perceived foreign accent resulting from brain damage. An important question concerning FAS is the role of prosodic deficits, including the extent to which difficulties in stress assignment may contribute to segmental errors. In this study, acoustic analyses were performed on the speech of a 46-year-old female patient who presented with a pseudo-accent described as Swedish. Stop consonant VOT, consonant burst spectra and duration, and vowel formant frequencies and trajectories were analyzed, along with prosodic cues for lexical stress assignment and sentence-level intonation. Results indicated that the patients vowels were centralized and realized with reduced dynamic specifications. There was a strong tendency to realize the English alveolar flap as a full stop, and to produce flaps that had greater-than-normal closure durations. Lexical stress assignment was frequently inaccurate and highly variable, with similar problems noted for non-speech stimuli. Overall, the data suggest that stress assignment deficits were the basis for most of her segmental difficulties. The findings support the view that local prosodic deficits play a critical role in FAS.

Incomplete neutralization of /t/ and /d/ in flapping environments: An analysis of the North Midland dialect of American English

This paper presents an acoustic study of alveolar flaps in American English as produced by 20 speakers of a North Midland dialect spoken in the Kansas area. Participants read three lists of 164 monosyllabic and disyllabic words and nonwords containing word‐final and medial /t/ and /d/. Vowel duration differences in monosyllabic and disyllabic tokens and consonant duration differences in monosyllabic tokens duplicated previous findings in that vowels preceding /d/ were significantly longer than those preceding /t/ and in that the average duration of /t/ was significantly longer than that of /d/. However, flap duration measured significantly longer for /d/‐flaps than /t/‐flaps. When analyzing flap frequency, it was also discovered that females flapped significantly more often than males and that participants were more likely to flap when they were less aware of the contrast between /t/ and /d/. While previous research reported that monomorphemic and high‐frequency words are more likely to be flapped than bimorphemic and low‐frequency words, neither word frequency nor morphological complexity affected flap frequency in the present study. Flap frequency was based on a method of distinguishing flapped from unflapped stops on a speaker‐by‐speaker basis, a more accurate method than that used in previous studies.

More on the /t/:/d/ distinction in American alveolar flaps

In American English, alveolar stop consonants occurring in intervocalic position tend to be articulated as a flap (or tap). It has long been claimed that the duration of the vowel immediately preceding the flap is a primary cue to its underlying voicing status. Evidence will be presented to show that listeners can discriminate between naturally produced minimal pairs containing flaps (e.g., coating, coding) based on cues other than preceding vowel duration or the acoustic properties of the flap itself. Consistent differences in phonetic quality and overall quantity between such word pairs will be discussed.

The alveolar flap repair of the cleft alveolus related to the development of the upper jaw

The alveolar flap repair of the cleft alveolus related to the development of the upper jaw

The alveolar flap for the repair of the cleft alveolus — Related to the development of the upper jaw

A new method for the repair of the cleft alveolus employing the alvolar flap, was carried out in 33 patients with a unilateral total cleft. Alternating primary osteoplastic repairs were performed in in aqual number of patients. The postoperative interval varies between 8 and 9 years. The patients were followed up with attention beng paid to the further growth of the upper jaw.

Discourse Redundancy in Hixkaryana

1Hixkaryana is a member of the Carib linguistic family and is spoken by groups located on the Nhamunda and Mapuera rivers in northern Brazil. There are currently about 350 speakers. This presentation is based on data collected on various field trips between 1959 and 1975 as a member of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and under a contract between that Institute and the Fundacao Nacional do Indio. Some of the data can be found in Desmond Derbyshire, Textos Hixkaryana, Publicacoes Avulsas no. 3 (Belem: Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, 1965), with some modifications of orthography, spellings, and glosses. This article was prepared as part of a seminar held by the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of North Dakota in the summer of 1976. I am especially indebted to Joseph E. Grimes, who conducted the seminar, for his general guidance and many helpful suggestions. For purposes of this article, the local orthography has been used, and shows some changes compared with that used in D. Derbyshire, Hishkaryana (Carib) Syntax Structure, pts. I and II, IJAL 27 (1961): 125-42 and 226-36. The phonemes are: high vowels e, a, u; low vowels a, o; consonants p, t, tx (alveopalatal affricate), k, b, d, dy (alveopalatal stop), f (bilabial fricative), s, x (alveopalatal fricative), m, n, ny (alveopalatal nasal), r (alveolar flap), ry (alveopalatal flap with lateral release), w, y, h.