Coda Position Research Articles

Consonant Elision in English Word Pronunciation of Obolo Speakers of English in Nigeria

This research investigates consonant elision in the spoken words of Obolo speakers of English (OSE). There is an assumption that the Obolo speakers of English exhibit features of inaccurate pronunciation especially, the elision of the voiceless alveolar and velar consonant sounds /t/ and /k/ in their English speech as it impedes mutual intelligibility during conversation. This assumption forms the background of this study. Sixty (60) university graduates from different fields of study were randomly drawn from six communities of Obolo: Ekede, Ayama Ekede, Ebukuma, Ngo, Agana and Egwede. The Optimality theory was used as a theoretical thrust for this study, and prepared single and connected words were arranged on a questionnaire for the subjects to read, while their productions were recorded using an MP3 digital recording device. For the analysis, the study employed perceptual and quantitative approaches focusing on the phonotactic order and the structure of English sounds as realized by the Obolo speakers of English. The findings revealed that the majority of Obolo speakers of English delete the consonant sounds /t/ and /k/ in their English pronunciations at the medial and coda positions of consonant clusters. Phonotactically, it was discovered that the output violates the faithful constraints. The statistics also show that subjects exhibit consonant elision in their pronunciation. For instance, 65%, 70% and 64% were unable to realized /k/ and /t/ correctly. This problem is not peculiar to only Obolo Speakers of English. The researcher suggests more research of this kind in other languages using a different approach.

Examining negative transfer in Cantonese learners of English as a foreign language: an optimality theory approach to English syllable acquisition

Abstract The contrasting differences that exist in the English and Cantonese phonological systems result in divergent articulatory production between them. This article aims to investigate the negative transfer of Cantonese EFL learners in acquiring English consonant clusters and the constraint rankings of Cantonese and English syllable systems by comparing syllable structures and analyzing experimental statistics. The objective is to elucidate the reasons behind their negative transfer in English syllable acquisition. The research results demonstrated that Cantonese EFL learners found it easier to acquire consonant clusters in the onset position compared to the coda position. Additionally, an increase in consonants in the coda position posed greater difficulties for Cantonese EFL learners. The results also indicated that participants encountered the most problems with deletion, followed by substitution and epenthesis. The OT analysis reveals that the different rankings of faithfulness and markedness constraints in Cantonese and English led to transfer errors.

Interpretation of Ambiguous Segments in the Zo’é Language

This study, conducted as part of a project at the Federal University of Western Pará, re-evaluates the phonological system of the Zo’é language to address discrepancies in phonetic and phonological interpretations identified since the 1990s. Central to this research is the reinterpretation of ambiguous sounds, such as affricates, labialized, and palatalized consonants, as well as approximants. Utilizing historical data and recent recordings, the study identifies systematic processes preserving syllable patterns, including syllable restructuring at morpheme boundaries. The findings propose that sounds like [kʲ], [gʲ], [ŋʲ], [pʲ], [bʲ], [hʲ], [mʲ], [kw], [ʧw], [gw], [ʧ], and [ʤ] function as simple sounds. Additionally, the study explores the complex role of glides [w] and [j], suggesting their dual interpretation as consonants in onset positions and vowels in coda positions. By resolving phonological ambiguities and establishing a cohesive phonetic framework, this research lays the groundwork for a unified orthographic system for the Zo’é language, contributing significantly to its linguistic documentation and preservation.

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.

Modeling vowel-inherent spectral change in varying consonant context

A wide variety of experimental evidence has shown that vowel inherent spectral change (VISC) is important in vowel identification. This evidence is drawn from production data, statistical pattern recognition, and perceptual experiments with both synthetic or manipulated naturally produced speech. Experimental studies often consider vowels in a constant consonant context which makes it difficult to factor out context effects from the VISC itself. In order to examine the magnitude of these consonant effects, we developed a statistical procedure inspired by Broad and Clermont [(2014). J. Phon. 47, 47–80] in which vowel formant frequencies are approximated by a linear combination of vowel and consonant influences which vary as a function of time. Vowels extracted from a database of both spontaneous and read speech were analyzed to produce context-normalized vowel-formant tracks. Results show that vowel formant frequencies vary systematically across their duration in both spontaneous and read speech and that all consonants in both onset and coda position show significant effects on vowel production across their entire duration. Although these formant patterns are seemingly complex, perceptual evidence suggests that listeners may only attend to onsets and offsets and that deviations from a straight-line interpolation between onset and offset must be relatively large for listeners to discriminate them.

A Generative Phonology: Syllable Structure of Hajji Yemeni Arabic

This study deals with the syllable structure of Hajji Yemeni Arabic (HYA) in the light of Generative Phonology. Hajji Yemeni Arabic is a variation of Arabic spoken in the northwestern part of Yemen, which tries to elaborate and discuss the elements of syllable structure and possibilities of patterns of syllables in a term of consonants and vowels. The main aim of this study is to investigate the syllabification patterns of Hajji Yemeni Arabic, hereafter referred to as (HYA). Through qualitative phenomenology, this study analyzed the different syllabification patterns attested in Hajji Yemeni Arabic and a comprehensive analysis of the syllable shape within the framework of Generative Phonology. The findings of the study; Hajji Yemeni Arabic has five patterns of syllables: (monosyllabic, disyllabic, trisyllabic, tetrasyllabic and pentasyllabic). Hajji Yemeni Arabic prohibits initial consonant clusters, but consonant clusters are permitted in the coda position, and the maximum number of permitted consonants is two only. No vowel occurs word-initially, and every syllable must begin with one and only one consonant sound (simple onset). Hajji Yemeni Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables, as in the syllable shapes /CV/ and /CV:/, while closed syllables, as in the syllable shapes /CVC/, /CV:CC/, /CV:C/ and /CVCC/.

Processing of English Coda Laterals in L2 Listeners: An Eye-Tracking Study.

This study explores speech processing of English coda laterals (dark L's) in second language (L2) listeners whose native language does not permit laterals at syllable coda positions. We tested L2 listeners' (native Mandarin) perception of coda laterals following three Australian English vowels differing in phonological backness, including /iː/, /ʉː/, and /oː/, which represent a front vowel, and central vowel, and a back vowel, respectively. L2 listeners first completed an AX task which tested their ability to discriminate between /iː/-/iːl/, /ʉː/-/ʉːl/, and /oː/-/oːl/, and then they completed an identification task with eye-tracking which tested their ability to distinguish vowel-lateral sequences and bare vowel categories using explicit phonological-orthographical labels. The results show that vowel backness plays a key role in L2 listeners' perceptual accuracy of English coda laterals, whereas the eye-tracking and identification data suggest some paradigmatic differences between the two tasks. Mandarin listeners show excellent discrimination and identification of coda laterals following a front vowel and poor performance following a back vowel, whereas the central vowel has led to intermediate patterns.

한국인 영어 학습자의 학습 전ㆍ후 영어 유음 /l/과 /r/의 인지 및 산출

The aim of this study is to analyze errors made in the perception and production of English liquids by Korean college students. For this study, perception and production experiments were conducted with 27 Korean college students(14 males and 13 females). The experiment stimuli tested were /l/ and /r/, occurring in various positions: onset, onset cluster, word-medial, coda, and coda cluster. The results of this study are as follows. First, as a result of the perception experiments, the subjects showed a higher error rate in /r/ than in /l/. Second, in the production experiments, it was found that more errors were made in /l/ than in /r/, contrary to the perception experiment, due to the difficulty of pronouncing the dark [ɫ]. Third, in both the perception and production experiments, the error rate of the coda position was significantly higher and that of the onset cluster was the lowest. In addition, the results of this study proved the general trend seen in second language acquisition. First, in the perception and production of /l/ and /r/ in English, both negative and positive transfer of mother tongue appear. Second, there is a proportional correlation between perception and production in second language acquisition.

Perception and production mismatch in truncated past tense verbs in Korean

Abstract Korean is often described as neutralizing its obstruents to unreleased stops in coda position. However, a stylistic truncated form of the intimate past tense expressing avuncularity, contradicts this description by realizing a fricative word finally. Despite tokens elicited from informants lacking phonetic evidence for a word-final vowel, speakers report hearing [ɨ] word-finally in these truncated forms. The present article gives an optimality theoretic (OT) account (McCarthy & Prince 1995) of this phenomenon by utilizing Benua’s (1995) base-truncated form (BT) constraints to explain the production of the form and Boersma & Hamann’s (2008) cue constraints to explain the mismatch between the production and perception in parallel to the treatment of loanwords. This suggests that output-output constraints and perceptual cue constraints may interact to create differences in phonological form between production and perception, even within native phonologies, and lends further support for the need for separate production and perception phonologies ( Boersma 1999 ).

Acoustic characteristics of English/n, l, t, k/ produced by native speakers of American English and Japanese at and near the word boundary

The acoustic characteristics of English /n, l, t, k/ produced by native speakers of American English and Japanese at and near the word boundary are compared. The phonemes are produced in two-word sequences in sentence contexts, /n/ or /l/ appears at the end of the first word (e.g., an earth, you'll earn) or at the beginning of the second word (e.g., a nurse, you learn), while /t/ or /k/ appears at the beginning of the second word (e.g., stops talking, ice cream) or as the second segment of the initial cluster /sk/ of the second word (e.g., stop stalking, I screamed). Acoustic analysis revealed that English speakers' /n/ in coda position is shorter and creakier, while Japanese speakers' /n/ is as long as in onset. In addition, English speakers' vowels in /Vl#/ context are more velarized than vowels in /V#l/ context, whereas Japanese speakers' vowels in /Vl#/ context are less /l/-colored. English speakers produced initial /t/ and /k/ with much longer VOT than in /st/, /sk/ conditions, but because Japanese voiceless stops are weakly aspirated, Japanese speakers /t/ and /k/ not significantly different in VOT between the two contexts, leading potentially to syllable misparsing by English listeners

Korean EFL Learner’s Suprasegmental Features

This study delves into some aspects of suprasegmental features such as syllable structure, stress, and rhythm and compares them between NS and NNS. It is investigated in spectrograms and sound waveforms that 1. On the aspect of syllable structure in English, the onset and the coda in English syllable structure are characterized to have a maximum of 3 and 4 consonant clusters, respectively. In contrast, Korean allows only 1 single consonant in onset and coda position. This cross-linguistic difference gives rise to the insertion of the neutral vowel /ɨ/ to break up the consonant clusters in English words, in which the inserted vowel forms an independent wave chunk. 2. Refer to stress in English, it is universally recognized as every single English word or sentence consist of its own stress. On the contrary, Korean lacks stress placed at the level of the word. It follows that Korean EFL learners tend to put an approximately equal prominence on every syllable in a word and to exhibit a tendency to put a strong prominence particularly on the first syllable of a word with more than 2 syllables, which is dubbed an ‘initial prominence phenomenon’in this paper. 3. In relation to English rhythm, English is certainly a stress-timed rhythm, but Korean is a syllable-timed rhythm. The core differences between the stress-timed rhythm and the syllable-timed are on the form of ‘foot’, which is established when stressed and unstressed syllables occur in relatively regular alternating patterns in sentences, led to a phenomenon of that the number of feet depends on the timing of articulation within a whole sentence. “This paper finds significance in exhibiting suprasegmental features in visualization between NS and NNS, given that these features play a more important role than segmental ones. It can also serve a milestone for future researchers in the EFL phonetic filed.”

The Use of San in the Lugano Alphabet. A Survey of Cisalpine Celtic Onomastics

The so-called “Lugano alphabet” is a northern Italian script that derives from the Etruscan alphabet. It was used to write Celtic texts belonging to the Lepontic language, uncovered in the centre of the Gallia Transpadana (Lombardy in Italy and Ticino in southern Switzerland), ranging from the 6th c. to the 1st c. BC, and a later variety called Cisalpine Gaulish, again located in the Transpadana (Lombardy and Piedmont in Italy), whose earliest texts date from the 4th c. BC, and which represents a later wave of immigrants or invaders. This dialect is distinguished from the former by a few morphological traits, like the patronymic suffix -ikno vs. Lepontic -alo-. While the Lugano script is deciphered in its entirety, some pending issues remain as to the actual use of some of its letters, its evolution and possible external influence from related alphabets. This work will address the problem of the so-called “butterfly sign,” a letter transliterated as <ś>, which shows different shapes, some of them easily confusable with <m>, and goes back to Greek san. For the “butterfly sign” a high number of synchronic values and etymological origins has been proposed. The article attempts to show that its use overlaps with that of zeta, transliterated as <z>. Both may have had a single value, and the reflected phoneme is in both cases a voiceless affricate that goes back to Indo-European /st/, /ts/ or /ds/, to epenthesis of /t/ in a sequence *-ns#, or to affrication of /d/ in coda position. The author also evaluates the possibility that the occurrence of san and tau gallicum in some contexts, specifically in codas, is due to mere phonemic reallocation not mediated by sound change.

Alliteration and Rhyme in the Traditional Kakataibo Chants of Emilio Estrella

This paper studies alliteration and rhyme in the traditional Kakataibo chants of Emilio Estrella Logía, one of the most important Kakataibo sabios of the present era. For alliteration and rhyme, consonants which are able to be in coda position according to Kakataibo syllable structure play a central role. Alliteration is sporadic and based on the repetition of fricative consonants in passages of indeterminate length. It occurs in syllable onset and freely within a line and across lines, the latter by adjacency. Kakataibo rhyme is also sporadic, its domain is the final syllable of the line and the nucleus of it; only the nasal consonant /n/ can occupy coda in end-line syllables. Kakataibo true rhyme, as opposed to rhyme in lists created by repetition or semantic parallelism, is by adjacency and within vowel passages of indeterminate length.

The Syllabification of High Vowels in the Kerinci Language: An Autosegmental Phonological Analysis

The aim of this article is to explain the syllabification of high vowels /i/ and /u/ at the nucleus position in the Kerinci language. In this language, the high vowels /i/ and /u/ at the nucleus position will undergo changes - for example, /i/, /u/, /is/ and /us/ will be realized as [aj], [aw], [ajh] and [awh]. In order to explain the phonological processes, each problem was analyzed using the theory of autosegmental phonology (Goldsmith, 1976, 1990). There are three processes involved in the theory, namely linking, delinking and features spreading. The phonological modifications involving the high vowels can be adequately explained based on the process of syllabification that is couched in the CV skeletal model of McCarthy (1981). The data for this study were obtained through three different methods, namely library research, observation and interviews. The instruments used in this study were a recorder, questionnaires and notebooks. The informants selected for this study comprised five men and women who are aged 50 years and above, who are native speakers of Kerinci Semerap dialect, and were born in Kabupaten Kerinci, West Sumatera, Indonesia. However, they have been living in Kampung Batu 21 Sungai Lui, Hulu Langat, Selangor, for more than 30 years. The finding showed that the high vowels /i/ and /u/ at the nucleus of word final syllable are linked to the coda nodes and surfaces as the glides [j] and [w]. Thus, the analysis of the syllabification of high vowels at the coda position explains the application of vowel [a] in the output of words such as [mã.taj] “dead”, [sa.taw] “one”, [tu.lajh] “write” and [lu.rawh] “straight” based on the CV skeletal model of McCarthy (1981).

Debuccalization in Gulf Pidgin Arabic: OT Parallelism or Harmonic Serialism

Abstract The current study examines debuccalization in Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA), which targets pharyngeal fricatives, /ʕ/ and /ħ/, based on the analysis of feature geometry and Optimality Theory (henceforth OT). This study relies on data elicited from interviews with 10 GPA speakers from two linguistic backgrounds, Bengali and Malayalam. This study concludes that /ʕ/ is debuccalized to [ʔ] and /ħ/ to [h] in onset position. Debuccalization is also seen as a step prior to the deletion of pharyngeal fricatives in the coda position. The process of debuccalization is shown through a feature geometric representation of which the Retracted Tongue Root [RTR], as an articulator feature dominated by the pharyngeal place node in pharyngeal fricatives is prone to inertness. [RTR] inertness and the loss of pharyngeal place node are peculiar to the deletion of pharyngeal fricatives in the coda position. Parallelism, as an OT model, is shown to be able to account for debuccalization in the onset in GPA while Harmonic Serialism, as another OT model, is capable of accounting for a serial derivation of which debuccalization of pharyngeal fricatives in the coda position represents the first step prior to consonant deletion.

Laterals in Spanish–English bilinguals

Patterns of production of Spanish and English laterals by early sequential Spanish–English bilinguals (L1 and L2 respectively in the order of acquisition) were investigated. A total of 25 early Spanish–English bilinguals, who are all English-dominant (average age of L2 acquisition: 3;9), were recruited. They were recorded while reading sentences aloud in Spanish and in English containing laterals in onset and coda positions adjacent to front and back vowels. Target words with laterals were spectrographically analysed through an investigation of F1 and F2 values. The measurements obtained were compared between the two languages. The results show that the participants maintain separate acoustic realizations for the laterals in all four different phonetic environments in their two languages. Since their lateral productions are mixed with respect to the influence of the two languages, the results suggest that bilinguals’ interrelated systems influence each other at a fine-grained acoustic level.

A phonetic case study of Tŝilhqot’in /z/ and /zʕ/

This paper provides an acoustic description of /z/ and /zʕ/ in Tŝilhqot’in (Northern Dene). These sounds are noted by Cook (1993, 2013) to show lenition and some degree of laterality in coda position. Based on recordings made in 2014 with a single, mother-tongue speaker of Tŝilhqot’in, we describe their acoustic properties and examine their distribution as a function of prosodic position and segmental environment. We find that they vary along three dimensions: manner (fricative–approximant), degree of retraction (non-retracted–retracted), and laterality (non-lateral–lateral). In addition, some tokens have a characteristic ‘buzziness’, which has been associated with the Chinese front apical vowel (Shao & Ridouane 2018, 2019) and the Swedish ‘Viby-i’ (Westberger 2019). We argue that ‘lenition’ (Kirchner 2004, Ennever, Meakins & Round 2017) can only account for some of the observed variation and suggest that both /z/ and /zʕ/ are specified for two tongue articulations: tongue tip/blade and tongue body (Laver 1994), encompassing laterality (and concomitant retraction) in addition to the primary coronal gesture.

The Genesis of Spanish /θ/: A Revised Model

This article proposes a revised model of the genesis of Castilian Spanish /θ/, based on (i) precise tracking across the Late Middle Ages of the orthographical d → z change in preconsonantal coda position and (ii) the potential for auditory indeterminacy between denti-alveolar variants of [s] and the non-sibilant [θ]. According to the findings, two non-sibilant phonemes, /θ/ and /ð/, are likely to have come into existence by the early 1500s, merger at the expense of /ð/ occurring shortly thereafter. This effectively inverts the normally assumed chronology, according to which devoicing preceded and indeed was implicated in the genesis of /θ/. The revised chronology weakens the teleological analysis of /θ/, which treats its genesis in terms of a functionally motivated widening of the articulatory distance between similar-sounding sibilants. Instead, the emergence of Castilian /θ/ is argued to be a natural reflex of the auditory permeability between the denti-alveolar type of [s] and the non-sibilant [θ], with analogous evolutions occurring outside the domain of Castilian Spanish. As part of this overall approach, the article assumes dissibilation (understood as the converse of assibilation) to be the fundamental process in the genesis of /θ/, rather than interdentalization.

Lateral vocalization in Brazilian Portuguese.

Lateral vocalization is a cross-linguistically common phenomenon where a lateral is realized as a glide, such as [w,j], or a vowel [u, i]. In this paper, we focus on the articulatory triggers that could cause lateral vocalization. We examined Brazilian Portuguese, a language known for the process of lateral vocalization in coda position. We examined the lateral in onset and coda position in four vocalic environments and compared the dynamic tongue contours and contours at the point of maximum constriction in each environment. We also performed biomechanical simulations of lateral articulation and the vocalized lateral. The results indicate increased tongue body retraction in coda position, which is accompanied by tongue body raising. Simulations further revealed that vocalized laterals mainly recruit intrinsic lingual muscles along with the styloglossus. Taken together, the data suggest that vocalization is a result of positional phonetic effects including lenition and additional retraction in the coda position.

Multinomial regression modeling of vowel insertion patterns: adaptation of coda stops from English to Korean

Abstract When an English word ending in a stop is adapted to Korean, a vowel is variably inserted after the final stop. Vowel insertion in this position is surprising because voiceless stops are permissible in coda position in Korean and it is not motivated by Korean native phonology. This study examines five factors that have been hypothesized to affect the likelihood of vowel insertion, i.e., tenseness of the pre-final vowel, voicing and place of the English final stop, word size and final stress. These possibilities were tested using a corpus of Korean loanwords whose source word ends in a stop. Patterns of vowel insertion were classified as no vowel insertion, vowel insertion, or optional vowel insertion, and analyzed using multinomial regression modeling. The results confirmed that all the relevant factors significantly increased the likelihood of vowel insertion and optional vowel insertion patterns relative to no vowel insertion patterns compared with the reference condition rates. These findings suggest that particular features indeed impact production patterns in loanword phonology. My Results support the need for further research into how other possible auditory factors such as stop release may shape speech perception in loanword adaptation.