Consonant Voicing Research Articles

THE ROLE OF L1 PROSODY IN L2 VOWEL DURATION PRODUCTION: EVIDENCE FROM ASIAN LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

The pre-fortis clipping pattern refers to vowels being shorter before voiceless consonants compared to vowels before voiced consonants. This study examined whether first-language (L1) prosodic properties affect the production of this vowel duration pattern in second-language (L2) English speech. Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese with varying English proficiency participated in a production experiment. Results showed that while speakers exhibited some pre-fortis clipping, there were no significant vowel lengthening patterns. Additional analysis revealed subtle differences based on the L1 prosody type. Native Mandarin and Vietnamese speakers, with lexical tone, had similar duration ratios. However, native Korean speakers, with no tone, showed less distinction in vowel duration by consonant voicing. Japanese speakers, with pitch accents, fell in the middle. The findings provide limited evidence that L1 prosody affects L2 vowel duration production. The results have implications for theories of L2 speech acquisition as well as pedagogical techniques when teaching English vowels.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0711/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Bidirectional C-to-V coarticulation across syllable and word boundaries

Extensive work has explored the anticipatory or carryover coarticulatory effects of consonants on F2 of adjacent vowels using locus equation. However, studies examining bidirectional effects remain scarce. This study examines how voicing and place of articulation (PoA) of consonants affect bidirectional C-to-V coarticulation across syllable and word boundaries. Recordings of / C;1V;1.C;2V;2/, /C;1V;1#C;2V;2/ and /C;1V;1C;2#V;2t/ sequences from native speakers of Canadian English were analyzed. F0, F1, and F2 were measured at the onset and offset of the target vowels (/i ɑ/) to compare the coarticulatory effects caused by the adjacent consonants with different voicing and PoA (/p b t d g k/). Preliminary results (N = 6) indicate that coarticulatory effects vary based on voicing and PoA of consonants. Voiceless consonants exhibited a greater effect on f0 bidirectionally, but smaller effects on F1 and F2. Regarding PoA, only the effect of F2 in anticipatory contexts was dependent on different PoA. The findings also suggest that bidirectional coarticulatory effects are found across both syllable and word boundaries. Within and across these boundaries, larger anticipatory effects were found on f0, while the carryover effect on F1 was more robust. Concerning F2, differences between coarticulatory effects were only evident in voiceless and velar contexts.

Did I say ‘pup’ or ‘pub’?

Language users possess knowledge about the second language (L2) phonological system and their own L2 pronunciation, known as phonological awareness and phonological self-awareness, respectively. Higher awareness about the L2 phonology has been shown to be beneficial for L2 pronunciation accuracy (e.g. Kennedy & Trofimovich, 2010), making it relevant to know which features L2 learners are able to notice and how the L2 phonology can be brought into the learners’ attention better. The aim of the paper is to examine language learners’ awareness about their own pronunciation by investigating which L2 segmental features are noticed, how one’s intelligibility is perceived and how participants view their phonological self-awareness abilities. 33 L1 Finnish learners of English enrolled in an English phonetics and phonology course recorded a speech sample and later listened to it by noting down the perceived pronunciation deviations on selected features. The participants also answered a phonological self-awareness questionnaire. The results indicate that the learners noticed segmental deviations in their productions, mainly in relation to consonantal voicing and vowel duration. The participants also perceived themselves as highly intelligible and reported it to be easy to notice the gap in their pronunciation, to identify pronunciation deviations in other speakers’ speech and to identify Finnish-accented English. Nevertheless, the overall verbalization of noticing was scarce and the participants manifested difficulties in explaining the noticed phenomena. The discussion relates the phonological self-awareness findings to pedagogical applications.

Speech intelligibility of English spoken by Indonesian and Taiwanese speakers and judged by Taiwanese listeners: application of TOCS+ automatic software

Former investigations were about the familiarity advantage that people with the same language backgrounds are more intelligible. Besides, particular English was most intelligible to participants with high certain English familiarity. This study investigated how Taiwanese listeners judge the English speech intelligibility of Taiwanese and Indonesian speakers. Thirty Indonesian speakers and thirty Taiwanese speakers participated in this study. Ninety Taiwanese listeners were recruited to judge speech intelligibility. The recording and judging process used the TOCS+ software (Hodge et al., 2009). The software provided 124 contrast items of minimal pairs for the recognition task, including contrast of syllable shape, vowels, and consonants. The listeners' judgments were then analyzed by the TOCS+ software automatically. It was found that Taiwanese English speaker is more intelligible to Taiwanese listeners. The variables that predict intelligibility for Indonesian speakers are syllable shape contrast item correct (SSIC) and consonant item correct (CIC), while Taiwanese speakers’ SSIC and vowel item correct (VIC) did not predict intelligibility. Only CIC predicts intelligibility. Both groups made similar errors in consonant voicing. The study's findings contribute to the teaching materials for the English preparation of students who will study abroad.  Â

Звонкость согласных в сургутском диалекте хантыйского языка по данным электроглоттографии

This paper presents an experimental phonetic study of consonant voicing in Surgut Khanty conducted with one na-tive speaker of the Trom-Agan sub-dialect using a Rose Medical EGG-D200 laryngograph and icSpeech software. The vocal cord activity was assessed non-invasively with sensors on the speaker’s throat. The recordings were seg-mented and annotated via Praat software and then statistically processed with the Emu-SDMS corpus manager and R programming language. A voicing rate was calculated as the relative duration of the sound segment defining the fundamental frequency. Over 770 sound segments were processed. The obstruent consonants /p/, /t/, /c͡ç/, /k/, /s/, /ɬ/, and /ʎ̥/ were pronounced voicelessly, partially voiced in intervocalic position but never having sonants’ and vowels’ typical values. The obstruent consonants had the voicing coefficients of 0–0,44, with the mean values for different phonemes of 0,02–0,06, while vowels feature the voicing coefficients of 0,44–0,89 and the mean values of 0,53–0,82. The sonor consonants /m/, /n/, /r/, /j/, /ɣ/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/, and /w/ were pronounced as voiced in the initial and medial positions. In the final position, the sonor consonants were realized as devoiced or voiceless depending on the syntagmatic conditions, with the voicing coefficients of 0–0,83 and average values of 0,4–0,63. The paper provides oscillograms and glottograms for the sounds investigated. A control evaluation was conducted using the acoustic data. The comparison of the consonant voicing data from the audio recording and glottography revealed only the latter method to accurately detect a boundary of the voiced segment.

Perception of English vowel length modulation due to vowel identity and the identity of the following consonant by Korean learners of English

In English, consonant voicing has large effects on the previous vowel duration, as does the status of the vowel as tense or lax. Our aim is to examine the relationship between discrimination and identification of these contrasts by Korean L2 listeners. An ABX discrimination task shows little correlation between the two contrasts, so that listeners who distinguish English consonant voicing contrasts do not tend to do better with the English tense/lax contrasts. An identification task, however, indicates a strong correlation across the two different contrasts such that listeners who identify the correct underlying final consonant are able to identify the correct underlying vowel identity in their English perception. Further, comparing the participants’ performance on the two tasks shows a different relationship between discrimination and identification. For voicing contrasts, discrimination performance needs to reach a level of accuracy before the listeners improve in identification, suggesting that auditory discrimination is a foundation for identification. However, for the tense-lax contrast, the listeners’ performance in the two tasks is entirely uncorrelated, suggesting that part of the difficulty for the listeners acquiring the tense-lax contrast is that they auditorily attend to aspects of the signal which are inappropriate for identification.

Subsegmental representation in child speech production: structured variability of stop consonant voice onset time in American English and Cantonese.

Voice onset time (VOT) of aspirated stop consonants is marked by variability and systematicity in adult speech production. The present study investigated variability and systematicity of voiceless aspirated stop VOT from 161 two- to five-year-old talkers of American English and Cantonese. Overall, many aspects of child VOT productions parallel adult patterns, the analysis of which can help inform our understanding of early speech production. For instance, VOT means were comparable between children and adults, despite greater variability. Further, across children in both languages, talker-specific VOT means were strongly correlated between [th] and [kh]. This correlation may reflect a constraint of "target uniformity" that minimizes variation in the phonetic realization of a shared distinctive feature. Therefore findings suggest that target uniformity is not merely a product of a mature grammar, but may instead shape speech production representations in children as young as two years of age.

Differences in Final /z/ Realization in Southwest and Northern Virginia

Two apparently contradictory observations have been made about consonantal voicing in Southern U.S. English: compared to other U.S. varieties, Southern speakers produce more voicing on “voiced” stops, but they also “devoice” word-final /z/ at higher rates. In this article, regional differences in final /z/ realization within Virginia are investigated. Thirty-six students from Southwest and Northern Virginia were recorded completing tasks designed to elicit /z/-final tokens. Tokens were acoustically analyzed for duration and voicing; they were also automatically categorized as being [z] or [s] using an HTK forced aligner. At the surface level, the two approaches yield incompatible results: the single acoustic measures suggest that the Southwest Virginians produce more [z]-like /z/ tokens than the Northern Virginians, and the aligner finds that the Southern-identifying participants produce the most [s]-like tokens. However, both analyses converge on the importance of following environment: the Southwest Virginians are relatively least voiced prepausally and more voiced in other environments. These combined findings confirm previous work showing that Southern “voiced” consonants generally have more voicing than other regional U.S. varieties but also suggest that the dialect may exhibit greater phrase-final fortition. There are also differences within Southwest Virginian speakers based on differences in their rurality or in their orientation to the South.

Орфография староиспанских текстов в арабской графике (на примерах имен собственных из Архива толедских мосарабов XII-XIII вв.)

The purpose of the research is to provide a systematic description of a linguistic phenomenon called “Mozarabic Aljamiado”. The research is novel in that it is the first in Russian Spanish studies to consider this phenomenon from the viewpoint of the historical phonetics of the Spanish language, in particular, the features of using the Arabic letters Tā’/Ṭā’, Kāf/Qāf in Spanish texts in the Arabic script. As a result, it has been shown that the alternations of the letters Tā’/Ṭā’, Kāf/Qāf in some cases reflect the process of consonant voicing in the intervocalic position.

Floating low tone and consonant voicing in Akebu

The paper deals with floating low tone and consonant voicing in Akebu, historically induced by the nasal velar ŋ. The phenomena manifest in combination as nominal and agreement markers in a number of noun classes, as well as in independent pronouns. I argue against the analysis of paired voiced consonants as positional variants of their voiceless counterparts after the floating low tone found in the previous literature. This study proposes that floating low tone is considered only as a special case of the low tone and does not differ from the low tone on overt markers in any respect. Accordingly, paired voiced consonants are viewed as independent phonemes, while keeping in mind that they have acquired their phonemic status recently.

Preschoolers Have Difficulty Discriminating Novel Minimal-Pair Words.

The primary aim was to assess whether children have difficulty distinguishing similar-sounding novel words. The secondary aim was to assess what task characteristics might hinder or facilitate perceptual discrimination. Three within-subjects experiments tested ninety-nine 3- to 5-year-old children total. Experiment 1 presented two cartoon characters each saying a novel word. Children were asked to report whether they said the same word or different words. Words were identical (e.g., deev/deev), were dissimilar (deev/vush), differed in onset consonant voicing (deev/teev), or differed in vowel tenseness (deev/div). Experiment 2 added accuracy feedback after each trial to remind children of task instructions. Experiment 3 interspersed many "same" trials containing a repeating standard word to assess the role of bottom-up stimulus support on difference detection. The d' scores were highest for dissimilar words, next highest on different-vowel pairs, and lowest on different-consonant pairs. Performance was better with repeated standard stimuli (Experiment 3) than without (Experiment 1). Benefits for repeated task instructions (Experiment 2) were marginal. Exploratory analyses comparing these results to findings in a word-learning study using the same stimuli suggest an imperfect match to how easily children can learn similar-sounding words. Overall, similar-sounding novel words are challenging for children to discriminate perceptually, although discrimination scores exceeded chance for all levels of similarity. Clinically speaking, same/different tests may be less sensitive to sound discrimination than change/no-change tests. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.20151848.

The relationships between EFL learners’ anxiety in oral presentations, self-perceived pronunciation, and speaking proficiency

Learners’ anxiety has drawn widespread attention in the field of second language / foreign language (L2/FL) teaching and learning (e.g. classroom anxiety, communication (with foreigners) anxiety, and anxiety associated with the four macro-skills, namely listening, reading, speaking, and writing). However, this topic is under-explored in L2/FL public speaking (e.g. oral presentations in academic studies), in which anxiety is especially prominent. This study investigated the relationships between EFL (English as a foreign language) learners’ anxiety in public speaking, self-perceived pronunciation competence, and actual speaking proficiency. 176 tertiary-level EFL students in Hong Kong participated in this mixed-methods study using questionnaires and interviews. Overall, different aspects of self-perceived pronunciation were negatively correlated with anxiety to different extents. However, when analysed by proficiency levels, only voicing of consonants and overall pronunciation of consonants showed moderate negative correlations with anxiety for the high-proficiency and intermediate-proficiency groups respectively. In the interviews, the high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency interviewees suggested nativelikeness, accuracy, and intelligibility respectively as their different pronunciation goals in EFL oral presentations.

A protracted developmental trajectory for English-learning children’s detection of consonant mispronunciations in newly learned words

ABSTRACT Children are adept at learning their language’s speech-sound categories, but just how these categories function in their developing lexicon has not been mapped out in detail. Here, we addressed whether, in a language-guided looking procedure, 2-year-olds would respond to a mispronunciation of the voicing of the initial consonant of a newly learned word. First, to provide a baseline of mature native-speaker performance, adults were taught a new word under training conditions of low prosodic variability. In a second experiment, 24- and 30-month-olds were taught a new word under training conditions of high or low prosodic variability. Children and adults showed evidence of learning the taught word. Adults’ target looking was reduced when the novel word was realized at test with a change in the voicing of the initial consonant, but children did not show any such decrement in target fixation. For both children and adults, most learners did not treat the phonologically distinct variant as a different word. Acoustic-phonetic variability during teaching did not have consistent effects. Thus, under conditions of intensive short-term training, 24- and 30-month-olds did not differentiate a newly learned word from a variant differing only in consonant voicing. High task complexity during training could explain why mispronunciation detection was weaker here than in some prior studies.

Enhancing secondary voicing cues in words with minimal pairs

Lexical competition conditions phonetic variation. For example, words with more phonological neighbors are produced with more hyperarticulated vowels than words with fewer neighbors, and /p,t,k/-initial words with voiced stop minimal pairs have longer VOT. Such effects enhance contrastive features and may be aimed at improving perceptibility of more potentially confusable words. Secondary features may also help distinguish words, as with lengthened vowels that cue coda consonant voicing in English. Our study investigates whether secondary features are enhanced in the production of lexically confusable words, comparing vowel duration in words with final voiced consonants between words with and without minimal pair competitors (e.g., bag with minimal pair back vs. gag with no pair gack). Fifteen American English speakers produced 30 monosyllabic English words with voiced final consonants, half with minimal pair competitors and half without (matched for frequency and neighborhood density). Pre-voiced vowels were found to be longer in minimal pair words than in non-minimal pair words; interactions indicate that the effect is stronger for some vowels. These findings show that it is not just contrastive features, but secondary features too that are subject to enhancement in lexical competition contexts, since they too can contribute to successful lexical perception.

후행하는 자음의 여러 특성에 따른 영어 모음 길이에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difference of vowel duration due to the voicing of word-final consonants in English and its relation to the types of word-final consonants (stops vs. fricatives), (partial) devoicing, and stop releasing. Addtionally, this study attempts to interpret the findings from the functional view that the vowels before voiced consonants are produced with a longer duration in order to enhance the salience of the voicing of word-final consonants. This study conducted a recording experiment with English native speakers, and measured the vowel duration, the degree of (partial) devoicing of word-final voiced consonants and the release of word-final stops. First, the results showed that the ratio of the duration difference was not influenced by the types of word-final consonants. Second, it was revealed that the higher the degree of (partial) devoicing of word-final voiced consonants, the longer vowel duration before word-final voiced consonants, which was compatible with the prediction based on the functional view. Lastly, the ratio of the duration difference was greater when the word-final stops were uttered with the release compared to when uttered without the release, which was not consistent with the functional view. These results suggest that it is not sufficient enough to explain the voicing effect by its function of distinguishing the voicing of word-final consonants.

Variability in within-category implementation of stop consonant voicing in American English-speaking children.

The development of stop consonant voicing in English-speaking children has been documented as a progressive mastery of phonological contrast, but implementation of voicing within one voicing category has not been systematically examined. This study provides a comprehensive account of structured variability in phonetic realization of /b/ in running speech by 8-12-year-old American children (n = 48) when compared to adults (n = 36). The stop always occurred word-initially, was followed by either a voiced or voiceless coda, and its position varied in a sentence, which created systematic conditions to examine acoustic variability in closure duration (CD) and voicing during the closure (VDC) stemming from phonetic context and prosodic prominence. Children demonstrated command of long-distance anticipatory coarticulation, providing evidence that information about coda voicing is distributed over an entire monosyllabic word and is available in the onset stop. They also manifested covariation of cues to stop voicing and command of prosodic variation, despite greater random variability, greater CD, reduced VDC, and exaggerated execution of sentential focus when compared to adults. Controlling for regional variation, dialect was a significant predictor for adults but not for children, who no longer adhered to the marked local variants in their implementation of stop voicing.

Exploring phonetic cues to persuasive oral presentation: A study with British English speakers and English L2 learners

Persuasiveness in oral communication in English can be expressed with various vocal phonetic cues that may not be readily accessible to English second language (L2) learners whose native language may employ a different set of cues. With a goal to increase L2 learners’ perceived spoken confidence and persuasiveness, and obtain empirical evidence for phonetic adjustments that native English speakers make to influence listeners, the current study explored the use of consonant prolongation in stressed syllable onsets for emphasis by native British English speakers and English L2 learners. The native speakers’ durations of continuant consonants and voiceless stop consonant voice onset times (VOTs) in (1) neutrally-produced speech and (2) persuasively delivered motivational/shocking/emotional messages were compared to Latvian L2 English speakers’ productions. The results revealed that in persuasive speech, the British speakers’ consonantal durations, particularly those of continuants, got significantly longer relative to the vowels that followed them; for English L2 learners, the duration of consonants did not change as a factor of speech type. This is in line with our previous research with American English speakers and carries implications for L2 speech learning and teaching.

Adult perception of stop consonant voicing in American-English-learning toddlers: Voice onset time and secondary cues.

Most studies of speech perception employ highly controlled stimuli. It is not always clear how such results extend to the processing of natural speech. In a series of experiments, we progressively explored the role of voice onset time (VOT) and potential secondary cues in adult labeling of stressed syllable-initial /b d p t/ produced by typically developing two-year-old learners of American English. Taken together, the results show the following: (a) Adult listeners show phoneme boundaries in labeling functions comparable to what have been established for adult speech. (b) Adult listeners can be sensitive to distributional properties of the stimulus set, even in a study that employs highly varied naturalistic productions from multiple speakers. (c) Secondary cues are available in the speech of two-year-olds, and these may influence listener judgments. Cues may differ across places of articulation and the VOT continuum. These results can lend insight into how clinicians judge child speech during assessment and also have implications for our understanding of the role of primary and secondary acoustic cues in adult perception of child speech.

Consonantal F0 perturbation in American English involves multiple mechanisms.

In this study, we revisit consonantal perturbation of F0 in English, taking into particular consideration the effect of alignment of F0 contours to segments and the F0 extraction method in the acoustic analysis. We recorded words differing in consonant voicing, manner of articulation, and position in syllable, spoken by native speakers of American English in both statements and questions. In the analysis, we compared methods of F0 alignment and found that the highest F0 consistency occurred when F0 contours were time-normalized to the entire syllable. Applying this method, along with using syllables with nasal consonants as the baseline and a fine-detailed F0 extraction procedure, we identified three distinct consonantal effects: a large but brief (10-40 ms) F0 raising at voice onset regardless of consonant voicing, a smaller but longer-lasting F0 raising effect by voiceless consonants throughout a large proportion of the following vowels, and a small lowering effect of around 6 Hz by voiced consonants, which was not found in previous studies. Additionally, a brief anticipatory effect was observed before a coda consonant. These effects are imposed on a continuously changing F0 curve that is either rising-falling or falling-rising, depending on whether the carrier sentence is a statement or a question.

Perception experiments to try on your friends

This talk presents hands-on activities to give intermediate students experience conducting phonological perception experiments and deepen their grasp of categorical consonant perception. It focuses on two assignments in which students gather categorical perception responses from friends, graph them to reveal crossover points, form hypotheses about contributing cues, and apply Praat measurement skills to test them. In the first, students and naïve friends respond to online phoneme identification and discrimination tasks involving a synthesized /ba-da-ga/ continuum varying only in formant transitions. They tally and graph the pooled responses, identify crossover points, and answer interpretation questions. In the second task, students and friends identify words on a bad-bat continuum varying only in vowel length. They hypothesize which phonetic features might distinguish the words, then measure them in Praat to discover that vowel length cues final consonant voicing, not voice onset time as learned in previous lessons. These activities have been used successfully in an advanced introduction to speech science for speech-language pathology undergraduates with an introductory English phonetics prerequisite. They form many students’ first experience conducting experiments, and the hypothesis, deduction, and interpretation portions stretch their critical thinking skills.