Coronal Fricatives Research Articles

Status of Velar Fricatives and Flap in Dagbanli

The study is cross-dialectal investigation of the velar fricatives [x, ɣ] and the flap [ɾ] in Dagbanli, a Mabia language spoken in the Northern Region of Ghana. The issues investigated and assessed for the purpose of Dagbanli phonology are the status of the velar fricatives [x, ɣ] and the flap [ɾ] across Dagbanli dialects. Ethnographic approach is employed to solicit the primary data from bucolic Dagbanli speech communities. Descriptive method is engaged for the analysis of the primary data available. The investigation reveals that Dagbanli dialects have the velar fricatives [x, ɣ] confined to specific segmental contexts with a particular inventory stricture. The flap[ɾ] is noticed to occur in mostly in intervocalic but entirely missing in Dagbanli indigenous words in word-initial. The velar fricatives [x, ɣ] and the flap[ɾ] are observed to be non-contrastive and only suffice as dialectal allophones in the language. The paper shows evidence of coalesce of non-coronal labial /m/ and coronal fricative /s/ to produce dorsal fricative [x] in intervocalic and coalesce of stem final stop /ɡ/ and suffix onset fricative /s/ to yield the dorsal fricative [x], a finding which shows the status of the segment [x] in Dagbanli phonology. The paper concludes that the segments [x], [ɣ] and [ɾ] are positional variants of /s/, /ɡ/ and /d/.

The pitfalls of near-mergers: A sociophonetic approach to near-demergers in the Malaga /θ/ vs /s/ split

Abstract The near-merger hypothesis has served to explain many situations where other explanations have not sufficed, including mainly those where apparently completed mergers have been reversed. However, the situation in the city of Malaga (Spain) calls for a critical review of the main pitfalls of this hypothesis and for a sociolinguistic reorganisation of sound change to allow for near-demergers. The present work focusses on the reversal of the coronal fricative /θ/ and /s/ merger (Casa ‘house’ = Caza ‘hunting’) that has been widely observed in Malaga. Acoustic-perceptual analysis of the realisations of 54 speakers reveals that a completed phonological merger can, in fact, revert and that acoustic cues do not necessarily indicate a near-merger.

Palatalization of /d/ across word boundaries in UK English

In many spoken varieties of English, the coronal stop /d/ may palatalize or affricate before /j/, including at word boundaries; e.g., “did you” [ˈdɪdʒu], “would you” [ˈwʊdʒu]. We study this process in the large, naturalistic Audio BNC (http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/AudioBNC). Previous studies have found that coronal fricatives /s, z/ palatalize preceding /j/ in predictable contexts and at increased speech rates, implying that palatalization results from coarticulatory gestural overlap. However, analysis of /t/ shows that palatalization to [tʃ] is a categorical stylistic variant, which is instead selected in formal contexts at slower speech rates. To determine whether [dʒ] results from gestural overlap or as a stylistic variant, we analyze /d/’s rate of palatalization using approximately 8000 tokens of /d#j/ gathered from the force-aligned Audio BNC. Tokens were impressionistically coded as palatalized to [dʒ], released as [d], or unreleased/deleted. With multinomial logistic regressioni, we test whether effects of lexical frequency, speech rate and duration, phonological context, discourse, or speaker characteristics (e.g., region, gender) predict the realization of /d#j/ in naturalistic speech. In line with previous findings, we hypothesize that [dʒ] is more likely in frequent collocations and at high speech rates, but style-driven effects of region, formality, or gender may also predict this variant.

Phoneme acquisition in French-speaking children with moderate hearing loss

ABSTRACT The current study aims to provide a more precise understanding of phoneme acquisition by children with moderate hearing loss (MHL), since they have been an under-studied population among children with hearing loss. The acquisition of sounds by 15 children with MHL (mean: 3;11 year-old) was compared to that by six younger normal-hearing (YNH) children (mean: 2;8 year-old). All the children were video- and audio-recorded in interaction with one or both parents in two semi-spontaneous tasks, and during a naming task. All their productions were analysed in terms of percentage of accuracy and substitution patterns. Similarities and differences between the two populations were observed. Globally, the phoneme level of accuracy of children with MHL was similar to that of YNH, but with a general delay. The observation of substitution patterns revealed differences between the two populations, such as prevalent fortition of fricatives and /ʁ/ by children with MHL, which was unusual among YNH children. Another difference was the prevalent posteriorization of coronal fricatives by children with MHL, whereas anteriorization of post-alveolar fricatives was more common in YNH children. These findings highlight the role of perception and language experience in phonological acquisition, showing that an atypical hearing experience may not only cause a delay, but also the emergence of a specific developmental path.

A Japanese 4-year-old with protracted phonological development: the challenge of coronals

ABSTRACT This study examines the phonology of a Japanese four-year-old with mildly protracted phonological development (PPD) as a contribution to a special crosslinguistic issue presenting individual profiles in PPD within the framework of constraint-based nonlinear phonology. Although the child’s word structure and vowels were well-established, certain consonant classes presented challenges. Coronal anterior obstruents often showed posteriorization (backing): dorsal stops replaced coronal stops, and with some exceptions, alveolopalatal affricates replaced anterior fricatives and affricates. The feature [+continuant] was also not yet established: palatal and bilabial fricatives and /h/ were either deleted or replaced with glottal stop; and non-anterior affricates replaced coronal fricatives. If affricates are analyzed as a sequence of [-continuant]-[+continuant], they were possible transitional elements from non-continuants to continuants. The profile culminates with suggestions for intervention based on the nonlinear phonological analysis, consistent with other papers in this special issue.

Asymmetries in Perceptual Adjustments to Non-Canonical Pronunciations

This paper examines two plausible mechanisms supporting sound category adaptation: directional shifts towards the novel pronunciation or a general category relaxation of criteria. Focusing on asymmetries in adaptation to the voicing patterns of English coronal fricatives, we suggest that typology or synchronic experience affect adaptation. A corpus study of coronal fricative substitution patterns confirmed that North American English listeners are more likely to be exposed to devoiced /z/ than voiced /s/. Across two perceptual adaptation experiments, listeners in test conditions heard naturally produced devoiced /z/ or voiced /s/ in critical items within sentences, while control listeners were exposed to identical sentences with canonical pronunciations. Perceptual adaptation was tested via a lexical decision test, with devoiced /z/ or voiced /s/, as well as a novel alveopalatalized pronunciation, to determine whether adaptation was targeted in the direction of the exposed variant or reflected a more general relaxation. Results indicate there was directional and word-specific adaptation for /z/-devoicing with no evidence for generalization. Conversely, there was evidence of /s/-voicing generalizing and eliciting general category relaxation. These results underscore the role of perceptual experiences, and support an evaluation stage in perceptual learning, where listeners assess whether to update a representation.

Perceptive-auditive and perceptive-visual judgment in the identification of gradient productions in fricatives.

To analyze which method of judgment, auditory- perceptual (PAJ) of audios or perceptual-visual judgment (PVJ) (ultrasound images), is more sensitive to detect gradual productions between the class of deaf coronal fricatives and check if there is a correlation between these forms of judgment. Audio and video files of language ultrasound (LUS) related to the production of the words "frog" and "key", of 11 children, between 6 and 12 years old, with atypical speech production, were selected from a bank data and edited for judgments. After instruction and prior training, 20 judges should choose, immediately upon presentation of the stimulus (auditory or visual), one of three options arranged on the computer screen. In PAJ the options were: correct, incorrect or gradient production, while in PVJ the options were images corresponding to the production of [s], [∫] or undifferentiated. The presentation time of the stimuli and the reaction time were automatically controlled by the PERCEVAL software. PVJ provided a higher percentage of identification of gradient stimuli and a shorter reaction time in performing the task compared to PAJ, both statistically significant. Spearman's correlation test did not show statistical significance between PAJ and PVJ responses, nor for reaction time. PVJ using US images proved to be the most sensitive method for detecting gradient production in the production of fricatives [s] and [∫], and can be used as a complementary method to PAJ in speech analysis.

The split of a fricative merger due to dialect contact and societal changes: A sociophonetic study on Andalusian Spanish read-speech

AbstractIn line with a growing body of literature suggesting that mergers are reversible given the adequate dialect contact and social context, the present study examines the phonetic split of the Andalusian Spanish merger of ceceo into the Castilian Spanish feature of distinción. Specifically, the study analyzes 19,420 coronal fricatives produced by 80 Western Andalusian speakers from the city of Huelva and the nearby town of Lepe using a reading passage and wordlist. The analyses find that leaders of this change are younger speakers, women, those with more educational attainment, those of service and professional occupations, and those from Huelva. The implications are that large-scale societal changes have allowed for the split of the ceceo merger into distinción in both speech communities, albeit at different rates of change due to their unique socioeconomic histories, demonstrating that a split is possible given the right social context.

The distribution of speaker information in Dutch fricatives /s/ and /x/ from telephone dialogues.

Although previous work has shown that some speech sounds are more speaker-specific than others, not much is known about the speaker information of the same segment in different linguistic contexts. The present study, therefore, investigated whether Dutch fricatives /s/ and /x/ from telephone dialogues contain differential speaker information as a function of syllabic position and labial co-articulation. These linguistic effects, established in earlier work on read broadband speech, were first investigated. Using a corpus of Dutch telephone speech, results showed that the telephone bandwidth captures the expected effects of perseverative and anticipatory labialization for dorsal fricative /x/, for which spectral peaks fall within the telephone band, but not for coronal fricative /s/, for which the spectral peak falls outside the telephone band. Multinomial logistic regression shows that /s/ contains slightly more speaker information than /x/ in telephone speech and that speaker information is distributed across the speech signal in a systematic way; even though differences in classification accuracy were small, codas and tokens with labial neighbors yielded higher scores than onsets and tokens with non-labial neighbors for both /s/ and /x/. These findings indicate that speaker information in the same speech sound is not the same across linguistic contexts.

The evolution of proto-Brit. *-/lth/ in Welsh

Abstract This paper argues that the evolution of proto-Brittonic final *-/lth/ > -/lθ/ > -/ɬt/ in Welsh is the result of the metathesis of the feature [spread glottis] from the final coronal fricative to the lateral approximant with well known concomitant phonetic changes that devoiced and fricated the lateral approximant while occluding the coronal fricative.

Ultrasonographic analysis of lateral liquids and coronal fricatives: judgment of experienced and non-experienced judges

ABSTRACT Purpose: to verify if the accuracy in the judgment of the ultrasound (US) images varies according to the experience of the judges and the sound class - alveolar liquids and coronal fricatives. Methods: ultrasound images related to the production of liquids and fricatives in the intervocalic context of the vowel /a/, produced by 20 typical adults, were judged by 15 experienced judges and 15 non-experienced judges. A previous analysis of the images was performed to establish the typical ultrasound pattern of the liquids and fricatives. The accuracy (% of correctness and errors) of the judgments performed by the judges was considered in the analysis. Factorial ANOVA statistical test was used, considering as factors the sound class and the experience of the judges. Results: the Factorial ANOVA showed a significant effect for the accuracy of the judgment only for the sound class, with no significance for the judges' experience or for the interaction between the experience of judges and the sound class. The liquids had a lower accuracy in the judgment, as compared to the fricatives, confirming their articulatory complexity, since they involve the production of two simultaneous gestures. Conclusion: the accuracy in the judgment of the US images did not vary according to the experience of judges, but it was dependent on the sound class. It should be noted, however, that all judges presented previous knowledge about the processes of speech production which may have favored image interpretation.

Speech Production Patterns in Producing Linguistic Contrasts are Partly Determined by Individual Differences in Anatomy

Author(s): Johnson, Keith | Abstract: This study explored correlations between (a) measures of vocal tract anatomy and (b) measures of articulatory/linguistic contrasts in vowels and coronal fricatives. The data for the study come from the Wisconsin X-Ray MicroBeam Database (Westbury, 1994). The anatomical measures included vocal tract length, oral cavity length, palate size and shape, as well as measures of maximal tongue protrusion and jaw wagging amplitude. Measures of the articulatory vowel space included the range of x and y location at vowel midpoints for four pellets on the tongue, the interpolated highest point of the tongue, and the locations of pellets on the upper and lower lips and to the lower incisor. For each of these clouds of vowel midpoint measurements, the orientation of variation was also measured. For fricatives, measures of tongue advancement and tongue tip lowering were taken. The results showed that the articulatory vowel space was related to both the length of the vocal tract, and to the shape of the palate, while fricative variation was related to palate parameters alone. In simple correlations, the percentage of articulatory variance between segments that could be predicted by anatomical characteristics was modest; never more than 36% for vowels and 25% for fricatives. Canonical correlation analysis found two anatomical factors that predict articulatory patterns jointly in vowels and coronal fricatives. The first canonical variable found a relationship between vocal tract length/palate depth and vowel tongue vertical range and jaw motion. Talkers with long vocal tracts and deep palates showed large tongue vertical range and small jaw range. The second canonical variable found a relationship between palate depth and tongue tip raising in coronal fricatives. Talkers with more shallow palate tended to have a tongue-tip up posture in fricatives. Phonetic tagging for the XRMBDB is made publicly available by this project.

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.

Perception and Production of Consonants of English by Pakistani Speakers

This paper depicts a comprehensive picture of consonants of Pakistani English (PakE). The study shows that PakE speakers neutralize aspiration contrast in English stops. In the PakE, /t/ in /st/ cluster on onset of a word (e.g., steal) is produced with more aspiration than that on syllable-initial position without preceding /s/ (e.g., in “teach”). Besides, /t d/ are produced with strong retroflexion but /t/ in tautosyllabic /st/ clusters on word-initial position is produced without retroflexion. Voiced stops are produced with pre-voicing. Dental fricatives /θ ð/ produced by native speakers of English are perceived as [f z] or [s v] by PakE speakers but they produce these fricatives as stop. PakE speakers can realize a difference between clear and dark lateral of English in perception although they do not maintain the same difference in production as they produce English lateral as a clear lateral on onset and coda of syllables. Coronal fricative /ʒ/ is perceived and produced as approximant /j/ and /v w/ as a labial approximant. In PakE [r] is produced with strong trilling and rhoticity on all word-positions.

Kuwaiti Arabic: acquisition of singleton consonants.

Arabic, a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic variety, has a rich consonant inventory. Previous studies on Arabic phonological acquisition have focused primarily on dialects in Jordan and Egypt. Because Arabic varies considerably across regions, information is also needed for other dialects. To determine acquisition benchmarks for singleton consonants for Kuwaiti Arabic-speaking 4-year-olds. Participants were 80 monolingual Kuwaiti Arabic-speaking children divided into two age groups: 46-54 and 55-62 months. Post-hoc, eight children were identified as possibly at risk for protracted phonological development. A native Kuwaiti Arabic speaker audio-recorded and transcribed single-word speech samples (88 words) that tested consonants across word positions within a variety of word lengths and structures. Transcription reliability (point-to-point) was 95% amongst the authors, and 87% with an external consultant. Three acquisition levels were designated that indicated the proportion of children with no mismatches ('errors') for a given consonant: 90%+ of children, 75-89%, fewer than 75%. Mismatch patterns were described in terms of a phonological feature framework previously described in the literature. The Kuwaiti 4-year-olds produced many singleton consonants accurately, including pharyngeals and uvulars. Although the older age group had fewer manner and laryngeal mismatches than the younger age group, consonants still developing at age 5 included coronal fricatives and affricates, trilled /r/ and some uvularized consonants ('emphatics'). The possible at-risk group showed mastery of fewer consonants than the other children. By feature category, place mismatches were the most common, primarily de-emphasis and lack of contrast for [coronal, grooved] (distinguishing alveolar from interdental fricatives). Manner mismatches were next most common: the most frequent substitutions were [+lateral] [l] or other rhotics for /r/, and stops for fricatives. Laryngeal mismatches were few, and involved partial or full devoicing. Group differences generally reflected proportions of mismatches rather than types. Compared with studies for Jordanian and Egyptian Arabic, Kuwaiti 4-year-olds showed a somewhat more advanced consonant inventory than same age peers, especially with respect to uvulars, pharyngeals and uvularized (emphatic) consonants. Similar to the other studies, consonant categories yet to master were: [+trilled] /r/, coronal fricative feature [grooved], [+voiced] fricatives /ʕ, z/ and the affricate /d͡͡ʒ/ and some emphatics. Common mismatch patterns generally accorded with previous studies. This study provides criterion reference benchmarks for Kuwaiti Arabic consonant singleton acquisition in 4-year-olds.

Perceptual integration of acoustic cues to laryngeal contrasts in Korean fricatives.

This paper provides evidence that multiple acoustic cues involving the presence of low-frequency energy integrate in the perception of Korean coronal fricatives. This finding helps explain a surprising asymmetry between the production and perception of these fricatives found in previous studies: lower F0 onset in the following vowel leads to a response bias for plain [s] over fortis [s*], despite the fact that there is no evidence for a corresponding acoustic asymmetry in the production of [s] and [s*]. A fixed classification task using the Garner paradigm provides evidence that low F0 in a following vowel and the presence of voicing during frication perceptually integrate. This suggests that Korean listeners in previous experiments were responding to an "intermediate perceptual property" of stimuli, despite the fact that the individual acoustic components of that property are not all present in typical Korean fricative productions. The finding also broadens empirical support for the general idea of perceptual integration to a language, a different manner of consonant, and a situation where covariance of the acoustic cues under investigation is not generally present in a listener's linguistic input.

The production of Korean coronal obstruents by inexperienced English-speaking learners of Korea

English-speaking learners of Korean often experience difficulty in learning Korean laryngeal categories (i.e., fortis, lenis, and aspirated). We examine whether the degree of difficulty in producing these laryngeal categories generalizes across the whole coronal obstruent system (i.e., stops and fricatives) and two different prosodic locations (i.e., CV and VCV). In our experiment, English-speaking college students taking first semester Korean course read a list of Korean frame sentences with target stimuli. The target stimuli consist of three coronal stops /t t’ th/ and two coronal fricatives /s s’/ combined with the vowel /a/ in CV and VCV. To assess production accuracy, native speakers of Korean are asked to identify the consonants from the learners’ productions. Results indicate that lenis categories are the most difficult across stops and fricatives in the two prosodic locations, suggesting that the learners develop production skills for laryngeal contrast applicable across the entire obstruent system. However, the degree of difficulty patterns are not similar in CV and VCV: the learners were more accurate producing /th/ in VCV than in CV. Thus, these findings suggest that the learners develop the production skills separately for different prosodic locations.

Quasi-neutralization in the acquisition of English coronal fricatives by native speakers of Japanese

Second language learners show various forms of mispronunciation, or modification, of target pronunciation, most perhaps due to direct native language transfer, but others, summarized here, to deflected contrast, hypercorrection and covert contrast. The present paper reports on a novel form of adaptation that we term ‘quasi-neutralization,’ in which acoustic characteristics of competing target phonemes are found within the same interlanguage segment (e.g., think [θɪŋk] pronounced as [θsiŋk]). The three English voiceless coronal fricatives /s/, /ʃ/, /θ/ were elicited from Japanese learners of English via two techniques: a wordlist reading task that encouraged participants to focus on their pronunciation, and a sentence construction task that diverted their attention from pronunciation. Among different types of modification, quasi-neutralization was observed predominantly when participants were conscious of their pronunciation, which could reflect their linguistic insecurity as learners. This research thus illuminates another of the strategies that learners employ in the acquisition of L2 pronunciation.

An Acoustic Comparison of Korean Coronal Fricatives in the Seoul and Yanbian Korean Dialects

This study was intended 1) to investigate acoustic realizations of the fortis /s’/ and non-fortis /s/ in Seoul and Yanbian Korean and 2) to explore how a two-way phonemic contrast, /s/ and /s’/, can be compared with a three-way laryngeal contrast of Korean stops in each dialect. Korean fricatives from 10 Seoul and 10 Yanbian Korean speakers were analyzed in terms of fricative duration, center of gravity, F0, H1-H2 and duration of adjacent vowels. This study generated five interesting findings: First, the fortis /s’/ mainly differs from the non-fortis /s/ in frication duration in Seoul Korean. Second, H1-H2 plays a systematic role in differentiating the non-fortis /s/ from the fortis /s’/ in Yanbian Korean. Third, in Yanbian Korean, center of gravity of the non-fortis /s/ is higher than fortis /s’/. Fourth, in Seoul Korean, the fortis /s’/ patterns with tense obstruents, whereas its counterpart /s/ exhibits the phonetic characteristics of lenis and aspirated obstruents. Finally, in Yanbian Korean, the fortis /s’/ shows the properties similar to lenis and tense obstruents, while the non-fortis /s/ demonstrates a comparable pattern as lenis and aspirated obstruents.

Temporal characteristics of vowel articulation: Electromyographic investigation of the “articulatory period”

In speech, articulator movement precedes the acoustic signal [e.g., Meyer (1991); Gracco (1988); Lubker and Gay (1982); Bell-Berti and Harris (1981)]. The onset and offset of movement, i.e., the ‘articulatory period' (Bell-Berti and Harris, 1981, p. 13) is said to encompass the acoustic signal however the precise timing and variability of this period are not well understood. Using electromyography (EMG), we examine the onset/offset of the articulatory period as a function of phonetic context. We recorded EMG activity from the posterior and anterior regions of the genioglossus (GG) muscle of the tongue in subjects during the articulation of static vowels, static vowels with initial coronal or palatal fricatives and vowels embedded in the nonce word [∫pVp]. We show front and high vowels entail earlier onset of GG activation and that vowels preceded by coronal fricatives are associated with significantly earlier muscle activation than vowels preceded by palatal fricatives. We also note timing differences between GG regions. Thus, for these stimuli, posterior GG EMG activation encompasses the duration of anterior GG EMG activation. These findings underscore the dynamic nature of lingual movement wherein regional tongue muscle activities exhibit predictable differences determined in large part by phonetic context.