Coronal Stop Research Articles

자음 간 영어 설단폐쇄음 변이양상 : 단어 경계를 중심으로

자음 간 영어 설단폐쇄음 변이양상 : 단어 경계를 중심으로

Explaining Coronal Reduction: Prosodic Structure and Articulatory Posture

Consonant reduction is often treated as an allophonic process at the phonological planning level, with one production target (allophone) being substituted for another. We propose that, alternatively, reduction can be the result of an online process driven by prosodically conditioned durational variability and an invariant production target. We show that this approach can account for patterns of coronal stop (/t/, /d/, and /n/) production in both American English and Spanish. Contrary to effort-driven theories of reduction, we show that reduction does notdepend on changes to gestural stiffness. Moreover, we demonstrate how differences between and within a language in the particular articulatory postures used to produce different coronal stops automatically lead to reduction to what have normally been considered distinct allophones - coronal approximants ([ð̞]) and flaps ([ɾ]). In this way, our approach allows us to understand different outcomes of coronal stop reduction as the dynamic interaction of a single process (durationally driven undershoot) and variable spatial targets. We show that these patterns are reflected across a wide variety of languages, and show how alternative outcomes of reduction may fit within the same general framework.

“My Presiden(t) and Firs(t) Lady Were Black”:

“My Presiden(t) and Firs(t) Lady Were Black”:

Word-final consonant epenthesis in Northeastern Nigerian English

L2 speakers of Nigerian English in parts of northeastern Nigeria occasionally insert an alveolar coronal stop [t] or fricative [s] following another alveolar coronal pre-pausally and phrase-internally. The article discusses this typologically unusual phenomenon for the Nigerian English of speakers whose L1 is the Adamawa language Bena (ISO 639-3: yun). I also consider comparable cases of word-final consonant epenthesis in several other varieties of English, both the so-called New Englishes and Inner Circle varieties, and provide an account of the details of epenthesis with respect to which they differ. At first sight, hypercorrection of the tendency for word-final consonant cluster simplification in Bena English may seem an obvious explanation. However, I argue that hypercorrection alone falls short of explaining the observed pattern. In addition, we need to call on phonetic properties of Bena L1 such as pre-pausal glottalisation and lengthening of consonants to be able to account for both the actuation of the hypercorrection and the phonologisation of the epenthesis. Although the availability of a clear phonetic explanation makes this sound pattern conceivable as a natural rule, its typological rarity in non-contact lects highlights the positive bias induced by hypercorrection as a necessary part of the mix in creating the conditions for a reanalysis.

Production planning and coronal stop deletion in spontaneous speech

Many phonological processes can be affected by segmental context spanning word boundaries, which often lead to variable outcomes. This paper tests the idea that some of this variability can be explained by reference to production planning. We examine coronal stop deletion (CSD), a variable process conditioned by preceding and upcoming phonological context, in a corpus of spontaneous British English speech, as a means of investigating a number of variables associated with planning: Prosodic boundary strength, word frequency, conditional probability of the following word, and speech rate. From the perspective of production planning, (1) prosodic boundaries should affect deletion rate independently of following context; (2) given the locality of production planning, the effect of the following context should decrease at stronger prosodic boundaries; and (3) other factors affecting planning scope should modulate the effect of upcoming phonological material above and beyond the modulating effect of prosodic boundaries. We build a statistical model of CSD realization, using pause length as a quantitative proxy for boundary strength, and find support for these predictions. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that the locality of production planning constrains variability in speech production, and have practical implications for work on CSD and other variable processes.

Exploring the Bilingual Phonological Space: Early Bilinguals' Discrimination of Coronal Stop Contrasts.

It is well known that the way monolingual listeners discriminate speech sounds is strongly influenced by their native (L1) sound system. Moreover, such perceptual constraints are not limited to monolinguals: multiple studies have found evidence of language-specificity in bilingual speech perception. However, the question of whether bilinguals have simultaneous access to both of their phonologies during non-native contrast discrimination has not been systematically examined. Namely, very few studies of bilinguals have specifically examined cases where a non-native contrast pair straddles the boundary between two sound systems, with one sound corresponding to a sound in the L1, and the other to a sound in the second language (L2), but with neither the L1 nor the L2 containing both. The current study aimed to do so by comparing the ability of early bilinguals to discriminate non-native phonetic contrasts consisting of sounds that exist in either their L1 or L2, but not in both. A forced-choice perception task compared two listener groups-Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals-on their perception of Nepali dental-alveolar stop contrasts. Results showed that despite displaying some sensitivity to phonetic differences within each contrast pair, the bilingual group was unable to discriminate such "cross-language contrasts" significantly better than the monolingual English control group.

Is there a bilingual advantage in phonetic and phonological acquisition? The initial learning of word-final coronal stop realization in a novel accent of English

Research question:We address the question of whether the cognitive advantage of the bilingual mind, already demonstrated in the case of auditory processing or novel word acquisition, also applies to other linguistic domains, specifically to phonetic and phonological learning.Design:We compare the performance of 17 monolinguals and 25 bilinguals from Canada in a production experiment with two tasks: imitation and spontaneous reproduction of a novel foreign accent, specifically Sussex English.Data and analysis:To eliminate potential sources of variability, our focus is on a sound already existing in the subjects’ production (the glottal stop), but differently mapped to surface representations in the novel accent to which they were exposed (i.e., as an allophone of coronal stops in word-final position). We measured the glottal stop rates of our subjects in baseline, training, and post-training.Results:The two groups behaved differently, with bilinguals showing a larger increase of their glottal stop rate post-training. Our results are thus consistent with a bilingual advantage in phonetic and phonological learning.Originality:We interpret these findings in light of recent psycholinguistic work and conclude that echoic memory strategies, possibly underlain by stronger subcortical encoding of sound in bilinguals, may account for our results by facilitating the re-mapping between existing mental representations of sounds and existing articulatory command configurations.Significance:Our study adds to the body of work suggesting that there may be an advantage of bilingualism in second dialect learning in adulthood, and provides an explanation in terms of perceptual strategies in which echoic memory is involved. We also contribute to the body of research suggesting that imitation of an action can result in improved understanding of that action.

Consonantal timing and release burst acoustics distinguish multiple coronal stop place distinctions in Wubuy (Australia).

Substantial research has established that place of articulation of stop consonants (labial, alveolar, velar) are reliably differentiated using a number of acoustic measures such as closure duration, voice onset time (VOT), and spectral measures such as centre of gravity and the relative energy distribution in the mid-to-high spectral range of the burst. It is unclear, however, whether such measurable acoustic differences are present in multiple place of articulation contrasts among coronal stops. This article presents evidence from the highly endangered indigenous Australian language Wubuy, which maintains a 4-way coronal stop place contrast series in all word positions. The authors examine the temporal and burst characteristics of / t̪ t ʈ/ in three prosodic positions (utterance-initial, word-initial but phrase medial, and word-medial). The results indicate that VOT, closure duration, and the spectral quality of the burst may indeed differentiate multiple coronal place contrasts, in most positions, although measures that distinguish the apical contrast in absolute initial position remain elusive. The authors also examine measures (spectrum kurtosis, spectral tilt) previously used in other studies of multiple coronals in Australian languages. These results suggest that the authors' measures perform at least as well as those previously applied to multiple coronals in other Australian languages.

Coronal stop deletion in Hawai'i English

Coronal Stop Deletion (CSD) is believed to be constrained by the phonological environment and the word’s morphological make-up (i.e., monomorphemic, semi-weak past tense, regular past tense) (Guy 1991; Hazen 2011). In this talk, we present results from an analysis of CSD in the speech of four speakers of Hawai'i English. In addition to using a traditional approach (i.e., auditory analysis of CSD in word-final position), we also analyzed CSD in non-final position (e.g., followed by plural -s) and conducted acoustic phonetic analysis of /t/ in tokens where it was realized. The results demonstrate highly significant effects of environment. Additionally, there is no effect of morpheme type; instead, the results provide evidence that deletion is favored in words with a greater number of morphemes, regardless of whether the coronal stop is found in the stem or the affix. Additionally, the acoustic analysis suggests that the effect of following environment is acoustically gradient: tokens followed by a voiceless, non-alveolar consonant (i.e., the environment that most strongly disfavors deletion in our data) are most likely to be realized with complete occlusion in the vocal tract. Implications for models of speech production are discussed.

Sociolinguistic variation in Asian Englishes

This paper examines coronal stop deletion (CSD), the deletion of word-final /-t, -d/ in consonant clusters, in three new varieties of Asian English: China English, Hong Kong English, and Viet Nam English. The study seeks to determine to which extent the linguistic and extralinguistic constraints found to govern CSD in other varieties of English also impact CSD in emerging Englishes such as those examined in the current study. A total of 60 tertiary students, 20 from each variety of English, participated in the study. Results indicate that, while new Englishes such as China English, Hong Kong English, and Viet Nam English are affected by constraints such as linguistic environment and morphological conditioning, the proficiency level of speakers impacts CSD rates and the effects of the various constraints.

Discrimination of Multiple Coronal Stop Contrasts in Wubuy (Australia): A Natural Referent Consonant Account

Native speech perception is generally assumed to be highly efficient and accurate. Very little research has, however, directly examined the limitations of native perception, especially for contrasts that are only minimally differentiated acoustically and articulatorily. Here, we demonstrate that native speech perception may indeed be more difficult than is often assumed, where phonemes are highly similar, and we address the nature and extremes of consonant perception. We present two studies of native and non-native (English) perception of the acoustically and articulatorily similar four-way coronal stop contrast /t ʈ ȶ/ (apico-alveolar, apico-retroflex, lamino-dental, lamino-alveopalatal) of Wubuy, an indigenous language of Australia. The results show that all listeners find contrasts involving /ȶ/ easy to discriminate, but that, for both groups, contrasts involving /t ʈ / are much harder. Where the two groups differ, the results largely reflect native language (Wubuy vs English) attunement as predicted by the Perceptual Assimilation Model [1, 2, 3]. We also observe striking perceptual asymmetries in the native listeners' perception of contrasts involving the latter three stops, likely due to the differences in input frequency. Such asymmetries have not previously been observed in adults, and we propose a novel Natural Referent Consonant Hypothesis to account for the results.

“The obligation of newspeople is not only to give the news accurately; it is also to say it correctly”: Production and perception of broadcaster speech

This research explores the popular belief among Americans that broadcasters speak a ‘correct’ version of American English. Six broadcast journalism students and six non journalism students recorded news stories as if they were ‘on radio or television’. Their readings are examined auditorily for intervocalic-/t/ flapping, coronal stop deletion, variable (ng), and allegro gonna-wanna. Samples of speech from interviews with the students are also examined for comparison between tasks. Results show that students being trained as broadcasters do not meet the popular expectation for producing prescriptively standard speech, suggesting that these sociolinguistic variables operate consistently across speakers and refuting folk perceptions about broadcaster speech. News readings are also ranked and commented on by listeners for perceived professionalism. Respondents are generally able to differentiate trained broadcasters from other speakers. Rankings do not reward prescriptivist productions. Respondents are also less consistent in ranking African American speakers for professionalism than they are white speakers.

“Variations of a Coronal Nasal and a Voiceless Coronal Stop Clusters : a Corpus-based Study.”

“Variations of a Coronal Nasal and a Voiceless Coronal Stop Clusters : a Corpus-based Study.”

Gestural Control in the English Past-Tense Suffix: An Articulatory Study Using Real-Time MRI

The English past tense allomorph following a coronal stop (e.g., /bɑndəd/) includes a vocoid that has traditionally been transcribed as a schwa or as a barred i. Previous evidence has suggested that this entity does not involve a specific articulatory gesture of any kind. Rather, its presence may simply result from temporal coordination of the two temporally adjacent coronal gestures, while the interval between those two gestures remains voiced and is acoustically reminiscent of a schwa. The acoustic and articulatory characteristics of this vocoid are reexamined in this work using real-time MRI with synchronized audio which affords complete midsagittal views of the vocal tract. A novel statistical analysis is developed to address the issue of articulatory targetlessness based on previous models that predict articulatory action from segmental context. Results reinforce the idea that this vocoid is different, both acoustically and articulatorily, than lexical schwa, but its targetless nature is not supported. Data suggest that an articulatory target does exist, especially in the pharynx where it is revealed by the new data acquisition methodology. Moreover, substantial articulatory differences are observed between subjects, which highlights both the difficulty in characterizing this entity previously, and the need for further study with additional subjects.

The role of articulatory cues in the establishment of perceptual categories

This study investigates the interaction of perceptual and articulatory information in the acquisition of non-native phoneme categories. There is evidence that perceptual learning can improve production of target sounds in a new language, but the reverse—improvement of perceptual discrimination from articulatory learning—is less well-studied (for one example, see Catford and Pisoni 1970). In this experiment, native English speakers learned Hindi coronal stop contrasts (dental vs. retroflex; 4-way VOT contrast) in a pre-test/training/post-test paradigm. Training involved production training, where subjects got explicit instruction about place of articulation and voicing of the target sounds, and practiced producing them. Comparison of pre- and post-test performance on an AX discrimination task indicated greater accuracy (β = 0.486, t = 2.763) and faster responses (β = −0.215, t = −3.396) for most target contrasts after training. (Those contrasts which did not improve tended to map onto English phonemic distinctions, and were well-discriminated at pre-test.) This result supports the hypothesis that articulatory information can contribute to the early development of novel perceptual categories under certain conditions. More generally, it suggests that information from one speech domain can be used to support representations in another speech domain.

Articulatory Attributes in Korean Nonassimilating Contexts

This study examined several kinematic properties of the primary articulator (the tongue dorsum) and the supplementary articulator (the jaw) in the articulation of the voiceless velar stop (/k/) within nonassimilating contexts. We examined in particular the spatiotemporal properties (constriction duration and constriction maxima) from the constriction onset to the constriction offset by analyzing a velar (/k/) followed by the coronal fricative (/s/), the coronal stop (/t/), and the labial (/p/) in across-word boundary conditions (/k#s/, /k#t/, and /k#p/). Along with these measurements, we investigated intergestural temporal coordination between C1 and C2 and the jaw articulator in relation to its coordination with the articulation of consonant sequences. The articulatory movement data was collected by means of electromagnetic midsagittal articulometry (EMMA). Four native speakers of Seoul Korean participated in the laboratory experiment. The results showed several characteristics. First, a velar (/k/) in C1 was not categorically reduced. Constriction duration and constriction degree of the velar (/k/) were similar within nonassimilating contexts (/k#s/

Jaw movement and coronal stop spectra in Central Arrernte

This paper presents jaw movement data from two female speakers of Central Arrernte, focusing on the four coronal places of articulation (dental, alveolar, retroflex and alveo-palatal) across stop, nasal and lateral manners of articulation. It also presents spectral burst data for the stop consonants. Results suggest that when there is a clear spectral peak for the release burst, as is the case primarily for the alveo-palatal, but also for the alveolar and retroflex, the jaw remains high at stop release; but when the spectral burst has a relatively diffuse spectrum, as is the case for the dental, the jaw begins to lower before stop release in anticipation of the following vowel. In addition, there is evidence that the highest jaw target for the alveo-palatal is timed not for the release of the stop closure, but for the frication portion which follows. These results are interpreted as lending support for the view that the lower teeth play a role in stop burst release, similar to their role in sibilant fricative production. Finally, with regard to the retroflex consonants, there is evidence that the continuous upwards jaw movement during acoustic closure is associated with a low jaw position for the initial posterior placement of the tongue tip, followed by a final high jaw position at the anterior release of the tongue tip closure. These results support the view that both biomechanical and acoustic considerations play a role in speech planning and coarticulation.

Vowel acoustics reliably differentiate three coronal stops of Wubuy across prosodic contexts

AbstractThe present study investigates the acoustic differentiation of three coronal stops in the indigenous Australian language Wubuy. We test independent claims that only VC (vowel-into-consonant) transitions provide robust acoustic cues for retroflex as compared to alveolar and dental coronal stops, with no differentiating cues among these three coronal stops evident in CV (consonant-into-vowel) transitions. The four-way stop distinction /t, t̪, ʈ, c/ in Wubuy is contrastive word-initially (Heath 1984) and by implication utterance-initially, i.e., in CV-only contexts, which suggests that acoustic differentiation should be expected to occur in the CV transitions of this language, including in initial positions. Therefore, we examined both VC and CV formant transition information in the three target coronal stops across VCV (word-internal), V#CV (word-initial but utterance-medial) and ##CV (word- and utterance-initial), for /а/ vowel contexts, which provide the optimal environment for investigating formant transitions. Results confirm that these coronal contrasts are maintained in the CVs in this vowel context, and in all three positions. The patterns of acoustic differences across the three syllable contexts also provide some support for a systematic role of prosodic boundaries in influencing the degree of coronal stop differentiation evident in the vowel formant transitions.

Acoustic variability affects asymmetry in infant speech discrimination

From birth, infants are capable of discriminating speech sounds that occur cross-linguistically, but by their first year, infants have difficulty discriminating most non-native contrasts (Werker and Tees, 1984). Yet, language experience is not the only factor affecting discrimination. Further research into language-specific perception reveals asymmetries occur in the discrimination of vowels according to perceptual space (Polka and Bohn, 2003) and consonants based on frequency in the input (Anderson etal., 2003). It might be that acoustic variability also causes asymmetries in infant speech perception. Seventy-six 6- and 9-month olds participated in a discrimination task comparing bilabial and velar stop - /l/ onsets to unattested coronal stop - /l/ onsets (e.g. /kla/ - /tla/; /pla/ - /tla/) in both voiced and voiceless conditions. Infants successfully discriminated coronal from bilabial onsets (p<0.05), but not velar (p>0.05), with no effects of age or voicing. Adult productions of the attested clusters were subjected to an acoustic analysis. Of the four tested characteristics, higher standard deviations were found in velar onsets (/kla/ > /pla/: F2 onset and liquid duration; /gla/ > /bla/: F2 slope, VOT, and liquid duration). This suggests that acoustic variability in the input affects infants' speech discrimination.

Speech style and authenticity: Quantitative evidence for the performance of identity

AbstractThe question of what constitutes an authentic speaker, particularly with regard to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), has been the subject of some debate in sociolinguistics (Butters, 1984; Labov, 1980; Sweetland, 2002) and arises anew in the case of white hip-hop–affiliated youth (WHHs) who converge toward AAVE in their speech. This paper takes a quantitative approach to this question by examining how speech style alters the relationship between the frequencies of a variable in different linguistic environments. Guy (1991b) showed that the exponential relationship in English among rates of coronal stop deletion (CSD) in several morphological categories is systematically distorted by constraints on the surface-level phonology. Because stylistic variation appears to operate at this level, such distortion provides an internal measure of a speaker's stylistic shifting away from their neutral vernacular usage. Data on CSD deletion from WHHs who style shift toward AAVE show this kind of distortion when compared with the speech of AAVE speakers. This data provide strong internal evidence in support of the idea that some WHHs are “performing” a speech style that diverges from their unmarked style.