CV Syllables Research Articles

The Interplay of Syllable Structure and Consonant Sonority in L2 Speech Segmentation

The present study investigated whether L1 and L2 Spanish speakers show sensitivity to matching/mismatching syllable structure and consonant sonority in lexical segmentation in Spanish. A total of 81 English–Spanish learners and 72 Spanish–English learners completed a fragment-monitoring task. They listened to lists of Spanish words as they saw a CV or CVC syllable (e.g., “pa” or “pal”) and pressed a button when the word began with the syllable shown on the screen. The task manipulated syllable structure (CV or CVC) and consonant sonority (fricative, nasal, or liquid) of target syllables and carrier words. Target syllables either matched or did not match the structure of the first syllable in target carrier words (e.g., “pa—pa.lo.ma”; “pa—pal.me.ra”). The results showed that consonant sonority modulated sensitivity to syllable structure in both groups of participants. Spanish–English learners responded faster to matching syllable structure in words that had a fricative or a nasal as the second consonant, and English–Spanish learners responded faster only with a fricative consonant. Higher L2 Spanish proficiency correlated with faster target-syllable identification, but sensitivity to matching/mismatching structure did not vary as a function of proficiency. The study highlights the influence of phonetic factors in the development of L2 lexical segmentation routines.

Appropriate Syllable Length and its Fixation of Consecutive CV Syllables－3- Syllable and 4-Syllable Words May as be the Basis for Mastering Special Syllable－

<p>正確、流利的使用日語乃是所有外國人學習日語的目標。然而，以中文為母語的日語學習者（以下簡稱CNJ）對於五十音無法熟記等問題亦時有所聞。此問題恐與CNJ發話時日語的CV音節過長有關。該如何有效解決此問題乃當務之急。因此，本研究是以6名的CNJ與3名東京腔的日語母語者(以下簡稱JN)為對象，運用日語音聲的特徵以輕聲無義詞來指導，加以確認CNJ是否可利用連續的短CV音節發出日語適當的音節長。通過本實驗研究，比較CNJ（指導前後）和JN的差異，針對單詞、詞語、短句發話中的3音節和4音節無義詞，分析其是否可正確區分CV音節長度。研究結果顯示，指導前CNJ的3音節與4音節的音節長度分布與JN之間具有顯著差異，且音節的高低傾向與JN的音長伸縮率也呈現出差異性。然而，經筆者指導後，CNJ與JN之間的差異已不復見。換言之，我們認為與JN相近之CV音節長度，如在日語音節長度記憶的時間範圍內，則可視為連續短CV音節的日語發話基礎已確立。由此可見，以連續輕聲音節為主的無義詞為基準，並記住日語連續短CV音節長度，足以產出適當的音節長度，得知通過一連串的指導可盡早學習到日語的正確發音。日語連續短CV音節發話基礎的確立，是為解決CNJ與JN的CV音節長度認知差異的有效方法。另，掌握對立長音節間的語音差異，對日語特殊節拍的學習效果亦具一定成效。</p> <p> </p><p>Accurate and fluent linguistic performance is the goal of language acquisition for foreign learners of Japanese. However, some native Chinese learners (hereinafter referred to as CNJ) complain that they cannot memorize the Japanese syllabary. This is related to the excessively long CV syllables of Japanese produced by CNJ, and prompt resolution of this issue is required.In this research, from the viewpoint of whether it is possible to reproduce the appropriate syllable length by short CV syllables using the meaningless words of 0 tone syllables. As a quasi-experimental study, using the three-syllable and four-syllable test words, including words, phrases, and short sentences by 6 CNJs and 3 native speakers of Tokyo dialect (hereafter referred to as JN) to conduct an experiment.As a result, the syllable length of CNJ (before instruction) for both three-syllable and four-syllable words was significantly more than JN and was also shown in the difference in expansion and contraction rate of syllable length from JN. But after instruction, no significant difference observed, which is close to JN. It shows that the basis of Japanese utterances based on consecutive short CV syllables has already been established.It was confirmed that it is possible to produce an appropriate syllable length by recalling the points of continuous short CV syllables of Japanese, based on meaningless words with continuous o tone syllables. Establishment of the base of utterances by consecutive short CV syllables of Japanese is a standard for resolving discrepancies in CV syllable lengths and grasping the phonetic differences between long syllables. It is also expected to serve as a basis for mastering special syllable.</p> <p> </p>

Secondary Stress and Vowel Lengthening in Biblical Aramaic


 
 
 This study is concerned with the placement of the secondary stress in Tiberian Biblical Aramaic. The challenging aspect of this placement is that, contrary to universal typology, both long-voweled CVVC, CVV and short-voweled CV syllables are stressed whereas short-voweled CVC syllables are not. This apparently abnormal distribution is rationalized by arguing that CV syllables became CVV due to a secondary lengthening of the short vowel. I claim that this lengthening is a late development and likely corresponds to the late orthographical practice of regularly marking the secondary stress on open syllables. A similar lengthening in Eastern Syriac offers support for this interpretation. Finally, the common origin of Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic secondary stresses is briefly discussed.
 
 

Reduplication, repetition and sound symbolism in Fungwa

A pattern of reduplication marks the intensity of evaluatives in Fungwa. CV syllables of nominal roots and CV prefixes can be reduplicated, but V syllables cannot. The intensity marker, which also has a CV shape due to an onset condition, can be multiply repeated. The reduplicative intensifier and its repetition(s) are akin to arbitrary affixes in the language in terms of their phonological characteristics, and they are also consistent with non-arbitrary sound-meaning mapping across languages. Formally, the repetition and shape of the reduplicant are considered to be effects of morphosyntax and markedness constraints. Considering that the evaluative marker and the intensifier are consistent with patterns of sound symbolism, Fungwa presents categorical evidence for the perspective that sound-meaning mapping involves both arbitrariness and non-arbitratriness.

The influence of non-canonical vowels on phonetic parsing

Speech segments are highly context sensitive due to coarticulation. This paper investigates phonetic context effects and how listeners parse the acoustic signal (Fowler, 1984). The previous literature reported that listeners could parse adjacent segments in a dissimilative manner (e.g., Mann, 1980), or in an assimilative manner (e.g., Fujimura et al., 1978). More recently, Rysling et al. (2019) reported that spectrally ambiguous or discontinuous transition can lead dissimilative parsing than assimilative parsing. This paper examines how non-canonical vowels affect the perception of adjacent consonant. When listeners hear non-canonical vowels, they may parse the incoming phonetic signal matching canonical exemplars, and assign any deviance in the spectral frequencies to the adjacent consonant. Hence, listeners may do assimilative parsing even with or without appropriate vowel transitions. American English listeners identified synthetic CV and VC syllables with an ambiguous fricative noise between [s] and [ʃ], and vowels including a good exemplar and poor exemplars of [i] and [u], each vowel with or without vowel transitions. Analyses are currently underway, but will illuminate the cause of assimilative parsing with respect to exemplar matching in the exemplar-based model (e.g., Johnson, 1997; Pierrehumbert, 2001).

The perception of nasal coarticulatory variation in face-masked speech.

This study investigates the impact of wearing a face mask on the production and perception of coarticulatory vowel nasalization. Speakers produced monosyllabic American English words with oral and nasal codas (i.e., CVC and CVN) in face-masked and un-face-masked conditions to a real human interlocutor. The vowel was either tense or lax. Acoustic analyses indicate that speakers produced greater coarticulatory vowel nasality in CVN items when wearing a face mask, particularly, when the vowel is lax, suggesting targeted enhancement of the oral-nasalized contrast in this condition. This enhancement is not observed for tense vowels. In a perception study, participants heard CV syllables excised from the recorded words and performed coda identifications. For lax vowels, listeners were more accurate at identifying the coda in the face-masked condition, indicating that they benefited from the speakers' production adjustments. Overall, the results indicate that speakers adapt their speech in specific contexts when wearing a face mask, and these speaker adjustments have an influence on listeners' abilities to identify words in the speech signal.

The internal structure of the syllable in Russian and in Hebrew: Evidence from monolingual kindergarteners

AbstractNotwithstanding remarkable phonological differences, the CV syllable is the most frequent syllable type in both Russian and Hebrew. This led to the prediction that the internal structure of the CVC syllable in the two languages, as reflected in phonological awareness tasks, might be similar. The study tested phonological awareness in two groups of monolingual kindergarteners: Hebrew-speaking (N = 35) and Russian-speaking (N = 20) in order to shed light on the underlying structure of the CVC syllable in the two languages. Phonological awareness tasks targeted awareness of the sub-syllabic structure (structured and unstructured) and phoneme awareness (initial and final). A linear mixed model analysis revealed that children in both groups showed greater facility with body-coda CV-C than with onset-rime C-VC syllable splitting and higher scores on final than on initial phoneme isolation tasks. The unstructured tasks also reflected the cohesion of the CV body in both languages. The findings demonstrate a similar internal representation of the CVC syllable in Russian and in Hebrew speakers as reflected in phonological awareness among preschoolers.

Vowel Compression in Altiplateau Mexican Spanish

This paper presents an exploratory study of coda-driven vowel compression in Altiplateau Mexican Spanish (AMS). Previous research has led to the claim that pan-dialectal, coda-driven compression does not occur in Spanish and that, instead, only onset complexity drives the shortening of following vowels (Aldrich & Simonet 2019). Based on acoustic analysis of continuously read speech, we find that mid and low vowels in AMS centralise in closed unstressed syllables, and they also display significant shortening in CVC contexts (relative to their uncompressed duration in CV syllables). By contrast, onset complexity does not induce significant compression in our data. Inferential testing confirms that it is an interaction between stress and syllable structure (i.e. coda presence in unstressed syllables) that is most significant in driving both qualitative and quantitative compression. We argue that phonologically constrained, coda-driven compression occurs in Spanish, but it is dialect-specific and stress-dependent. We consider the implications of these variety-specific patterns in the context of debates concerning Spanish resyllabification, phonological rhythm and the acoustic marking of stress.

The combined effects of contextual predictability and noise on the acoustic realisation of German syllables.

Speakers tend to speak clearly in noisy environments, while they tend to reserve effort by shortening word duration in predictable contexts. It is unclear how these two communicative demands are met. The current study investigates the acoustic realizations of syllables in predictable vs unpredictable contexts across different background noise levels. Thirty-eight German native speakers produced 60 CV syllables in two predictability contexts in three noise conditions (reference = quiet, 0 dB and -10 dB signal-to-noise ratio). Duration, intensity (average and range), F0 (median), and vowel formants of the target syllables were analysed. The presence of noise yielded significantly longer duration, higher average intensity, larger intensity range, and higher F0. Noise levels affected intensity (average and range) and F0. Low predictability syllables exhibited longer duration and larger intensity range. However, no interaction was found between noise and predictability. This suggests that noise-related modifications might be independent of predictability-related changes, with implications for including channel-based and message-based formulations in speech production.

On the syllable structure effect in European Portuguese: Evidence from ERPs

Syllable effects during visual word recognition have been observed for CV but not for CVC syllables, a puzzling effect that is not explained either by the distributional frequencies of CV and CVC syllables, syllable complexity, or syllabic neighbourhood density. Furthermore, in European Portuguese (EP), syllable effects have not been found for pseudowords, suggesting that syllable activation might not precede lexical activation. Here, we combined a colour-congruency lexical decision task with the collection of electroencephalographic (EEG) data to investigate syllable effects in EP for CV and CVC words and pseudowords, with the latter presenting a match (CVCO+P+) or a mismatch (CVCO+P-) between their orthographic (O) and phonological (P) syllable structure to further ascertain the locus (i.e., orthographic and/or phonological) of syllable effects. Results showed syllable congruency effects in the N100, P200, and N400 ERP components for CV and CVC words suggesting the influence of different factors underlying the syllable structure effect.

Embodied Prosodic Training Helps Improve Accentedness and Suprasegmental Accuracy

Abstract With increasing evidence in favour of embodied learning techniques, more research is needed to explore eventual applications in the field of second language acquisition, for example, the effect of embodied training on phonological learning. This study investigated how pronunciation was affected by visuospatial hand gestures depicting speech rhythm and intonation during the oral repetition of logatomes (i.e. a series of identical nonsense CV syllables that maintain prosodic structure intact). Seventy-five Catalan learners of French participated in three training sessions with short dialogues, in one of three conditions: speech-only, non-embodied logatome, and embodied logatome. Before and after the training period, participants carried out an identical pre- and posttest which consisted of reading four dialogues aloud. Their oral output was evaluated in terms of fluency, comprehensibility, accentedness, and suprasegmental and segmental features by three native French speakers. While all three groups significantly improved in all measures after training, the embodied logatome group improved significantly more in terms of accentedness and suprasegmental features compared with the speech-only group, while the non-embodied logatome group did not.

Speaking rate and language-specific voice onset time effects on burst amplitude: Cross-linguistic observations and implications for sound change

The relationship between speaking rate and burst amplitude in voiceless plosives was investigated in two languages with differing oro-laryngeal timing implementations of phonological voicing, North American English and Indian Tamil. Burst amplitude (reflecting both intraoral pressure and flow geometry of the oral channel) was hypothesized to decrease in CV syllables with increasing speaking rate, which imposes temporal constraints on both intraoral pressure buildup behind the oral occlusion as well as respiratory air flow. Increased speaking rate led to decreased burst amplitude (relative to vowel amplitude) in both languages, with the magnitude of the effect being considerably weaker in Tamil, which has short-lag implementation of voice onset time. Bilabials in both languages were affected disproportionately relative to other places of articulation. Additionally, burst amplitudes were lower overall in Tamil, reflecting lower intraoral pressure which promotes faster vocalic onset. Results are discussed in terms of language-internaland extra-linguistic phonetic phenomena potentially serving as perceptual triggers for historical sound change.

On the role of syllabic neighbourhood density in the syllable structure effect in European Portuguese

Previous lexical decision masked priming studies have shown that the advantage of syllable-congruent primes over syllable-incongruent primes is observed for CV (e.g., JU.ROS [interests]), but not for CVC first-syllable words (e.g., TUR.BO [turbo]), giving rise to the so-called syllable structure effect (e.g., ju.ral-JU.ROS < jur.ga-JU.ROS; tur.ta-TUR.BO = tu.res-TUR.BO). This effect is puzzling since it is not accounted for either by the distributional frequencies of CV and CVC syllables in European Portuguese (EP) or by syllable complexity. Here we examine whether the number of words of the same syllabic length sharing the same (first) syllable in the same (first) position, a measure taken as an index of syllabic neighbourhood density, may account for the syllable structure effect. To that purpose, 36 EP skilled readers performed a lexical decision masked priming task in which 48 CV and 48 CVC words matched in the number of syllabic neighbours, amongst other variables, were preceded by syllable-congruent (e.g., ju.ral-JU.ROS and tur.ta-TURBO), syllable-incongruent (e.g., jur-ga-JU.ROS and tu.res-TUR.BO), and unrelated primes (e.g., pu.cas- JU.ROS and binva-TURBO). Syllable priming effects were still observed only for CV words, even though CVC words with a CV phonological structure (e.g., EN.TE[comb] - /pˈẽtɨ/) tended to behave similarly to CV words, suggesting that EP syllable effects may be driven by phonological factors.

The effect of linguistic experience on perceived vowel duration: Evidence from Taiwan Mandarin speakers

Perceived vowel duration is known to be influenced by many factors, including f0 height/movement and ones’ native phonological system. Using multiple experimental paradigms, this study examined whether native tonal representations and phonetic knowledge of duration associated with different lexical tones may further shape the ways in which vowel duration is perceived. In a perception experiment, Taiwan Mandarin and Korean listeners rated the duration of duration-controlled CV syllables carrying one of the four lexical tones in Mandarin or a reduced T3half (X21). The results showed that perceived vowel duration by Korean listeners, the control group, reflected general perceptual biases: contour tones were rated as longer than level tones, and high-f0 tones were rated as longer than low-f0 tones. Taiwan Mandarin listeners, on the other hand, overestimated the duration of vowels carrying T3 (X214) and T3half, despite their short phonetic duration in Taiwan Mandarin, indicating the significance of the canonical representation of the complex T3 contour. A spontaneous imitation experiment further supported the canonicity effect: T3half was again hyperarticulated, produced as longer and with similar f0 trajectories as T3full, based on its phonological association to T3. Taken together, the findings of the present study suggest that the perception of vowel duration is guided by higher-order phonological knowledge from speakers’ linguistic experience as well as by general perceptual biases.

Cross-linguistic comparison of utterance shapes in Korean- and English-learning children: An ambient language effect

This study compared vocal development in Korean- and English-learning infants and examined ambient-language effects focusing on predominant utterance shapes. Vocalization samples were obtained from 14 Korean-learning children and 14 English-learning children, who ranged in age from 9 to 21 months, in monolingual environments using day-long audio recordings. The analyzers, who were blind to participants’ demographic information, identified utterance shapes to determine functional vocal repertoires through naturalistic listening simulating the caregiver’s natural mode of listening. The results showed no cross-linguistic differences in the amount of vocal output or the proportion of canonical syllables. However, the infants from the two language backgrounds showed differences regarding the predominant canonical utterance shapes. The percentage of VCV utterances in Korean-learning children was higher than in English-learning children while CV syllables predominated in the English-learning children. We speculate that the difference between the predominant utterance shapes of Korean- and English-learning children could be associated with differences in early lexical items typically acquired in the two language groups.

Templates silábicos no Português do Príncipe: processos em coda e ‘prevalência’ de sílabas CV

Este artigo discute a silabificação no Português do Príncipe (PP), variedade da língua portuguesa falada em Santo Antônio do Príncipe, em São Tomé e Príncipe. Focaremos, para tanto, na coda. Apresentamos, inicialmente, os templates silábicos do PP, indicando os segmentos licenciados nos diferentes constituintes da sílaba. Após isso, fazemos o levantamento de alguns processos fonológicos, cujo domínio é a coda. Com base em um corpus de fala espontânea, verificamos que a coda, no PP, pode ser preenchida, com múltiplas realizações fonéticas de um rótico /r/, uma sibilante /S/, uma lateral /l/ ou mesmo abarcar uma nasal subespecificada /N/, da mesma forma que é previsto para outras variedades do português como a brasileira e a europeia. Processos fonológicos que têm a coda como domínio de aplicação e as consoantes /r/, /S/ e /l/ como alvo também foram observados: apagamentos, velarização, vocalização e posteriorização. O levantamento de tais fenômenos, no PP, corrobora uma concepção hierárquica para tratamento da estrutura silábica do PP e indica a atuação de duas trajetórias gramaticais paradoxais: a prevalência de sílabas CV fomentada por apagamentos e lenição segmentais, em que sílabas fechadas se adaptam em sílabas abertas, e a emergência de estruturas silábicas complexas, promovidas pela ressilabificação de /S/.

An acoustic study of Russian affricated dental plosive /t′/

This paper aims to examine some acoustic properties of Russian affricated dental plosive /t′/. Russian language has ‘palatalized’ consonants, and they are produced by raising the front of the tongue so as to touch the hard palate. Palatalized labial consonants are different from dental plosives. When dental plosives are palatalized, they are merged with another articulation which is frication. To analyze Russian affricated dental plosive /t′/, recordings were made of 5 native Russian male speakers producing 5 vowels (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/) in isolation and in CV syllables. Measurements were made of duration, intensity, CoG, formant vowel transitions, spectrogram and spectral shapes. The results showed that /t′/ is affricated, the place and manner of articulation were similar to affricate /c/ and /&#269;/. However, when succeeded by vowels, /t′/ still had the acoustic characteristics of dental plosive /t/. This study contributes to a better understanding of acoustic characteristics of Russian affricated /t′/.

Language development in children from different SES backgrounds

AbstractThe aim of the study is to analyze prelexical speech development in young children with a different socio-economic status (SES): children from low SES backgrounds (lowSES) are compared with mid-to-high SES (mhSES) children. Timing of the onset of babbling and the consonantal development in consonant-vowel (cv) syllables are investigated. Result show that lowSES children reach the babbling onset milestone significantly later than mhSES children. In addition, they use different consonant types in their cv-syllables: they use more glides, but fewer stops, nasals, fricatives, and liquids. These early differences between children of different backgrounds seem to be in line with the literature on SES differences later on in life.

Syllable Structure of Oromo (Harar dialect) Based on Moraic Approach

This concept focused on the syllable structure of Oromo (Harar dialect) based on moraic theory. Based on this concerned idea, it has attempted to describe the syllable types that occur in Harar Oromo. These are CV, CVC, CVV, and CVVC syllables. Therefore, based on the notion of the moraic theory, the language assigned CV and CVC syllables as light, whereas CVV and CVVC syllables as heavy. In connection with light and heavy syllables, it has revealed that mono-moraic syllable as light, while bi-moraic and tri-moraic syllables as heavy in Oromo (Harar dialect). In these types of syllables, in addition to vowels (short and long), consonant geminates and clusters bear only one mora in word-medial position. In Harar Oromo, word-initial and final consonant gemination and cluster are not allowed. In the language, each word has initial consonant in underlying representation. However, in surface representation onset-less words are presented due to the deletion of the voiceless glottal plosive sound /Ɂ /. Due to this fact, some words begin with the vowel /i/, /e/, /u/, /o/and /a/ in the language. However, because of the derivation of surface structure from the underlying representation, onset consonants are obligatory constituents. Keywords: Phonology, Syllable Structure, Moraic theory, Harar Oromo, light and heavy syllables, and gemination and cluster. DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/71-01 Publication date: August 31 st 2020

Coarticulatory Aspects of the Fluent Speech of French and Italian People Who Stutter Under Altered Auditory Feedback.

A number of studies have shown that phonetic peculiarities, especially at the coarticulation level, exist in the disfluent as well as in the perceptively fluent speech of people who stutter (PWS). However, results from fluent speech are very disparate and not easily interpretable. Are the coarticulatory features observed in fluent speech of PWS a manifestation of the disorder, or rather a compensation for the disorder itself? The purpose of the present study is to investigate the coarticulatory behavior in the fluent speech of PWS in the attempt to answer the question on its symptomatic or adaptive nature. In order to achieve this, we have studied the speech of 21 adult PWS (10 French and 11 Italian) compared to that of 20 fluent adults (10 French and 10 Italian). The participants had to repeat simple CV syllables in short carrier sentences, where C = /b, d, g/ and V = /a, i, u/. Crucially, this repetition task was performed in order to compare fluent speech coarticulation of PWS to that of PWNS, and to compare the coarticulation of PWS under a condition with normal auditory feedback (NAF) and under a fluency-enhancing condition due to an altered auditory feedback (AAF). This is the first study, to our knowledge, to investigate the coarticulation behavior under AAF. The degree of coarticulation was measured by means of the Locus Equations (LE). The coarticulation degree observed in fluent PWS speech is lower than that of the PWNS, and, more importantly, in AAF condition, PWS coarticulation appears even weaker than in the NAF condition. The results allow to interpret the lower degree of coarticulation found in fluent speech of PWS under NAF condition as a compensation for the disorder, based on the fact that PWS’s coarticulation is weakening in fluency-enhancing conditions, further away from the degree of coarticulation observed in PWNS. Since a lower degree of coarticulation is associated to a greater separation between the places of articulation of the consonant and the vowel, these results are compatible with the hypothesis that larger articulatory movements could be responsible for the stabilization of the PWS speech motor system, increasing the kinesthetic feedback from the effector system. This interpretation shares with a number of relatively recent proposal the idea that stuttering derives from an impaired feedforward (open-loop) control system, which makes PWS rely more heavily on a feedback-based (closed loop) motor control strategy.