Homorganic Stop Research Articles

Preocclusion in Manx

Preocclusion – the insertion of a homorganic stop element before stressed final nasals and laterals – is one of the best-known features of Manx phonology. In written sources the phenomenon is only attested in certain nineteenth-century folksong manuscripts in non-standard orthography, although there is reason to believe it developed significantly earlier. This article examines the phenomenon from synchronic, diachronic and comparative perspectives, evaluates previous hypotheses regarding its origins, and proposes an account which situates preocclusion within wider developments in the liquid consonant inventory and prosody of the modern Gaelic languages. In particular, building on the intuitions of Rhŷ;s (1894), it is argued that the development of preocclusion in Manx is most plausibly to be linked to the reduction of the fortis-lenis contrast in nasals and liquids and loss of gemination. Synchronically, preocclusion can be seen as one of a number of a developments which increase the weight of syllable codas in Gaelic phonology (Iosad 2016). Accounts involving language contact (McDonald 2021) are superficially attractive given the presence of preocclusion in Scandinavian, but it is more likely this is the result of deeper structural similarities in the phonology of northern European languages, perhaps related to much older language contact in the region (Iosad 2016).

Three Different Strategies of Voice Coarticulation in Modern Standard Russian

The paper reports some new data based on an experimental study in voice coarticulation of voiced and voiceless obstruents adjacent to sonorants as a function of place and manner of articulation of these consonants in Standard Modern Russian. The results of the experiment based on the 384 tokens collected from 24 participants confirm once again that in word internal clusters of [sonorant + obstruent + sonorant] coronal consonants the voice coarticulation of the obstruent is observed; it may be determined by the surrounding sonorants. The coarticulation in question may be realized in three different ways. In the case of sonorants not identical in place and manner of articulation [dental nasal + dental voiceless stop + alveolar vibrant] the closure part of the dental stop becomes voiced throughout, but this accommodation in phonation type does not lead nevertheless to the voiced/voiceless phonemes’ neutralization since the the contrast in question is still maintained by means of phonetic parameters other than voice (phonation itself), such as closure duration, burst duration (being significantly higher in underlyingly voiceless stops) and relative overall intensity (being noticeably higher in underlyingly voiced obstruents). On the other hand, in the case of dental sonorants identical in place and manner of articulation [nasal + voiceless stop + nasal], where the maximum effect of coarticulation for an homorganic stop was expected, the contrast in burst duration is eliminated since no burst of dental stop is found in the position before an homorganic nasal, but the closure part of the stop does not acquire voicing in order to prevent the voiced/voiceless phonemes’ neutralization. Finally, in the case of [dental nasal + dental voiceless stop + dentalveolar lateral] consonantal clusters the closure part of the dental stop is voiced throughout and the increased burst duration leads to (generally complete) devoicing of the following lateral. The direction of coarticulation in [ntlj] clusters is progressive, it is carried out gradually, left to right.

CONSONANT GEMINATES IN SIMALUNGUN LANGUAGE

This study aims to describe morphophonemic processes which result in consonant geminates as well as to classify types of consonant geminates in Simalungun language. Types of geminates in this study are analyzed from the morphophonemic processes resulted in consonant geminates and from the true or fake types of geminates. The data analyzed in this paper is collected during a short fieldwork in Pematang Raya Kecamatan Raya (Raya district), Simalungun regency, Sumatra Utara Province. From the analysis, it can be concluded that consonant geminates in Simalungun language always occur word-medially. Consonant geminates found in this language are [pp], [tt], [kk], [ss], [ll], [gg], [nn] and [mm]. Based on the morphophonemic processes, geminates in Simalungun language can be divided into four types: (1) consonant geminates resulted from assimilation of a nasal to a following homorganic stop, (2) consonant geminates resulted from velarization and assimilation, (3) assimilation of heterorganic consonant clusters and (4) nasal geminates. Regarding true and fake type of geminates, true geminates in Simalungun are found morpheme-internally or lexicalized; fake geminates are resulted from affixation and clitization. True geminates in Simalungun are [pp], [tt], [ss], [kk], [gg] and [mm], while the fake geminates found in this language are [ss], [kk], [ll] and [nn].

Acoustic characteristics of Danish infant directed speech

Danish presents several challenges for language learners, such as a very densely packed upper portion of the acoustic vowel space, and a sibilant contrast that is acoustically less distinct than in, e.g., English. The present study examined whether Danish caregivers enhance Danish contrasts when speaking to their 18 month old children (infant directed speech—IDS) as opposed to an adult (adult directed speech—ADS). Caregivers were recorded talking about toy animals in conversations with their child and with an adult interlocutor. The toy names were designed to elicit Danish contrasts differing in voice onset time and in place of articulation for sibilants, and vowels which are close neighbors in the crowded Danish vowel space. The dependent variables for the comparison of IDS to ADS were as follows: VOT differences for homorganic stop consonants, the frequency at the amplitude peak for the sibilants, the Euclidean F1/F2 differences between vowels, F0 of the stressed (first) syllable in the toy name, as well as the duration of the stressed syllable, the vowels, and the fricatives. Results of the acoustic differences between ADS and IDS were compared to the results of parents’ reports on the children’s productive and receptive vocabulary knowledge. [Work supported by the Danish National Research Foundation –Danmarks Grundforskningsfond.]

Voice onset time in Shekgalagarhi stops

The aim of this paper is to determine the efficacy of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in distinguishing a series of word initial homorganic stop consonants in Shengologa, a dialect of Shekgalagarhi, a South-eastern Bantu language of the Western Sotho-Tswana group. Issues pertinent to VOT are also addressed: namely VOT as a function of place of articulation; and the effect of phonetic context on VOT; specifically the influence of the following vowel. Compared with other stops, ejectives have often manifested long VOT values in some languages with VOT values of around 80+ ms in duration being not uncommon. The argument is that in Shengologa, the voiceless unaspirated stops are pulmonic stops rather than glottalic. Voiceless aspirated stops in general manifest long duration of aspiration. LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research Vol.3 () 2006: pp.169-185

Initial and non-initial clusters of a nasal sonant and homorganic stop in the Balkan languages

The Balkan Sprachbund is a linguistic community which is defined by morph syntactic features. However it also has some phonetic peculiarities of which the most specifies ones are: 1. traces of the occurrence in all "proper" Balkan languages of the common phoneme (a nasal shwa) in Medieval Ages, and 2. specific functioning of the clusters containing a nasal sonant and a homorganic occlusive. The second feature is constituted by a set of various phenomena (quite trivial, as well as very unusual ones) which occur in Greek, Albanian, Macedonian, Italian, Rumanian. Processes regarding these clusters are extremely concentrated in the area of the central-western part of the Balkan Sprachbund. The common denominator of these - sometimes very different phenomena - is a tendency towards monophonemic value of the clusters in question. As a result of such a tendency an enormous number of options occur in the Balkan dialects - where clusters very often function as facultative realizations of voiced stops, or vice versa. The most unusual feature - when we regard it in European perspective - is the occurrence of the NT clusters at the beginning of words.

Voiced–unvoiced classification for recognition of stop consonants

Significant error in stop consonant recognition is caused by the confusion between voiced stop consonants and their unvoiced counterparts. The recognition is based on HMM’s which use 12 MFCC’s and energy with their time derivatives. The voicing state is the distinctive feature of homorganic stop consonants. According to recognition error-rate analysis, it seems that the cepstral feature does not accurately represent the voicing state of the modeled phone. For this purpose, a voiced–unvoiced classifier in conjunction with HMM’s is proposed to improve the recognition of stop consonants. The recognition is done in two passes. In the first pass, a phone recognizer uses well-trained HMM’s to identify a stop consonant. This pass provides the recognized stop consonant in addition to the log probability. In the second pass, the voiced–unvoiced classifier checks if the voicing state of the phone segment matches with its phonetic description. In the case of mismatch and low probability of recognition, the voiced (unvoiced) consonant is swapped with its corresponding unvoiced (voiced) counterpart. Recognition results are presented in terms of error rate, using different techniques of voiced–unvoiced classification. This method reduces the recognition error rate of stop consonants. [Research supported by DARPA Contract Nos. DABT63-93-C-0037, N66001-96-C-8510, and NSF Contract No. IRI-9618854.]

Stop voicing in thai after unilateral brain damage

Abstract Word-initial bilabial stops (/b p ph/), alveolar stops (/d t th/), and velar stops (/k kh/) in Thai were produced by 20 normal adults (10 young, 10 old), 12 non-aphasic patients with unilateral right hemisphere lesions, and 17 aphasic patients with unilateral left hemisphere lesions (nine fluent, eight non-fluent). Voice onset time (VOT) was measured from broad-band spectrograms. Relative frequency distributions of VOT values indicated minimal or no overlap between homorganic stop consonants for normal speakers, only sporadic occurrences of overlap for right hemisphere speakers, slightly more overlap for left fluent speakers, and even more overlap for left non-fluent speakers. By group, mean VOTs of homorganic stop consonants differed for all groups except /d t/ for the left non-fluent. By voicing category, mean VOTs of /b d/ for the left non-fluent group were shorter than those of other groups, and mean VOT of /k/ was longer than those of other groups. Mean VOTs of /ph th kh/ for the old normal ...

“Post-stopped nasals”: An acoustic investigation

In some dialects of Chinese and Miao, the nasals in syllable-initial position have been described as being accompanied by a homorganic stop, which are often transcribed with superscripts: [mb], [nd], and [ŋg], as a deliberate attempt to characterize these segments as phonetically distinct from prenasalized stops, [mb], [nd], [ŋg]. In our study, the acoustic nature of these “post-stopped” nasals will be explored, since no instrumental study has been conducted on them. A preliminary investigation of data from two Zhongshan Chinese speakers confirm that these nasals are different both perceptually and acoustically from the prenasalized stops in other languages. It is found that the so-called “stop” component in Zhongshan syllable-initial nasals is not a stop, but a burst that occurs simultaneous with the oral release following the nasal. Such bursts occur sporadically in English, but are consistently produced in the Zhongshan nasals, and are perceived as homorganic stops accompanying the nasals. The waveforms also show a characteristic shape, with a sharp rise in amplitude at vowel onset. The results suggest the precise synchronization of velic closure with oral release.

The acquisition of the voicing contrast in Thai: a study of voice onset time in word-initial stop consonants.

ABSTRACTThis paper reports on a cross-sectional acoustical investigation of the development of the voicing contrast in Thai word-initial stops. Voice onset time (VOT) productions associated with three bilabial stops (/b p ph/), three alveolar stops (/d t th/), and two velar stops (/k kh/) were measured in seven 3-year-old children, seven 5-year-old children, seven 7-year-old children, and seven adults. Within each age group, differences in mean VOT between homorganic stop consonants indicated that 3-year-olds have acquired all voicing contrasts except /b/ vs. /p/ and /d/ vs. /t/. By age five, children have acquired all voicing contrasts. However, as measured by differences in mean VOT across age groups, 5-year-olds still do not produce /b/ or/d/ in an adult-like manner. Issues concerning the order of acquisition and nature of development of stop consonants are discussed.

Atypical VOT categories in Hebrew and Spanish

Available data indicate that most languages employ three categories of Voice Onset Time (VOT) to distinguish homorganic stop consonants. The three categories, voicing lead/short lag/long lag, are temporally discrete and, in the opinion of some researchers, may coincide with psychoacoustically predetermined regions of auditory sensitivity. Moreover, speakers of languages which display a two‐way opposition (i.e., /ptk/ vs /bdg/) seem to employ adjacent VOT categories (e.g., short lag and long lag) and not the extreme categories (i.e., voicing lead and long lag) to differentiate stops having the same place of articulation. Data gathered from native (but bilingual) speakers of Hebrew and Puerto Rican Spanish reveal that they commonly use either the extreme categories of VOT or voicing lead and a category intermediate to short and long lag. These data, together with those previously reported for Canadian French, Danish, and Korean, raise questions about the specific relationship between auditory sensitivity and the determination of VOT categories in natural languages. [Research supported by NINCDS.]

In qualified defense of VOT.

The VOT measure has been said to provide the single most nearly adequate physical basis for separating homorganic stop categories across a variety of languages, granted that other features may also be involved. That transition duration affects perceived voicing of synthesized initial stops of one specific language, English, has suggested the hypothesis by Stevens and Klatt (1974) that a detector responsive to rapid formant-frequency shifts after voice onset better explains the child's acquisition of the contrast than does some mechanism which responds to VOT directly. If such a detector is part of our biological equipment, then it seems remarkably underutilized in language, for the hypothesis asserts that basic to voicing perception is whether laryngcal signal is or is not present during the interval in which the stop-vowel transition occurs. In effect, the “archetypical” voiceless stop is aspirated. Not only do many languages not possess voiceless aspirates, but even in English aspiration is severely restricted. Of course the VOT measure has its limitations - it is inapplicable to prepausal stops. However, there are much more serious difficulties with the posited detector, since even for the English initial stops there is evidence that the presence of a voiced first-formant transition is not required for the perception of /bdg/, nor does the absence of such a transition necessarily yield /ptk/, provided appropriate VOT values are provided.

On pushing the voice-onset-time (vot) boundary about.

There is voluminous evidence that homorganic stop consonants are distinguishable on the basis of voice onset time relative to their supraglottal articulation. For initial stops a convenient acoustic reference point is the onset of the release burst, and VOT has been defined as the interval between this point and onset of glottal signal. VOT boundary values between voiced and voiceless initial stops of English have been established by spectrographic measurements of naturally produced isolated words and by perception testing of synthesized CV syllables. The close match between the two kinds of boundary values suggests that fairly natural values were chosen for the invariant features of the synthetic speech patterns tested. It is known, however, that certain of these affect voicing perception. New data from synthesis experiments show that VOT boundaries shift with changes in transition duration, and that it is the first formant and not higher ones which are responsible.

On pushing the voice-onset-time (VOT) boundary about

There is voluminous evidence that homorganic stop consonants are distinguishable on the basis of voice onset time relative to their supraglottal articulation. For initial stops a convenient acoustic reference point is the onset of the release burst, and VOT has been defined as the interval between this point and onset of glottal signal. VOT boundary values between voiced and voiceless initial stops of English have been established by spectrographic measurements of naturally produced isolated words and by perception testing of synthesized CV syllables. The close match between the two kinds of boundary values suggests that fairly natural values were chosen for the invariant features of the synthetic speech patterns tested. It is known, however, that certain of these affect voicing perception. New data from synthesis experiments show that VOT boundaries shift with changes in transition duration, that it is the first formant and not higher ones which are responsible, and that transition duration is constrained to values which differ for place of articulation. It is hypothesized that listeners evaluate VOT with respect to estimated rate of articulation.