Liquid Consonants Research Articles

Consoantes líquidas: ocorrência de estratégias de reparo em diferentes faixas etárias e gravidades do desvio fonológico

OBJETIVO: investigar a relação dos tipos de estratégias de reparo utilizadas nas consoantes líquidas do Português Brasileiro de acordo com a faixa etária e a gravidade do desvio fonológico. MÉTODOS: participaram do estudo 120 crianças, sendo 41 do sexo feminino e 79 do masculino, com idades entre quatro e oito anos e onze meses. Todas as crianças empregavam pelo menos uma das estratégias envolvendo alguma das consoantes líquidas (/l/, /<img src="/img/revistas/rcefac/2010nahead/a44-10car01.jpg" align="absmiddle" />/, /r/, /R/) - substituição, semivocalização e/ou omissão - com emprego de 40% ou mais da estratégia no sistema fonológico. Os dados foram extraídos das avaliações fonológicas de crianças que não haviam recebido terapia fonológica, e a gravidade do desvio fonológico foi determinada por meio do Cálculo do Percentual de Consoantes Corretas - Revisado. Os dados foram submetidos à análise estatística por meio do Teste Exato de Fisher, com p<0.05. RESULTADOS: não houve diferença no emprego das estratégias de reparo utilizadas para a classe das líquidas conforme a faixa etária. Porém, foram observadas diferenças estatísticas na comparação entre a gravidade do desvio e estratégias de reparo das líquidas em relação a alguns dos segmentos e estratégias estudadas. CONCLUSÃO: conclui-se que a variável extralinguística, faixa etária, não está diretamente relacionada com a utilização de estratégias de reparo para as consoantes líquidas no desvio fonológico. No entanto, atenta-se para a influência da gravidade do desvio fonológico sobre o uso destas estratégias, que varia conforme o segmento-alvo.

Articulatory comparison of Tamil liquids and stops using real-time magnetic resonance imaging.

It has been hypothesized that liquid consonants differ from stops in that they exhibit more global control over tongue shapes. This has been demonstrated by ongoing work showing greater vowel context effects in the production of stops than liquids in Spanish and Russian. Languages with rich inventories of coronal consonants, like Tamil, provide an interesting challenge for this view, as the presence of retroflex-dental contrasts among the stops may require substantial global tongue control, and therefore inhibit context effects. To test this, dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to investigate the midsagittal production of Tamil liquids in intervocalic environments. MRI sequences were acquired at a frame rate of 22.4 Hz. The five liquids of Brahmin Tamil were elicited from three speakers in three different vowel contexts. Nasal stop consonants were also elicited at the same places of articulation to compare the influence of vocalic coarticulation on liquids and stops. Greater coarticulatory influences were observed during the production of nasals than during the production of liquids in the same vowel contexts, suggesting that the production of liquids involves a more active control of dorsal articulation than that used in the production of stops. [Work supported by NIH.]

The Liquid and Stem-final Vowel Alternations of Verbs in Ancient Japanese

The aim of this paper is to clarify the phonological motivation for the stem-final /i-u/ and /e-u/ alternations of verbs, as well as properties of liquids in Ancient Japanese. I explore the possibility of a connection between the stem-final vowel alternations in verbs and certain properties of liquid consonants. Present-day Japanese, at least the Tookyoo dialect, does not exhibit stem-final /i-u/ and /e-u/ alternations of verbs. Some modern dialects, e.g., those in Kyuushuu, exhibit alternation only in /e/-stem verbs, but not in /i/-stem verbs. This /e-u/ alternation is a relic of Ancient Japanese. There has been only one liquid phoneme in Japanese throughout its history, whose phonetic realization remains an issue for phonologists.

A motor differentiation model for liquid substitutions in children’s speech

Studies of lip‐jaw coordination in children have shown a lack of motor differentiation between anatomically coupled articulators in young childrens speech [Green & al. 2000, JSLHR 43: 239–255]. A model is described in which children contending with their developing motor systems generally strive to reduce the degrees of freedom of complex anatomical structures (e.g., the tongue). The claim is pursued that segmental substitutions (e.g., /w/ replacing /r/ or /l/) are the result of specific compensation strategies which aim to simplify the complexity of the articulatory task. The proposal that gestural simplification may dictate substitution strategies for liquid consonants has been suggested previously [Studdert‐Kennedy & Goldstein 2003, Language Evolution, Oxford U. Pr. 235‐254]. It is proposed here that gestural simplification may be achieved via one of two basic mechanisms: gestural omission and stiffening (and hence merger), and that these two mechanisms account for all of the commonly attested substitutions for English /r/ and /l/. Supporting data are presented from ultrasound studies of: postvocalic /r/ production of an 11‐month‐old female speaker of English, liquid production of a group of 3–5‐year‐old speakers of English, and liquid production and substitutions in the speech of adolescent speakers of English with speech and hearing disorders.

Fundamentals of sound with applications to speech and hearing

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Relative timing of the three gestures of North American English /r/

Interarticulator timing of liquid consonants has been shown in recent years to be of importance in understanding syllable-based allophonic variation and related synchronic, historical, and developmental phonological phenomena. In this and other respects, the unusual complexity of North American English /r/ in particular has attracted much attention. Nevertheless, because of the difficulty of collecting simultaneous dynamic measurements of the lips, tongue body and tongue root, the articulatory dynamics of /r/ remain a subject of conjecture. A simultaneous ultrasound and video study of relative timing of these three gestures of /r/ will be presented. Preliminary results from three native North American English speakers show that, for the prevocalic allophone, the lip gesture reaches its target first, followed by the tongue body (TB) gesture, then the tongue root (TR) gesture last. As for the postvocalic allophone, the lip and TR constrictions are reduced in magnitude; also the TR gesture tends to precede the other gestures in both gestural onset and peak. These results support a view of the lip gesture of /r/ as a consonantal component, and presents a pattern for /r/ analogous to that previously observed for /l/. [Research supported by NSERC and NIH.]

Geometry, kinematics, and acoustics of Tamil liquid consonants.

Tamil is unusual among the world's languages in that some of its dialects have five contrasting liquids. This paper focuses on the characterization of these sounds in terms of articulatory geometry and kinematics, as well as their articulatory-acoustic relations. This study illustrates the use of multiple techniques--static palatography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and magnetometry (EMMA)--for investigating both static and dynamic articulatory characteristics using a single native speaker of Tamil. Dialectal merger and neutralization phenomena exhibited by the liquids of Tamil are discussed. Comparisons of English /[symbol: see text]/ and /l/ with Tamil provide evidence for generality in underlying mechanisms of rhotic and lateral production. The articulatory data justify the postulation of a class of rhotics and a class of laterals in Tamil, but do not provide evidence in favor of a larger class of liquids. Such a superclass appears to have largely an acoustic basis.

Facilitatory Effects of Vowel Epenthesis on Word Processing in Dutch

We report a series of experiments examining the effects on word processing of insertion of an optional epenthetic vowel in word-final consonant clusters in Dutch. Such epenthesis turns film, for instance, into film. In a word-reversal task listeners treated words with and without epenthesis alike, as monosyllables, suggesting that the variant forms both activate the same canonical representation, that of a monosyllabic word without epenthesis. In both lexical decision and word spotting, response times to recognize words were significantly faster when epenthesis was present than when the word was presented in its canonical form without epenthesis. It is argued that addition of the epenthetic vowel makes the liquid consonants constituting the first member of a cluster more perceptible; a final phoneme-detection experiment confirmed that this was the case. These findings show that a transformed variant of a word, although it contacts the lexicon via the representation of the canonical form, can be more easily perceptible than that canonical form.

Phonological spelling errors in the writing of dyslexic adolescents

Spelling researchers in the past have disagreed about the meaning of spelling errors for the diagnosis of dyslexia. Many studies have reported that spelling errors of individuals with dyslexia are similar to those of younger children but that they are not deviant or unusual. In this study, spelling errors from the spontaneous writing of 19 adolescents with a history of reading problems and persistent spelling difficulties were analyzed. The poorer spellers in this group made more errors than the better spellers on certain phonological and morphophonological constructions. Specifically, the poorer spellers made a disproportionately large number of errors in their representation of liquid and nasal consonants, especially after vowels, and their spellings of inflections -ed and -s. Even though poor spellers might eventually learn to spell with reasonable phonetic accuracy, their spelling appears to be marked by persistent, intractable difficulties representing specific phonological and morphophonological features of words.

An articulatory and perceptual study of Tamil liquids

In Tamil there are 5 liquid consonants. They are the lateral approximation [l], the retroflex lateral approximant [hooked el], the alveolar tap [inverted sm cap jay], the retroflex tap [hooked are], and an obscure segment that has been variously described. This paper presents electropalatography data from one speaker and perceptual data from five listeners exploring the articulatory and acoustic dimensions of the phonetic space for liquids in Tamil. The dimensions which are explored include duration (distinguishing flaps and approximants), dynamic tongue movement (distinguishing retroflex and nonretro- flex), and constriction location/spectral shape (distinguishing [l] and the obscure liquid). Preliminary analyses suggest that the obscure liquid of Tamil is an apicopalatal central approximant. However, unlike other segments in Tamil which require tongue tip backing (the retroflexes) there is no evidence of dynamic tongue movement during the closure and some suggestion of acoustic zeros, perhaps from a lateral opening. Additional perception data designed to clarify this picture will be presented.

Tests of the perceptual magnet effect for American English /r/ and /l/

Experiments by Kuhl and her colleagues have suggested that the perceptual organization of vowel categories is strongly influenced by category goodness. Using a variety of techniques, including signal detection analysis and multidimensional scaling, a perceptualmagneteffect for vowels characterized by poor sensitivity and perceptual clustering near the best exemplars of a category and by good discrimination and stretched perceptual distances near the worst exemplars has been demonstrated. The present experiments extend these findings to American English /r/ and /l/. Sixteen variants of /r/ and /l/ were synthesized by independently changing F2 and F3. Adults gave similarity ratings on a seven-point scale for pairs of these tokens. Multidimensional scaling analyses demonstrated that the perceptual space was shrunk in the F2 and F3 dimensions near the best exemplars of /r/ and /l/, and that the perceptual space was stretched in both dimensions near poor exemplars. This suggests that the perceptual magnet effect may characterize the perception of liquid consonants as well as vowels. Additional experiments on the perception of American English /r/ and /l/ by nonnative speakers may also be discussed. [Work supported by NIH.]

Examination of the intrasyllable phonemic discrimination deficit in children with reading disabilities

A previous study ( Hurford & Sanders, 1990) found that children with reading disabilities were deficient in their performance on a phonemic discrimination task. It was hypothesized that the deficit was related to the inability of disabled readers to process the phonemic information within syllables. The present study further investigated this discrimination deficit by examining the ability of 78 second, third, and fourth grade disabled and nondisabled readers to discriminate between syllables that were vowels and CV syllables that began with liquid and plosive consonants. As hypothesized, the disabled readers performed significantly worse than nondisabled readers. The disabled readers also performed significantly worse on the syllables that contained formant transitions. Unexpectedly, the younger disabled readers were as deficient processing the syllables that began with liquid consonants as they were processing the syllables with plosive consonants.

Speech Deterioration in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Few detailed reports have been published on the nature of speech and voice changes during the course of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The subject of this case study is a woman who was diagnosed as having ALS with bulbar signs at the age of 53. Speech intelligibility, pulmonary function, and selected speech and voice functions were tested during an approximately 2-year course of her disease. Over this period, her speech intelligibility, as measured by a multiple-choice word identification test, declined from 98% to 48%. Phonetic features that were most affected during the intelligibility decline included voicing contrast for syllable-initial and syllable-final consonants, place of articulation contrasts for lingual consonants, manner of articulation for lingual consonants, stop versus nasal manner of production, features related to the liquid consonants, and various features related to syllable shape. An acoustic measure, average slope of the second-formant frequency, declined in association with the intelligibility reduction and is thought to reflect the loss of lingual motoneurons. Her pulmonary function also declined over the observation interval, with particularly severe reduction in measures of air flow. Oral diadochokinesis and measures of vocal function (including jitter, shimmer, and signal-to-noise ratio) were highly variable across test sessions. These results are discussed in terms of the challenges they present to sensitive assessment of change and to management of the communication disability in ALS.

Effects of discrimination training on the perception of /r-l/ by Japanese adults learning English.

Native Japanese speakers learning English have difficulty perceptually differentiating the liquid consonants /r/ and /l/, even after extensive conversational instruction. Using a same-different discrimination task with immediate feedback, eight adult female Japanese were given extensive training on a synthetic “rock”-“lock” stimulus series. Performance improved gradually for all subjects over the 14 to 18 training sessions. Comparisons of pretraining and posttraining categorical perception tests with the training stimuli indicated transfer of training to the more demanding identification and oddity discrimination tasks for seven of the eight subjects. Five of seven subjects also improved in identification and oddity discrimination of an acoustically dissimilar “rake”-“lake” synthetic series. However, transfer did not extend to natural speech words contrasting initial /r/ and /V/, It was concluded that modification of perception of some phonetic contrasts in adulthood is slow and effortful, but that improved laboratory training tasks may be useful in establishing categorical perception of these contrasts.

Pitch continuity and speech source attribution.

Two experiments showed that continuity of the pitch contour is an important perceptual indicator that a formant pattern comes from a single speech source. Subjects listened to repeatedly played formant patterns that changed smoothly between two vowels. When the pitch was a monotone, these patterns were heard as containing semivowels and liquid consonants; but when a discontinuous, steplike pitch contour was imposed on the patterns, they divided into two perceptually distinct speech sources, and the phonemic percept changed to a predominance of stop consonants. In the second experiment, this effect was shown to be due to changes in pitch itself, rather than to concomitant changes in amplitude or energy. Earlier suggestions that continuity of both formant structure and pitch contour are important for the perceptual coherence of speech were borne out.

Phonological substitution processes of a hard-of-hearing child.

This is an investigation in the generative framework of phonological substitution processes of a six-year-old child with a moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss. The child’s substitutions had much in common with the substitutions of younger normal children. For instance, as commonly occurs with normals, liquid consonants were replaced in this child’s speech by glides and rounded vowels, final fricative consonants were devoiced, and consonants in general were shifted to more forward places of articulation. To account adequately for the data from this hard-of-hearing child, it was necessary to invoke some of the same sorts of ordering restrictions (on rule application) that have been found necessary in the description of substitution processes of normal children.

Analysis of Liquid Consonants

A number of CVC syllables containing the liquids /l/ and /r/, and produced by three American English talkers, have been analyzed using analysis-by-synthesis methods. The temporal variation of the lowest three formants was measured throughout the utterances. In the case of /l/, the frequencies of a zero and a pole in the vicinity of the third formant were also measured as a function of time. This pole-zero-pole cluster for /l/ varied considerably with talker and with vowel context, but values of F1 and F2 showed less variation with talker. Transitions examined in an F1-F2 plane for both liquid consonants exhibited similar topological features for all talkers. Physiological interpretations of these data are discussed briefly.

Liquid Consonants and the Relationship of Polynesian to Austronesian Languages

In a number of recent publications it has been suggested that the existence of more than one liquid consonant in parallel distribution in certain of the Polynesian outliers may not only provide an important clue for the next attempt to ascertain the status of Polynesian languages, but incidentally suggest a solution of the problem of the routes of Polynesian migrations.

Sundry features of otosclerosis.

CLINICALLY, the otosclerotic often appears deafer than his pure-tone shortcoming. In bilateral otosclerosis, with a speech frequency loss of 40 db. in one ear and 30 db. in the other, poor intelligibility of average conversation is frequently the complaint. On the other hand, the otosclerotic usually obtains a greater degree of normalcy in hearing from adequate amplification than a person who is deafened from a different cause. In the laboratory, Ersner and Saltzman 1 observed a distinctive pattern of response to word-hearing tests in uncomplicated otosclerosis. At moderate intensities, the score was poorer for words of the low frequency range predominating in nasal and liquid consonants and vowels than for words of high frequency emphasis containing sibilant and dental consonants. Word hearing was compared in persons with an air-conduction threshold of 40 to 50 db. who were deafened from various causes. Invariably, word intelligibility, at the average conversational level, was

The Pronunciation of English in Scotland

Preface Values of phonetic symbols Part I. Phonetics: 1. Phonetics and phonetic transcriptions 2. The organs of speech 3. Classification of sounds 4. Plosive consonants 5. Liquid consonants 6. Fricative consonants 7. The vowels 8. Nasalization and inversion 9. The breath group 10. Sounds in the breath group 11. Syllables 12. Assimilation 13. Stress 14. Quantity 15. Intonation Part II. Phonetic Transcriptions: 1. Standard pronunciation. A. Declamatory style 2. Standard pronunciation. B. Careful conversational style 3. Standard pronunciation. C. Rapid conversational style 4. Scotch dialect Part III. Questions and Exercises Appendix 1. Ordinary spelling of the pieces transcribed in Part II Appendix 2. Summary of differences of pronunciation between standard Scottish and Southern English Appendix 3. Points to be remembered by teachers of reading Index of words referred to.