Phoneme Research Articles

The Role Of English Consonants In Language Development : Acquisition And Articulation

This article examines the crucial role of English consonants in the language development of individuals, focusing on their acquisition and articulation processes. It explores how children acquire and master consonants in the English language, highlighting the significant milestones in their articulation development. The acquisition of English consonants plays a pivotal role in the overall language development of children. It involves the gradual learning of phonetic distinctions and the ability to produce and perceive consonant sounds accurately. This article discusses the various stages of consonant acquisition, starting from early babbling to the development of a more sophisticated consonant inventory. Articulation, the physical production of speech sounds, is a key component of consonant acquisition. The article emphasizes the importance of clear articulation for effective communication. It delves into the challenges that learners may encounter during the articulation process, such as difficulty in producing specific consonant sounds or mastering complex sound combinations. Furthermore, the article highlights the connection between consonant acquisition and vocabulary development. Adequate mastery of consonants enables learners to pronounce words correctly, enhancing their overall language proficiency and communication skills. Understanding the role of English consonants in language development is crucial for educators, parents, and speech-language pathologists. By gaining insights into the acquisition and articulation of consonant sounds, stakeholders can provide appropriate guidance and support to facilitate language learning and address any potential difficulties that learners may encounter. Overall, this article emphasizes the significance of English consonants in language development, emphasizing their role in acquisition, articulation, and vocabulary expansion.

How inaccurate rhymes reveal Old Norse vowel phonemes

This article discusses so-called inaccurate rhymes in Old Norse dróttkvætt poetry and their bearing on the phoneme structure of Old Norse. Inaccurate rhymes between /ǫ/ and /a/ do occur, but were to some extent avoided in Old Norse poems in the eleventh and the twelfth century. The same applies to rhymes between /ǫ́/ and /á/ in the second half of the twelfth century. This avoidance confirms the status of /ǫ́/ as a phoneme by providing, indirectly, an opposition between /á/ and /ǫ́/. Furthermore, rhymes between the diphthong /ja/ and the vowel /a/ were used infrequently in the tenth century, and the diphthong /jó/ and the vowel /ó/ were not rhymed at all. Thus /ja/ and /jó/ were not treated as a sequence of a consonant /j/ and a vowel.

The phonology of Atchan

AbstractAtchan is a Kwa language spoken by approximately 150,000 people in and around Abidjan in southern Côte d’Ivoire. In this paper, I describe aspects of the phonology of Atchan, including its consonant and vowel inventory, syllable structure, patterns of nasalisation, and lexical and grammatical tone. I provide examples from primary data collected in collaboration with native speakers of Atchan. This article offers the first comprehensive sketch of Atchan phonology in the literature.

The Phonetic and Morphosyntactic Dimensions of Grammatical Gender in Spanish Heritage Language Acquisition

Abstract Previous studies disagree as to whether heritage bilinguals demonstrate loss of knowledge of Spanish grammatical gender. As phonetic variability is known to affect the acquisition of certain grammatical markers, we examine whether bilinguals’ gender difficulties relate to bilingual contact-induced phonetic variability, namely, reduction in the inventory of word-final unstressed vowels. We analyzed narratives from children in the United States (n = 49, ages 4–12). All NP s (n = 1415) were analyzed for structure, noun class, and morphology. Word-final vowels were sub-selected for acoustic analyses. Morpho-syntactically, group results show high accuracy with gender (95%), but with wide individual variation (44%–100%). Speakers also show individual variability and substantive numbers of vowel misclassifications (6%–33%) with higher variability for /a/ and /o/. We found bilingual effects in both domains but no association between phonetics and gender accuracy. These findings have implications for the relationship between phonetics and grammar, and for the morphosyntax of Spanish gender.

Evaluating normalization accounts against the dense vowel space of Central Swedish.

Talkers vary in the phonetic realization of their vowels. One influential hypothesis holds that listeners overcome this inter-talker variability through pre-linguistic auditory mechanisms that normalize the acoustic or phonetic cues that form the input to speech recognition. Dozens of competing normalization accounts exist-including both accounts specific to vowel perception and general purpose accounts that can be applied to any type of cue. We add to the cross-linguistic literature on this matter by comparing normalization accounts against a new phonetically annotated vowel database of Swedish, a language with a particularly dense vowel inventory of 21 vowels differing in quality and quantity. We evaluate normalization accounts on how they differ in predicted consequences for perception. The results indicate that the best performing accounts either center or standardize formants by talker. The study also suggests that general purpose accounts perform as well as vowel-specific accounts, and that vowel normalization operates in both temporal and spectral domains.

How L1-Chinese L2-English learners perceive English front vowels: A phonological account

Second language acquisition involves readjusting features from one’s L1 onto counterparts in the L2. Learners often face difficulty during this process due to the presence of an already firmly rooted L1 grammar. Furthermore, a learner’s L1 serves to constrain sensitivity to non-native contrasts during the acquisition process. If a learner’s L2 grammar lacks the phonological feature that can differentiate a non-native contrast, then that learner may experience persistent difficulties in representing the L2 sounds as a result. Mandarin learners of English as a second language have to contend with a substantially expanded L2 vowel inventory in the early stages of acquisition, grappling with the addition of pronounced features less prevalent in their L1. In an attempt to account for front vowel acquisition difficulties and possible routes to progress for L1- Mandarin L2-English using a direct transfer approach, this work follows the Toronto School of contrastive phonology which holds that phonological representation is determined primarily through the ordering of contrastive features. We present data from recent phonetic research that catalogues Mandarin learners’ progress in incorporating English front vowels while, at the same time, examining the underlying phonological processes. This serves as the basis for a preliminary model of contrastive hierarchy in language acquisition using elements of a feature geometry paradigm. The model provides a theoretical roadmap showing that, as Mandarin learners progress and gradually incorporate English front vowels into their L2 repository, the learner’s L2 hierarchy evolves through successive stages as contrasts are perceived and categorized.

Precursors of Sociolinguistic Typology

Abstract This paper examines the contribution of the Norwegian historian, politician, and ethnologist Ludvig Kristensen Daa (1809–1877) to the study of the Indigenous languages of North America. We focus on his accounts of sound systems, where he argued that North American languages are characterized by greater linguistic diversity, small consonant inventories and gaps in inventories, unusual sounds, and indistinct pronunciation of consonants. Daa attributed these features to the use of the languages in small and isolated communities, thus anticipating more recent discussions in which the degree of linguistic complexity is attributed to social and demographic factors. While some of his claims reflect methodological shortcomings of pre-20th-century phonetic study, the factors which according to Daa shape languages spoken in isolation are analogous to the parameters now examined by typologists, thus providing a sense of continuity across centuries in the links sought between structural diversity among languages and external factors.

Evaluating normalization accounts against the dense vowel space of Stockholm Swedish

Talkers vary in the phonetic realization of their vowels. One influential hypothesis holds that listeners overcome this inter-talker variability through pre-linguistic auditory mechanisms that normalize the acoustic or phonetic cues that form the input to speech recognition. Dozens of competing normalization accounts exist —including both vowel-specific (e.g., Lobanov, 1971; Nearey, 1978; Syrdal and Gopal, 1986) and general-purpose accounts applicable to any type of phonetic cue (McMurray and Jongman, 2011). We add to the cross-linguistic literature by comparing normalization accounts against a new database of Swedish, a language with a particularly dense vowel inventory of 21 vowels differing in quality and quantity. We train Bayesian ideal observers (IOs) on unnormalized or normalized vowel data under different assumptions about the relevant cues to vowel identity (F0-F3, vowel duration), and evaluate their performance in predicting the category intended by talker. The results indicate that the best-performing normalization accounts centered and/or scaled formants by talker (e.g., Lobanov), replicating previous findings for other languages with less dense vowel spaces. The relative advantage of Lobanov decreased when including additional cues, indicating that simple centering relative to the talker’s mean might be sufficient to achieve robust inter-talker perception (e.g., C-CuRE).

Merger in Eivissan Catalan: an acoustic analysis of the vowel systems of young native speakers

AbstractThe vowel system of Catalan has been the focus of many studies, though work on the varieties spoken on the island of Eivissa (Ibiza) are scarce, with a single mention of the possible merger of the mid back vowels /o, ɔ/ (Torres Torres, Marià. 1983. Aspectes del vocalisme tònic eivissenc.Eivissa14. 22–23). The present article provides the first acoustic analysis of the vowel inventory of 25 young native speakers of Eivissan Catalan, with a focus on the realisations of stressed /ə, ɛ/, and the back mid vowels /o, ɔ/. We employed Pillai scores (Hay, Jennifer, Paul Warren & Katie Drager. 2006. Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress.Journal of Phonetics34. 458–484) to compare the possibly merged pairs /ə, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ to the fully-contrasting neighbouring pairs /e, ɛ/ and /o, u/. Our results show that all participants had considerable overlap of stressed /ə/ and /ɛ/, and all but one had considerable overlap of the back mid vowels, while the fully contrastive pairs (/e, ɛ/ and /o, u/) showed almost no overlap.

Stop Consonant Production in Children with Cleft Palate After Palatoplasty.

: The current study examined stop consonant production in children with cleft lip and/or palate (CP ± L) 2-6 months following palatal surgery. : Prospective comparative study. : Multisite institutional. : Participants included 113 children with repaired CP ± L (mean age = 16 months) who were participating in the multicenter CORNET study. Parents of participants were asked to record approximately two hours of their child's vocalizations/words at home using a Language ENvironmental Analysis (LENATM) recorder. Four ten-minute audio-recorded samples of vocalizations were extracted from the original recording for each participant and analyzed for presence of oral stop consonants. A minimum of 100 vocalizations were required for analysis. : Preliminary findings indicate that at least one oral stop was evident in the consonant inventory for 95 of the 113 children (84%) at the time of their post-surgery 16-month recording, and 80 of these children (71%) were producing two or more different stops. Approximately 50% of the children (57/113) produced the three voiced stops, and eight of the children (7%) were producing all six stop consonants. : The findings of this study suggest that the majority of children with repaired CP ± L from English-speaking homes are producing oral stops within six months following palatal surgery. Similar to same-age children without CL ± P, voiced stops were more frequently evident in the children's inventories than voiceless stops. In contrast to findings of previous reports suggesting place of articulation differences, a somewhat comparable percentage of children in this study produced voiced bilabial, alveolar, and velar stops.

A multifaceted approach to understanding unexpected sound change

Abstract This paper demonstrates that unexpected sound changes are best explained by an approach that accounts for different motivations: phonetic, structural and social. Here, we focus on a multifaceted investigation of the cross-linguistically uncommon bilabial trills to show the complex interaction between different drivers of sound change. In this paper, we highlight and examine the prenasalized voiced bilabial trill mʙ and plain voiceless bilabial trill p [ʙ̥] found in a number of Oceanic languages spoken on Malekula Island in Vanuatu. We offer a comparative-historical analysis, and we identify the various forces that have led to the emergence and persistence of mʙ and p in Malekula languages: the historical articulatory environments, the particular make-up of the consonant inventories of these languages, complementary sound changes and phonological processes, contact with non-Austronesian languages, and in-group identity attachment. Furthermore, we offer a hypothesis for the relative timing of these factors on the historical pathway of Malekula’s bilabial trills.

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).

Bootstrap co-occurrence networks of consonants and the Basic Consonant Inventory

Abstract It has been recently shown by Nikolaev and Grossman that it is possible to provide a fine-grained typological analysis of consonant inventories of the world’s languages by investigating co-occurrence classes of segments, i.e. groups of segments that tend to be found together in inventories. Nikolaev and Grossman argued that the structure of many of such co-occurrence classes is in contradiction with the Feature-Economy Principle. As a side product of this analysis, a new definition of the Basic Consonant Inventory (BCI)—a cluster of segments forming the bedrock of consonantal inventories of the world’s languages—was provided. This paper replicates the co-occurrence study in an arguably more robust way. In addition to making a methodological contribution, it shows that some of the co-occurrence classes defined by Nikolaev and Grossman, including the BCI, are not statistically stable and may be an artefact of the imbalance in the language sample used for the analysis. The findings of the authors regarding the Feature-Economy Principle, however, were corroborated.

Babbling in extremely premature infants at 12 months corrected age

ABSTRACT Babbling is an important precursor to speech in infancy, and deviations from the typical babbling development can predict later difficulties in speech, language, and communication. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate babbling and early speech in Swedish extremely premature infants. Samples of babbling were collected from 20 extremely premature infants (EPT group) at the corrected age of 12 months. Data collection was home-based and consisted of an audio-video recording of each infant playing with a parent. Presence of canonical babbling (CB), and three oral stop variables distinctive of typical babbling, and consonant inventory were assessed. The assessment was performed during a standardised observation of babbling. Data from the EPT group were compared to previously collected data of a reference group of 20 10-month-old infants without known medical diagnoses. The results showed that the EPT group had a lower proportion of infants producing CB, and that they used a significantly smaller consonant inventory compared to the reference group. Although not statistically significant, oral stops were less frequently found in the EPT group. The findings of a restricted consonant inventory and low proportion of CB in the EPT group are not surprising considering that the group has been found to be at risk of speech and language delay in toddlerhood. Still, further research is needed to explore whether babbling at 12 months can predict speech and language skills at an older age in extremely premature infants.

Acoustic Analysis of Dawoodi Consonants: A Severely Endangered Language of Northern Pakistan

Dawoodi (previously known as Domaaki) is an Indo Aryan language, spoken by very limited number of speakers in Gilgit. All Dawoodi speakers are multilingual and prefer to use other languages due to which Dawoodi is moving towards language death. The present study aims to develop the phonemic inventory of Dawoodi language. For the present study, qualitative approach is used in identification of sounds and phonemic analysis. Quantitative approach is carried out to figure out the acoustic cues of the sounds, which are presented in mean values. Moreover, palatography is also carried out to clarify the place of articulation of certain phonemes. The findings show that Dawoodi has large consonant and vowel inventories. Phonemic analysis reveals that Dawoodi has 36 consonant segments including voiced, voiceless and aspirated voiceless consonants. However, all the consonants do not occur at all three positions of the word. Acoustic analysis was carried out to measure VOT, closure duration and burst for the identification of stops. Fricatives are measured in terms of friction, V1 and V2 duration. Affricates were identified through closure, friction and total duration. Other consonants have vowels like formant structures (fainter) and their formant frequencies were measured.

An instrumental investigation of the vowel inventory of China English

ABSTRACT In today’s globalized world where English is increasingly used as a lingua franca , an increasing number of new English varieties are emerging in different parts of the world. China English (CE), as one of the fastest-growing varieties of English with the largest number of speakers, has been attracting a great deal of attention in recent years. This study aims to explore the vowel inventory of CE using an exploratory approach. Data were collected from 20 CE speakers who were recorded reading a standard elicitation list of words containing the 11 English monophthongs. Phonetic properties, phonemic contrasts, and allophonic variations of CE vowels were examined acoustically. Results provide some empirical evidence for the existence of a CE vowel system in which the vowel length contrasts are maintained, whereas the vowel quality contrasts tend to be neutralized to different extents, as compared to Inner Circle English varieties.

The phonological status of Swedish au and eu: Proposals, evidence, evaluation

AbstractMost modern studies of Swedish phonology take the view that the underlying vowel inventory of Central Standard Swedish comprises nine, rather than seventeen or eighteen, mutually contrasting vowel phonemes. A residual problem of a classic phonological type concerns the borrowed entities, rendered in traditional Swedish orthography as au and eu, whose ‘status in the vowel system is unclear’ (Riad 2014:42). The present paper scrutinizes earlier and current phonological interpretations of these entities, adduces evidence for and against each proposal, and concludes that the case for treating them as phonemic diphthongs /V͡V/, as /VC/-sequences, or as monosyllabic /VV̯/-sequences is weak and that they should in the first place be viewed as underlying heterosyllabic vowel sequences /VV/, subject to a special phonological stipulation valid for a borrowed sub-domain of the lexicon. Typologically, Central Standard Swedish should continue to be subsumed under the category of languages that lack phonological diphthongs.

The effect of allophonic variability on L2 contrast perception: Evidence from perception of English vowels.

Current frameworks of L2 phonetic acquisition remain largely underspecified with respect to the role of L1 allophonic variability in acquisition. Examining the role of L1 allophonic variability, the current study compared the perceptual discrimination of English /i-ɪ/ and /ɛ-æ/ by L1 Korean and L1 Mandarin speakers. Korean and Mandarin vowel inventories differ in that Mandarin employs significantly greater allophonic variation of the mid-region /E/ vowel. Results demonstrated worse perceptual accuracy by L1 Mandarin speakers for the /ɛ-æ/ contrast than L1 Korean speakers. These results suggest that both L1 phonemic inventories and allophonic variation play a role in L2 phonetic acquisition.

Interaction in bilingual early speech acquisition: Acceleration in the bilingual acquisition of English liquids for English-Spanish bilinguals

This study contributes to the understanding of bilingual speech sound acquisition, as it explores substitution patterns by preschoolers undergoing a language shift. Specifically, it investigates the distribution of glides [j w] as substituted sounds for rhotics and laterals sounds in English and Spanish. Spanish glides [j] and [w] share acoustic and phonological features with the high vowels [i] and [u], whereas English includes both glides in the consonant inventory. In English, the substitution pattern of gliding ([w]abbit) is frequently found in preschoolers, but it does not occur in monolingual Spanish-speaking children. Gliding was studied in Spanish-English bilingual and monolingual English-speaking children born and raised in a southwest border region of the U.S. Single word outputs of 61 typically-developing children were analyzed. Twenty-two (36%) exhibited gliding (11 bilingual children and 11 monolingual children). Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, this study shows evidence of distributed phonological systems and between-language interactions (Paradis, 2001). Gliding was found to occur significantly more often in English monolingual than Spanish-English bilingual children. Additionally, cross-linguistic effects were found in the Spanish data. These results indicate that maintenance of the minority language at home bootstraps the acquisition of English rhotics for these bilingual Spanish-English preschoolers in the borderlands.

Analisis Kesalahan Berbahasa Bentuk Baku Pada Masyarakat Poleang Barat

conversmost of the errors that appear in a piece of writing or spoken speech are caused by the presence of language spelling problems, errors in interpretation, the use of non-standard words that do not match their function. The purpose of studying language learners' language errors is to identify elements of the target language that cause language learning difficulties and to find explanations about the causes of language difficulties that result in language errors. The method used to identify language errors in the West Poleang community is a qualitative descriptive method with a note-taking technique. Ation Spoken language errors made by language users include errors at the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic levels. Mistakes made unconsciously due to lack of understanding of the phoneme structure and morphemes of the language being used.