Phonetic Environment Research Articles

Cross-Linguistic Nasalance Comparisons: A Review of Speech Sample Sets and Preliminary Consideration of Effect of Lexical Tone.

Nasalance is an acoustic representation of perceived nasality with proven clinical and research utility. Its validity is contingent on appropriate speech sample sets and distinct normative databases based on known impact factors such as language and phonetic environment, but little is known about the potential effects of lexical tone on nasalance. Its use in international cross-linguistic studies necessitates definition and added considerations of speech sampling protocol. Part I. A methodological review was undertaken using PRISMA (2020), the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) Methodology Checklist for evaluating risk of bias, and calculation of effect sizes and/or visual displays using tables showing grouping of similar data for synthesis of findings. Part II. A pilot study explored the effect of lexical tone on nasalance in Cantonese, a lexical tone language. Part I. 17 studies met the inclusion criteria. In addressing possible confounders and minimizing risk of bias, 13 studies were assigned an overall quality rating of (+) acceptable and the remaining 4, a high rating (++). For the 9-word string, there was a (non-clinical) difference of 3-5% between Swedish and Brazilian-Portuguese, and a moderate effect size for age (d=0.49); for the consonant-vowel syllables set (CV set), clinical differences across languages were identified for adults, and between 5-10% for children and adolescents. Part II. The pilot study showed a significant effect of lexical tone on nasalance where nasalance for the high-level tone 1 was significantly higher than that for high-rising tone 2, low-rising tone 5, and low-falling tone 4. There is a need for further evidence from other languages, including tonal languages, to better define the evidence and speech methodology of international cross-linguistic nasalance studies.

Lenition in L2 Spanish: The Impact of Study Abroad on Phonological Acquisition.

Objective: This study investigated the degrees of lenition, or consonantal weakening, in the production of Spanish stop consonants by native English speakers during a study abroad (SA) program. Lenition is a key phonological process in Spanish, where voiced stops (/b/, /d/, /ɡ/) typically weaken to fricatives or approximants in specific phonetic environments. For L2 learners, mastering this subtle process is essential for achieving native-like pronunciation. Methods: To assess the learners' progress in acquiring lenition, we employed Phonet, a deep learning model. Unlike traditional quantitative acoustic methods that focus on measuring the physical properties of speech sounds, Phonet utilizes recurrent neural networks to predict the posterior probabilities of phonological features, particularly sonorant and continuant characteristics, which are central to the lenition process. Results: The results indicated that while learners showed progress in producing the fricative-like variants of lenition during the SA program and understood how to produce lenition in appropriate contexts, the retention of these phonological gains was not sustained after their return. Additionally, unlike native speakers, the learners never fully achieved the approximant-like realization of lenition. Conclusions: These findings underscore the need for sustained exposure and practice beyond the SA experience to ensure the long-term retention of L2 phonological patterns. While SA programs offer valuable opportunities for enhancing L2 pronunciation, they should be supplemented with ongoing support to consolidate and extend the gains achieved during the immersive experience.

Park or bark? VOT production of English bilabial stops in Omani Arabic speakers of English

This study compares Voice Onset Time (VOT) patterns of word-initial English/b/and/p/in three groups: Omani undergraduate students, Omani professors and native English speakers (NES). It aims to investigate whether Omani Arabic students and professors can produce native-like VOTs of the English bilabial stops compared to NESs, and to what extent the findings support speech learning theories, such as the Speech Learning Model and the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis.Words containing/b, p/in two different phonetic environments (CV and CC) were elicited from the participants using a reading task. Also, Arabic words containing word-initial/b/were elicited from Omani professors to compare the VOT of Arabic and English/b/. The results revealed a significant difference between the mean VOT of Arabic and English/b/. A significant difference in the VOT patterns of/p/between students and NESs were also found, but not between professors and NESs. Students'/p/productions were characterized with shorter lag compared to those of professors or NESs. Variability in the production of English/b/existed among Omani speakers. While VOT production in NESs were characterized with short lag, students' and professors’ productions were characterized sometimes with voicing lead and other times with short/long lag. VOT values of/b/and/p/were not significantly affected by the phonetic context. The findings are discussed in relation to the Speech Learning Model and the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis.

Positional Variations of Ukrainian Back Vowel Formants

The purpose of this paper is to study variations in the location of formants of Ukrainian back vowels caused by different phonetic features. To do so, the oscillograms and two-dimensional spectrograms of recorded sounds in speech flow were analyzed. The corresponding invariant acoustic parameters being the ratios between frequencies of the formants rising due to the tube resonance are determined. It is shown that different phonetic environments cause different formant configurations in vowels which is a case of sound assimilation. The following phonetic features were found to give rise to variations of Ukrainian back vowels: coda, distant assimilation by the next or preceding vowel, and progressive assimilation by the preceding hard or palatalized consonant. In particular, high vowels make the other vowels in the phonetic word move higher, and the front ones make the back ones move forward. Such formant shifts are more pronounced in unstressed positions and especially in a coda.

A Teaching Mode of College English Listening in Intelligent Phonetic Environments

This paper discusses the integration of cutting-edge technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI) and speech synthesis in UETL environment. By using methods based on artificial intelligence, such as Fuzzy Convolutional Neural Network (FCNN) and Improved Hidden Markov Model (MHMM), this study aims to reform the traditional teaching paradigm. Through the in-depth study of the experiment, it illustrates how these innovations can enhance students' autonomous learning, understanding and participation in English language education. The implementation of speech synthesis mechanism realizes the conversion from real-time speech to text, and promotes interactive learning experience and personalized feedback. The comparative analysis before and after adopting advanced teaching methods shows that students' learning achievements and the overall effectiveness of UETL process have been significantly improved. This study emphasizes the revolutionary potential of integrating artificial intelligence and speech synthesis technology to optimize college English education.

Does the linguistic market explain sociolinguistic variation in spoken Swiss Standard German?

Abstract This paper shows (a) how the concept of the linguistic market can be operationalized as an index to enable its inclusion as a factor in variationist analysis and (b) how this index helps to explain sociolinguistic variation in a diglossic situation. To do this, sociolinguistic interviews were conducted in Swiss Standard German among 16 L1-dialect-speakers aged between 19 and 40 from Biel/Bienne in western Switzerland. Drawing from participants’ self-assessments of the importance of Standard German in their professional life, a linguistic market index (LMI) was created and cross-validated with external assessments. Our variationist analysis considered four phonetic-phonological variables—/k/, /ç/, /aː/, /ɛ-ɛː/—for which typical Swiss variants (i.e., sociolinguistic stereotypes) exist. Findings show that the LMI is crucial for explaining variation in all the variables tested. Other social (i.e., gender and formality of the language production task) and linguistic factors (e.g., phonetic environment) show partial effects as well.

Unflappable? Buckeyes say “whatever” to English flapping rules

American English dialects generally use a 'flap/tap' consonant in some places where /t/ or /d/ is both indicated in the spelling and used in some other dialects. What environments allow a flap to occur instead of /t/ or /d/? This question has inspired considerable debate in the literature, but a consensus has settled on a lack of stress on the syllable following as being the most critical factor in the occurrence of a flap word-internally. This study investigates the occurrence of flaps in the Buckeye Corpus of American English (40 speakers from Columbus, OH), detailing the frequency of flapping in various phonetic environments. One significant finding is that all speakers produced some flaps word-internally before syllables bearing primary or secondary stress (as in “whatever”).

Documenting and modeling the acoustic variability of intervocalic alveolar taps in conversational Peninsular Spanish.

This study constitutes an investigation into the acoustic variability of intervocalic alveolar taps in a corpus of spontaneous speech from Madrid, Spain. Substantial variability was documented in this segment, with highly reduced variants constituting roughly half of all tokens during spectrographic inspection. In addition to qualitative documentation, the intensity difference between the tap and surrounding vowels was measured. Changes in this intensity difference were statistically modeled using Bayesian finite mixture models containing lexical and phonetic predictors. Model comparisons indicate predictive performance is improved when we assume two latent categories, interpreted as two pronunciation variants for the Spanish tap. In interpreting the model, predictors were more often related to categorical changes in which pronunciation variant was produced than to gradient intensity changes within each tap type. Variability in tap production was found according to lexical frequency, speech rate, and phonetic environment. These results underscore the importance of evaluating model fit to the data as well as what researchers modeling phonetic variability can gain in moving past linear models when they do not adequately fit the observed data.

A Comparison of Perception-Based and Production-Based Training Approaches to Adults’ Learning of L2 Sounds

ABSTRACT While phonetic training in laboratory settings has been shown to be helpful for second language (L2) sounds learning in prior studies , it is still open to debate whether a perception- or a production-based approach can better help adults learn L2 sounds in classroom settings. This study aimed to fill this knowledge gap. The participants were three groups of adult Chinese college students who had difficulties in perceiving and producing English/θ/-/s/and/ð/-/z/. Group 1 and Group 2 were exposed to a perception-based and a production-based training approach respectively. Group 3 was the control group (no training). The training materials were “minimal pairs” embedding the target contrasts in various phonetic environments. Each session included explicit articulatory instructions and perception- or production-based practice activities. Individual participants’ perception and production of the target contrasts were tested before (pretest), after (posttest), and one month after the training programme (delayed posttest). According to the results, (1) in comparison with the pretest, both the perception- and production-based groups showed significant perception and production improvement in the posttest, which remained in the delayed posttest; the control group had no significant perception or production changes across the three tests; (2) the production-based group had significantly better perception and production performance than the perception-based group both in the posttest and the delayed posttest. The overall results suggest that a production-based approach may be optimal for L2 sounds learning.

Is secondary stress phonetically real for second-language learners? Evidence from Japanese-accented English

Speakers of a non-stress language such as Japanese often have difficulty producing lexical stress distinctions in languages such as English. Distinguishing primary-stressed versus unstressed syllables may be difficult, but distinctions involving secondary stress may be even more challenging. Some studies report that Japanese learners of English (JE) do not distinguish secondary-stressed and unstressed syllables in terms of vowel duration and quality whereas native American English speakers (AE) do. However, the data are limited and inconclusive. To resolve this issue, the present study asked AE and two groups of JE differing in English proficiency to produce 83 English words that exhibit stress shift, e.g., phótogràph-phòtográphic-photógraphy and conducted acoustic analysis of vowels in corresponding positions, which have the same consonantal context but differ in stress level. Preliminary results indicate that JE frequently produce devoiced vowels in unstressed syllables, particularly in phonetic environments similar to where devoicing occurs in Japanese. Devoicing, however, does not seem to occur in secondary-stressed syllables, suggesting that JE might distinguish secondary-stressed and unstressed syllables with respect to devoicing. Results from duration and formant analysis will also be reported and discussed in relation to theories of native-language influences on second-language speech learning. [Work supported by JSPS.]

How similar are the formants in the speech of bilingual speakers?

This study investigated whether a stronger accent in the L2 of Cantonese-English bilingual speakers with high levels of English proficiency correlates with greater convergence of corresponding vowels (four monophthongs (/i a (a) c u/ and five diphthongs /ai au ei ci ou (eu)/) between their two languages in identical phonetic environments. No consistent effect of accent rating was found in either acoustic or perceptual similarity measures. Much individual variation and vowel-specific patterns were observed. The results demonstrate that the formant patterns in one language or one vowel cannot predict those in another language or another vowel, even with highly comparable materials and speakers with a relatively strong accent. Possible reasons and implications for the lack of correlation between accentedness and vowel convergence are discussed.

Interaction of Voice Onset Time with Vocal Hyperfunction and Voice Quality

The main aim of the present work was to investigate whether vocal hyperfunction (VH), perceptual voice quality (VQ), gender, and phonetic environment influence Voice Onset Time (VOT). The investigated group consisted of 30 adults, including 19 women (X = 46.1 ± 13.7 years) and 11 men (X = 47.5 ± 11.0 years), who had either phonotraumatic vocal hyperfunction (PVH) and non-phonotraumatic vocal hyperfunction (NPVH). VQ was judged considering the overall severity of dysphonia (OS) and the subcharacteristics of roughness, breathiness, and strain. Phonetic variables such as vowel stress, syllable stress, and mode of speech task were analyzed. Four samples of syllables with [p] plus vowel or diphthong were retrieved from CAPE-V sentences recordings. Acoustic analysis with Praat comprised VOT, mean fundamental frequency (fo), intensity (SPL dB(A)), and coefficient of variation of fundamental frequency (CV_fo %). VOT was significantly influenced by OS (p ≤ 0.001) but not by vocal VH condition (PVH versus NPVH) (p = 0.90). However, CV_fo was affected by the VH condition (p = 0.02). Gender effects were only found for mean fo (p ≤ 0.001) and SPL (p = 0.01). All VQ sub characteristics (OS, roughness, breathiness, and strain) correlated with VOT (p ≤ 0.001) and SPL (p ≤ 0.001) but not with fo. In summary, VOT was affected by voice quality, while it was not affected by vocal hyperfunction conditions. Therefore, VOT has the potential to objectively describe the onset of voicing in voice diagnostics, and may be one underlying objective characteristic of perceptual vocal quality.

Phonology of Adur Niesu in Liangshan, Sichuan

This study describes the segmental and suprasegmental phonology of Adur Niesu, a Loloish (or Ngwi) language spoken mainly in Liangshan, Sichuan, southwest China. Phonemically, there are 41 consonants, 10 monophthongs and 1 diphthong in Adur Niesu. All Adur syllables are open. Its segmental changes mainly happen to the vowels, featuring high vowel fricativization, vowel lowering, vowel centralization, vowel assimilation and vowel fusion. It is common for Adur Niesu syllables to be reduced in continuous speech, with floating tones left. There are three main types of syllable reduction: complete reduction including the segment and tone, partial reduction with a floating tone left, and partial reduction with the initial consonant left. Adur Niesu employs tones as an important means for lexical contrast, namely, high-level tone 55, mid-level tone 33, and low-falling tone 21. There is also a sandhi tone 44. There are two types of tonal alternation: tone sandhi and tone change. Tone sandhi occurs at both word and phrasal levels, and is conditioned by the phonetic environment, while tone change occurs due to the morphosyntactic environment. Finally, some seeming tonal alternation is the result of a floating tone after syllable reduction.

A Phonological Study of Consonants and Vowels Phonemic Merger in Hausa

This paper examined a phonological study of consonants and vowels phonemic merger in Hausa. The main objective of this research is to examine how phonological and morphological rules trigger phonemic merger of certain consonants and vowels phonemes in particular phonetic environments of a word as phonetic and phonemic entity, on the assumption that, phonological and morphological rules relate an underlying structure to its phonetic representation. The study employed generative phonological framework in the analysis of the data so that we can establish the set of rules that describe the changes of the underlying structure when they occur in speech. Also, for the data collection an ethnographic communication method is adopted. The findings of the research discovered three phonological processes that motivate consonants and vowels phonemic merger in Hausa. The identified phonological processes are: palatalization, rhotacization and deletion motivating phonemic merger. In addition, it is noted that phonemic merger is a rule-governed process because, we have clearly seen how a series of cumulative Hausa phonological and morphological rules operate on the underlying forms, and transform them into surface forms in realizing a phonemic merger in Hausa.

The French Phonetic Impact on English

The Normandy conquest to England represented a shift in power from the Anglo-Saxon into French or Norman possession. It sheds great effects on people’s life. This shift undoubtedly made a great influence or impact on English in considering that languages are channels for the interaction of cultures and habits. Hence, English was influenced by Latin descendants which reflected by Old French, Old Norse and later the Anglo-Norman variety. This paper tackles French phonetic impact on English which made crucial changes in each spelling and pronunciation by which English shifted from old to middle era. Moreover, by French conventions, some consonants and their literary representations were added to English by loanwords. Vowels were reduced, lengthened or diphthongized by certain processes or phonetic environments. The modifications and merges appeared in the Middle English phonemes were nearly the main inputs for Present- Day English.

An acoustic analysis of Oromo vowels of the northern dialect

This study presents the results of an acoustic analysis of Oromo vowels of the northern dialect. The data for the study were collected from 19 speakers (nine female, 10 male) who produced the vowels in the same phonetic environment. Such acoustic measures as duration, fundamental frequency and the first three formant frequencies were extracted for the analysis. In a linear mixed-effects model, each acoustic parameter was modelled as a function of the fixed effects such as gender and vowel quality, and of participants’ random effects. The model shows a main effect of gender on all the acoustic measures, with the female speakers producing the vowels with significantly greater duration and formant frequencies. The model also indicates the main effect of vowel quality on all the acoustic measures with the exception of duration. The proportion of variances explained by gender and vowel quality is found to be large for fundamental frequency and the first formant frequency respectively. As regards the classification of the vowels, Support Vector Machine reveals that the time-varying frequency does not have an advantage over a steady state in separating vowels of both genders. However, it is generally fairly effective in classifying vowels of the dialect of the language.

Simplification: A Case of Phonetic Salience of Consonant Clusters in Marathi

Abstract: Second/foreign language learning has myriad repercussions upon the way/s a learner tries to learn it. The most striking is how the new language sounds to the learner. Interestingly, the new language sounds both familiar and different. This is unique to all languages sharing language universals. A learner uses strategies to simplify the words of second/foreign language. In doing so, he/she adds phonetic features of his/her native language. The purpose of this research article is to observe native speakers of Ahirani (a dialect of Marathi) making use of English words with obstruent clusters and way/s of simplifying them. It would talk on possible reasons for simplification. The study is observational-analytical in nature. A datasheet as a tool was used to note the English words spoken by the speakers exhibiting cluster simplification. The data collected shows how they adapt English words (pronunciation) to fulfill their purpose of informal communication. The author subscribed to the contrast-based approach to cluster simplification in light of cluster simplification by speakers of Marathi. The author commented on variations in producing consonant clusters of English, simplification processes adapted and morphophonemic environment contributing to simplification. The study observed epenthesis, deletion, vowel shortening, vowel change, as the most frequent strategies used by the participants. Keywords: Consonant, Cluster Simplification, Phonetic Environment, Marathi/Ahirani

A CURIOUS CASE OF /t/ and /d/ SPIRANTIZATION IN SERBIAN-ENGLISH INTERPHONOLOGY

The paper explores a subtype of the phonological process of lenition, more precisely, the phe- nomenon of spirantization in the Serbian-English interlanguage system. During the process of spirantization, plosive sounds transform into fricatives and the factors causing altered realiza- tions may stem from various sources, the most prominent being mother tongue interference. For example, due to the specific pronunciation of alveolar stops and fricatives in L1, Spanish learners of English as a foreign language tend to transfer the feature into their L2, causing thus all voiced plosives, regardless of the place of articulation, to transform into fricatives (Zampini 2008). However, the phonological system of Serbian is not characterized by the same processes, hence, the occasional spirantization in the interlanguage system, we argue, cannot be derived from mother tongue interference, yet may be the result of other factors, such as, qualitative hypercorrection. The analyzed corpus was obtained from the recordings of a spontaneous speech by 15 Serbian English-major students at the tertiary level of education. We investigated the instances of spirantization using the methods of acoustic analysis and spectrographic illustra- tions via Praat, version 6.2.04. The findings indicated that only alveolar plosives (both voiced and voiceless) were spirantized, most frequently in accented position. Regarding the phonetic environment, the word-initial pre-vocalic position, as well as the word-final post-vocalic and post-consonantal position, triggered the highest frequency of spirantization occurrence. Acous- tic measurements confirm the initial assumptions regarding the specific nature of spirantized variants [dz], [ts], [ð] and [θ]. The results have important pedagogical implications and provide insights into the complexity of cross-linguistic influence.

THE PRODUCTION OF HIGH BACK VOWELS: A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH AND STANDARD SERBIAN

This paper reports on the findings of a contrastive study of American English high back vowels /u, ʊ/ and Serbian vowel /u/ produced by ten male native speakers of Serbian. Previous research (Marković 2009a; Bjekić, Čubrović 2021; Čubrović 2019, 2017; Dančetović, Nešić 2017) has indicated that the differences in quality between the English high back vowels /u/ and /ʊ/ are often poorly detected by Serbian speakers. Therefore, the overall aim of the present research is to observe the acoustic properties of high back vowels in the given languages, so as to determine whether or not our subjects can adequately produce the L2 vowels with respect to both quality and quantity, and whether they can differentiate them from their L1 categories. The research subjects were first instructed to read a set of 13 monosyllabic English words representing the high back vowels /u, ʊ/ in different phonetic environments. The second task called for the subjects to read a set of 13 Serbian words representing the vowel /u/ in short and long stressed syllables. The collected speech samples were then analyzed acoustically using Praat, version 6.2.13 (Boersma, Weenink 2022). The statistical analysis of the acoustic measurements was performed using R, version 4.2.1 (R Development Core Team 2022). The results suggest that, in terms of quantity, in the speech of Serbian students, the lax vowel, in particular, bears more resemblance to the subjects’ L1 category, rather than the targeted vowel. The analysis of the formant data indicates that, although our subjects’ L2 categories differ from those of native speakers, the quality of GA high back vowels our subjects produce does not reflect the quality of their L1 categories.

Laterals in Spanish–English bilinguals

Patterns of production of Spanish and English laterals by early sequential Spanish–English bilinguals (L1 and L2 respectively in the order of acquisition) were investigated. A total of 25 early Spanish–English bilinguals, who are all English-dominant (average age of L2 acquisition: 3;9), were recruited. They were recorded while reading sentences aloud in Spanish and in English containing laterals in onset and coda positions adjacent to front and back vowels. Target words with laterals were spectrographically analysed through an investigation of F1 and F2 values. The measurements obtained were compared between the two languages. The results show that the participants maintain separate acoustic realizations for the laterals in all four different phonetic environments in their two languages. Since their lateral productions are mixed with respect to the influence of the two languages, the results suggest that bilinguals’ interrelated systems influence each other at a fine-grained acoustic level.