Phonetic Indices Research Articles

Phonetic indices of syllabic organization in German stop-lateral clusters

Using articulatory data from five German speakers, we study how segmental sequences under different syllabic organizations respond to perturbations of phonetic parameters in the segments that compose them. Target words contained stop-lateral sequences /bl, gl, kl, pl/ in word-initial and cross-word contexts and were embedded in carrier phrases with different prosodic boundaries, i.e., no phrase boundary versus an utterance phrase boundary preceded the target word in the case of word-initial clusters, or separated the consonants in the case of cross-word sequences. For word-initial cluster (CCV) onsets, we find that increasing C1 stop duration or the lag between two consonants leads to earlier vowel initiation and reduced local timing stability across CV, CCV. Furthermore, as the inter-consonantal lag increases, C2 duration decreases. In contrast, for cross-word C#CV sequences, increasing inter-consonantal lag does not lead to earlier vowel initiation and robust local timing stability is maintained across CV, C#CV. In other words, in CCV sequences within words, local perturbations to segments have effects that ripple through the rest of the sequence. Instead, in cross-word C#CV sequences, local perturbations stay local. Overall, the findings indicate that the effects of phonetic perturbations on coordination patterns depend on the syllabic organization superimposed on these clusters.

A proposed order of historical emergence of Esan speech varieties

Abstract Significant studies on the sound systems of Edoid languages have been conducted, but studies of the internal relations that may exist within them are rare. Linguistic and nonlinguistic correlates of Northern Edoid features have been identified, thereby laying out broad phonetic and phonological indices for identifying this group of languages. Esan is classified as North Central Edoid. The goal of this study is to address the need to further define internal linguistic relations within the languages which constitute this linguistic group. Specifically, this study seeks to identify an order of historical emergence of identified Esan speech varieties. The study is lexicon based. Data were gathered from one adult native speaker from each of the twelve identified Esan speech varieties making a total of twelve informants. The Ibadan word list of 400 basic items served as an instrument. Available data were transcribed in phonetic tradition and subjected to sound identification procedures. A comparative analysis of the sound systems which emerged for each identified Esan speech variety, separated them into eight groups in the following order: Udo-Ugboha-Ubiaza; Ebhoato-Igueben-Ilushi; Uromi; Ekpoma; Ohordua; Ogwa; Irrua; Ugbegun. The first group of Esan speech varieties exhibit speech sound characteristics that indicate that it is an earlier form of the language. Ubiaza exhibited further linguistic indices to suggest that it predates its counterpart Esan varieties. Although this study is not aimed at reconstructing Esan, its findings serve as input to such a goal as well as to dialect studies of the language. It provided an avenue for the documentation of Esan speech forms. The outcome of this study contributes to further similar linguistic studies on Esan and other Edoid Languages.

Associations of acoustically measured tongue/jaw movements and portion of time speaking with negative symptom severity in patients with schizophrenia in Italy and the United States

This is the first cross-language study of the effect of schizophrenia on speech as measured by analyzing phonetic parameters with sound spectrography. We hypothesized that reduced variability in pitch and formants would be correlated with negative symptom severity in two samples of patients with schizophrenia, one from Italy, and one from the United States. Audio recordings of spontaneous speech were available from 40 patients. From each speech sample, a file of F0 (pitch) and formant values (F1 and F2, resonance bands indicating the moment-by-moment shape of the oral cavity), and the portion of the recording in which there was speaking (“fraction voiced,” FV), was created. Correlations between variability in the phonetic indices and negative symptom severity were tested and further examined using regression analyses. Meaningful negative correlations between Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) total score and standard deviation (SD) of F2, as well as variability in pitch (SD F0) were observed in the Italian sample. We also found meaningful associations of SANS affective flattening and SANS alogia with SD F0, and of SANS avolition/apathy and SD F2 in the Italian sample. In both samples, FV was meaningfully correlated with SANS total score, avolition/apathy, and anhedonia/asociality.

Stochastic time analysis of syllable-referential intervals and simplex onsets

We pursue an analysis of the relation between qualitative syllable parses and their quantitative phonetic consequences. To do this, we express the statistics of a symbolic organization corresponding to a syllable parse in terms of continuous phonetic parameters which quantify the timing of the consonants and vowels that make up syllables: consonantal plateau durations, vowel durations, and their variances. These parameters can be estimated from continuous phonetic data. This enables analysis of the link between symbolic phonological form and the continuous phonetics in which this form is manifest. Pursuing such an analysis, we illustrate the predictions of the syllabic organization corresponding to simplex onsets and derive a number of previously experimentally observed and simulation results. Specifically, we derive not only the canonical phonetic manifestations of simplex onsets but also the result that, under certain conditions we make precise, the phonetic indices of the simplex onset organization change to a range of values characteristic of the complex onset organization. Finally, we explore the behavior of phonetic indices for syllabic organization over progressively increasing sizes of lexical samples, thereby concomitantly diversifying the phonetic context over which these indices are taken.

Phonetic measures of reduced tongue movement correlate with negative symptom severity in hospitalized patients with first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum disorders

BackgroundAprosody, or flattened speech intonation, is a recognized negative symptom of schizophrenia, though it has rarely been studied from a linguistic/phonological perspective. To bring the latest advances in computational linguistics to the phenomenology of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders, a clinical first-episode psychosis research team joined with a phonetics/computational linguistics team to conduct a preliminary, proof-of-concept study. MethodsVideo recordings from a semi-structured clinical research interview were available from 47 first-episode psychosis patients. Audio tracks of the video recordings were extracted, and after review of quality, 25 recordings were available for phonetic analysis. These files were de-noised and a trained phonologist extracted a 1-minute sample of each patient's speech. WaveSurfer 1.8.5 was used to create, from each speech sample, a file of formant values (F0, F1, F2, where F0 is the fundamental frequency and F1 and F2 are resonance bands indicating the moment-by-moment shape of the oral cavity). Variability in these phonetic indices was correlated with severity of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale negative symptom scores using Pearson correlations. ResultsA measure of variability of tongue front-to-back position—the standard deviation of F2—was statistically significantly correlated with the severity of negative symptoms (r=−0.446, p=0.03). ConclusionThis study demonstrates a statistically significant and meaningful correlation between negative symptom severity and phonetically measured reductions in tongue movements during speech in a sample of first-episode patients just initiating treatment. Further studies of negative symptoms, applying computational linguistics methods, are warranted.

Non-acoustic Communication with Speech Smoothing

This paper presents a technique to synthesize speech from SEMG signals using a frame-by- frame basis. SEMG signals are firstly enframed and classified into a number of phonetic classes by a neural network, then the produced sequences of phonetic indices are translated to acoustic signals by concatenating their corresponding pre-recored speech segments. A significant advantage of the proposed synthesis based approach compared with previous recognition based approach is that, human is intelligent enough to recognition the synthesized speech although there is errors in it. Experimental evaluations based on the synthesis of eight words show that on average over 73.4% of the words can be synthesized correctly and the neural network can classify the SEMG frames of seven phonemes at a rate of 81.9%. The accuracy can be increased to 88.6% by using a glitch removal technique to smooth the produced sequence of phonetic indices. The results show that the phoneme-frame based speech synthesis technique can be applied to SEMG-based non-acoustic communication.

Dynamic invariance in the phonetic expression of syllable structure: a case study of Moroccan Arabic consonant clusters

We asked whether invariant phonetic indices for syllable structure can be identified in a language where word-initial consonant clusters, regardless of their sonority profile, are claimed to be parsed heterosyllabically. Four speakers of Moroccan Arabic were recorded, using Electromagnetic Articulography. Pursuing previous work, we employed temporal diagnostics for syllable structure, consisting of static correspondences between any given phonological organisation and its presumed phonetic indices. We show that such correspondences offer only a partial understanding of the relation between syllabic organisation and continuous indices of that organisation. We analyse the failure of the diagnostics and put forth a new approach in which different phonological organisations prescribe different ways in which phonetic indices change as phonetic parameters are scaled. The main finding is that invariance is found in these patterns of change, rather than in static correspondences between phonological constructs and fixed values for their phonetic indices.

Biology, socialization, and identity: Accounting for the voices of female-to-male transsexuals

Although dissimilarities between men’s and women’s voices are often attributed to biological differences between the sexes, a great deal of research shows that many of the phonetic indices of speaker gender are socially learned. A number of questions remain, however, surrounding the exact process through which speakers acquire these features. In this paper I present findings from an ongoing study of the voices of English-speaking female-to-male transsexuals. Although the voices of male-to-female transsexuals have been studied fairly extensively, work on female-to-male speakers is virtually nil. However, these speakers’ voices present an ideal testing grounds for understanding the relationship between biology, socialization, and identity in the development of phonetic styles associated with women and men. My findings, which reveal that female-to-male transsexuals’ voices are in most ways comparable to other men’s, demonstrate that identity, along with biology and socialization, makes a crucial contribution in shaping the gendered characteristics of the voice.

The Effects of Duration and Sonority on Contour Tone Distribution: A Typological Survey and Formal Analysis (review)

Reviewed by: The effects of duration and sonority on contour tone distribution: A typological survey and formal analysis by Jie Zhang Michael Cahill The effects of duration and sonority on contour tone distribution: A typological survey and formal analysis. By Jie Zhang. (Routledge outstanding dissertations in linguistics series.) New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. xii, 280. ISBN 0415941563. $85.95 (Hb). One of the touted benefits of optimality theory is that it should encourage typological studies, but studies involving more than a handful of languages have been rare. This published version of Zhang’s [End Page 905] 2001 UCLA dissertation is a welcome exception, with at least passing reference to 187 languages, several in some detail. The nine chapters in this book cover two major areas: (i) phonetic and typological data, and (ii) an analysis of these and their implications for broader phonological theory. Phonetically, Z establishes the importance of rime duration in production and perception of contours. In his typological survey, contours are more likely to be found in syllables that are either long, stressed, final, or belonging to a short word. All of these factors involve increased duration of the syllable rime. He devotes an entire chapter to detailed instrumental studies of duration in five languages, showing that syllables that can bear contour tones are significantly longer than those that cannot. Building on these phonetic studies, Z proposes a tonal complexity scale, which indicates the phonetic complexity of a tone, and a phonetic index CCONTOUR, which is the weighted sum of the duration of the vowel and of the rime, and is an indicator of the ability of a syllable to bear a contour tone. Turning to more formal analysis, both a representational account, in which a tone is associated to a mora, and a general-purpose positional markedness account, in which initial syllables are advantaged, are shown to be inadequate to account for the data Z discusses. A contrast-specific markedness account, which identifies longer rime durations as favored for contours, fares somewhat better, but Z’s preferred approach is a more direct phonetic one, in which duration and sonority can be computed and compared within a word. He does this and develops a direct optimality theory approach to incorporate his phonetic insights. He applies this model to five languages, presenting data for most of them. The main interaction with broader phonological theory is with positional markedness. With many studies showing initial syllables exhibiting more contrasts than others, the assumption has often been that such prominence on initial syllables applies to all features. However, Z clearly shows that this does not apply to tonal contrasts, and thus positional prominence effects can be feature-specific. Any time someone tries to propose universals, they leak. At times in this work there is a tendency to shoehorn recalcitrant languages into a box for which the fit is dubious. For example, Bantu languages are simply reported to have penultimate stress (on the basis of long vowels), but it is far from certain that this can properly be called stress. In addition, two languages in which contours are limited to final syllables (even though there are nonfinal long syllables, and final syllables may be short) are treated as exceptional cases which need additional explanation, whereas the pattern is quite robust in West Africa and so should be a natural part of the typology predicted by tone theory. Still, this work is a worthwhile contribution to the literature on tone. Michael Cahill SIL International Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

The Intelligibility of Children’s Speech

Summary descriptions are included for 19 procedures that have been, or could be, used to assess the intelligibility of pediatric subjects. Most procedures can be placed in one of the following categories, depending on the emphasis of the analysis: phonetic contrast analysis, phonological process analysis, word identification tests, phonetic indices derived from continuous speech scoring, scaling of continuous speech, and traditional word-level analysis of continuous speech. The general discussion includes an examination of the major issues to be considered in intelligibility testing and a set of criteria to be applied in test selection.

A cross-linguistic validation of locus equations: Are there ‘‘phonetic hot spots’’ in CV acoustic space?

A previous study [Sussman etal., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 1309–1325 (1991)] of American English CV coarticulation showed a remarkably linear relationship between onset frequencies of F2 transitions (plotted along the ordinate) in relation to midvowel target frequencies (plotted along the abscissa) in CVC tokens with initial /bdg/ followed by ten medial vowels. Slope and y intercept of regression functions (‘‘locus equations’’) fitted to these coordinates systematically varied as a function of stop place. Discriminant analyses, using as predictor variables, slope and y intercept, yielded 100% correct classification of stop place categories. Locus equations provide a systematic lawfulness to coarticulatory variation and a relationally invariant phonetic index for stop place classification. The present study extends the metric to three additional languages−Thai, Cairean Arabic, and Urdu. Resulting scatterplots were extremely linear and varied as a function of stop place. Plotting slope Xy intercept yields a derived map of CV phonetic space with which to relationally compare 2, 3, and 4-stop place languages. Within-language stop place contrasts were consistly divergent in CV space. Variability of labial, alveolar/dental, and velar coordinates across five languages showed fairly broad clustering of stop place categories, rather than narrowly focused ‘‘phonetic hot spots.’’ The data are discussed in relation to quantal and adaptive dispersion theories. [Work supported by NSF.]

The Pinyin Chinese-English Dictionary

This comprehensive dictionary contains over 6,000 single-character entries, including characters with variant tones. There are over 50,000 compound-character entries and over 70,000 compound words, set phrases and examples - all with Pinyin Romanization. Apart from everyday words and expressions, a number of common classical Chinese words, dialect words, four-character idioms, proverbs and common scientific expressions from both the natural and social sciences are included. The emphasis is on the use of modern Chinese, while modern English forms the basis of all English translations. Words and expressions have been defined clearly and precisely with practical examples. All entries are arranged according to Chinese Phonetic alphabetical order. A Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Index and Radical Index are located before the text of the dictionary for the convenience of the user. There are ten appendices, including a list of the original complex forms of Chinese characters and their simplified versions, the scheme for the Chinese phonetic alphabet, lists of countries, regions, capitals, currencies, weights and measures, chemical elements in Chinese and English and a brief Chinese chronology.

The Polynesian articles

The articles have generally a threefold use in Polynesian, viz. personal, deictic, and ligative. The forms of the personal and deictic articles may serve as morphological criteria for the classification of the Polynesian languages, which at present is based on exclusively phonetic indices. In function the articles are more complex than their names: “definite” and “indefinite” do not always have their European values, and the contrast of singular and plural is rather an antithesis of collective and numerative. All the Polynesian articles, except the vestigial ligative, help to differentiate noun from verb, to define personality and substance in the lexeme, sometimes with the added sense of plurality, emphasis, and size, but not of gender as in Indo-European and isolatedly in Indonesian. Their origin appears to be associated with demonstrative or selective usage like that of the allied Austronesian articles, to which they bear a close resemblance in function, if not in form. The articles, as part of the wider category of particles, constitute, with the pronouns, the active elements in the Polynesian (and the Austronesian) sentence.