Phonetic Realization Research Articles

EXPRESS: Same same but different - The graded influence of vowel quality and prosodic prominence on letter detection.

The present study investigates the impact of phonetic realization and prosodic prominence on visual letter identification, focusing on the letter <e> in German bisyllabic words. Building upon previous research, a computerized letter search task was conducted with 78 skilled adult readers. Words featuring different phonetic realizations of <e> (/eː, ɛ, e, l̩, n̩, ɐ/) in stressed and unstressed first and second syllables were systematically included. Analyses of error rates and response times revealed a graded pattern in detection of <e>, with the closed long (/eː/) and closed short (/e/) realizations being easiest to detect, open (/ɛ/) and near-open central (/ɐ/) vowels becoming incrementally harder, and silent vowels in syllabic consonants (/n̩/) being the most challenging. Results divided by position and stress of the syllable containing the target letter further indicated influences of prosodic prominence. The findings contribute to understanding the intricate interplay of grapheme-phoneme correspondences and prosodic structure in skilled readers' visual letter recognition.

An experimental study of the phonetic realization of Russian speech by native speakers of Karachay-Balkar

An experimental study of the phonetic realization of Russian speech by native speakers of Karachay-Balkar

A Systematic Review and Bayesian Meta-Analysis of Acoustic Measures of Prosody in Parkinson's Disease.

Linguistic prosody is affected in Parkinson's disease (PD), which implicates the basal ganglia's role in the production of prosody. However, there is no recent systematic synthesis of the available acoustic evidence of prosodic impairment in PD. This study aimed to identify the acoustic features of linguistic prosody that are consistently affected in PD. The authors systematically reviewed articles that reported acoustic features of prosodic production in PD. Articles focused on fundamental frequency (F0) and its variability, intensity and its variability, speech and articulation rate, and pause duration and ratio. From a total of 648 records identified, 36 met criteria for inclusion and exclusion. For each acoustic measurement and task, data from people with PD (PwPD) were compared with those from controls to extract effect sizes. Pooled effect sizes were estimated using robust Bayesian hierarchical regression models. PD was associated with decreased F0 variability and increased pause duration. There was limited evidence of reduced intensity variability and speech rate in PwPD. No evidence was found to suggest that PD affects articulation rate or pause ratio. The primary acoustic parameters of prosody affected by PD are F0 variability and pause duration. The identification of these acoustic parameters has important clinical implications for the selection of PD management strategies. The association of F0 variability and pause duration with PD suggests that the neural circuits controlling these parameters are at least partly shared and might include the basal ganglia. While the current study focused on the phonetic realization of prosodic cues, future studies should examine whether and how PD affects prosody at higher levels of processing. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25892923.

Lenition of fricative sibilants in casual conversations in Basque

This paper analyses lenition of lamino-alveolar and apico-alveolar fricative sibilants in Basque in casual conversations between speakers of the variety of Beasain (Central Basque dialect). To describe the phonetic realisation of sibilants, the following measures were used: the proportion of voiced frames, the centre of gravity and relative intensity. Results show that 13% of sibilants can be classified as ‘voiced’ (i.e. they show uninterrupted voicing during the middle 50% of the duration) and another 25% has at least one voiced frame in the middle interval. Several factors were identified as important predictors of voicing: context, speech rate and the presence of the word boundary. It is also shown that voicing lowers the sibilants’ centre of gravity and relative intensity. Finally, the paper discusses potential lexical effects in lenition phenomena.

PHRASE PROSODY OF A MIDDLE-RUSSIAN DIALECT: TVER

t: This paper deals with the phrase prosody of Middle-Russian dialect with оkan’je spoken in Kal’azin district of Tver region. The study, based on the material of dialectal speech recordings made in the 2019 (eight speakers born in 1933–1955, total duration — 10 hours), reveals that the intonational system of Tver idiom is quite similar to the Standard one in regard to its prosodic constituents as well as to their association to basic communicative categories — yes-no and whquestions, statements, imperatives and vocatives. We posit in it three pitch accents — one rising L+H* and two falling H*(+L) and H+L* as well as two final boundary tones (L% and H%). There is no phonological contrast between the initial boundary tones in Kal’azin dialect, this differentiates the idiom in question from more southern Russian dialects. The most specific point in the phonetic realization of the melodic contours of the narrow focus statements and the yes-no questions in Tver idiom as compared to other Middle-Russian dialects and Standard Russian is the significant variability in timing of the rising and falling pitch accents — from the very early to the very late. Based on the data studied we claim thus that the Tver dialect demonstrates the transition from the characteristic dialectal prosodic system based on level pitch accents to the standard one with contour tunes being significantly ahead of the neighbouring Pskov and Seliger-Torzhok dialects on this way to Modern Standard Russian.

Acoustic and articulatory variation of Mandarin diphthong /ou/

Abstract This study compared dynamic formant trajectories and corresponding ultrasound tongue data of the diphthong /ou/ in Taiwan Mandarin and Beijing Mandarin speakers. Results of the Generalized Additive Mixed Models (GAMM) analyses showed that both groups of speakers produced a clearly diphthongal /ou/, which contrasts with previous auditory-based accounts that /ou/ in Taiwan Mandarin may be monophthongal. The two dialects, however, had rather different phonetic realizations: Taiwan Mandarin had a significantly lower realization for the nucleus of /ou/ than its Beijing counterpart; Taiwan Mandarin also had a significantly more fronted realization for the offglide than Beijing Mandarin. The articulatory patterns mostly corresponded to the acoustic results, in that while tongue dorsum raising was found for all speakers in this study, an additional tongue dorsum fronting gesture was observed for the majority of the Taiwan Mandarin speakers. Together, the results suggest that the less studied dialectal variation in Mandarin vowels may be a promising line of investigation, particularly with parallel acoustic and articulatory data collection.

Production of the English /ɹ/ by Mandarin-English Bilingual Speakers.

Rhotic sounds are some of the most challenging sounds for L2 learners to acquire. This study investigates the production of English rhotic sounds by Mandarin-English bilinguals with two English proficiency levels. The production of the English /ɹ/ by 17 Mandarin-English bilinguals was examined with ultrasound imaging and compared with the production of native English speakers. The ultrasound data show that bilinguals can produce native-like bunched and retroflex gestures, but the distributional pattern of tongue shapes in various contexts differs from that of native speakers. Acoustically, the English /ɹ/ produced by bilinguals had a higher F3 and F3-F2, as well as some frication noise in prevocalic /ɹ/, features similar to the Mandarin /ɹ/. Mandarin-English bilinguals did produce language-specific phonetic realizations for the English and Mandarin /ɹ/s. There was a positive correlation between language proficiency and English-specific characteristics of /ɹ/ by Mandarin-English bilinguals in both articulation and acoustics. Phonetic similarities facilitated rather than hindered L2 speech learning in production: Mandarin-English bilinguals showed better performance in producing the English /ɹ/ allophones that were more similar to the Mandarin /ɹ/ (syllabic and postvocalic /ɹ/s) than producing the English /ɹ/ allophone that was less similar to the Mandarin /ɹ/ (prevocalic /ɹ/). This study contributes to our understanding of the mechanism of speech production in late bilinguals.

Perceptual adaptation to unfamiliar dialect variation

Regional varieties of a language often differ in the phonetic realization of shared phonological categories, resulting in perceptual ambiguity. In perceptual tasks, listeners with more exposure to regional dialect variation perform differently than listeners with less exposure, reflecting underlying differences in lexical competition. In this study, we examined perceptual adaptation to one authentic dialect of American English and one novel dialect to test for adaptation to unfamiliar variation. Our materials contained contrasts that are perceptually ambiguous in Southern American English and in the novel dialect we created, in which linguistically trained bilinguals substituted English /ow/ with Spanish /o/. Participants heard a familiarization passage spoken in a Southern or Novel dialect and then completed an auditory lexical decision task. Adaptation was assessed by differences in accuracy and response times for each vowel contrast, talker dialect, and familiarization dialect. Results revealed lower accuracy and slower response times for both target contrasts when pronounced in their respective dialects. These effects reflect the difficulty in processing perceptually ambiguous stimuli. Familiarization dialect had no effect on accuracy or response times; future analyses will include quantification of listener regional dialect exposure to better assess its influence on processing novel variation.

Acoustic vowel distances within and across dialects

Regional dialects of American English exhibit variation in the phonetic realization of vowel categories. This variation leads to different degrees of phonetic vowel similarity within and across dialects. This vowel similarity has been captured by measures of formant distance and overlap in the acoustic space, typically with static formant estimates from a single timepoint in the vowel. In contrast, dialect similarity has been assessed using measures of acoustic distance over time. In the current study, dynamic measures of acoustic distance, including dynamic time warping, root mean-square distance, and generalized additive mixed effect models, were used to assess within-dialect vowel category distances and to compare these distances across dialects. The results were generally consistent across the different distance metrics, confirming their respective ability to capture acoustic vowel distance. However, the magnitude of the distances varied across dialects and vowel variables. Whereas some dialect-specific variables showed the expected patterns of within- and across-dialect similarity based on previous descriptive work, other variables did not. These mixed findings have implications for our understanding of regional dialect variation in American English, its effect on acoustic vowel similarity, and the relationship between acoustic vowel similarity and perceptual ambiguity of vowel contrasts within and across dialects.

Indexical meanings of the realization of /sˤ/ ص as [s] س in spoken and written Jordanian Arabic: a language change in progress?

Abstract This study examines how the phonetic realisation of the phoneme /sˤ/ and its orthographic form ص is surfacing as the variant [s] in speaking and as س in writing in Ammani Arabic (AA), which is a variety of Jordanian Arabic (JA), and how this relates to language variation. We look at instances where certain Ammani Arabic speakers, particularly females, pronounce and write words containing /sˤ/ ص as [s] س, despite both /sˤ/ and /s/ being phonemes in JA in general and in AA in particular. We used a quantitative corpus-based approach, where we obtained written data from Facebook, and elicited spoken tokens and qualitative data through interviews. Our findings reveal that females in our two corpora [spoken and written] use and prefer [s] and س more than males, and our interviews revealed that female interviewees also prefer this pronunciation and writing. We suggest that the use of [s] س instead of [sˤ] ص by females can be seen as a direct index for femininity within their community of practice, and that this pronunciation/writing can indirectly index female gender in daily conversations and on social media websites, based on orders of indexicality (Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language &amp; Communication 23. 193–229).

The phonetic realization of laryngeal contrasts in Lili Wu Chinese: Evidence from tone-sandhi domain medial position

摘要: 喉部特征的语音实现受韵律环境影响。本研究考察了黎里吴语塞音声 母三分特征在连调域词中位置上的语音实现。在单字及连调域词首位 置，黎里吴语以中古调类为条件(上去入)出现“送气分调”现象，即 送气声母后元音的基频( f0 )显著低于不送气声母后的，与浊声母后元 音的 f0 接近。实验结果显示，在连调域词中位置，“送气分调”现象 消失，取而代之的是类似上海话的典型的“首音节控制”连读变调模 式，不同声母条件下的 f0 趋同。但浊音起始时间(VOT)及第一、二谐 波差(H1*–H2*)能在一定程度上将不同声母区别开来。此外，前字音 高及后字音节结构都对塞音声母的语音实现有影响。这些结果一方面 体现了黎里吴语声母与声调的音系特征同语音实现之间的多样性；另 一方面也体现了音系规则与语音规则的复杂联系，进一步说明了实验 方法在探究汉语方言语音议题上的重要性。

The Phonetic Realization of Obstruent Clusters in Najdi Arabic: An Exploratory Study

This study provides an acoustic analysis of the realization of the surface word-initial obstruent clusters that resulted from the deletion of short vowels in Najdi Arabic. While past studies discussed the syllable structure of Najdi Arabic and affirmed the permissibility of initial consonant clusters, most of these studies lack acoustic analyses that attest the occurrence of initial consonant clusters and left much uncertainty about the allowed and disallowed segments in the clusters. The aim of the present research is to address this gap in the literature by conducting an acoustic analysis that examined the types and patterns of the allowed obstruent clusters in the Najdi Arabic dialect. Two methods were implemented to collect the data: informal interview and a reading task. The stimuli represented the four types of obstruent clusters: fricative-fricative, fricative-plosive, plosive-fricative, and plosive-plosive. Fourteen native Najdi Arabic speakers (7 males, 7 females) were recruited. The findings of this study affirm the presence of the four types of the obstruent clusters and provide a description of their patterns in Najdi Arabic. This finding enhances our understanding of the phonology of Najdi Arabic and contributes to the wide-ranging context of Arabic dialectology with regards to phonotactics and syllable structure.

현대중국어 부사 도치문 ‘~了都’의 음성 실현

현대중국어 부사 도치문 ‘~了都’의 음성 실현

Türkçede Ad-Ad Bileşiklerinin Sesbilgisel Görünümlerine ilişkin Bürünsel ve Analojik Etkiler

Previous studies on phonetic realization of compounds in Turkish have typically examined prosodic accounts of lexical stress; however, evidence for phonetic features is relatively sparse. This study investigates phonetic implementation of lexical stress in Turkish noun-noun compounds by measuring acoustic correlates of compounds vs. phrases and existing vs. novel compounds. In Experiment 1, noun-noun compounds and their phrasal contrasts (e.g., [da.ná.bur.nu] ‘mole cricket’ vs. [[da.ná][bur.nú]] ‘nose of a calf’), in Experiment 2, existing and novel compounds were acoustically measured by using existing vs. novel pairs (e.g., [da.ná.bur.nu] vs. [ke.dí.bur.nu]). Results for Experiment 1 showed a clear phonetic tendency that distinguished compounds from their phrasal counterparts. The model revealed significant main effects for intensity, duration, pitch values, and a strong interaction between position (left vs. right) and prosodic type (compound vs phrase). In Experiment 2, even though novel compounds are not lexicalized parts of a language, results from novel compounds revealed a similar stress assignment on the pitch, intensity, and duration of existing compounds. Significant interaction effects were observed for acoustic correlates between position (left vs. right) and compound type (existing vs. novel). Findings obtained from this research might contribute to revealing the basic phonetic aspects of the compound stress in Turkish, and results may lay the groundwork for future research.

A sociophonetic analysis of rhotic variation in Italian schoolchildren

This paper investigates the production of Italian rhotics in the speech of 75 schoolchildren (6-10 years old) in the area of Biella, in the North-West of Italy. As rhotics are subject to a high degree of variation in Italian, their distribution and phonetic realisations were taken into account to test the influence of linguistic and sociolinguistic variables, i.e., phonological context, age and migratory background of the children’s families. Results show that children’s production varies across contexts and ages, as older subjects’ patterns of variation seem to be approaching the distribution and the characteristics that would be expected in the target. Moreover, we propose that the migratory backgrounds and, in particular, the different Heritage Languages present in the children’s repertoires, might be explanatory to the high degree of variability observed, e.g., in subjects of the same age.

Acoustic phonetics: Notes on the evolution of /ti̯, ki̯/ yod contexts in Spanish

The explanation for the evolution of /ti̯/ and /ki̯/ yod contexts has been based on articulatory reasons. However, sound change has an important auditory and acoustic basis. This paper deals with two main topics: (a) it examines the confluence of the phonetic realisations of dental and velar stops in /ti̯/ and /ki̯/, and (b) it seeks to determine whether voicing occurs after the assibilation process. The results show that the allophones for /t/ and /k/ display acoustic similarities regarding point of articulation cues, which could explain misperceptions. Voicing also seems to be very frequent in these phonetic realisations, which points to a process simultaneous with assibilation.

Historical sound changes in Central Chadic (Afroasiatic)

Abstract In its entirety as much as with regard to its four branches, the Chadic language family poses challenges to the application of the Neogrammarian-school comparative method, not the least because of the immense time-depth involved and aggravated by certain typological peculiarities of Chadic phonology and morphology as inherited from its Afroasiatic ancestry. This is particularly true for Central Chadic, which—with 80 languages—is the most numerous and most diverse branch of Chadic, which in total counts almost 200 languages and thereby more than half of all known Afroasiatic languages. Both more or less ‘regular’ and ‘sporadic’ sound changes criss-cross the territories currently occupied by speakers of Central Chadic languages in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad, which allow confident identification of cognates. Some cognates have survived many millennia of language history practically unchanged with regard to their phonetic realisations, while others differ remarkably from the reconstructed proto-language forms beyond ad hoc recognisability. Recent historical comparative research by Richard Gravina (2014, 2015) and the present author (2022, 2023) involving 66 spoken languages and some 230 cognate lexical items have unearthed much of the linguistic histories behind the massive synchronic diversity of the modern Central Chadic languages. The recent research by the author has added to our understanding of historical Central Chadic phonology by unravelling the phonological processes by which the languages have developed sets of new phonemes, in addition to tracing more or less ‘regular’ and ‘sporadic’ sound changes that the PCC segmental inventories of vowels and consonants underwent. Modern Central Chadic languages show sets of innovative vowels and consonant whose emergence can largely be attributed, besides occasional instances of segmental fusion, to the ‘colouring’ effects of so-called prosodies. This makes the analysis of prosodic features such as palatalisation, labialisation, prenasalisation and glottalisation essential in order to understand the evolution of modern Central Chadic languages.

How Mandarin Influences R in the Accented American English of Chinese Learners

The use of English as a global language has led to a growing number of non-native English speakers, including Chinese learners, who speak English with an accent influenced by their first language. This phenomenon can be explained by the mutual exclusivity assumption, which means that our first language will interfere with the second language acquisition. This study examines the role of the English phoneme/r/in the accented English of Chinese learners. The research investigates how Chinese learners perceive, produce, and acquire /r/in English and the challenges they face in mastering this sound. The study draws on existing research on the mutual exclusivity effect, second language acquisition, and phonology employing a qualitative method to analyze data collected from Chinese learners of English with the help of Praat. The findings reveal that Chinese learners encounter difficulties with /r/ due to the absence or different phonetic realization of this sound in their native language. These learners often struggle with both the perception and production of /r/, leading to various types of mispronunciation. The study also identifies factors that contribute to the challenges faced by Chinese learners in acquiring /r/, including the influence of their first language, the age of acquisition, and the exposure to English input. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of teaching strategies that target the specific needs of Chinese learners in mastering/r/and improving their overall English pronunciation.

Acoustic and durational correlates of diphthong contrasts in Nafsan

The phonetic realization of diphthongs, vowels with dynamic productions involving two targets and often described as inherently long, is under-studied cross-linguistically (e.g., Petersen, 2018), including within many well-documented languages. Nafsan, an Oceanic language spoken by around 6000 people on Efate island in Vanuatu, has a vowel inventory with monophthongs of five qualities, all with a length contrast (Billington et al., 2021), and at least six contrastive closing diphthongs (Thieberger, 2006). These include /ei/ and /oi/, and two pairs in which the primary difference is viewed as the height of the second target: /ai/ and /ae/, and /au/ and /ao/. However, there are indications that duration may be an important correlate in these pairs. This presentation reports on a study of the six closing diphthongs based on data collected with six Nafsan speakers in Erakor village, using a wordlist of mostly monosyllabic words with diphthongs in both open syllables and syllables closed with a coronal consonant, produced in an utterance-medial frame. Results show that, in addition to differences in second formant frequency, /ae/ and /ao/ are significantly longer than /ai/ and /au/, raising questions about whether the contrast is best interpreted as a length contrast similar to that found among monophthongs.

Creaky voice prevalence across Sydney

Creaky voice is a voice quality that has been associated with various social categories such as gender, age, and socioeconomic status in previous literature. However, few studies have investigated creaky voice in relation to linguistic or ethnic heritage. Using a corpus of conversational speech from 131 Australian English-speaking teenagers who live in various areas across Sydney characterized by differences in linguistic and ethnic diversity, we explore how creaky voice use is influenced by gender and ethnic heritage. Creaky voice is automatically detected using the optimized Union method (White et al., 2022, JASA), which employs a combination of acoustic cues to identify the various phonetic realizations of creaky voice. Findings show that creaky voice use is highly variable across Sydney indicating that a complex relationship exists between creaky voice prevalence, speaker gender and ethnic heritage. This study shows that while variability may correlate with social groupings, other factors, such as a speaker’s orientation towards their community, may contribute to levels of creaky voice prevalence.