Phonological Distinctions Research Articles

Phrase prosody of a southern Russian dialect: Rogovatoe

This paper deals with the phrase intonation of the Southern Russian dialect spoken in the village of Rogovatoe, in the Starooskol’sky district of the Belgorod region. The study is devoted to the analysis of the prosodic structure of various communicative categories: statements, yes-no questions, wh-questions, non-finality, imperative, and vocative. Based on the examination of more than 7000 sentences, I argue that the dialect of Rogovatoe uses only two monotonal pitch accents — H* and L* — as opposed to three bitonal accents of Modern Standard Russian. I also postulate two final boundary tones — H% and L% — for this dialect, while no proof of a phonological distinction between the high and the low phrase accents was found. Finally, the idiom of Rogovatoe employs the phonological distinction between the high and the low initial boundary tone — %H and %L. Therefore, the prosodic system of this Southern Russian dialect is much more focused on the level tones than Modern Standard Russian utilizing predominantly contour (rising and falling) tones.

Auditory-Motor Mapping Training With an Autistic Child from a Bilingual Family

Abstract Bilingual immigrant family members in the United States may experience specific challenges in providing support to their autistic children, who often exhibit speech delays and communication issues. These challenges can arise from a combination of language barriers, cultural obstacles, and a lack of therapeutic resources in their heritage language; a term synonymous with “home language,” “native language,” and “mother tongue,” referring to a language other than English used by immigrants and their children. This article focuses on addressing these issues through an adaptation of auditory-motor mapping training (AMMT), a specific therapeutic intervention originally designed for autistic children who consider English as their primary language, aiming to enhance speech production. This article brings forward a case example of an autistic child of a Korean immigrant family to illustrate the adaptation process of AMMT from English to another language, Korean, specifically the Seoul dialect. This study highlights three factors music therapists should consider during the adaptation: (a) phonological distinctions between the heritage language and English; (b) the language spoken within the child’s home and the parents’ perspective on bilingualism; and (c) the unique attributes of each autistic child. The pros and cons of AMMT and recommendations for music therapy professionals are also discussed.

Problemy z interpretacją fonologiczną postpalatalnych głosek zwarto-wybuchowych

PROBLEMS WITH THE PHONOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF POST-PALATAL PLOSIVE SOUNDS The article reports the most important phonetic changes which took place in the contemporary Polish language. The aim of the chapter is to answer the questions that arise when learning phonetics and phonology, especially in regard to phonemes /k΄/ and /g΄/. In this paper the author presents various opinions on the phonological distinctiveness of the two sounds. The author focuses on the phenomenon associated with depalatalisation of consonants [k΄] and [g΄] and presents solutions adopted in academic textbooks. Finally, the author presents suggestions for the phonological interpretation of selected consonants.

Two types of [NT]s in Panãra: Evidence for temporally ordered subsegmental units

This paper discusses articulatory and perceptual phonetic data on Panãra (ISO code: kre), a Jê language of Central Brazil, supporting the existence of a previously undocumented phonological distinction between two types of [NT] segments. Panãra exhibits a distinction between partially nasalized consonants arising from two distinct phonological processes: post-oralization of nasal consonants (/m, n, ɲ, ŋ/ → [mp, nt, ns, ŋk]), and pre-nasalization of oral obstruents (/p, t, s, k/ → [mp, nt, ns, ŋk]). These [NT]s contrast in surface sequences of the type [ṼNTV], as in the minimal pair /mĩ-ŋɾɛ/ → [mĩŋkɾɛ] ‘caiman egg’ vs. /mĩ-kɾɛ/ → [mĩŋkɾɛ] ‘caiman burrow.’ This novel data provides clear evidence that phonological grammars can and do manipulate subsegmental units. The data is analyzed within the framework of Q Theory, a model of representational phonology which decomposes the segment [Q] into a series of three quantized, temporally ordered subsegments (q1 q2 q3) (e.g., Shih & Inkelas 2019). The tripartite architecture of Q Theory provides the level of granularity necessary to distinguish between post-oralized nasals and pre-nasalized stops, where the former are represented with two nasal subsegments followed by one oral subsegment (m1 m2 p3), and the latter are represented with a single nasal subsegment followed by two oral subsegments (m1 p2 p3). It is shown that, to model the distribution between the two [NT]s in Panãra, the grammar must crucially make use of constraints that reference subsegmental units.

Tonal center of gravity predicts variation in the interpretation of rising and falling intonation in American English

In English, the pitch trajectory at the end of a phrase distinguishes assertions from questions, through falling versus rising intonation, respectively. This study asks if, within these broad classes, variation in the shape or slope of the pitch excursion is meaningful. Recent work proposes a phonological distinction between two tonally distinct sub-categories of rising intonation: shallow rises favor an assertive interpretation, while steep rises favor a question interpretation (Jeong 2018). We test an alternative analysis, where the probabilistic association between intonation and assertive/inquisitive interpretation arises not from a discrete difference between shallow and steep rises, but from meaningful variation within the rising class. We present findings from two perception experiments where listeners hear short utterances and identify the speaker’s intention to ASK or TELL. Pitch resynthesis (PSOLA) was used to create a stimulus continuum of phrase-final rising and falling F0 trajectories that vary in the slope and shape of monotonic F0 trajectories. Our results show a probabilistic relationship between interpretation (ASK/TELL) and rise variation, but do not support the previously proposed phonological distinction between shallow and steep rises. We propose a more parsimonious model of within-category variation grounded in the Tonal Center of Gravity acoustic measure (Barnes et al. 2012).

Spanish–English Cross-Linguistic Influence on Heritage Bilinguals’ Production of Uptalk

The present study examines the production of uptalk in Spanish and in English by Spanish heritage speakers in Southern California. Following the L2 Intonation Learning Theory, we propose that cross-linguistic influence in heritage bilinguals’ uptalk may occur along multiple dimensions of intonation. In this study, we examined the systemic dimension (i.e., presence of uptalk and presence of uptalk with IP-final deaccenting), the frequency dimension (i.e., frequency of uptalk and frequency of uptalk with IP-final deaccenting), and the realizational dimension (i.e., pitch excursion and rise duration) of heritage bilinguals’ uptalk. Our data showed that the three dimensions of intonation demonstrate varying degrees of cross-linguistic influence. The heritage bilinguals produced uptalk with IP-final deaccenting in both languages (i.e., systemic dimension), but produced it more in English than in Spanish (i.e., frequency dimension). That is, IP-final deaccenting emerges in heritage bilinguals’ uptalk in Spanish, but heritage bilinguals seem to recognize that this is an English feature that is not allowed in Spanish and try to suppress it as much as possible when producing uptalk in Spanish. However, in the realizational dimension, the heritage bilinguals demonstrated either phonetic assimilation to English (i.e., pitch excursion) or individual variability conditioned by language learning experience (i.e., rise duration). The asymmetry found across the dimensions suggests that, when bilinguals’ two languages are in competition for finite online resources, such as in the case of spontaneous speech production, phonological distinctions between L1 and L2 prosodic structures are kept, whereas phonetic differences that do not lead to any change in meaning are more prone to undergo cross-linguistic influence in order to reduce online processing cost. This study attempts to fill a gap in the literature on the cross-linguistic influence of intonation by bringing attention to heritage bilinguals. Heritage bilingualism introduces bilingual contexts that are often left unnoticed in traditional L2 acquisition scenarios (e.g., transfer from L2 to L1 intonation, asymmetry between order of acquisition and language dominance). Given that many aspects of cross-linguistic influence are shared across bilinguals, the investigation of heritage bilinguals’ intonation will contribute to building robust models of bilingual intonation.

Phrase Prosody of Two Eastern Middle-Russian Dialects

This paper deals with the phrase intonation of two neighboring Eastern Middle-Russian dialects with okan’je and akan’je spoken in Melenki and Gus’-Khrustal’ny districts of Vladimir region. The study, based on the material of dialectal speech recordings made in the 2008 and 2009 (nine speakers born in 1914–1940, total duration — 19 hours), reveals that the prosodic system of these dialects is relatively similar to that one of the Modern Standard Russian, sharing with it most pitch accents (L*, H*+L, L*+H) and association of tonal structures with the basic communicative categories — statements, yes-no questions, wh-question, non-finality, commands and requests. The main distinctive properties of the Vladimir dialect as compared to Standard Russian are: 1) phonological distinction between two rising pitch accents — L*+H and L+H*; 2) probable H* pitch accents in dialects with akan’je; 3) “falling set-up” on pretonic syllable for rising pitch accents; 4) earlier timing of rising L*+H and falling H*+L pitch accents; 5) phonological distinction between two initial boundary tones — %L and %H; 6) the wide distribution of falling final boundary tone HL%; 7) some traces of ‘word-to-word’ tonal prominence. Meanwhile, the difference between the two Vladimir dialects themselves is not that noticeable and lies in the domain of phonetic realization and the degree of manifestation of particular elements of prosodic structure, as well as in the degree of their prevalence rather than in the set of prosodic units.

German Word-Final Devoicing in Naturally-Produced and TTS Speech

This study explores the production and perception of word-final devoicing in German across text-to-speech (from technology used in common voice-AI “smart” speaker devices—specifically, voices from Apple and Amazon) and naturally produced utterances. First, the phonetic realization of word-final devoicing in German across text-to-speech (TTS) and naturally produced word productions was compared. Acoustic analyses reveal that the presence of cues to a word-final voicing contrast varied across speech types. Naturally produced words with phonologically voiced codas contain partial voicing, as well as longer vowels than words with voiceless codas. However, these distinctions are not present in TTS speech. Next, German listeners completed a forced-choice identification task, in which they heard the words and made coda consonant categorizations, in order to examine the intelligibility consequences of the word-final devoicing patterns across speech types. Intended coda identifications are higher for the naturally produced productions than for TTS. Moreover, listeners systematically misidentified voiced codas as voiceless in TTS words. Overall, this study extends previous literature on speech intelligibility at the intersection of speech synthesis and contrast neutralization. TTS voices tend to neutralize salient phonetic cues present in natural speech. Subsequently, listeners are less able to identify phonological distinctions in TTS. We also discuss how investigating which cues are more salient in natural speech can be beneficial in synthetic speech generation to make them more natural and also easier to perceive.

Facial locations in ASL based on production and perception data

This study tests the phonological distinctiveness of eight facial locations in ASL, with both production and perception experiments. This kind of work is crucial because, due to scarceness of minimal pairs in sign languages, phonemic locations are difficult to determine. Moreover, claims made but not tested by previous theoretic models (Stokoe et al. 1960, Stokoe 1965, Battison et al. 1975, Battison 1978, Friedman 1977, Kegl & Wilbur 1976, Wilbur 1979, Sandler’s 1989, Brentari’s 1998) are here investigated, including whether locations that are predicted to be contrastive are indeed distinct (e.g. ‘chin’ vs ‘mouth’). The specific goal of the first experiment (elicited production) is to determine what are the places of articulation, the aim of the second experiment (perception) is to determine if these places are contrastive.

Individual variation in acquisition of voicing contrasts by classroom learners of French

Abstract The present study examines the production of voicing by English-speaking learners of French in a traditional classroom environment, focusing on the juxtaposition between group patterns and individual tendencies. Thirty-one intermediate-level learners completed word-reading production tasks in French and English, and voice onset time was measured in word-initial bilabial stops. At the group level, results demonstrated strong interference from English in participants’ French, especially in the production of voiceless stops. In contrast, voiced stops overall were more target-like, revealing an asymmetry in the acquisition of the two members of the phonological distinction. At the individual level, much variability was observed both in the relative attainment of pronunciation targets and in the alignment between participants first and second language pronunciation patterns, ultimately highlighting the need for future research to consider individual trends in order to understand L2 speech acquisition in a more comprehensive manner.

Expanding Echo: Coordinated Head Articulations as Nonmanual Enhancements in Sign Language Phonology.

Echo phonology was originally proposed to account for obligatory coordination of manual and mouth articulations observed in several sign languages. However, previous research into the phenomenon lacks clear criteria for which components of movement can or must be copied when the articulators are so different. Nor is there discussion of which nonmanual articulators can echo manual movement. Given the prosodic properties of echoes (coordination of onset/offset and of dynamics such as speed) as well as general motoric coordination of various articulators in the human body, we expect that the mouth is not the only nonmanual articulator involved in echo phonology. In this study, we look at a fixed set of lexical items across 36 sign languages and establish that the head can echo manual movement with respect to timing and to the axis/axes of manual movement. We propose that what matters in echo phonology is the visual percept of temporally coordinated movement that repeats a salient movement property in such a way as to give the visual impression of a copy. Our findings suggest that echoes are not obligatory motor couplings of two or more articulators but may enhance phonological distinctions that are otherwise difficult to see.

O grafema e o dígrafo um estudo longitudinal do desempenho ortográfico de crianças de três dialetos portugueses

e possible preservation of the phonological distinction between the voiceless post-alveolar affricate /tS/ and the voiceless post-alveolar fricative /S/ - corresponding to the graphic forms <ch> and <x>, respectively - in only a few dialects in the north of the country could be motivating different behaviors from children speaking different regional varieties of Portuguese in their first years of schooling. Since this study has not yet been done, this paper intends to analyze the written productions of Portuguese children from three linguistic areas of Portugal, represented here by children from the cities of Lisbon, Porto, and Chaves, about the spellings <x> and <ch>, to understand whether there is any relationship between the preservation or non-preservation of this phonological distinction and the children’s orthographic performance. Thus, the written productions of students belonging to the three dialectal regions mentioned above will be analyzed based on data from the EFFE-On corpus (Rodrigues, Lourenço-Gomes, Alves, Janssen & Gomes 2015) with the phonological distinction between /tS/ and /S/ having been preserved in some and neutralized in others. Therefore, it will be possible to measure the impact that the students’ dialect can have on their orthographic performance, as well as perceive any differences in performance related to the grapheme <x> vs. the digraph <ch>. Two groups of children were created for the analysis: a group with typical and another with atypical phonological development children. The differences observed point to a need to deepen the discussion concerning the sound aspect of language in the classroom, beginning in the first years of schooling - especially during the literacy phase.

The various rising tones in Newcastle English: a phonological distinction?

L’anglais de Newcastle est caractérisé par l’utilisation de contours ascendants comme contours par défaut, l’anglais du Tyneside faisant partie en tant que tel des variétés présentant une intonation appelée UNBI (Urban Northern British Intonation), typique des grands centres urbains du Nord de la Grande Bretagne. Une étude précédente sur l’anglais de Newcastle réalisée sur le corpus NECTE a permis de distinguer deux grands types de contours montants : les montées simples ou montées-plateau d’une part, et les montées par paliers, d’autre part. Dans cette étude, nous faisons l’hypothèse que la différence entre ces deux types de contours montants est une distinction phonologique plutôt que phonétique, ce qui signifie que chaque type de montée aurait une fonction spécifique. Nous avons testé cette hypothèse en réalisant une étude pilote basée sur une expérience de perception. Le test ne montre pas de différence phonologique claire entre les deux contours, mais confirme que l’anglais de Newcastle appartient au groupe UNBI. Les résultats du test nous conduisent à une autre hypothèse, à savoir que l’un de nos contours montants serait en fait un contour connu sous le nom de HRT (High Rising Terminal ou Uptalk). HRT a en effet commencé à se diffuser à travers les variétés UNBI, et ce serait le cas à Newcastle, où l’on trouverait une cohabitation entre les deux intonations. Si cela s’avérait exact, on pourrait alors dire qu’il existe bien une distinction phonologique entre les deux types de montées puisqu’il a été démontré que les HRT ont des fonctions interactionnelles.

A graph-theoretic approach to identifying acoustic cues for speech sound categorization

Human speech contains a wide variety of acoustic cues that listeners must map onto distinct phoneme categories. The large amount of information contained in these cues contributes to listeners' remarkable ability to accurately recognize speech across a variety of contexts. However, these cues vary across talkers, both in terms of how specific cue values map onto different phonemes and in terms of which cues individual talkers use most consistently to signal specific phonological contrasts. This creates a challenge for models that aim to characterize the information used to recognize speech. How do we balance the need to account for variability in speech sounds across a wide range of talkers with the need to avoid overspecifying which acoustic cues describe the mapping from speech sounds onto phonological distinctions? We present an approach using tools from graph theory that addresses this issue by creating networks describing connections between individual talkers and acoustic cues and by identifying subgraphs within these networks. This allows us to reduce the space of possible acoustic cues that signal a given phoneme to a subset that still accounts for variability across talkers, simplifying the model and providing insights into which cues are most relevant for specific phonemes. Classifiers trained on the subset of cue dimensions identified in the subgraphs provide fits to listeners' categorization that are similar to those obtained for classifiers trained on all cue dimensions, demonstrating that the subgraphs capture the cues necessary to categorize speech sounds.

Perception of English Tense and Lax Vowels by Young Dialect Speakers and its Pedagogical Implication

This study attempts to investigate the perception of English tense and lax vowels /i, ɪ, u:, ʊ, eɪ, ɛ, oʊ, ɔ/ by two regional dialect Korean speakers focusing on the phonological and phonetic distinction. Their perceptual patterns are analyzed based on the Perceptual Assimilation Model. For this study, two perceptual tasks, the AX discrimination task and an identification task, were carried out with 18 Kyunggi dialect speakers and 12 North Kyungsang dialect speakers by using different sets of 80 tokens. The major results indicate that: (1) in phonetic distinction, there was no major difference in discriminating tense and lax vowels between regional dialect speakers; (2) in phonological distinction, a significant difference was detected in /i-ɪ/ pair in North Kyungsang dialect speakers; (3) Both groups showed the poorest performance in perceiving /u:-ʊ/ in phonetic and phonological distinction, specifically lower in phonological distinction; and (4) Employing this result of the L2 perceptual category into PAM, it can be explained that each regional dialect group uses different parameters of category goodness in L2 acquisition. Based on this analysis, the pedagogical implication is provided.

Consoantes róticas e variação no português de São Tomé

We investigate the phonetic variants associated with European Portuguese’s rhotic phonemes /ʀ/ e /ɾ/ in Santomean Portuguese, a variety that presently constitutes the L1 of the majority of San Tomeans, and we discuss the linguistic and sociolinguistic variables that underlie the observed variation. In order to do so, we carried out phonetic transcription of excerpts from 9 spontaneous interviews with Santomean informants, who were recorded in San Tome in 2008 and 2012. The data were transcribed with the EXMARaLDA Partitur software, counted manually, and linguistically analysed. The findings were confronted with recent studies on rhotics in this variety. Our data confirm that the neutralization of the distinction between /ʀ/ and /ɾ/ is a tendency stabilizing in the younger age groups of the urban population of São Tomé (cf. Bouchard, 2017). In light of the overall results, we further propose that São Tomean Portuguese lacks a phonological distinction between /ʀ/ and /ɾ/ (cf. Brandão, 2016; Brandão et al., no prelo).

Do listeners rely on dynamic spectral properties in the recognition of high-pitched vowels?

Previous research has demonstrated that intrinsic spectral changes play a significant role in vowel perception. It is possible that dynamic properties are of particular importance at high fundamental frequencies (f o) where the transfer function of the vocal tract is severely undersampled. The purpose of the present work was to determine whether the phonological function of vowels with very high f os can be preserved if listeners' identification is based exclusively on static spectral cues. Harmonic additive synthesis was used to generate 324 steady-state versions of the vowels /i y e o ɛ a o u/ with nine different f os between 220 and 880 Hz (all 250 ms). The gross spectral shape of each synthesized sound corresponded to a smoothed spectrum derived from a respective template vowel that was naturally produced in isolation by a female native German talker. Native German listeners either identified the spoken or re-synthesized isolated vowels in a two-alternative choice task. Preliminary data showed that listeners' sensitivity (A′) was above chance level in both conditions at all f os, but significantly higher in the spoken vowel condition. This supports the prediction that dynamic properties enhance listeners' identification at very high f os, but also indicates that phonological distinctiveness is to some degree preserved at high f os even when no dynamic spectral information is present. [Work supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) grants P2ZHP1_168375168375 and P400PG_180693180693.]Previous research has demonstrated that intrinsic spectral changes play a significant role in vowel perception. It is possible that dynamic properties are of particular importance at high fundamental frequencies (f o) where the transfer function of the vocal tract is severely undersampled. The purpose of the present work was to determine whether the phonological function of vowels with very high f os can be preserved if listeners' identification is based exclusively on static spectral cues. Harmonic additive synthesis was used to generate 324 steady-state versions of the vowels /i y e o ɛ a o u/ with nine different f os between 220 and 880 Hz (all 250 ms). The gross spectral shape of each synthesized sound corresponded to a smoothed spectrum derived from a respective template vowel that was naturally produced in isolation by a female native German talker. Native German listeners either identified the spoken or re-synthesized isolated vowels in a two-alternative choice task. Preliminary data showed that li...

False recognition modality effects in short-term memory: Reversing the auditory advantage

The auditory advantage in short-term false recognition – reduced false memories for auditory compared to visually presented words (Olszewska, Reuter-lorenz, Munier, & Bendler, 2015), has been attributed to greater item distinctiveness in auditory compared to visual memory traces. If so, varying auditory trace distinctiveness should influence false recognition rates. Phonologically and semantically related words were presented visually or aurally. The auditory advantage for semantic lists was replicated but a reversal was observed for phonological lists. Reducing modality-specific acoustic and phonological distinctiveness by increasing phonological similarity led to increased false memory. The findings are consistent with a framework positing the generation of input-dependent memory traces and the role of relative distinctiveness in influencing short-term memory.

Language surveillance: Pressure to follow local models of speakerhood among Latinx students in Madrid

Abstract In this article, we examine the language surveillance – both self and externally imposed – experienced by Madrid university students of Latin American origin in their encounters with the local population in educational settings. A pattern of language surveillance emerges in the interviews held with these students. It consists of hierarchical observation, normalising judgment and interrogation. These three reported practices are related to the following linguistic and non-linguistic resources that make surveillance possible, namely: (a) indexicality, especially with regard to phonological distinctions that index speakers as “local” vs. “non-local” or “native” vs. “non-native”; (b) the invoking of disciplinary and prescriptive linguistic knowledge, together with the application of a colonial episteme whereby the metropolitan norm prevails, thus denying non-metropolitan speakers their right to language ownership; and, (c) the management of power within interactions. By these means, varieties and speakers of Spanish are hierarchised and those that differ from locals are positioned as subaltern others. Language surveillance is a disciplinary power technique that prompts speakers to adapt to the centripetal force exerted by the reproduction of this knowledge. Finally, the article examines the extent to which this stylistic move to adapt, could be considered an example of muda given that these shifts are situational and relational and attend to the different social demands of the communicative settings where the practice is observed.

Consoantes róticas e variação no português de São Tomé

We investigate the phonetic variants associated with European Portuguese’s rhotic phonemes /ʀ/ e /ɾ/ in Santomean Portuguese, a variety that presently constitutes the L1 of the majority of San Tomeans, and we discuss the linguistic and sociolinguistic variables that underlie the observed variation. In order to do so, we carried out phonetic transcription of excerpts from 9 spontaneous interviews with Santomean informants, who were recorded in San Tome in 2008 and 2012. The data were transcribed with the EXMARaLDA Partitur software, counted manually, and linguistically analysed. The findings were confronted with recent studies on rhotics in this variety. Our data confirm that the neutralization of the distinction between /ʀ/ and /ɾ/ is a tendency stabilizing in the younger age groups of the urban population of São Tomé (cf. Bouchard, 2017). In light of the overall results, we further propose that São Tomean Portuguese lacks a phonological distinction between /ʀ/ and /ɾ/ (cf. Brandão, 2016; Brandão et al., no prelo).