Place Of Articulation Features Research Articles

An Analytical Study of Assimilation in English Reading Texts

Abstract This study is concerned with analysing of assimilation as an English co-articulated phenomenon in a selected reading course assigned for Iraqi students in order to enhance the Iraqi ESL learners understanding of variety of English reading skills as well as phonology which is one of the bases of effective and successful reading. The aim of this paper is to help students overcome their problems through reading, listening and fluently pronouncing assimilated words in connected speech of English utterances for successful interaction and minimizing the Iraqi ESL students’ foreign accent. The collected data are the soundtracks of 14 reading passages taken from “Intermediate-Select Readings” /Second Edition by Linda Lee & Erik Gundersen as a second year reading textbook at the College of Languages / University of Kufa. The study analysed the data under scrutiny and found that the reciprocal assimilation is not as it is defined as adjacent sounds having mutual influence on each other to produce a third new fused sound, some features are copied just by one of them. It was also revealed that germination mostly occurs in complete assimilation when consonants in sequence are homorganic (the consonants have two features in common, manner of articulation and phonation). Since manner of articulation feature is existed in both sounds, the third place of articulation feature is copied automatically from the adjacent sound. Keywords: Assimilation, Germination, Voicing, Place, Manner, Regressive, Progressive

≪월인석보≫ 권 19의 진언 표기에 대하여: 종성 ‘ᅀ, ᄝ’을 중심으로

This paper explores the phonetic values, the principle of pronunciation, and the systematization of the final phonemes, codas ‘ᅀ, ᄝ’ appearing in the transcription for mantras of Wolinseokbo Vol. 19. ‘ᄝ, ᄫ, ᅀ, ᅙ’ appear as the final phonemes, codas in the transcription for mantras of Wolinseokbo Vol. 19, considering the phonological system of Chinese. This notation was identified as a method for notation of Chinese phonemes that are different from the Korean syllable structure or do not correspond to Korean. In this paper, the pronunciation of the codas ‘ᅀ, ᄝ’ and the principle of pronunciation were analyzed, and they corresponded to the Chinese [ɿ, ʅ] and [w] respectively. This was because each phoneme has the same place of articulation features. This analysis is expected to contribute to the establishment of the principle and system of the transcription for the final phonemes, codas in the foreign language notation of Hunminjeongeum.

Consonant–vowel interaction in Sichuan Chinese: An element-based analysis

This paper focuses on the representation of place of articulation features in consonants and vowels, on the basis of interaction between consonant and vowel place. New data from Sichuan Chinese are examined, which show at least four types of consonant–vowel interaction: labial attraction, two types of coronal attraction and velar attraction. Since consonants and vowels show patterns of interaction at all places of articulation, we argue that consonant and vowel place should be described using the same representational elements. We propose that the relevant generalizations reflect the historical development (not synchronic alternation), and show that an account using standard Dependency Phonology unary features can capture these facts.

Enhancing speech envelope by integrating hair-cell adaptation into cochlear implant processing

Cochlear implants (CIs) bypass some of the mechanisms that underlie normal neural behavior as occurs in acoustic hearing. One such neural mechanism is short-term adaptation, which has been proposed to have a significant role in speech perception. Acoustically-evoked neural adaptation has been mainly attributed to the depletion of neurotransmitter in the hair-cell to auditory-nerve synapse and is therefore not fully present in CI stimulation. This study evaluated a signal processing method that integrated a physiological model of hair-cell adaptation into CI speech processing. The linear high-pass adaptation process expanded the range of rapid variations of the electrical signal generated by the clinical processing strategy. Speech perception performance with the adaptation-based processing was compared to that of the clinical strategy in seven CI users. While there was large variability across subjects, the new processing improved sentence recognition and consonant identification scores in quiet in all the tested subjects with an average improvement of 8% and 6% respectively. Consonant recognition scores in babble noise were improved at the higher signal-to-noise ratios tested (10 and 6 dB) only. Information transfer analysis of consonant features showed significant improvements for manner and place of articulation features, but not for voicing. Enhancement of within-channel envelope cues was confirmed by consonant recognition results obtained with single-channel strategies that presented the overall amplitude envelope of the signal on a single active electrode. Adaptation-inspired envelope enhancement techniques can potentially improve perception of important speech features by CI users.

Laryngeal co-occurrence restrictions in Aymara: contrastive representations and constraint interaction

Through analyses of laryngeal co-occurrence restrictions in two varieties of Aymara, this article shows that contrastively specified representations are crucial in shaping phonological patterning. The article argues for a model of contrastive specifications in which features are hierarchically ordered (Dresher 2009). This results in asymmetries between features such that, for a given inventory, some features are contrastively specified in a greater number of segments than others. This asymmetry between features plays a central role in accounting for the interaction of place of articulation features and laryngeal features in Bolivian Aymara. The article also demonstrates that contrastive representations can be achieved as output forms in Optimality Theory and that the constraints which determine contrastive representations can be integrated with constraints which motivate restrictions on the co-occurrence, ordering and location of laryngeal features in Peruvian and Bolivian Aymara.

The neural correlates of sign versus word production

The production of sign language involves two large articulators (the hands) moving through space and contacting the body. In contrast, speech production requires small movements of the tongue and vocal tract with no observable spatial contrasts. Nonetheless, both language types exhibit a sublexical layer of structure with similar properties (e.g., segments, syllables, feature hierarchies). To investigate which neural areas are involved in modality-independent language production and which are tied specifically to the input–output mechanisms of signed and spoken language, we reanalyzed PET data collected from 29 deaf signers and 64 hearing speakers who participated in a series of separate studies. Participants were asked to overtly name concrete objects from distinct semantic categories in either American Sign Language (ASL) or in English. The baseline task required participants to judge the orientation of unknown faces (overtly responding ‘yes’/‘no’ for upright/inverted). A random effects analysis revealed that left mesial temporal cortex and the left inferior frontal gyrus were equally involved in both speech and sign production, suggesting a modality-independent role for these regions in lexical access. Within the left parietal lobe, two regions were more active for sign than for speech: the supramarginal gyrus (peak coordinates: −60, −35, +27) and the superior parietal lobule (peak coordinates: −26, −51, +54). Activation in these regions may be linked to modality-specific output parameters of sign language. Specifically, activation within left SMG may reflect aspects of phonological processing in ASL (e.g., selection of hand configuration and place of articulation features), whereas activation within SPL may reflect proprioceptive monitoring of motoric output.

Childrens’ Phoneme Identification in Reverberation and Noise

This study assessed the effects of reverberation, noise, and their combination on listeners' identification of consonants and vowels in naturally produced nonsense syllables presented at different sensation levels (re: speech recognition threshold). A secondary purpose of this study was to assess listeners' identification of voicing, manner, and place of articulation for consonants at 50 dB SL in the reverberation, noise, and combined conditions. Listeners, aged 6-30 years, identified consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV) stimuli presented at four different sensation levels (re: speech recognition threshold) of 30, 40, 50, and 60 dB SL in 4 listening conditions: (a) an optimal listening situation (no reverberation, no noise), (b) reverberation only (1.3 seconds), (c) noise only (+13 dB S/N against a multitalker babble), and (d) reverberation plus noise. Results showed that all listener groups achieved maximum consonant identification performance at 50 dB SL. Vowel identification scores were unaffected by SL. Statistical analyses revealed that children's ability to identify consonants varied according to listening condition. For example, children's consonant identification abilities reached adult-like levels of performance at about age 14 years in the reverberation-only and noise-only listening conditions. However, in the reverberation-plus-noise listening condition, children's consonant identification abilities do not mature until the late teenage years. The ability to identify vowels, on the other hand, develops much earlier. A feature analysis of the consonant data showed that for all 3 features (voicing, manner, and place), identification scores were highest in the control condition, similar for the reverberation-only and noise-only conditions, and lowest in the reverberation-plus-noise condition. Voicing was easier for listeners to identify than manner or place of articulation features in reverberation and noise. Taken together, these results suggest that the ability to identify speech in reverberation and noise reaches adult-like level of performance at different ages for different components of the speech signal.

The relationship between non-native phoneme perception and the MMN

The mismatch negativity (MMN) auditory-evoked potential reflects the detection of minimal stimulus differences at a preattentive level. It has been reported that the MMN reflects acoustic, rather than phonetic processing of speech stimuli. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between discrimination at a neurophysiologic level, as reflected by the MMN, and the behavioral ability of native speakers of American English to discriminate and label pairs of Hindi stop consonants that are contrasted by a place of articulation feature that is not phonemic in English. These pairs were the voiceless unaspirated Hindi stop consonants, dental and retroflex /t/, and the voiced unaspirated Hindi stops, dental and retroflex /d/. The present study addressed two questions: (1) whether the MMN response would be evoked by acoustic differences resulting from differences in place of articulation, even though behavioral discrimination ability was poor; and (2) whether there would be a difference in the presence/absence or other parameters (latency, duration, amplitude, and area) of the MMN response depending on which voicing contrast was presented.

Glottal transparency

Glottal consonants (/h/ and /?/) often have a special status that has led to the hypothesis that they are underspecified for both consonant and vowel place of articulation features. There is an alternative acoustically based explanation for the special status that, while workable, is valued less highly in linguistic theory. This alternative hypothesis can be ruled out only with data where the relevant acoustic phenomena are not contained in the input to be learned. I address four processes of consonant and vowel harmony in the speech of three children learning English, where the alternative hypothesis cannot account for the data. I conclude that glottals are underspecified for consonant and vowel place of articulation features, and that they lack the node in feature geometry that immediately dominates such features (either the Place node or an Oral node).

Speech cue enhancement in intervocalic stops

The place of articulation feature for stop consonants is subject to many errors in speech processing by hearing-impaired listeners. Attempts to improve the recognition of initial and final stop consonants by lowering the level of the first formant or-with a different approach-by narrowing the formant bandwidth of the first five formants only very partially led to satisfactory results. Intervocalic stops were used in the present investigation, on the one hand because the spectral information is represented twice (in the VC as well as in the CV-transition) and, on the other hand, because the closure duration offers additional information to the listener. The modification of bandwidth led to no noticeable improvement in the /b, d, g/ discrimination. A change of the closure durations affected the identification of the stops, especially the /b/. The modification of the transitions of the second and third formants optimized the recognition rates for /b/ and /g/.