Set Of Consonants Research Articles

Amodal phonological abstraction in infants at 10 months

Infants can abstract amodal information about place of articulation at 4-5 months, before perceptual attunement to native consonants occurs (Altuntas et al., in preparation). We tested infants in the same task at 10 months, after native consonant attunement has commenced, which may affect phonological abstraction relative to 4–5 months. 29 infants acquiring Australian English were trained to associate different cartoon animals with audio-only words from two artificial mini-languages (Language A: Kangaroo; Language B: Kookaburra), which differed in use of only labial or only coronal sets of consonants. They were tested with video-only words (silent talking face) paired with Congruent (matching) or Incongruent (mismatching) animals. We hypothesized that infants would look longer at the Congruent than Incongruent pairings during the test trials, indicating generalization from the auditory (training) to the visual modality (test), i.e., amodal abstraction. Surprisingly, looking times did not differ between Congruent and Incongruent trials. Attunement to native consonants at 10 months may interfere with phonological abstraction of the place of articulation feature across different consonants that share the same place. Examining other phonological abstractions or comparing infants acquiring languages with different consonant inventories could shed light on how perceptual attunement affects amodal phonological abstraction.

Spectral analysis of english fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/ produced by people with profound hearing loss

Purpose Hearing loss not only causes restricted speech understanding, but also alters speech production resulting in poor intelligibility. This study investigated whether English fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/ spoken by people with severe-to-profound hearing loss acoustically differ from those spoken by normal hearing (NH) individuals. Methods For hearing impaired (HI) group, we analyzed a part of deaf speech corpus collected at the Speech Perception Assessment Lab (SPAL) at the University of Memphis. From the big dataset, /aSa/ and /aSha/ recordings spoken by eight females were selected. For NH control group, Shannon’s consonant set (1999) spoken by eight females was used. A set of spectral moment analysis (Mean, Variance, Skewness, Kurtosis) along with spectral peak (SP) and wiener entropy (WE) were used as measures of spectral properties of /s/ and /ʃ/. Results Variance and WE for HI were significantly higher than those for NH group (p<0.05). Mean and SP for /s/ were significantly greater in NH group, while Mean and SP for /ʃ/ were significantly greater in HI group (p<0.05). This trends suggest greater Mean and SP differences between /s/ and /ʃ/ for NH group than HI group. Conclusions Based on our finding, Variance and WE are spectral measures that are different between NH and HI individuals’ spoken /s/ and /ʃ/. We assume that HI individuals likely pronounce /s/ and /ʃ/ without making clear distinction substituting by each other due probably to lack of auditory feedback or failure of motor control. Keywords: Fricatives; Spectral moment analysis; Hearing loss; Deaf speech

Open and closed mid-front vowels in Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec

Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec is spoken in the community of Teotitlán del Valle, in the Central Valley of Oaxaca in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Teotitlán Zapotec is one of the Central Zapotec languages, which belong to the Zapotecan language family within the Otomanguean language stock. Teotitlán Zapotec has two mid-front vowels. The distribution of these two mid-front vowels is conditioned by the nature of the adjacent consonants and accent and presents challenges to formal analysis due to a number of properties predictive of the distribution: the disjunctive set of consonants conditioning the alternation, the ganging effect of consonant type and syllable structure as triggers, the featural characterization of the process as raising assimilation, and asymmetries between derived and non-derived environments in the observed patterns.

Audio-visual integration in cochlear implant listeners and the effect of age difference.

This study aimed to investigate differences in audio-visual (AV) integration between cochlear implant (CI) listeners and normal-hearing (NH) adults. A secondary aim was to investigate the effect of age differences by examining AV integration in groups of older and younger NH adults. Seventeen CI listeners, 13 similarly aged NH adults, and 16 younger NH adults were recruited. Two speech identification experiments were conducted to evaluate AV integration of speech cues. In the first experiment, reaction times in audio-alone (A-alone), visual-alone (V-alone), and AV conditions were measured during a speeded task in which participants were asked to identify a target sound /aSa/ among 11 alternatives. A race model was applied to evaluate AV integration. In the second experiment, identification accuracies were measured using a closed set of consonants and an open set of consonant-nucleus-consonant words. The authors quantified AV integration using a combination of a probability model and a cue integration model (which model participants' AV accuracy by assuming no or optimal integration, respectively). The results found that experienced CI listeners showed no better AV integration than their similarly aged NH adults. Further, there was no significant difference in AV integration between the younger and older NH adults.

Two applications of movable mandible for physical models of the human vocal tract

The first application of a movable mandible for physical models of the human vocal tract is based on the 2017 static-model, the vocal-tract configuration of which was set to produce the vowel /a/. Two parts of the model, upper and lower jaws, are combined with a miniature robot hand unit to achieve articulatory movements for visual cues in a speech perception study. The second application is based on the 2018 dynamic-model, which is physically able to produce human-like speech sounds with a flexible material. Because portions of the articulators including the top surface of the tongue are made of a gel-type material, a user can manipulate the shape of the tongue and articulate different vowels and a certain set of consonants for educational purposes, for example. However, the mandible of the model is fixed, making it difficult to manipulate different sounds with different jaw openings, such as high versus low vowels. Therefore, a new model was developed by adding an additional mandible mechanism to the 20...

A Phonemic-Based Tactile Display for Speech Communication.

Despite a long history of research, the development of synthetic tactual aids to support the communication of speech has proven to be a difficult task. The current paper describes a new tactile speech device based on the presentation of phonemic-based tactile codes. The device consists of 24 tactors under independent control for stimulation at the forearm. Using properties that include frequency and waveform of stimulation, amplitude, spatial location, and movement characteristics, unique tactile codes were designed for 39 consonant and vowel phonemes of the English language. The strategy for mapping the phonemes to tactile symbols is described, and properties of the individual phonemic codes are provided. Results are reported for an exploratory study of the ability of 10 young adults to identify the tactile symbols. The participants were trained to identify sets of consonants and vowels, before being tested on the full set of 39 tactile codes. The results indicate a mean recognition rate of 86 percent correct within one to four hours of training across participants. Thus, these results support the viability of a phonemic-based approach for conveying speech information through the tactile sense.

‘Proper’ pro-nun-ʃha-ʃhun1 in Eighteenth-Century English: ECEP as a New Tool for the Study of Historical Phonology and Dialectology

English historical linguists have often complained about the scholarly neglect of the phonology of the Late Modern English period; yet, the value of pronouncing dictionaries as rich and reliable evidence has been demonstrated (Beal, J. C., 1999, English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Spence’s Grand Repository of the English Language (1775). Oxford: Clarendon Press; Jones, C., 2006, English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). This article presents a new electronic, searchable database of ‘Eighteenth-Century English Phonology’ (ECEP) which aims to facilitate research on the social, regional, and lexical distribution of phonological variants in 18th-century English, as documented in contemporary pronouncing dictionaries. Taking Wells’ (1982, Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) lexical sets for the vowel system of present-day varieties of English as its reference, the database provides unicode IPA transcriptions for the relevant segment of each word given as an example of lexical (sub)set in his account of standard lexical sets, to which we have added some complementary consonant sets. These will be of use for comparative studies with 19th-century and present-day English. First, we describe the methodology and contents of ECEP: primary source selection, data input and annotation, the web-based interface. Second, we report on two case studies that demonstrate the value of evidence that can be systematically extracted from ECEP for the analysis of segmental and suprasegmental phonology; these are variations in the pronunciation of ‘wh’ in the set whale (/hw/∼/w/∼/h/), and the palatalization of alveolar consonants before /uː/. Thus, this article will demonstrate the viability of ECEP for historical phonology, dialectology, and sociolinguistics, and will help to promote the use of databases as key resources in historical linguistics.

When borders overlap: Composite identities in children in international schools

A growing internationally mobile community is served by international schools. Their students are seen as adjusting to moves by identity development, acquiring new values and norms through cultural influences from national, individual and perhaps global sources. This occurs by emotional attachment to significant others and subsequent adoption of values which form consonant sets. Identity structure analysis was used to investigate this in a cohort of students over the course of a year. Results demonstrated their use of national and individual value-sets, forming a mosaic of identities rather than a blend.

Perceptual constraints in phonotactic learning.

Structural regularities in language have often been attributed to symbolic or statistical general purpose computations, whereas perceptual factors influencing such generalizations have received less interest. Here, we use phonotactic-like constraints as a case study to ask whether the structural properties of specific perceptual and memory mechanisms may facilitate the acquisition of grammatical-like regularities. Participants learned that the consonants C and C had to come from distinct sets in words of the form CVccVC (where the critical consonants were in word edges) but not in words of the form cVCCVc (where the critical consonants were in word middles). Control conditions ruled out attentional or psychophysical difficulties in word middles. Participants did, however, learn such regularities in word middles when natural consonant classes were used instead of arbitrary consonant sets. We conclude that positional generalizations may be learned preferentially using edge-based positional codes, but that participants can also use other mechanisms when other linguistic cues are given.

A new method for constructing fuzzy evidence based on the non-consonant random set

Natural-language information is often mathematically expressed by fuzzy sets. With the random set theory as a bridge, this kind of information can be transformed into fuzzy evidence in Dempster-Shafer (DS) theory. Then Dempster’s combination rule or other combination rules of evidence can be used perfectly for fusing natural-language and other information. However, this traditional transformation involves the use of α-cut sets to construct the focal elements which have to be represented as consonant sets. This construction is very inflexible and unreasonable in some practical applications. In this paper, with the desire to overcome this limitation, a method for constructing more general non-consonant focal elements is proposed based on the random set theory. Some examples are given to show the generality and the efficiency of this new method. Finally, we validate that non-consonant constructions provide less degrees of total uncertainty than that of the consonant case in these examples by using the evaluation criterion of total uncertainty

Consonant confusions in white noise

The classic [MN55] confusion matrix experiment (16 consonants, white noise masker) was repeated by using computerized procedures, similar to those of Phatak and Allen (2007). ["Consonant and vowel confusions in speech-weighted noise," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, 2312-2316]. The consonant scores in white noise can be categorized in three sets: low-error set [/m/, /n/], average-error set [/p/, /t/, /k/, /s/, /[please see text]/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /Z/], and high-error set /f/theta/b/, /v/, /E/,/theta/]. The consonant confusions match those from MN55, except for the highly asymmetric voicing confusions of fricatives, biased in favor of voiced consonants. Masking noise cannot only reduce the recognition of a consonant, but also perceptually morph it into another consonant. There is a significant and systematic variability in the scores and confusion patterns of different utterances of the same consonant, which can be characterized as (a) confusion heterogeneity, where the competitors in the confusion groups of a consonant vary, and (b) threshold variability, where confusion threshold [i.e., signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and score at which the confusion group is formed] varies. The average consonant error and errors for most of the individual consonants and consonant sets can be approximated as exponential functions of the articulation index (AI). An AI that is based on the peak-to-rms ratios of speech can explain the SNR differences across experiments.

EEG alpha distinguishes between cuneal and precuneal activation in working memory

In the literature on EEG during working memory (WM), the role of alpha power (8–13 Hz) during WM retention has remained unclear.We recorded EEG while 18 subjects retained sets of consonants in memory for 3 s; setsize (ss4, ss6, ss8) determines memory workload.Theta power (4–8 Hz) increased with workload in all subjects in middle frontal electrodes. Using ICA, the increase in theta could be attributed to one component whose generators were localized by sLORETA in the medial frontal gyrus.Alpha power in parietal electrode Pz showed a mean increase during retention as compared to prestimulus fixation (event-related synchronization, ERS). On an individual basis, alpha power increased with workload in 9 subjects (WL+ group) and decreased in 9 subjects (WL− group). The alpha increased in upper alpha for the WL+ group (mean: 10.4 Hz) and decreased in lower alpha for the WL− group (mean: 8.9 Hz). Time–frequency representations show high alpha power early during retention for the WL+ group and high alpha power late during retention for the WL− group. sLORETA revealed maximal contrast for the WL+ group in the cuneus and for the WL− group in the precuneus.In subjects with WL+, alpha increase in the cuneus may reflect WM maintenance or active inhibition of task-irrelevant areas. In subjects with WL−, alpha decrease in the precuneus may reflect release of inhibition associated with attentional demands. Thus, alpha EEG characterizes two aspects of processing in the same WM task.

Semantic priming effects from single words in a lexical decision task

The present research examines the semantic priming effects of a centrally presented single prime word to which participants were instructed to either “attend and remember” or “ignore”. The prime word was followed by a central probe target on which the participants made a lexical decision task. The main variables manipulated across experiments were prime duration (50 or 100 ms), the presence or absence of a mask following the prime, and the presence (or absence) and type of distractor stimulus (random set of consonants or pseudowords) on the probe display. There was a consistent interaction between the instructions and the semantic priming effects. Relative to the “attend and remember” instruction, an “ignore” instruction produced reduced positive priming from single primes presented for 100 ms, irrespective of the presence or absence of a prime mask, and regardless of whether the probe target was presented with or without distractors. Additionally, reliable negative priming was found from ignored primes presented for briefer durations (50 ms) and immediately followed by a mask. Methodological and theoretical implications of the present findings for the extant negative priming literature are discussed.

Evidence of an Early Metathesis among Akkadian piristum-Stem Nouns

Discussions of Semitic grammatical issues frequently fail to draw a distinction between two discrete aspects of the investigation of morphology, viz. synchronic parsing and diachronic etymology. 1 The core of the typical Semitic word-stem is said to lie in the root, an ordered set of consonantal elements serving as the word's formal and semantic skeleton. The root serves as the raw material out of which the morphological machinery of the language constructs the stem in question. Identifying the root within a given stem is, in one sense, a fairly simple question of parsing. There is, however, an intrinsic duality to the role of the root within the methodology of grammatical analysis-while, on the one hand, the root serves as the origin of the word-stem, at the same time it is the product of the analyst's act of grammatical deconstruction. As long as we are dealing solely with the synchronic plane, the difference between these two aspects of the root-the root as a building block in the construction of words vs. the root as an artifact of grammatical analysis-is fairly trivial. The distinction becomes crucial, however, when the analysis shifts to the level of diachrony, where our principal concern lies in the explication of linguistic history. Once we allow for the possibility that language change might play a key role in determining the shape which any given word has assumed by the time of its documentation, it becomes apparent that it is impossible to draw a simple equation between that word's synchronic root-the set of consonants which the grammatical parsing of a given stem will extractand its etymological root. Since linguistic formations are inherited from the past at least as much as they are generated in situ in the present, an etymological analysis will often demonstrate that, in historical terms, a given linguistic formation is ultimately the product of a set of developmental factors quite different from the grammatical processes of the language in which it is embedded.

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An EPG study of allophonic variation in the gestural magnitude of English lingual consonants

Previous work on English glides and liquids has shown that certain (consonant) gestures are most constricted in initial allophones, least constricted in final allophones, and constricted to an intermediate degree in ambisyllabic or resyllabified allophones. It is not known, however, whether this generalization applies to other consonants such as stops and fricatives. As the point-tracking and imaging techniques used in previous studies are not well suited for measuring these types of segments, the present paper will present the results of an EPG study testing the degree of tongue contact during lingual consonants in these three syllable positions. Results of a pilot study using two subjects and a reduced set of consonants were mixed, failing to replicate previous findings for some previously measured consonants (e.g., /n/), while supporting the predicted pattern for others not previously measured (e.g., /z/). Results will be presented for additional subjects using the full inventory of lingual consonants. [Work supported by NSERC.]

Mass media and the death penalty: Social construction of three Nebraska executions

This research analyzes local TV news coverage of three Nebraska executions in the 1990s, the first in the state since 1959. The three Nebraska executions allow us to see mass media coverage of the death penalty from four perspectives: 1) media organization routines, journalistic beliefs, and how source selection affected the content; 2) justice was portrayed through a consonant set of social symbols; 3) the public support for the death penalty in this country may have led journalists to avoid tough questioning of public officials; 4) the resulting coverage was a social construction of reality that might influence future public opinion. TV news reports emphasized the carnival‐like atmosphere at the state penitentiary during two of the three executions.

Integrated Cues of Voicing and Vowel Length in German: A Production Study

This paper examines influences of phonological representations upon the temporal relations in the production of word-medial VC-sequences. The parameters under investigation are vowel, closure, and release duration in a selected set of German disyllabic words. The words include systematically varied word-medial VOWEL LENGTH /a/ versus /a:/ preceded by the contrasting stops /p, b/, /t, d/, and /k, g/. One point of interest is the extent to which the duration of the vowel and of the closure interact in distinguishing the sets of consonants in intermediate position. The results provide evidence for an anticipatory vowel-lengthening effect before VOICED stops instead of a nearly constant duration of the “vowel + closure” sequence as claimed in the literature. Both LONG and SHORT vowels show a lengthening effect when preceding VOICED stops. Further, closure durations of VOICED stops are shorter than those of VOICELESS stops, but are not a function of preceding VOWEL LENGTH. If the stop closures somehow “compensate” for the greater lengthening of the LONG vowels, they should show a larger duration difference when preceded by LONG vowels, which they do not. Following the results of the production study, a tentative model for the temporal vowel and obstruent production is proposed.

Deriving a "phase response curve" from adjustment to simulated time zone transitions.

Thirty-eight subjects in groups of two to four have been subjected to simulated time zone transitions of 8 hr eastward, 8 hr westward, or 12 hr; all experiments have taken place in a temporal isolation unit, in which the light intensity during the waking periods was 250-300 lux. Circadian rhythms of rectal temperature have been used as a marker of the process of adjustment, the data being analyzed before (raw) and after "purification." Conventional results have been obtained, but when the data have been treated appropriately, they have produced a relationship between shift of the sleep-activity cycle and shift of the temperature rhythms that shows many characteristics of a phase response curve. Even though the factor or factors causing such adjustment are unknown, the results confirm that changes of a consonant set of "weak" zeitgebers is sufficient for entrainment to a new time zone to occur.

Invariants, specifiers, cues: an investigation of locus equations as information for place of articulation.

This experiment explored the information for place of articulation provided by locus equations--equations for a line relating the second formant (F2) of a vowel at midpoint of F2 of the formant at consonant-vowel (CV) syllable onset. Locus equations cue place indirectly by quantifying directly the degree of coarticulatory overlap (coarticulation resistance) between consonant and vowel. Coarticulation resistance is correlated with place. The experiment tested predictions that when coarticulation resistance varies due to properties of the consonant other than place of articulation (in particular, due to manner of articulation), locus equations would not accurately reflect consonantal place of articulation. These predictions were confirmed. In addition, discriminant analyses, using locus equation variables as classifiers, were generally unsuccessful in classifying a set of consonants representing six different places of articulation. I conclude that locus equations are unlikely to provide useful place information to listeners.