Sonority Sequencing Principle Research Articles

Discussing some Phonological Aaspects of Kurdish Through the Words befr and berf ”snow”

”befr” and ”berf” are variants of the same word. They are used in different Kurmanji-speaking areas. Although the sequencing of [f] and [r] is the main difference between them, this variation leads us to investigate some aspects of Kurdish phonology. It also works as a sample for testing some phonological theories. In this study, the sounds of befr and berf are described in phonetics terms and in the frame of distinctive features. Since one of the key questions of this study is why these two forms exist in Kurmanji, the phonotactics of their sounds within the frame of the Sonority Hiearchy and the Sonority Sequencing Principle is presented. When befr is pronounced in isolation, an epenthetic [i] is inserted between [f] and [r]. This epenthesis changes the monosyllabic [befr] to a disyllabic [be.fir]. Therefore, syllabe types and stress placement in Kurmanji are also discussed here by presenting the theory of Metrical phonology and the moraic theory.The study ends with answering the key question. The last section demonstrates why both forms of Kurdish ”snow” are acceptable by adopting Optimaltiy Theory.

Sensitivity to the sonority sequencing principle in rats (Rattus norvegicus)

Albeit diverse, human languages exhibit universal structures. A salient example is the syllable, an important structure of language acquisition. The structure of syllables is determined by the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP), a linguistic constraint according to which phoneme intensity must increase at onset, reaching a peak at nucleus (vowel), and decline at offset. Such structure generates an intensity pattern with an arch shape. In humans, sensitivity to restrictions imposed by the SSP on syllables appears at birth, raising questions about its emergence. We investigated the biological mechanisms at the foundations of the SSP, testing a nonhuman, non-vocal-learner species with the same language materials used with humans. Rats discriminated well-structured syllables (e.g., pras) from ill-structured ones (e.g., lbug) after being familiarized with syllabic structures conforming to the SSP. In contrast, we did not observe evidence that rats familiarized with syllables that violate such constraint discriminated at test. This research provides the first evidence of sensitivity to the SSP in a nonhuman species, which likely stems from evolutionary-ancient cross-species biological predispositions for natural acoustic patterns. Humans’ early sensitivity to the SSP possibly emerges from general auditory processing that favors sounds depicting an arch-shaped envelope, common amongst animal vocalizations. Ancient sensory mechanisms, responsible for processing vocalizations in the wild, would constitute an entry-gate for human language acquisition.

Application of sonority theory in standard Albanian

The Sonority Theory, which is the fundamental model in syllabification, has been one of the most researched theories for more than a century. Although this theory has been treated by Albanian linguists, it is necessary that a few supplementations and precisions be made. Through this paper, we intend to provide a more comprehensive view of this theory and its mechanisms in Standard Albanian. The aim of this paper was to prove that the sonority theory is applicable to the standard Albanian, because the interviewed students were its native speakers. The object of this paper were bi-consonantal clusters, that are numerous in Albanian. Based in the material comprised in the Dictionary of Present-Day Albanian (1980) we explored bi-consonantal clusters appearing in onsets and codas, which were classified into three kinds: a) consonant clusters in full compliance with the sonority sequencing principle, b) consonant clusters that violate the sonority sequencing principle, and c) consonant clusters that have the same scale of sonority. From the undertaken analysis, conclusions were drawn as to the dispersion of sounds in the onset and coda for the syllable model of standard Albanian, and suggestions were given according to the orthography of some words with consonantal clusters that violate the sonority principle.

Production and perception of novel consonant clusters

The present study details a visual world paradigm eye tracking experiment on perception and production of novel consonant clusters. The clusters varied in difficulty based on sonority or perceptual salience scales. During the familiarization phase, listeners heard and watched a story on-screen and produced the names of novel creatures and objects. Each story focused on one cluster. Four creatures/objects were introduced corresponding to the (1) target cluster (e.g., [dlɑpɹ]), (2) epenthesized cluster competitor (e.g., [dəlɑkn]), (3) first cluster consonant (e.g., donkey), and (4) second cluster consonant (e.g., lollipop). During each trial, participants verbally identified one of the four creatures/objects, and their gaze was tracked. We analyzed the productions and gazes to investigate the relative difficulty of producing and perceiving the consonant clusters. We predicted participants would (1) correctly produce/perceive a cluster, (2) epenthesize a vowel/perceive vowel epenethesis, or (3) perceive/produce only one of the cluster sounds. We statistically analyzed the participants’ propensity toward each behavior in both production and perception. As part of the analysis, we examined whether participant behavior was better predicted by analyzing the clusters with the sonority sequencing principle or in terms of acoustic salience and cue recoverability.

Frequent violation of the sonority sequencing principle in hundreds of languages: how often and by which sequences?

AbstractThe Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) is a fundamental governing principle of syllable structure; however, its details remain contested. This study aims to clarify the empirical status of the SSP in a cross-linguistic study of 496 languages. We adopt a phonetically-grounded definition of sonority – acoustic intensity – and examine how many languages contain SSP-violating clusters word-initially and word-finally. We consider the treatment of complex segments both as sonority units and as clusters. We find a significant proportion of languages violate the SSP: almost one half of the language sample. We examine which clusters cause the violations, and find a wide range: not only the notorious case of clusters with sibilants, but also with nasals, approximants and other obstruents. Violations in onsets and codas are not symmetrical, especially when complex segments are treated as units. We discuss where existing theoretical accounts of the SSP require further development to account for our crosslinguistic results.

Clear speech in Tashlhiyt Berber: The perception of typologically uncommon word-initial contrasts by native and naive listeners

Tashlhiyt Berber is known for having typologically unusual word-initial phonological contrasts, specifically, word-initial singleton-geminate minimal pairs (e.g., sin vs ssin) and sequences of consonants that violate the sonority sequencing principle (e.g., non-rising sonority sequences: fsin). The current study investigates the role of a listener-oriented speaking style on the perceptual enhancement of these rarer phonological contrasts. It examines the perception of word-initial singleton, geminate, and complex onsets in Tashlhiyt Berber across clear and casual speaking styles by native and naive listeners. While clear speech boosts the discriminability of pairs containing singleton-initial words for both listener groups, only native listeners performed better in discriminating between initial singleton-geminate contrasts in clear speech. Clear speech did not improve perception for lexical contrasts containing a non-rising-sonority consonant cluster for either listener group. These results are discussed in terms of how clear speech can inform phonological typology and the role of phonetic enhancement in language-universal vs language-specific speech perception.

Frequent violation of the sonority sequencing principle in hundreds of languages: How often and by which sequences?: Supplementary Materials

Frequent violation of the sonority sequencing principle in hundreds of languages: How often and by which sequences?: Supplementary Materials

Frequent violation of the sonority sequencing principle in hundreds of languages: How often and by which sequences?: Supplementary Materials

Frequent violation of the sonority sequencing principle in hundreds of languages: How often and by which sequences?: Supplementary Materials

Brain responses to lexical attestedness and phonological well-formedness as revealed by fast periodic visual stimulation

We investigated the mechanisms underlying the online-processing of phonological constraints using oddball fast-periodic visual stimulation coupled with EEG. We focused on the Sonority Sequencing Principle and examined whether steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) are sensitive to the sonority constraint on syllable onsets. Native French speakers were presented with streams of CCVC non-words (C: consonant, V: vowel) at a fixed 6-Hz base rate. We manipulated the phonological well-formedness and lexical attestedness of CC onsets in two conditions. SSVPs were observed at the base rate associated to visual stimuli. As expected, they did not differ between conditions. Oddball SSVEPs were observed at 1.2 Hz (and its harmonics) and differed in the two conditions. These results showed that SSVEPs are sensitive to sublexical features. They also suggest that the processing of phonological constraints rely on mechanisms which could be dissociated from those underlying the processing of statistical properties of the lexicon.

The Analysis of Coda Clusters in Jizani Arabic: An OT Perspective

This paper explains how native speakers of Jizani Arabic (henceforth, JA) treat final consonant clusters in superheavy syllables (CVCC) using a parallel Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993, 2004) to show how the theory can account for the cross-linguistic variations of coda clusters through the ranking of different constraints. JA is a Saudi dialect spoken in the southwestern part of Saudi Arabia in Jizan city. It is common among many Saudi Arabic dialects like Najdi, Hijazi, Taifi and Qassimi that rising sonority in coda clusters is avoided by using vowel epenthesis to comply with the Sonority Sequencing Principle (henceforth, SSP), where there is no difference between nasals and liquids. However, in JA, we observe that vowel epenthesis occurs only if the last segment in CVCC is a liquid (/l/ or /ɾ/); for instance, /tʕifl/à [tʕifil] ‘child’ and /ħibɾ/à [ħibiɾ] ‘ink’. The vowel has been epenthesized because the last consonant in both examples is more sonorous than the preceding obstruents. However, the vowel will not be inserted if the final consonant is a nasal preceded by an obstruent; for instance, /laħm/à[laħm] ‘meat’ and /ɡutʕn/à[ɡutʕn] ‘cotton’. Although the universal sonority scale ranks nasals as more sonorous than obstruents, nasals in JA behave as they are equally sonorous as obstruents. In other words, nasals in this dialect group with stops and fricatives in the sonority scale.

Consonant Cluster Productions in Preschool Children Who Speak African American English.

The aim of this study was to compare word-initial and word-final consonant cluster productions in young children who speak African American English (AAE) and compare their productions to what we know about cluster productions in children who speak Mainstream American English (MAE), in order to minimize misdiagnosis of speech sound disorders. Twenty-two children (ages 2;10-5;4 [years;months]) labeled pictures whose names contained at least one consonant cluster in word-initial and/or word-final position. Most two-element clusters of English were sampled, the majority in two or more words. The participants' responses were transcribed using a consensus transcription procedure. Each cluster attempt was analyzed for its similarity with MAE. Percentage matching scores were significantly higher for word-initial than word-final clusters. Word-final clusters produced as singletons were significantly more common than word-final cluster substitutions. However, word-initial cluster substitutions were significantly more common than word-initial clusters produced as singletons. Word-initial cluster mismatches were consistent with markedness theory and the sonority sequencing principle (SSP). By contrast, word-final cluster mismatches were not consistent with the SSP, while the voicing generalization seen in adult speakers of AAE was evident. Culturally and linguistically appropriate assessment of phonological development in children who speak AAE requires an understanding of the contrastive and noncontrastive features exemplified in their consonant cluster productions.

Competing repair strategies for word-final obstruent-liquid clusters in northern metropolitan French

ABSTRACTFrench licenses word-final obstruent-liquid clusters (table /tabl/; souffre /sufʁ/). These clusters may be realised faithfully resulting in an apparent violation of the sonority sequencing principle (Clements, 1990). Yet, the clusters can also be repaired in one of two ways: (1) through the reduction of the cluster (i.e. [tab]) or (2) through the epenthesis of a schwa vowel, resyllabifying the cluster into the onset position (i.e. [ta.blə].) In this article, I investigate which factors condition the realisation of word-final obstruent-liquid clusters. The results are formalised in Maximum Entropy Grammar (Goldwater and Johnson, 2003), but evidence for effects of style and speaker age require the scaling of several constraints (Coetzee and Kawahara, 2013). This study sheds light on these curious clusters, while raising new questions about the interaction of grammatical and non-grammatical factors.

Vowel And Consonant Simplification In Speech Disorder: An Analysis Of Segmental Phonology

The objective of the study is to investigate the sound simplification of speech output in Broca's aphasics and describe the effect of the alteration within phonological features from the perspective of Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP). The speech output of two patients was exposed using phonological tasks and recorded with a Sonny voice recorder. The effect of features in substitution sonority was measured with the Wilcoxon's test and acoustic features were analyzed with Praat. The results of the study revealed that the consonant substitution and omission errors in Broca’s aphasia occur in the initial position due to the lesion in the anterior part of the left brain and that the less marked features that are statistically substituted by marked features are not significantly affected by marked features that are substituted by less marked features. The substitution was dominantly influenced by neighboring segments and the sonority violance occured againts the sonority scale

Sonority projection effect in French: A signal detection theory approach

AbstractFocusing on the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP), we investigated the extent to which adult native speakers of French are sensitive to sonority-related constraints compared to lexical attestedness. In a non-word acceptability task, participants were asked to rate the acceptability of three types of non-words using a 6-point scale: non-words with attested sonority rising onset, non-words with unattested sonority rising onset, and non-words with unattested sonority falling onset. Data analysis was done using the signal detection theory approach to measure sensitivity of participants to lexical attestedness and to phonological well-formedness (i.e., respecting or violating the SSP). The results showed that speakers distinguished well-formed and ill-formed forms even when lexical attestedness was controlled for. This is consistent with previous findings on sonority projection effects. Participants were more sensitive to lexical attestedness than phonological well-formedness. Future research using computational models should investigate mechanisms that could account for these findings, namely whether a similar result would be obtained without including any assumption about the SSP in these models.

Adjacent Consonants and the Universality of Sonority Sequencing Principle in Dotyali Dialects: Syllable Contact Analysis

This paper presents on all the possible adjacent consonant letters in Dotyali, one of the descendant language of Sanskrit, mainly spoken in Shudoor Paschim Nepal [sʊdʊrə-pəssɪmə] (Far-western) and compares the results of their phonological changes in seven local contemporary speech (dialects)：Doteli，Dadeldhuri，Bajhangi，Achhami，Baitadeli，Darchuli and Bajureli. Based on the corpus data from the field survey conducted in between July-September 2017 on a list of 1000 frequently used Dotyali words, this paper comes with a conclusion that even the onset clusters with rising sonority profile (except glides) are broken up by vowel epenthesis or simplify the clusters by deletion. It is revealed that dialects, except from the Achhami and Bajureli, the consonants with different degree of sonority across the syllable boundary tend to be changed due to syllable contact to meet Sonority hierchy, but the sonority distance between two consonants (coda and onset consonants) varies, therefore phonological changes like assimilation, dissimilation, desonorization, contact anaptyxis, contact methasis etc. goes differently. The phonological changes in Bajureli occurs maily due to other separate independent constraints.

Some Characteristics of Syllable Structure in Qassimi Arabic (QA): An Optimality Theoretic Framework

The paper investigates the syllable structures of Qassimi Arabic (QA), which is a sub-dialect of Najdi Arabic (NA) and is spoken in the north-central region of Saudi Arabia, particularly in the Qassim Region. Within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT), we show how the well-formed syllable is derived from the interaction of constraints. We show how the OT captures some of the major processes for structuring the syllables of QA, such as syncope, epenthesis, and geminate. The analysis revealed that onsetless syllables are prohibited in QA. The dialect allows word-initial consonant clusters, which is a result of the syncope process. Coda clusters also occur in QA that must obey the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP); otherwise, epenthesis presents to repair the violation. As for the geminates, QA permits geminates medially and finally, but not initially. The data revealed that QA demonstrates seven fundamental syllable structures grouped into three categories: light syllables, as in CV; heavy syllables, as in CVV and CVC; and super heavy syllables, as in CVVC, CVCC, CCVVC and CVVCC.

Phonological awareness and sonority in Greek children: developmental data and clinical perspectives

ABSTRACT Phonological awareness is closely related to reading acquisition and it is often the focus of the therapy services provided by speech-language pathologists and special education teachers. In this study, we investigate whether sonority theory can account for the developmental patterns of phoneme awareness skills in Greek. To that end, 40 preschool and first grade children carried out an offline metaphonological task that involved the initial consonant deletion of two-consonant clusters. Overall, children’s performance was in line with the sonority sequencing principle (SSP); consonant clusters that display a maximal rise in sonority were easier to manipulate compared to clusters with minimal sonority difference or SSP-violating clusters. Affricates generated the highest number of errors, a finding that strengthens the singleton status of /ts/ and /dz/ in Greek. Increased error rates were also found for /ps/, /pç/, /ks/, a fact attributed to both to their spelling and sonority characteristics. Conclusively, it is claimed that the developmental error patterns reported in this study can be used to inform appraisal and treatment protocols of phonological awareness in Greek, by organizing metaphonological tasks based on the presumed level of difficulty of the items tested and/or treated.

A Mixed-principle Rule-based Approach to the Automatic Syllabification of Serbian

In this paper, we present a mixed-principle rule-based approach to the automatic syllabification of Serbian, based on prescriptive rules from traditional grammar in combination with the Sonority Sequencing Principle. We explore the problems and limitations of the existing rule set and sonority-based approaches, introduce an algorithm that utilizes both means in an attempt to produce a more accurate segmentation of words into syllables that is better aligned with the intuition of the native speakers, and present the statistical data related to the distribution of syllables and their structure in Serbian.

Sonority Sequencing Principle in Sabzevari Persian: A Constraint-Based Approach

Abstract This study sheds light on the relationship between the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) and syllable structure in Sabzevari, a Persian vernacular spoken in the Sabzevar area of Northeast Iran. Optimality Theory (OT), as a constraint-based approach, is utilized to scrutinize sonority violation and its repair strategies. The results suggest that obedience to the SSP is mandatory in Sabzevari, as shown through the treatment of word-final clusters in Standard Persian words which violate the SSP. These consonant clusters are avoided in Sabzevari by two phonological processes: vowel epenthesis and metathesis. Vowel epenthesis is motivated by final consonant clusters of the forms /fricative+coronal nasal/, /plosive+bilabial nasal/, /fricative+bilabial nasal/, /plosive+rhotic/, /fricative+rhotic/, and /plosive+lateral/. Metathesis, as another repair strategy for sonority sequencing violations, occurs when dealing with final consonant clusters of the forms /plosive+fricative/and / fricative+lateral/.

Konsonantski nizovi u nastupu u engleskom i srpskom

The aim of this paper is to provide a comparison of onset clusters in English and Serbian within the theoretical framework that employs the concept of sonority. According to the Sonority Sequencing Principle (Kiparsky, 1979; Selkirk, 1984; Clements, 1990), consonant sequences can be divided into core clusters, sonority reversals and sonority plateaus. In order to divide onset clusters into these three groups, we used the principles referring to possible consonant clusters provided in Roach (2009) and the classification of consonant clusters in Petrović & Gudurić (2010). The classification shows that the majority of sequences in English and Serbian represent core clusters. All three types of clusters are more numerous in Serbian. Dispersion of demisyllables in the two languages was calculated with the aim of determining their complexity. Complexity ranking indicates that more complex structures tend to occur less frequently in both languages. On the other hand, the simpler demisyllables can be found in a larger number of words.