English Stop Research Articles

Variation in VOT in English child-directed speech of English-Mandarin and English-Malay early bilinguals in Singapore

ABSTRACT Variability has been observed in the phonetic/phonological properties of child-directed speech from late-second language bilingual caregivers, but less is known about input variation among early bilinguals in multi-dialectal/multilingual contexts. This study examined English stop voicing contrasts in the adult-directed and child-directed speech of 30 Singaporean early bilingual mothers who differed in their other language (Mandarin/Malay) and language dominance. Results showed that, while Malay and Chinese mothers used similar voice onset time (VOT) for voicing contrast, they differed in where on the VOT continuum these contrasts were made, regardless of speech style and dominance. Compared to their English-dominant peers, Malay/Mandarin-dominant mothers also produced smaller contrasts overall. These patterns could be attributed to cross-linguistic influence, as well as effects of long-term language contact and the mothers’ linguistic experiences. Sub-phonemic variation adds complexity to child bilingual phonological acquisition, emphasising the need to consider input properties in sociolinguistically complex contexts.

English Vowel Perception in Spanish-English Bilingual Preschoolers: Multiple-Talker Input Is Only Beneficial for Children With High Language Exposure Levels.

This study examines English vowel perception in Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers, comparing bilinguals' perception patterns to those of monolinguals and examining how child internal (age) and external variables (input quantity and input diversity) predict perceptual performance. Sixty children between 3;6 and 5;6 (years;months) of age participated in the study, 28 of whom were Spanish-English bilinguals and 32 English monolinguals. Perception was assessed through a forced-choice minimal-pair identification task in which children heard synthesized audio stimuli (i.e., "sheep" and "ship") that varied systematically along the /i-ɪ/ continuum and were asked to match them with one of two pictures. The data were analyzed with Bayesian mixed-effects logistic regression analyses, modeling responses as a function of continuum step, language background (monolingual or bilingual), age, English exposure (i.e., input quantity), and number of English input providers (i.e., input diversity). The results indicate that, despite displaying nonnative English stop voicing perception in a previous study, the same bilingual children showed English /i-ɪ/ perception patterns that did not differ from those of monolinguals. While age did not predict vowel perception, input quantity and diversity jointly interacted to moderate how well children perceived the /i-ɪ/ contrast. Specifically, diverse input promoted perceptual performance in children who received high levels of English exposure-and who presumably had more advanced English language skills, whereas it limited perceptual performance in children with more limited English exposure and skills. This study shows that bilingual children can show monolingual-like perception patterns for some sounds while displaying nontarget perception for others. This is the first study to demonstrate that language exposure mediates the role of input diversity on speech sound development, suggesting that varied input can be more or less beneficial for speech sound development based on the learner's language learning stage.

The Effect of Habitual Speech Rate on Speaker-Specific Processing in English Stop Voicing Perception.

This study investigates listeners' ability to track individual speakers' habitual speech rate in a dialogue and adjust their perception of durational contrasts. Previous studies that found such adjustments are inconclusive as adjustments can be attributed to exemplars of target structures in the dialogue rather than perceptual calibration of habitual speech rates. In this study, English listeners were presented with a dialogue between a fast and slow speaker, containing no stressed syllable-initial voiceless stops. Listeners then categorized /pi/-/bi/ syllables differing along a voice onset time continuum. Results did not show conclusive evidence that listeners' response differed systematically depending on speakers' habitual speech rate.

A Contrastive Study of The Effect of Initial /s/ on the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of Following Stops in English, Kurdish and Kurdish EFL Learners

When an initial /s/ precedes a voiceless stop in English, the aspiration is lost, and the voice onset time (VOT) is significantly shortened. This causes an allophonic variation of English stops based on context. This paper intends to comparatively investigate this phenomenon in English, Kurdish and Kurdish EFL learners from two proficiency levels. (40) participants which are divided among four groups (Kurdish, English, learners G1 and learners G2) are asked to read lists of words including voiceless stops preceded by /s/, constructed in English and Kurdish. Each stop in the list has two examples followed by a high and a low vowel. All the participants are asked to repeat each word three times to provide three tokens. These productions are recorded and VOT values are acoustically measured. Results are then statistically analyzed to check the significance of variable interactions. Results have shown that Kurdish voiceless stops preceded by /s/ are more aspirated than those of English in similar contexts and thus produced with longer VOT values. This indicates that Kurdish learners need to modify their voiceless stop production when speaking English. Results also show that advanced Kurdish learners have improved at pronouncing the aspirated English stop variety, but they still produce it with a noticeably extended VOT.

Probing a Neural Network Model of Sound Change for Perceptual Integration

The cross-linguistic tendency for contrast shifts to occur between some cues more than others has been investigated typologically and experimentally (Yang 2019), but with less attention in computational modeling. This paper adapts a human experimental paradigm (Kingston et al. 2008) to the speech perception component of a neural network model of sound change (Beguš 2020) to better understand how it processes acoustic cues in the context of Yang’s proposal that auditory dimensions affect which cues are more likely to undergo contrast shift. Piloting this neural network probing technique, I find evidence that the model integrates different pairs of English stop voicing cues than humans do, suggesting that further amendments to the model are necessary to implement Yang (2019)’s account. In general, these results highlight potential acoustic processing differences between humans and the model under investigation, a Convolutional Neural Network, which is commonly used in spoken language applications.

Investigating the nature of speech representations by contrasting computational models against behavioral data

How do listeners interpret speech input when exposure does not contain information about the talker’s category representations? Competing accounts are rarely contrasted. We implement competing hypotheses within the same general computational framework (Bayesian inference). All models were trained on phonetic productions to predict perception, reflecting the hypothesis that listeners learn category representations from the speech input. We compare them against two experiments on the perception of L1-US English stop voicing (N = 24 and 122). Both experiments used minimal pairs (e.g., tin/din) varying in the primary cue (VOT) while keeping secondary cues (f0 and vowel duration) at expected correlations. VOT values occurred equally often and spanned the range observed in US English. We find that (1) models that integrated perceptual noise performed better in predicting categorization responses than those without; (2) models with multiple cues performed better than those with just VOT; (3) models trained on talker-normalized phonetic cues performed better than those trained on unnormalized cues; and, surprisingly, (4) models that also normalized the novel speech input during the experiment performed worse than those that did not. (3) and (4) suggest that listeners’ long-term representations are based on talker-normalized cues but require *labelled* input—contrary to most normalization accounts.

The visual analogue scaling (VAS) task as a pre-instructional assessment in tailoring the L2 phonetic training paradigm

Our previous research has shown that we can predict which learners will benefit more from phonetic training to learn non-native phonological contrasts using the Visual Analogue Scaling (VAS). In this study, we adopted the VAS as a pre-instructional assessment to identify less likely-to-be successful learners and provided a pre-training to see whether such preparations would benefit those learners. We targeted naive English learners of Korean learning the Korean lenis-aspirated stop contrast who had to learn to use f0 cues (secondary cue in English stop voicing contrast) as a primary cue for successful learning. Using the VAS task with English stimuli, we identified participants with low f0 sensitivity. We gave the cue-attention switching training (CAST) to enhance their f0 sensitivity before providing three phonetic training sessions for the target contrast. Results showed the positive effects of CAST. Participants with low f0 sensitivity demonstrated a similar level of achievement in learning as participants with high f0 sensitivity and showed more native-like f0 cue utilization in identifying the target contrast than low f0 sensitivity participants who received training without CAST. Our study highlights the importance of considering individual differences with appropriate assessments and tailoring the training paradigm accordingly to maximize possible learning outcomes.

Great Aspirations: Examining VOT of Word-Initial Voiceless Stops in English and Serbian in Serbian EFL Speakers

Great Aspirations: Examining VOT of Word-Initial Voiceless Stops in English and Serbian in Serbian EFL Speakers

Integration of Perceptual Similarity With Faithful Mapping of Phonological Contrast in Loanword Adaptation: Mandarin Chinese Adaptation of English Stops

In loanword phonology, perceptual similarity and faithful mapping of phonological contrast are two main factors which influence loanword adaptation. Previous studies observe that English phonological voicing contrast is mapped to Mandarin Chinese (hereafter, Mandarin) phonological aspiration contrast, indicating faithful mapping of phonological contrast. Nevertheless, the role of perceptual similarity in adaptation of English stops to Mandarin has not been fully explored. The current study investigates the influence of perceptual similarity on loanword adaptation by examining how English voiced and voiceless stops are adapted in Mandarin Chinese using a data set of 1427 novel Mandarin loanwords from English. The results show consistent adaptation of English voiced stops as Mandarin unaspirated stops and English aspirated voiceless stops as Mandarin aspirated ones, while inconsistent adaptation patterns are found for the English unaspirated voiceless stops. In particular, English post-/s/ unaspirated voiceless stops which occupy a similar voice onset time (VOT) region to Mandarin unaspirated stops are adapted as Mandarin unaspirated ones, whereas the rest are mapped to aspirated stops in Mandarin. The overall adaptation patterns provide partial support to faithful mapping of phonological contrast and provide robust evidence for an integration of perceptual similarity with faithful mapping of phonological contrast in loanword adaptation.

Perceptual Cue Weighting Is Influenced by the Listener's Gender and Subjective Evaluations of the Speaker: The Case of English Stop Voicing.

Speech categories are defined by multiple acoustic dimensions and their boundaries are generally fuzzy and ambiguous in part because listeners often give differential weighting to these cue dimensions during phonetic categorization. This study explored how a listener's perception of a speaker's socio-indexical and personality characteristics influences the listener's perceptual cue weighting. In a matched-guise study, three groups of listeners classified a series of gender-neutral /b/-/p/ continua that vary in VOT and F0 at the onset of the following vowel. Listeners were assigned to one of three prompt conditions (i.e., a visually male talker, a visually female talker, or audio-only) and rated the talker in terms of vocal (and facial, in the visual prompt conditions) gender prototypicality, attractiveness, friendliness, confidence, trustworthiness, and gayness. Male listeners and listeners who saw a male face showed less reliance on VOT compared to listeners in the other conditions. Listeners' visual evaluation of the talker also affected their weighting of VOT and onset F0 cues, although the effects of facial impressions differ depending on the gender of the listener. The results demonstrate that individual differences in perceptual cue weighting are modulated by the listener's gender and his/her subjective evaluation of the talker. These findings lend support for exemplar-based models of speech perception and production where socio-indexical features are encoded as a part of the episodic traces in the listeners' mental lexicon. This study also shed light on the relationship between individual variation in cue weighting and community-level sound change by demonstrating that VOT and onset F0 co-variation in North American English has acquired a certain degree of socio-indexical significance.

Individual differences in processing non-speech acoustic signals influence cue weighting strategies for L2 speech contrasts.

How could individual differences in processing non-speech acoustic signals influence their cue weighting strategies for L2 speech contrasts? The present study investigated this question by testing forty L1 Chinese-L2 English listeners with two tasks: one for testing the listeners' sensitivity to pitch and temporal information of non-speech acoustic signals; the other for testing their cue weighting (VOT, F0) strategies for distinguishing voicing contrasts in English stop consonants. The results showed that the more sensitive the listeners were to temporal differences of non-speech acoustic signals, the more they relied on VOT to differentiate between the voicing contrasts in English stop consonants. No such association was found between listeners' differences in sensitivity to pitch changes of non-speech acoustic signals and their reliance on F0 to cue the voicing contrasts. The results could shed light on the different processing mechanisms for pitch and temporal information of acoustic signals.

Effects of Cue Weight on the Adaptation of English Stops and /s/ in Seoul and Yanbian Korean

This study investigates the effect of different cue weightings in Seoul and Yanbian Korean on loanword adaptation. The two Korean dialects have the same set of obstruents. However, obstruents in each dialect exhibit different cue weightings among f0, VOT and frication duration. Phonetic similarity is central in mapping source sounds to loan sounds (Silverman, 1992; Kang, 2003). However, which acoustic cue should be used to calculate phonetic similarity is still little understood. By conducting a comparative study of English stops and /s/ adaptation into Seoul and Yanbian Korean, we found that perceptual similarity is heavily influenced by the acoustic cue that mainly characterizes the phonological contrast in a borrowing language. Furthermore, a default segment in the borrowing language can be assigned for a source sound when the primary acoustic cue is not available. We provide a formal analysis using the Correspondence Theory (McCarty & Prince, 1995) to account for the different patterns of adapting English obstruents into two dialects. Our findings will be discussed in light of the diachronic variability of loanword adaptation.

Smoking Cessation Support for Pregnant Women Provided by English Stop Smoking Services and National Health Service Trusts: A Survey.

Reducing smoking rates in pregnancy continues to be a public health priority. Given a recent UK government policy change resulting in The National Health Service (NHS) making a significant new contribution to cessation support in pregnancy in England, in addition to that of Local Authorities (LA), an up-to-date assessment of national support offered to pregnant women is needed. LA Stop Smoking Service (SSS) managers and representatives from maternity services in NHS Trusts were invited to participate in an online survey in autumn 2020. Topics included service configuration, staffing, practitioner consultations and treatments offered. The survey response rate was 66% (99/151) of LAs and 68% (95/140) of Trusts. Most LAs provided smoking support for pregnant smokers (78%), whereas under half (43%) of NHS Trusts did. Combination nicotine replacement therapy, i.e., a combination of a patch and short-acting product, was offered by LAs (92%) and Trusts (95%) and most commonly for 12 weeks duration, at 53% and 50%, respectively. Similar national online training was undertaken by those supporting women, with the majority undertaking the specialist pregnancy-specific module: LAs 60% and Trusts 79%. However, clinicians were reported to deliver specialist stop smoking support in over 50% of Trusts, whereas this was reported in only 16% of LAs. In England, both LA and NHS Trusts are currently delivering similar stop smoking support to pregnant women. Having nationally recognised treatment programmes and training allows for the delivery of consistent, evidence-based smoking cessation to pregnant women in different healthcare settings.

Contrast implementation affects phonetic variability: A case study of Hindi and English stops

There is a large body of work in phonetics and phonology demonstrating sources and structure of acoustic variability, showing that variability in speech production is not random. This paper examines the question of how variability itself varies across languages and speakers, arguing that differences in extent of variability are also systematic. A classic hypothesis from Dispersion Theory (Lindblom, 1986) posits a relationship between extent of variability and phoneme inventory size, but this has been shown to be inadequate for predicting differences in phonetic variability. I propose an alternative hypothesis, Contrast-Dependent Variation, which considers cue weight of individual phonetic dimensions rather than size of phonemic inventories. This is applied to a case study of Hindi and American English stops and correctly predicts more variability in English stop closure voicing relative to Hindi, but similar amounts of lag time variability in both languages. In addition to these group-level between- language differences, the results demonstrate how patterns of individual speaker differences are language-specific and conditioned by differences in phonological contrast implementation.

Comparative Study of Voice Onset Time in English Word-Initial Stop Consonants Produced by Uzbek and American Speakers of English

The purpose of this study is to shed light on a comparative study of Voice Onset Time (VOT) values produced by Uzbek speakers of English and native speakers of American English. The study aimed to determine significant differences in terms of the VOT value in pronunciation of voiced and voiceless stop consonants in word-initial positions. Scholarly sources on the comparative study of Uzbek and English phonetics suggest that most of the Uzbek stop consonants possess similar qualities to those of English stop sounds (Abduazizov 1992; Yusupov 2013). A descriptive comparison of Uzbek and English consonants demonstrates the difference between the two languages in isolated forms rather than in speech. This study is motivated by the fact that little is known about recent studies on the instrumental comparative study of English plosives produced by Uzbek speakers of American English. In addition, so far, no studies have been carried out in VOT analysis of English sounds produced by Uzbek speakers. The research was conducted through voice recording and analyses of data collected from Uzbek speakers and American native speakers. Recordings of 3240 overall tokens were collected and analyzed using Praat phonetic software. The mean VOT values obtained from both subject groups have been compared and statistically tested using the Independent Samples t-test. The research findings show that Uzbek subjects’ and American native subjects’ VOT values differ significantly. However, there are a few words (9 out of 52) where the differences in the VOT values of the two subject groups are not statistically significant. The research presents implications for teaching pronunciation of English plosive sounds in word-initial positions where a stop consonant followed by a vowel sound to Uzbek speakers of English by taking into account the periodic measurement of consonants. In addition, there are implications for future research that might explore other features of VOT produced by Uzbek language speakers. Keywords: Voice Onset Time; stop consonants; voiced; voiceless consonants; Uzbek

Comparison of saliva cotinine and exhaled carbon monoxide concentrations when smoking and after being offered dual nicotine replacement therapy in pregnancy.

Background and AimsAlthough English Stop Smoking Services routinely offer dual nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to help pregnant women to quit smoking, little is known about how nicotine and tobacco smoke exposures following this compare with that from smoking. We compared, in pregnant women when smoking and after being offered dual NRT, saliva cotinine and exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations and numbers of daily cigarettes smoked.Design and SettingSecondary analysis of data from three sequential, observational, mixed‐methods cohort studies conducted as part of the Nicotine Replacement Effectiveness and Delivery in Pregnancy programme. Participants were recruited on‐line or in Nottingham University Hospitals (UK) antenatal clinics between June 2019 and September 2020.ParticipantsForty pregnant women, who agreed to try stopping smoking.InterventionParticipants were offered dual NRT, agreed a smoking quit date and received an intervention to improve adherence to NRT.MeasurementsSaliva cotinine and exhaled CO concentrations and reported number of cigarettes smoked per day.FindingsThere were no differences in saliva cotinine concentrations at baseline and day 7 post quit date [n = 20, mean difference = −32.31 ng/ml, 95% confidence interval (CI) = −68.11 to 3.5 ng/ml; P = 0.074, Bayes factor = 0.04]. There were reductions in the reported number of cigarettes smoked per day (n = 26, mean difference = −7 cigarettes, 95% CI = −8.35 to −5.42 cigarettes, P < 0.001) and concurrently in exhaled CO concentrations (n = 17, ratio of geometric means = 0.30 p.p.m., 95% CI = 0.17–0.52 p.p.m.; P < 0.001).ConclusionPregnant women who smoke and are offered dual nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) appear to show no change in their exposure to cotinine compared with their pre‐NRT exposure levels but they report smoking fewer cigarettes, as validated by reductions in exhaled carbon monoxide concentrations.

How a sample of English stop smoking services and vape shops adapted during the early COVID-19 pandemic: a mixed-methods cross-sectional survey

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic in England led to major changes in the delivery of support via stop smoking services (SSS) and to the widespread temporary closure of bricks and mortar e-cigarette retailers (vape shops herein). The impact of disruptions across the smoking cessation support landscape has not been fully documented. The purpose of this study was to capture how SSS and vape shops in England were affected and adapted their ‘business as usual’ during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodAn online cross-sectional survey was conducted between March and July 2020. Surveys were disseminated through online networks, professional forums and contacts. Open-ended qualitative responses were coded using thematic analysis.ResultsResponses from 46 SSS and 59 vape shops were included. SSS were able to adapt during this period, e.g. offering a remote service. A high percentage (74.6%) of vape shops had to close and were unable to make changes; 71.2% reported business declining. For both vape shops and SSS qualitative data revealed practical challenges to adapting, but also new pathways to support and co-working.ConclusionThe closure of vape shops appears to have most impacted smaller bricks and mortar shops affecting businesses by decline in customers and impacting staff (furlough). For those services that could stay open there may be lessons learned in how to support vulnerable and disadvantaged people who smoke by considering new pathways to support.

Domain-specific Stop Words in Malaysian Parliamentary Debates 1959 – 2018

Removal of stop words is essential in Natural Language Processing and text-related analysis. Existing works on Malay stop words are based on standard Malay and Quranic/Arabic translations into Malay. Thus, there is a lack of domain-specific stop word list, making it discordant for processing of Malay parliamentary discourse. In this paper, we propose a semantic approach towards identifying and removing Malay, conventional Malay spelling and English functional words in analysing a time-series corpus, namely the Malaysian Hansard Corpus (MHC), to extract a Malay specific-domain stop word list. The study utilised a combination of Z-method of most frequently occurring words, words that appear once, and the classic method. The dataset of the corpus evaluated comprised Parliament 1 (year 1959) to Parliament 13 (year 2018). The study then categorised the stop word list according to domain-specific related words. The resulting list comprised 587 stop words. New stop words that emerged from the MHC include parliamentary-related words like ‘ Berhormat’ (salutation to the members of the Parliament), ‘ Pertua’ (salutation to the Speaker of the House), ‘ ketawa’ (laugh) and ‘ tepuk’ (clap). Other than typical English stop words like ‘and’ and ‘the’, there are also words like ‘hon’ble’ (short for ‘Honourable’) and ‘honourable’. The list also includes stop words in conventional Malay spelling like ‘ untok ’ (for), ‘ lebeh ’ (more), and ‘ kapada ’ (to). The proposed set of stop words can be further utilised to assist natural language processing and text analysis.

Comparison of sensitivity to VOT and F0 cues in English stop voicing contrast between native English and Korean listeners

Comparison of sensitivity to VOT and F0 cues in English stop voicing contrast between native English and Korean listeners

일본인 청자의 영어 폐쇄음 유무성 지각에 미치는 VOT와 F0의 영향

일본인 청자의 영어 폐쇄음 유무성 지각에 미치는 VOT와 F0의 영향