Syllable-final Position Research Articles

Lenition Processes in Ut-ma’in (Fakkanci): A Case Study of Deletion and Weakining of Glottal Sound /ʔ/

This paper aims to describe the phonological processes of glottal /ʔ/ deletion in Ut-ma’in, a northwest Kainji language, under the Niger-Congo phylum. The paper employs an ethnographic method for data collection and adopts a distinctive features theory postulated by Chomsky and Halle (1968) in analyzing the glottal deletion in the language. The paper identifies, describes, and analyses glottal /ʔ/ deletion in the language, and the rules governing the process. The paper claims that the glottal stop /ʔ/ is deleted when it occurs at a word-final position; at syllable-final position, followed by another syllable and at a morpheme boundary in the language in a rapid speech. This claim is backed with several instances of words, compound words and verbal phrases. The paper discovers that the phonological process of deletion is very common in the language, and it plays a vital role in making speech easy. It also discovers that such a process results in a change of syllable structure another process of vowel lengthening and a change of noun class in the language.

AUSSIE ARTICULATION UNRAVELED: DISENTANGLING SYLLABLE AND VOWEL CONTRIBUTIONS TO MID-SAGITTAL TEMPORAL COORDINATION OF LATERAL APPROXIMANT

The objective of this research was to analyse the articulatory movements linked with the mid-sagittal plane in Australian English /l/. For this purpose, the investigation employed the experimental paradigm introduced by Sproat and Fujimura (1993) as a methodological framework for analysis. The study involved monitoring the production of syllable-initial and -final /l/s in four distinct vowel environments (/æ/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/ and /u/) by six speakers, using three-dimensional electromagnetic articulography (3D EMA). The timing lag difference between the tongue tip (TT) and the tongue middle (TM) was measured, along with the lag between the tongue tip (TT) and the tongue back (TB). Results revealed that during the articulation of the alveolar lateral approximant /l/ in initial and final positions within syllables, the timing and coordination of tongue movements differ. The findings align with previous research on the articulation of lateral approximant /l/ in American-accented English. The temporal coordination between coronal (i.e., TT) and dorsal (i.e., TM/TB) articulatory movements would be influenced by syllable position. In syllable-initial /l/s, coronal and dorsal articulatory movements are nearly simultaneous, whereas in syllable-final /l/s, dorsal articulatory movement precedes the coronal articulatory movement. Regarding the vowel effect, we observed that the influence of vowels on timing differences is not consistent across all measurements. While adjacent vowels partly affected timing discrepancies, particularly in the tongue tip-to-middle (TT-TM) measurement in syllable-final positions, the tongue tip-to-back (TT-TB) measurement does not show the impact of surrounding vowels, except in the /æ/ vowel environment.

Covariants of Gemination in Eastern Andalusian Spanish: /t/ following Underlying /s/, /k/, /p/ and /ks/

In Eastern Andalusian Spanish, consonants are deleted in syllable-final position, triggering regular gemination of a following consonant, even across word boundaries. This paper investigates five underlying phonemic contexts involving /t/, including singleton /t/ and four different underlying /C+t/ sequences that typically surface as [t:], by analyzing how durational and formant differences vary depending on the presence and identity of the preceding underlying consonant. Following the acoustic and statistical analyses of 444 instances of /ˈeta/, /ˈesta/, /ˈekta/, /ˈepta/ and /ˈeksta/, a Discriminant Function Analysis shows that differences in the total duration of /t/ and in the duration of the closure of /t/ are the strongest cues to distinguishing singletons from geminated consonants, with 91.9% and 90.6% accurate classifications, respectively. Cues indicating which specific consonants have been deleted before /t/ are much less robust and more varied in nature. It is unclear, however, whether this outcome is due to different compensation strategies in each case or whether they are affected by some kind of underlying coarticulatory effect. Given that gemination in this language variety is the result of regular /C1C2/ to [Cː] assimilation, and that its underlying phonemic status has not been demonstrated, Eastern Andalusian Spanish is unusual amongst languages studied with respect to gemination, making this study typologically interesting.

The Acquisition of /r/ in Iraqi Arabic

There is very little research in the field of Arabic language acquisition This study explores the development in the acquisition of the trill /r/ in Iraqi Arabic (IA). It attempts to answer four main questions: (1) What percentage in the total sample produced /r/ correctly? (2) Is this the age of customary, acquisition, or mastery for IA children? (3) Does the production accuracy of /r/ vary by position in the syllable and child sex? (4) How is the acquisition of /r/ developed within this age group? Samples were collected from 20 normally developing children between the ages of 1:8 and 3:7. The results showed noticeable sex differences in the acquisition of /r/. Besides, /r/ was produced more accurately in syllable-initial than syllable-final position. Statistics reflected a cross-dialectal variation among Arabic dialects, where Iraqi children acquired /r/ at different age it is acquired in other Arabic dialects, such as Jordanian Arabic. However, results of this paper go in support of previously suggested universal sound acquisition as /r/ was acquired in IA at about the same age it is acquired in English. The acquisition of /r/ was accompanied by gliding and deletion.

Final obstruent voicing in Lakota: Phonetic evidence and phonological implications

Final obstruent devoicing is common in the world’s languages and constitutes a clear case of parallel phonological evolution. Final obstruent voicing, in contrast, is claimed to be rare or nonexistent. Two distinct theoretical approaches crystalize around obstruent voicing patterns. Traditional markedness accounts view these sound patterns as consequences of universal markedness constraints prohibiting voicing, or favoring voicelessness, in final position, and predict that final obstruent voicing does not exist. In contrast, phonetic-historical accounts explain skewed patterns of voicing in terms of common phonetically based devoicing tendencies, allowing for rare cases of final obstruent voicing under special conditions. In this article, phonetic and phonological evidence is offered for final obstruent voicing in Lakota, an indigenous Siouan language of the Great Plains of North America. In Lakota, oral stops /p/, /t/, and /k/ are regularly pronounced as [b], [l], and [ɡ] in word- and syllable-final position when phrase-final devoicing and preobstruent devoicing do not occur.

초급 중국인 학습자의 한국어 자음 발음 유형 분석 -음절 경계의 자음을 중심으로 -

The goal of this study is to analyze articulatory errors of Korean consonants in the pronunciations of Chinese learners in Korean. In articulating Korean words, to enunciate any consonant sequence of a syllable boundary means to vocalize a final consonant by overlapping it with the subsequent initial consonant. This paper investigates these Korean phonological phenomena through the findings of Chinese students’ Korean pronunciations. There are three basic types of errors in phonetics at the consonantal sequences of syllable boundaries when Chinese students phonate Korean. Firstly, the syllable final deletion which is considered as the most typical error from Chinese learners occurs in various types of consonantal sequences. Although Chinese /n, ŋ/ can be distributed in syllable final positions, the Chinese students tend to delete Korean syllable finals such as ‘ㄴ,ㅇ’ due to their both distributional restrictions and characteristics of deleting convention of their native language. Secondly, the syllable initial alternation occurred in an isolated syllables can happen due to pronunciation errors of Korean obstruents. In this case, any syllable final consonants do not have any specific roles concerned with this progress. Lastly, the syllable final alteration attempted to the consonants has low sonority. The altered syllable final consonants tend to maintain their inherent places of articulations.

An ultrasound study of contextual and syllabic effects in consonant sequences produced under heavy articulatory constraint conditions

The present ultrasound study investigates lingual coarticulatory resistance and differences in tongue configuration and contextual variability for consonants in syllable onset vs coda position in Catalan /iC#Ci/ sequences. In agreement with comparable ultrasound data for /aC#Ca/ sequences reported in an earlier study, coarticulatory resistance turned out to be less for /r/ (which is realized as a trill in onset position and exhibits a more tap-like realization in coda position), /l/ (which is not strongly dark), /s/ and the alveolopalatal /ɲ/ than for /p, t, n, k/. As expected, contextual variability was less for /iC#Ci/ than for /aC#Ca/ sequences due to the highly demanding requirements put on the tongue body by the high front vowel. Regarding the syllable-position-dependent differences, consonants were often longer but not less variable articulatorily in syllable initial than syllable final position. Syllable-position differences in lingual configuration could be ascribed to either a trend for consonants to be more prominent in onset vs coda position or to prominent coarticulatory effects from flanking /i/ rather than from the contextual consonant in the cluster. The conclusion is drawn that the reason why consonants may sound more reduced in coda vs onset position in heterosyllabic clusters is due less to their actual lingual configuration than to their being manifestly shorter and to specific production characteristics which depend not only on the upper articulators but on the jaw cycle as well.

초등 1학년 발달성 난독 아동의 낱말 해독, 음운인식, 빠른 이름대기, 자소 지식*

This study aims to compare the word decoding skills, phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN) skills, and letter knowledge of first graders with developmental dyslexia (DD) and those who were typically developing (TD). Eighteen children with DD and eighteen TD children, matched by nonverbal intelligence and discourse ability, participated in the study. Word decoding of Korean language-based reading assessment(<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B27">Pae <italic>et al.,</italic> 2015</xref>) was conducted. Phoneme-grapheme correspondent words were analyzed according to whether the word has meaning, whether the syllable has a final consonant, and the position of the grapheme in the syllable. Letter knowledge asked about the names and sounds of 12 consonants and 6 vowels. The children’s PA of word, syllable, body-coda, and phoneme blending was tested. Object and letter RAN was measured in seconds. The decoding difficulty of non-words was more noticeable in the DD group than in the TD one. The TD children read the syllable initial and syllable final position with 99% correctness. Children with DD read with 80% and 82% correctness, respectively. In addition, the DD group had more difficulty in decoding words with two patchims when compared with the TD one. The DD group read only 57% of words with two patchims correctly, while the TD one read 91% correctly. There were significant differences in body-coda PA, phoneme level PA, letter RAN, object RAN, and letter-sound knowledge between the two groups. This study confirms the existence of Korean developmental dyslexics, and the urgent need for the inclusion of a Korean-specific phonics approach in the education system.

The distribution of the retroflex lateral allophone of the liquid phoneme in Korean

The liquid phoneme in Korean is known to have an optional retroflex allophone in syllable-final positions (Lee 1999). However, there lacks literature evaluating when and how this retroflex allophone is realized. To define the distribution of the retroflex allophone of the liquid phoneme in Korean, this study uses a read speech corpus of Seoul Korean to track the rhotacization of the liquid phoneme in coda positions. Rhotacization of the liquid is detected and measured by the lowering of the third formant. Preliminary results show that the liquid phoneme in coda position is realized as retroflex when preceded by a back vowel, and when followed by another liquid phoneme (gemination). The results suggest that the liquid phoneme is not simply optionally rhotacized in coda positions; instead, the retroflex allophone is realized in contexts defined by the preceding vowel and the following consonant. Future research remains to further examine the articulatory and perceptual aspects of the rhotacization.

Underlying and derived glides in Middle High German

The present study investigates the phonology of glides in Middle High German. On the basis of surface contrasts between prevocalic nuclear glides in syllable-final position ([VG.V]) and postvocalic glides in onset position ([V.GV]), it is argued that the latter were underlying glides (e.g. the /w/ in [le.wə] ‘lion’) and that the former were glides derived from vowels (e.g. the offglide [o̯] in the diphthong [uo̯] from /uo/). Underlying glides are argued to be [+consonantal], while nuclear glides ‒ like the vowels from which they derive ‒ are [‒consonantal].The analysis of Middle High German bears on several debates involving glides in the theoretical literature. First, a treatment with an underlying glide in /VGV/ cannot be reanalyzed by treating the vowels as peaks (e.g. Harris &amp;amp; Kaisse 1999 for Argentinian Spanish). Second, the treatment of underlying glides as [+consonantal] is to be preferred over alternatives which analyze those sounds as [‒vocalic] (e.g. Nevins &amp;amp; Chitoran 2008 for several languages). Third, an analysis of nuclear structure is adopted (from Harris &amp;amp; Kaisse 1999) which enables one to interpret which element in a complex nucleus is the peak and which is the nonpeak without stipulation. Fourth, the contrastive syllabification of surface glides (i.e. [VG.V] vs. [V.GV]) is shown to be a diagnostic of underlying glide languages that has not been discussed in the literature to date.

Phonological acquisition of Korean consonants in conversational speech produced by young Korean children.

This study investigates the phonological acquisition of Korean consonants using conversational speech samples collected from sixty monolingual typically developing Korean children aged two, three, and four years. Phonemic acquisition was examined for syllable-initial and syllable-final consonants. Results showed that Korean children acquired stops and nasals followed by affricates, fricatives, and the liquid. In general, Korean consonants were acquired earlier in syllable-initial position compared to syllable-final position, except for the liquid /l/. The findings are compared with previous research based on single-word assessments, and differences that appear to be associated with the unique morphological system of Korean are noted.

Syllable Structure Universals and Native Language Interference in Second Language Perception and Production: Positional Asymmetry and Perceptual Links to Accentedness.

The present study investigated how syllable structure differences between the first Language (L1) and the second language (L2) affect L2 consonant perception and production at syllable-initial and syllable-final positions. The participants were Mandarin-speaking college students who studied English as a second language. Monosyllabic English words were used in the perception test. Production was recorded from each Chinese subject and rated for accentedness by two native speakers of English. Consistent with previous studies, significant positional asymmetry effects were found across speech sound categories in terms of voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation. Furthermore, significant correlations between perception and accentedness ratings were found at the syllable onset position but not for the coda. Many exceptions were also found, which could not be solely accounted for by differences in L1–L2 syllabic structures. The results show a strong effect of language experience at the syllable level, which joins force with acoustic, phonetic, and phonemic properties of individual consonants in influencing positional asymmetry in both domains of L2 segmental perception and production. The complexities and exceptions call for further systematic studies on the interactions between syllable structure universals and native language interference with refined theoretical models to specify the links between perception and production in second language acquisition.

Ultrasound evidence for place of articulation of the mora nasal /ɴ/ in Japanese

The Japanese mora nasal /ɴ/, which occurs in syllable-final position, takes its place of articulation from the following segment if there is one. However, the mora nasal in utterance-final position is often transcribed as velar, uvular, or even placeless. The present study examines the tongue shapes in Japanese using ultrasound imaging to investigate whether Japanese mora nasal /ɴ/ is placeless and to assess whether assimilation to following segments is gradient or categorical. Preliminary results from ultrasound imaging from one native speaker of Tokyo dialect showed three shapes for final /ɴ/, even though the researchers could not distinguish them perceptually. Results from assimilation contexts showed that the velar gesture for /ɴ/ was not deleted. All gestures remained and assimilation was not categorical, even though perceptually, it was. The velar gesture for /ɴ/ might be expected to be deleted before an alveolar /n/ because they are both lingual, but a blending of the two tongue gestures occurred instead. Variability in place of articulation in final position occurred even within one speaker. Categorical assimilation was not observed in any phonological environments studied. The mora nasal may vary across speakers, so further research is needed to determine whether it behaves similarly for more speakers.

What’s in an Accent? Perceptions of Young Adult Listeners in Cork and Kilkenny

Objective: To investigate the perceptions of Irish listeners concerning geographical origin, occupation and socio-economic class, based on speech samples from County Cork; to relate this information to phonetic features of each speaker’s accent and recent changes in Irish English. Methods: Recordings of speakers from three locations in County Cork were analyzed for features of supra-regional and advanced Irish English (Hickey, 1998, 2003, 2010). These recordings were played to young adult listeners from counties Cork and Kilkenny. Listeners completed a questionnaire assessing the location, occupation and socio-economic class of each speaker. The results of the questionnaire were compared with the phonetic features of the speakers. Main results: Diphthongization of FACE and GOAT vowels, [𝜃, ð] for TH, GOOSE-fronting and emerging velarised /l/ in syllable final position tilt listener judgements towards non-regional, professional and upper middle class. Cork City listeners are most accurate in terms of locating Cork city speakers. Kilkenny listeners are least accurate in identifying speaker location. Conclusions: Irish English speech varies depending on location and gender. Perceptions of class and occupation are closely tied to gender of speaker and type of phonetic features present. Supra-regional features are increasingly used by young adults in County Cork, and recognized by young adult listeners.

Perception of voicing and place of articulation in labial and alveolar English stop consonants

AbstractDistinctive features define a multidimensional structure that must be implemented in speech production and perception. A multilevel Gaussian General Recognition Theory model is presented as a model of multidimensional feature perception. The model is fit to data from three experiments probing identification of noise-masked, naturally-produced labial and alveolar English stop consonants [p], [b], [t], and [d] in onset (syllable-initial) and coda (syllable-final) position. The results indicate systematic perceptual deviations from simple place and voicing structure in individual subjects and at the group level. Comparing onset and coda positions shows that syllable position modulates the deviation patterns, and comparing speech-shaped noise and multi-talker babble indicates that deviations from simple feature structure are reasonably robust to variation in noise characteristics. Possible causes of the observed perceptual confusion patterns are discussed, and extensions of this work to studies of feature structure in speech production and investigation of non-native speech perception are briefly outlined.

Spectrographic analysis of Egyptian Cairene /r/: Is it a trill or a tap?

The /r/ phoneme is variable in manner and place of articulation, and difficult to correct worldwide. Variability could exist within the same language. The objective of this study was to determine whether Egyptian Cairene /r/ was a trill or a tap and, if both forms were present, whether they were affected by word position or adjacent vowels/consonants. The information obtained was intended to improve correction of /r/ in faulty articulation. Spectrographic analysis was done for 50 Cairene subjects, who produced /r/ in different word positions in carrier phrases. Results have shown presence of both forms in the speech of every subject, but taps were more common than trills. Trills were more common in geminated /r/, in word-medial syllable final position, especially when preceded with /e/, /æ/ or /α/, and in word-medial syllable initial position, especially when preceded by non-back consonants.

Spectrographic Characteristics of Turkish /h/

/h/ is described differently by different researchers. While some argue that /h/ is a glottal fricative, others argue that it is the voiceless counterpart of the following vowel, yet others argue that /h/ is a glide or an approximant. However, de- tailed acoustic studies focusing on /h/ are very limited. This study aims to describe the spectrographic characteristics of /h/ in Turkish. Test words consisted of 48 monosyllabic and disyllabic words containing /h/ which was followed by eight Turkish vowels. Totally 1440 tokens were analyzed. After segmentation, /h/ was classified based on its spectrographic characteristics: 1) segment exhibiting formants, 2) segment exhibiting frication (but no formants) with energy in lower frequencies and 3) segment exhibiting almost no energy. In order to find out if there is a significant difference among these three categories, Chi-square test was applied. The spectrographic characteristics of /h/ in Turkish suggest that it is more like the voiceless version of the surrounding vowels, significantly when it is in syllable initial position and the preceding vowel when in syllable final position.

A gestural account of a child-specific neutralisation in strong position

The child-specific phenomenon of preferential neutralisation in initial position, which reverses a positional bias attested across adult grammars, represents a long-standing problem for formal models of developmental phonology. In a phonetically based model of phonology, child-specific phonological patterns may emerge as the consequence of physical differences between child and adult speech. This paper presents new case-study data suggesting that a child-specific pattern of fricative neutralisation in initial position has its roots in children's articulatory limitations. Coarticulated fricative and vowel gestures are shown to require independent control of the tongue and jaw, known to be problematic for developing speakers. Substitution errors affecting fricatives are analysed as a phonologised reflex of this phonetic pressure to avoid overlapping vowel and fricative gestures. The positional asymmetry emerges as the consequence of the differing degrees of gestural overlap permitted in syllable-initialvs. syllable-final position, as encoded in the framework of Articulatory Phonology (Browman &amp; Goldstein 1986).

Perceptual Processing of Mandarin Nasals by L1 and L2 Mandarin Speakers

Nasals are cross-linguistically susceptible to change, especially in the syllable final position. Acoustic reports on Mandarin nasal production have recently shown that the syllable-final distinction is frequently dropped. Few studies, however, have addressed the issue of perceptual processing in Mandarin nasals for L1 and L2 speakers of Mandarin Chinese. The current paper addressed to what extent and in what directions L1 and L2 speakers of Mandarin differed in perceiving Mandarin nasals. Possible variables, including the linguistic backgrounds (i.e. L1 vs. L2 speakers of Mandarin Chinese), the vocalic contexts (i.e. [i, ə, a, y, ua, uə, ia]) and the phonetic settings (i.e. syllable-initial vs. syllable-final), were discussed. Asymmetrical findings in the current investigation indicated limitations of speech learning theories developed from European languages in the context of Mandarin nasals. A tri-dimensional model was thus suggested for interpreting the cognitive mechanism in Mandarin nasal perception.

The Emergence of an Unmarkedness Effect in Mandarin Speech Errors: Nasals in a Coda Position

This study aims to explore how the markedness effect shapes Mandarin slips of the tongue with respect to nasals in syllable-final positions. Data were collected via natural speech and elicitation tasks from 35 participants' reading of 346 test items. Three hundred and eight slips in Mandarin from natural data and 360 slips from elicited data were investigated. This study shows that there exists a strong preference for unmarked coronal nasals over marked dorsal nasals in the syllable-final position in both spontaneous and elicited Mandarin slips. This tendency toward the unmarked [n] reveals that the influence of the unmarkedness effect is present in the coda position in Mandarin slips. Interestingly, this tendency is inconsistent with that found in a previous study by Wan of Mandarin slips in the onset position, which shows a tendency for coronals to be replaced by other sounds. This suggests an onset-coda distinction occurring in Mandarin speech errors, which implies that the markedness effect works differently in distinct syllable positions. More precisely, the unmarkedness effect emerges in the coda position in Mandarin slips, leading to the occurrence of unmarked segments, whereas it submerges in the onset position, resulting in marked segments.