Phonetic Variation Research Articles

Who says ejque?

Abstract This paper examines language attitudes of 386 participants from all regions of Spain toward a phonetic variant used in the Madrid area, velarized coda /s/. Results show that velarized /s/ aids in the identification of a Madrid origin and, moreover, that velarized /s/ speakers are considered lower status, less pleasant, less confident, more of a tough-guy, less desirable as friends, less compatible with the listener and worse storytellers. Nearly all of these traits interact with listener gender in which women show the strongest variable effect. In addition, ethnocentrism is found to play a role in listener judgments, irrespective of the coda /s/ variant used.

The role of L1 phonology in the perception of L2 semivowels

Abstract The study compares how L1 Chinese and Japanese speakers perceive L2 English semivowels (/j/ and /w/) preceding high vowels (/i/ and /u/). In Chinese, [j] and [w] serve as phonetic variants of /i/ and /u/, respectively. However, /j/ and /w/ are distinct phonemes in Japanese, although Japanese /w/ lacks the roundness feature found in English /w/. Participants completed experiments with a discrimination task and an identification task. While the discrimination task revealed no differences in /j/ and /w/ perception between the groups, the identification task showed that the Japanese speakers outperformed the Chinese speakers in their perception of /j/, suggesting an L1 “phonemic over phonetic” advantage. However, the Japanese speakers did not outperform the Chinese speakers in their perception of /w/, suggesting that an L2 feature unexploited in the L1 (i.e., roundness) can impede perception. These findings underscore the importance of considering both phonemic status and features in L2 speech perception.

Phonetic Universals

Understanding the range and limits of crosslinguistic variation stands at the core of linguistic typology and basic science. Linguistic typology is concerned with the relevant dimensions along which languages can vary and those along which they remain stable; an overarching goal is to understand the cognitive, physical, social, and historical factors that shape language. Phonetics is no exception to this enterprise, but it has faced obstacles in crosslinguistic data collection and processing power. The field has nevertheless established a solid foundation regarding the relevant dimensions of stability, revealing strong phonetic tendencies across languages (i.e., universals). This article provides an overview of phonetic universals with a summary of previously attested descriptive and analytic phonetic universals and consideration of methodological aspects when investigating phonetic universals. The increasing availability of multilingual speech data along with advanced speech processing tools promises a new era for investigations into crosslinguistic phonetic variation and systematicity.

What R Mandarin Chinese /ɹ/s? - acoustic and articulatory features of Mandarin Chinese rhotics.

Rhotic sounds are well known for their considerable phonetic variation within and across languages and their complexity in speech production. Although rhotics in many languages have been examined and documented, the phonetic features of Mandarin rhotics remain unclear, and debates about the prevocalic rhotic (the syllable-onset rhotic) persist. This paper extends the investigation of rhotic sounds by examining the articulatory and acoustic features of Mandarin Chinese rhotics in prevocalic, syllabic (the rhotacized vowel [ɚ]), and postvocalic (r-suffix) positions. Eighteen speakers from Northern China were recorded using ultrasound imaging. Results showed that Mandarin syllabic and postvocalic rhotics can be articulated with various tongue shapes, including tongue-tip-up retroflex and tongue-tip-down bunched shapes. Different tongue shapes have no significant acoustic differences in the first three formants, demonstrating a many-to-one articulation-acoustics relationship. The prevocalic rhotics in our data were found to be articulated only with bunched tongue shapes, and were sometimes produced with frication noise at the start. In general, rhotics in all syllable positions are characterized by a close F2 and F3, though the prevocalic rhotic has a higher F2 and F3 than the syllabic and postvocalic rhotics. The effects of syllable position and vowel context are also discussed.

Cross-Linguistic Phonetic Variation in Bilingual Speech: Cantonese /n/ > [l] Merger in Early Cantonese-English Bilinguals.

/n/ is merging with /l/ in Cantonese, as well as in several other Chinese languages. The Cantonese merger appears categorical, with /n/ becoming /l/ syllable-initially. This project aims to describe /n/ and /l/ in Cantonese and English speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals to better understand the status of the merger in Cantonese and its potential for cross-linguistic mutual influence. We examine early bilinguals' (n = 34) speech using the Speech in Cantonese and English (SpiCE) corpus, focusing on pre-vocalic /n/ and /l/ onsets in both languages. Items were auditorily coded for their perceived category identity, and two acoustic measures anticipated to have the potential to differentiate /n/ and /l/ within and across languages were applied. In English, bilinguals maintained a clear contrast between /n/ and /l/ in the auditory coding and in acoustic measurements. In Cantonese, however, there were higher rates of [l] for /n/ items, in line with the merger, and [n] for /l/ items, indicating hypercorrection of the pattern. Across languages, bilinguals produced language-specific /l/s, but there were no acoustic differences between Cantonese and English /n/. The participation of Cantonese /n/ in a sound change does not appear to compromise English /n/s' patterning, suggesting that Cantonese and English /n/ are maintained as distinct categories in the minds of early bilinguals.

A Study on Internet Interactive Language Variations from the Perspective of Schema Theory

Language variation is a common phenomenon of language evolution in online interactive communication. Based on schema theory, this paper explores the forms, reasons, features and ritual functions of language variations in the context of Internet interaction. This study finds that the forms of Internet language variations are mainly embodied in: phonetic variation, semantic variation and grammatical variation, characterized by four rituals: cooperation, pluralism, universality and alignment. Internet language variations contribute to the construction of identity, relationship and order in communication. Through a systematic study of Internet language variations, this paper aims to provide some enlightenment for the ritual turn of pragmatics and the study of network linguistics from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.

Names of Russian Oven and Its Components in Arkhangelsk Dialects

This article is dedicated to the study of dialectal vocabulary belonging to the thematic group “Russian Oven,” which is included in the second volume of the “Thematic Dictionary of Arkhangelsk Dialects.” This dictionary documents lexicon related to wooden structures and their components. The primary aim of this research is to record the nominations within the thematic group “Russian Oven” and to determine the meanings of the selected words for inclusion in the dictionary. The material for this article and the dictionary comprises dialectal records housed in the archive of the Department of Russian Language and Speech Culture at the Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M. V. Lomonosov. The study employed a method of comprehensive sampling of words from the department’s archive, along with descriptive and lexicographic methods to clarify word meanings. The research reveals the diversity of dialectal vocabulary that names parts of the Russian oven; the same component may have various designations across different regions of Arkhangelsk Oblast, leading to the formation of synonyms, as well as phonetic, morphological, and derivational variations. A significant derivational cluster consists of words with the root -печ-, which are formed through suffixation (pechka, pechishcha, pechurok, pechurochek, etc.) and prefix-suffixation (opechek, opechye, podpechek, podpechye, pripechek, pripechye, protipechye, etc.).

Schwa realisation in verbal inflection in two dialogue registers of German spontaneous speech

Abstract Word-final schwa in German inflectional suffixes shows varying realisations in spontaneous speech – from full realisations with varying duration to no realisation. While previous research has identified numerous social, distributional, and grammatical factors influencing the variation of phonetic variables in general, it remains unclear how fine-grained functional differences in different registers specifically affect schwa realisation. In this corpus-based study, we compare schwa realisation in two dialogue registers of German spontaneous speech – free conversation and task-based dialogues – which differ only in their communicative goal and therefore have different functional requirements. We find that schwa is rarely realised, though slightly but significantly more often in free conversation than in task-based dialogue. Other factors also promoting schwa realisation across both situations are less frequent verbs and sequences, and IP-final position.

Phonetic cues to depression: A sociolinguistic perspective

AbstractPhonetic data are used in several ways outside of the core field of phonetics. This paper offers the perspective of one such field, sociophonetics, towards another, the study of acoustic cues to clinical depression. While sociophonetics is interested in how, when, and why phonetic variables cue information about the world, the study of acoustic cues to depression is focused on how phonetic variables can be used by medical professionals as tools to diagnosis. The latter is only interested in identifying phonetic cues to depression, while the former is interested in how phonetic variation cues anything at all. While the two fields fundamentally differ with respect to ontology, epistemology, and methodology, I argue that there are, nonetheless, possible avenues for future engagement, collaboration, and investigation. Ultimately, both fields need to engage with Crip Linguistics for any successful intervention on the relationship between speech and depression.

Gender-Related Phonetic Variation of Vowels in Prishtina

Gender-Related Phonetic Variation of Vowels in Prishtina

LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE NAMES OF NUTS IN THE DIALECTS OF THE MIDDLE BUG AREA

The article deals with the linguistic analysis of the names of nuts preserved in the dialects of the Middle Bug area. The object of the study is the specified layer of botanical vocabulary. The subject of the study is the phonetic, lexical-semantic and grammatical features, etymology and spatial distribution of colloquial names of nuts, their varieties (including Juglans regia L., Corylus avellana L., Arachis hypogaea L.), fruits and cultivars. The sources of the factual material are audio recordings of vernacular speech, made in 74 settlements of the Middle Bug area during the period of 2014–2016. The article uses general scientific methods of research: analysis, synthesis and observation. The expeditionary method made it possible to communicate directly with informants and record live vernacular speech using a voice recorder. Such special linguistic research methods as questionnaires and interviews contributed to the documentation of dialect speech. The descriptive method was used in the analysis of colloquial speech, while the method of linguistic geography made it possible to illustrate the areology of the recorded floranomens. We managed to record and introduce into scientific circulation 54 floranomens (taking into account descriptive constructions, phrases, diminutive forms and phonetic variants of some words), including 43 names for Juglans regia L., its fruits and cultivars, 5 names for Corylus avellana L. and 3 names for Arachis hypogaea L. Floranomens for hazel and peanut were documented on occasion. At the same time, we carried out a multilevel linguistic analysis of the corresponding floranomens, taking into account their phonetic, accentual, lexical-semantic, and partially syntactic features; clarified the motivation and etymology of the names, documented their spatial distribution in the Middle Bug area. We have provided samples of colloquial speech that complement and specify the information on nut cultivation in the surveyed area and are also valuable in terms of dialectology, phonetics, lexicology, grammar, ethnography, horticulture, etc. We drew parallels between colloquial vocabulary and the vocabulary represented in the Ukrainian literary language. The prospect of further research lays in the continuation of the description of the names of fruit trees in the dialects of the specified area.

Navigating ‘safe’ and ‘non-safe’ queer spaces

Abstract It is well documented that gay people adopt behavioural strategies to navigate the heteronormative expectations and norms of social space. These practices are likely to be particularly pronounced in socially conservative countries which have seen less progress for LGBTQ+ rights. This study examines how two gay men (Rui and Kenni) stylistically negotiate their sexual identities in a socially conservative country – Singapore – by analyzing the variation in two phonetic variables that have been linked to gender and sexuality: Pitch and /s/. We show that both speakers style-shift across queer-friendly and heteronormative environments though the rate and degree of shifting is influenced both by the situated social meanings of the features and the interactional context. Concluding, we argue that research should consider how minoritised individuals are required to style-shift in order to adhere to the hegemonic norms and expectations of society.

Building a searchable online corpus of Australian and New Zealand aligned speech

ABSTRACT Advances in automatic speech recognition technology, increases in bandwidth availability, and the widespread use of video streaming and sharing platforms have opened new horizons for corpus phonetics. CoANZSE Audio, a searchable online version of the Corpus of Australian and New Zealand Spoken English, provides access to over 195 million words of transcribed speech from transcripts of videos uploaded to YouTube by councils and other local government entities in Australia and New Zealand. Audio and forced alignment files are also available, making the resource suitable for the investigation of a range of research questions pertaining to morphosyntax, phonetics, and discourse. The resource, which is freely available via login through CLARIN, Europe’s main language resources infrastructure network, was created through the use of open-source tools and software: yt-dlp, a Python library for collecting data from video and streaming websites; the Montreal Forced Aligner, a recent neural network alignment suite; and Parselmouth-Praat, Python bindings for the Praat acoustic analysis software. The website is powered by BlackLab, which combines a powerful search engine based on Apache Lucene with an intuitive web frontend. CoANZSE Audio may be useful for the investigation of regional differentiation of language features, and with additional annotation, differences in feature use according to social or demographic groups. Recent applications have included studies of double modals, a rare syntactic feature, and apology sequences. The nature of the audio and alignment data may make the resource especially suitable for the study of regional phonetic variation. Furthermore, the methods used to create the resource may be of interest to researchers seeking to adopt a pipeline approach for the creation of specialized corpora from publicly available online content.

Revisiting perceptual sensitivity to non-native speech in a diverse sample of bilinguals

Werker and Tees (1984) prompted decades of research attempting to detail the paths infants take towards specialisation for the sounds of their native language(s). Most of this research has examined the trajectories of monolingual children. However, it has also been proposed that bilinguals, who are exposed to greater phonetic variability than monolinguals and must learn the rules of two languages, may remain perceptually open to non-native language sounds later into life than monolinguals. Using a visual habituation paradigm, the current study tests this question by comparing 15- to 18-month-old monolingual and bilingual children’s developmental trajectories for non-native phonetic consonant contrast discrimination. A novel approach to the integration of stimulus presentation software with eye-tracking software was validated for objective measurement of infant looking time. The results did not support the hypothesis of a protracted period of sensitivity to non-native phonetic contrasts in bilingual compared to monolingual infants. Implications for diversification of perceptual narrowing research and implementation of increasingly sensitive measures are discussed.

Comparing perception of L1 and L2 English by human listeners and machines: Effect of interlocutor adaptationsa).

Speakers tailor their speech to different types of interlocutors. For example, speech directed to voice technology has different acoustic-phonetic characteristics than speech directed to a human. The present study investigates the perceptual consequences of human- and device-directed registers in English. We compare two groups of speakers: participants whose first language is English (L1) and bilingual L1 Mandarin-L2 English talkers. Participants produced short sentences in several conditions: an initial production and a repeat production after a human or device guise indicated either understanding or misunderstanding. In experiment 1, a separate group of L1 English listeners heard these sentences and transcribed the target words. In experiment 2, the same productions were transcribed by an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. Results show that transcription accuracy was highest for L1 talkers for both human and ASR transcribers. Furthermore, there were no overall differences in transcription accuracy between human- and device-directed speech. Finally, while human listeners showed an intelligibility benefit for coda repair productions, the ASR transcriber did not benefit from these enhancements. Findings are discussed in terms of models of register adaptation, phonetic variation, and human-computer interaction.

Optimization-based planning of speech articulation using general Tau Theory

This paper presents a model of speech articulation planning and generation based on General Tau Theory and Optimal Control Theory. Because General Tau Theory assumes that articulatory targets are always reached, the model accounts for speech variation via context-dependent articulatory targets. Targets are chosen via the optimization of a composite objective function. This function models three different task requirements: maximal intelligibility, minimal articulatory effort and minimal utterance duration. The paper shows that systematic phonetic variability can be reproduced by adjusting the weights assigned to each task requirement. Weights can be adjusted globally to simulate different speech styles, and can be adjusted locally to simulate different levels of prosodic prominence. The solution of the optimization procedure contains Tau equation parameter values for each articulatory movement, namely position of the articulator at the movement offset, movement duration, and a parameter which relates to the shape of the movement’s velocity profile. The paper presents simulations which illustrate the ability of the model to predict or reproduce several well-known characteristics of speech. These phenomena include close-to-symmetric velocity profiles for articulatory movement, variation related to speech rate, centralization of unstressed vowels, lengthening of stressed vowels, lenition of unstressed lingual stop consonants, and coarticulation of stop consonants.

THE HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT AND FORMATION OF ADVERBIAL SUFFIXES -YP, -IP (based on the monuments of Mamluk Kipchak)

There has been no in-depth, comprehensive and systematic study of the history of one of the complex grammatical categories of verbs-the category of adverbs, although it is found only slightly in some monuments and textbooks concerning the history of a particular language. One of the urgent problems of Kazakh Turkological science is a comprehensive study of the Turkic languages of any linguistic unity in historical periods, a comprehensive study of them from a synchronous and diachronic point of view and determining the level of historical continuity in comparison with our modern language.The article examines the grammatical function of the adverbial suffixes -yp, -ip, -up, -üp, -p in the Mamluk-Kipchak language, their influence and phonetic variants on the meaning of the word to which it is attached, the history of development and formation. The research is based on the materials of 5 monuments written in the Mamluk-Kipchak language and extant to the present day. The research work is based on the main method of studying the historical development of language - the comparative historical method.Phonetic variants of adverbial forms with suffixes -yp, -ip, -up, -üp, -p the order of attachment to the root, various semantic gradients in the main and indirect meanings, all of them do not differ much from modern Turkic languages, including Kazakh. Some features have been preserved in the modern Oguz language, and some in Kipchak. Even small differences between them can be considered as a natural phenomenon that arises during the historical development of the language.

Familiarization with the phonetic diversity of the English language in the context of teaching students’ perception of authentic spoken language

Importance. Reception plays a significant role in the communication process in a foreign language and is reflected in the key documents that govern standards for foreign language education. As such, with increasing proficiency in a foreign language, the importance of utilizing authentic materials grows, and it becomes necessary for students to become familiar with non-standard (uncommon) varieties of the English language. This is not currently reflected in most educational settings, including language institutions. To address this issue, it is essential to justify the necessity for students to be acquainted with the phonetic variation of the English language and to consider matters related to clarifying the objectives and selection of accent teaching materials (in particular, developing criteria for selection). Additionally, it is important to explore effective methods and techniques as well as resources. The aim of the research is to identify the key invariant features of the accent and to investigate the impact of students’ understanding of phonetic variation on their direct comprehension of oral communication, to define the purpose, specific content, and to consider potential methods for designing such training.Research Methods. The study employed an analysis of the existing literature on the research topic, comparison, categorization, and generalization.Results and Discussion. The main characteristics of an accent and the impact of awareness of these characteristics on the perception of native-like foreign language speech are analyzed. The purpose of becoming familiar with phonetic variation is clarified, which involves, on the one hand, developing students' ability to comprehend native oral speech and, on the other, mastering research tools necessary for independent study of accents. Training content is explored, methods and techniques for familiarizing with phonetic variation are identified, and criteria for selecting learning materials are proposed.Conclusion. Targeted accent training contributes to the development of linguistic competence in general and an improved understanding of oral communication in particular. Due to the presence of multiple accents resulting from intercultural interaction, it is necessary to familiarize students with the basic characteristics of this phenomenon on the one hand and provide them with tools for self-study on the other. This is reflected in the content of training. The choice of methods to familiarize students with accents is limited by the localized nature of these accents. Training should focus on communication and the development of skills to understand authentic spoken language. This can be achieved through methods such as analysis, imitation, and transcription. The reliance on transcription for listening, the use of contrastive analysis, and the gradual increase in level of complexity, as well as the development of an academic community of learners, are all key factors contributing to the achievement of this goal.

Chukchi sonorant consonants in a typological perspective

The article focuses on the sonorant consonants of the Chukchi language. Particular attention is paid to the consonants that show considerable phonetic variation: approximants (w, j and ɰ) and r. This variation is described in terms of acoustics and articulation, typology, history and dialectology of the Chukchi-Koryak languages, sociolinguistics and the influence of Russian. We use several approaches to link facts about the Chukchi language and explain some realisations of sonorants, as well as draw attention to cross-linguistic comparisons of approximants and rhotics. The study uses field recordings in the Amguema dialect of Chukchi.

Predicting word vectors for microtext

AbstractThe use of computer‐mediated communication has resulted in a new form of written text called Microtext, which is very different from well‐written text. Most previous approaches deal with microtext at the character level rather than just words resulting in increased processing time. In this paper, we propose to transform static word vectors to dynamic form by modelling the effect of neighbouring words and their sentiment strength in the AffectiveSpace. To evaluate the approach, we crawled Tweets from diverse topics and human annotation was used to label their sentiments. We also normalized the tweets to fix phonetic variations, spelling errors, and abbreviations manually. A total of 1432 out‐of‐vocabulary (OOV) texts and their IV texts made it to the final corpus with their corresponding polarity. To assess the quality of the corpus, we used several OOV classifiers such as linear regression and observed over 90% accuracy. Next, we inferred word vectors using a novel four‐gram model based on sentiment intensity and reported accuracy on both open domain and closed domain sentiment classifiers. We observed an improvement in the range of 4–20 on Twitter, Movie and Airline reviews over baselines.