Voiceless Counterparts Research Articles

Floating low tone and consonant voicing in Akebu

The paper deals with floating low tone and consonant voicing in Akebu, historically induced by the nasal velar ŋ. The phenomena manifest in combination as nominal and agreement markers in a number of noun classes, as well as in independent pronouns. I argue against the analysis of paired voiced consonants as positional variants of their voiceless counterparts after the floating low tone found in the previous literature. This study proposes that floating low tone is considered only as a special case of the low tone and does not differ from the low tone on overt markers in any respect. Accordingly, paired voiced consonants are viewed as independent phonemes, while keeping in mind that they have acquired their phonemic status recently.

Voice Onset Time of Initial Stops in Najdi Arabic

The voice onset time (VOT), which indicates the durational interval from the stop release to the start of the voicing of the following vowel, has long been a prominent research topic in the field of acoustic phonetics. It has shown to be a reliable universal acoustic parameter in discriminating the stop consonants in numerous languages, like English, German, Korean, and various Arabic varieties. It also has been claimed that other factors, such as place of articulation, gender, and vocalic contexts, may affect the productions of the VOTs of the stop categories. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the VOT values of the Najdi Arabic (NA) stops, particularly the plain stop consonants /b, d, g, t, k/, and the potential effects of the place of articulation, gender, and vocalic contexts on their production. Sixty male and female native NA speakers were recruited in this study. The findings revealed that NA has two types of VOTs: positive VOTs with the voiceless stops and negative VOTs with the voiced stops. They also showed that the VOTs of the NA stops become longer when the articulators move back to the oral cavity and shorter in the front cavity. Lastly, the findings reported that the VOTs with short vowels are significantly shorter than the VOTs with long vowels and that gender does not affect the VOTs of the voiced stops, but does affect the VOTs of their voiceless counterparts. Hopefully, the conclusions reached in this study contribute to a better understanding of this interesting acoustic parameter and to the less acoustic literature on Arabic and its various varieties.

A sociophonetic account of gradient /z/ devoicing among Chicanx high schoolers

AbstractThis paper examines final /z/ devoicing among Chicanx teens in Southern California to investigate the degree to which devoiced final /z/ neutralizes with final /s/ in this dialect. Results indicate on the one hand that devoiced /z/ remains distinct from /s/: as expected, devoiced /z/ is significantly less voiceless than /s/ and has a significantly lower center of gravity (COG). However, unexpectedly, devoiced /z/ has a significantly longer fricative duration and a significantly shorter preceding vowel duration than /s/, a pair of results that run counter to general tendencies for voiced fricatives to be shorter and have longer preceding vowels than their voiceless counterparts. We propose that these durational findings may explain, at least in part, the salience of final /z/ devoicing in Latinx Englishes despite its ubiquity among speakers of mainstream US English. In this first instrumental sociophonetic account of final /z/ devoicing in Latinx Englishes, we also find that, counter to existing segmental accounts, the morphological status of /z/ is no longer a significant predictor of devoicing. Moreover, while both following segment and speaker gender are significant predictors of devoicing, they do not condition devoicing in the expected ways.

Realisation of Voice Onset Time (VOT) and Its Implication on Voicing of English (RP) Stops in Ghanaian English (GhE)

There has been a general perception that the English voiced stops /b, d, g/ before and after a pause or silence are more often confused with the initial voiceless stops /p, t, k/. Thus, in distinguishing the two, listeners most often depend on the onset of voicing of the following segments. Voice onset time, therefore, serves as a significant cue in distinguishing English voiced stops from their voiceless counterparts. Interestingly, voiceless stops in many Ghanaian indigenous languages appear to be weakly aspirated; they are perceived to be made with a very short voice onset time. However, listeners are able to distinguish the voiceless stops from their voiced counterparts. What this study sought to do was to investigate the production of English initial voiceless stops, /p, t, k/ in Ghanaian English. Specifically, it sought to examine the voice onset time of the stops, and whether listeners are able to distinguish English stops made with weak aspiration from the voiced stops before and after a pause. The study used 112 Ghanaian speakers, 76 for a production test; they produced 21 tokens of the stops in a /p/-, /t/- and /k/- initial words, and 36 for a perception test; they listened to words produced with voiced stops in a /b-b/, /d-d/ and /g-g/ environments. The study has revealed that for all the voiceless stops, voicing for the following segments began after the stops were released, and there was no pre-voicing or voice lead. However, for some of the stops, voicing coincided with the release, while for some voicing began after an appreciable amount of time after the release burst. The length of the VOT was found to have been affected by place of articulation and vowel contexts. However, speaker sex seems to have no effect on the length of the VOT. It is clear that Ghanaian speakers of English would have no difficulty distinguishing weakly aspirated stops from voiced stops before and after a pause. Also, understanding words having the initial voiced stops before and after a pause and weakly aspirated stops produced by Ghanaians will not be a problem to listeners.

The Comparative Phonology of Konsoid

This study compares the phonology of Konso, Diraytata and Mosittacha languages which belong to the Konsoid subgroup in the Lowland East Cushitic family. The aim is to identify and describe the phonological similarities and differences that exist among these languages. The classification of the languages’ sound systems, gemination, phonotactics and syllable structures are carried out in order to determine the major pattern of differences and similarities. Some major sound changes are discovered and the merger of voiced obstruents into voiceless counterparts is another major finding observed in these languages.

Non-native perception and first language experience: The case of English final stop perception by Saudi Arabic listeners

This study investigated how listeners' native language [Saudi Arabic (SA)] could affect the perception of non-native (English) sound patterns. SA stopsare generally released, while English stops show free variation: released or unreleased. In a phoneme detection task, SA listeners were asked to detect English stops in coda position, and their accuracy and reaction time (RT) were measured. The influence of three factors of the final coda (i.e., release, voicing, and place of articulation) on the accuracy and RT was statistically analyzed using mixed effect models. The results indicated a significant interaction among the three factors on the listeners' accuracy but not on the RT. The results revealed that listeners relied mostly on release bursts as a phonetic cue to accurately detect the target phoneme. The significant interaction between release and voicing suggested that the unreleased voiced stops were easier to detect than the voiceless counterparts. Despite the difference in the accuracy, the listeners' RT was not significantly influenced by release, voicing, or place of articulation. The results suggested that L1 experience effects non-native perception if the target phoneme does not have enough acoustic information. Listeners can accurately detect unfamiliar sound patterns when the signal is acoustically rich. This study investigated how listeners' native language [Saudi Arabic (SA)] could affect the perception of non-native (English) sound patterns. SA stopsare generally released, while English stops show free variation: released or unreleased. In a phoneme detection task, SA listeners were asked to detect English stops in coda position, and their accuracy and reaction time (RT) were measured. The influence of three factors of the final coda (i.e., release, voicing, and place of articulation) on the accuracy and RT was statistically analyzed using mixed effect models. The results indicated a significant interaction among the three factors on the listeners' accuracy but not on the RT. The results revealed that listeners relied mostly on release bursts as a phonetic cue to accurately detect the target phoneme. The significant interaction between release and voicing suggested that the unreleased voiced stops were easier to detect than the voiceless counterparts. Despite the difference in the accuracy, the listen...

Final devoicing in Singapore English

This study investigates the voicing contrast in word-final obstruents in Singapore English. Previous auditory accounts have suggested that word-final obstruents undergo complete devoicing in Singapore English and become identical to their voiceless counterparts, including neutralization of differences in adjacent vowel duration (among others, Bao 1998, Wee 2008). On the basis of acoustic data from the NIESCEA corpus (Low 2015), we examine the extent to which voicing-related differences are neutralized when reading wordlists, sentences and passages as well as in unscripted conversations. Results suggest that neutralization is phonetically incomplete in Singapore English, with underlying voicing being recoverable from such parameters as closure voicing ratio and durations of consonants and adjacent vowels. These findings are in line with the results for other devoicing languages, such as German and Russian, that also show incomplete neutralization of the voicing contrast in final obstruents (e.g., Roettger et al. 2014, Kharlamov 2014).

Nasalisation in the Production of Iraqi Arabic Pharyngeals

Aim: This paper presents the auditory and acoustic investigations of pharyngeal consonants in Iraqi Arabic (IA). While the contested place and manner of articulation of these sounds have been the subject of investigation in many studies, the focus here is novel: we set out to investigate the extent to which pharyngeals in IA are accompanied by auditory nasalisation and how widespread the effect is across oral and nasal contexts. Methods: Auditory and acoustic properties of nasalization, as produced by nine male speakers of IA, were investigated in target words with oral, nasal, and pharyngeal environments. Results: When combined with oral consonants, pharyngeals exhibit little or no nasalisation; however, when pharyngeal are combined with nasals, they exhibit various degrees of nasalisation, sometimes beyond what is found for a nasal environment alone. This is especially so for voiced pharyngeals, which display more nasalisation than their voiceless counterparts. A principle component analysis combining all the acoustic correlates examined demonstrates a definite contribution of pharyngeals to the presence of nasalisation. Conclusion: The epilaryngeal constriction and variability in the articulation of pharyngeals are thought to be responsible for the nasalisation effect and may act as potential drivers for sound change in IA pharyngeals.

Toward an aerodynamic model of fricative consonants.

Determining the starting point of frication is a complex task involving aerodynamic factors dependent on adjustments controlling articulatory and laryngeal structures and on the regulation of air pressure. This study investigates the aerodynamic characteristics of the onset and offset of Belgian French fricative consonants using direct measurements of subglottal (Ps) and intraoral (Po) air pressure. Results show a higher difference between Ps and Po at the onset of voiced fricative consonants when compared to their voiceless counterparts. This accounts for the need for high air velocity through the glottal and consonantal constrictions for voiced fricatives. The offset of voiced fricatives is also characterized by a relatively large difference between Ps and Po, still lower for voiceless equivalents.

Evidence for active cavity expansion through advanced lingual place of constriction in voiced geminates

Geminate voicing requires both active and passive cavity expansion in order to delay the equalization of subglottal and supraglottal pressure (Ohala 1983, Ham 2001). Studies report differences in stop closure duration (Lahiri & Hankamer 1988) and pre-geminate vowel duration as cues to the laryngeal contrast. Following Schroeder (1967), Mermelstein (1967), and Iskarous (2010), we present results from formant transitions in the VC:V context and the anti-symmetric Fourier component coefficient, an = -2 (Fn-fn)/fn, to partially recover the area function of the vocal tract behind the geminate constriction. Voiced geminates exhibit significantly higher and positive coefficient values than their voiceless counterparts which implies that measured Fn values for voiced geminates are lower than their neutral tract formant values. This finding indicates that voiced geminates have a more anterior constriction compared to their voiceless counterparts. Without ruling out the role of passive cavity expansion through the cheek muscles, we conclude that in order to delay the pressure equalization the lingual constriction in voiced geminates is maintained at an anterior location compared to voiceless geminates in Bangla. Results from the slopes of first order F2 locus-equations are also presented to measure the differences in coarticulatory resistance between the voiced and voiceless geminates.Geminate voicing requires both active and passive cavity expansion in order to delay the equalization of subglottal and supraglottal pressure (Ohala 1983, Ham 2001). Studies report differences in stop closure duration (Lahiri & Hankamer 1988) and pre-geminate vowel duration as cues to the laryngeal contrast. Following Schroeder (1967), Mermelstein (1967), and Iskarous (2010), we present results from formant transitions in the VC:V context and the anti-symmetric Fourier component coefficient, an = -2 (Fn-fn)/fn, to partially recover the area function of the vocal tract behind the geminate constriction. Voiced geminates exhibit significantly higher and positive coefficient values than their voiceless counterparts which implies that measured Fn values for voiced geminates are lower than their neutral tract formant values. This finding indicates that voiced geminates have a more anterior constriction compared to their voiceless counterparts. Without ruling out the role of passive cavity expansion through the ...

Lithuanian and Latvian Occlusives: Duration and FFT Spectra of the Release Phase

This current research deals with the occlusives of the contemporary Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian. In the framework of this study two acoustic cues, a duration of the release phase (for the plosives and affricates) and energy distribution in the FFT spectra obtained at the burst onset (for the plosives), have been analysed. The aim of this paper is to test the role of the former acoustic cues in the classification of the occlusives according to their voicing, manner, and place of articulation. There are 20 occlusive phonemes in Standard Lithuanian: plosives/p, pj, b, bj, t, tj, d, dj, k, kj, g, gj/ and affricates /ʦ, ʦj, ʣ, ʣj, ʧ, ʧj, ʤ, ʤj/. Standard Latvian has 12 occlusive phonemes: plosives /p, b, t, d, c, ɟ, k, g/ and affricates /ʦ, ʣ, ʧ, ʤ/.The occlusives (C) have been studied in the phonetic context of all monophthongs (V) of Standard Lithuanian or Latvian. The recorded material consisted of isolated CVC syllables pronounced by 12 Lithuanian and 12 Latvian native speakers (6 males and 6 females within each language group) of the ages from 20 to 48. Their pronunciation was flawless and consistent with the norms of Standard Lithuanian or Standard Latvian. Each syllable was recorded 3–5 times. In the framework of the current research, the material of 6192 CVC syllables (3600 pronounced by the Lithuanian speakers and 2592 pronounced by the Latvian speakers) was analysed. Data processing was performed using the software PRAAT, MS EXCEL, and SPSS. The results indicate that the set of the two acoustic cues analysed in this paper provides a distinction between the following groups of the occlusives: 1) voiced vs. voiceless – displayed by the duration of the release phase (a classification of the occlusives according to their voicing); 2) plosives vs. affricates – displayed by the duration of the release phase (a classification of the occlusives according to their manner of articulation); 3) bilabials and dentals vs. palatals (la.) and velars – both displayed by the duration of the release phase and energy distribution in the FFT spectra (a classification of the plosives according to their place of articulation). The duration of the release phase provides a distinction between plosives and affricates. Within the class of plosives it is possible to separate bilabials and dentals (articulated in the frontal part of the oral cavity) vs. palatals (la.) and velars (articulated further back in the oral cavity). The results also reveal a correlation between the duration of the release phase and voicing: voiced occlusives usually have a shorter duration of the release phase in comparison to their voiceless counterparts with the same manner and place of the articulation both in Standard Lithuanian and Standard Latvian. The duration of the release phase for the occlusive (judging by mean values) is resistant to the effect of palatalisation (in Standard Lithuanian) and to gender-related differences (both in Standard Lithuanian and Standard Latvian). According to the FFT spectra obtained at the burst onset for the plosives of Standard Lithuanian and Standard Latvian, it is possible to distinguish the same groups of these consonants as by applying the duration of the release phase: bilabials and dentals vs. palatals (la.) and velars. Energy distribution in the FFT spectra is considered to be unaffected by voicing. Since it is imposible to distinguish bilabials vs. dentals or palatals (la.) vs. velars within the class of plosives, as well as to separate dental vs. alveolar affricates, it can be concluded that the set of two acoustic cues analysed in the paper is not sufficient for a complete classification of the occlusives in Standard Lithuanian or Standard Latvian. In order to achieve more accurate results, a complex analysis of the occlusives is required using a wider set of acoustic cues. Keywords: Standard Lithuanian, Standard Latvian, occlusives, duration of the release phase, FFT spectra. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15823/zz.2016.3

Relative fundamental frequency of voiced and voiceless stops and fricatives for different phonation types in normal French speakers

The relative fundamental frequency (RFF) was recently used to assess vocal effort in normal and dysphonic subjects since it reflects the vocal fold tension at the offset and onset of vowels with, in particular, lower values at the edges of voiced consonants compared to their voiceless counterparts. In this study, we explored the RFF variations according to the voicing status and the articulation manner of consonants, in several types of speech production known to involve different levels of vocal effort. Twelve native French speakers (6 females) with normal voice were asked to produce 24 trains of eight syllables in seven vocal conditions: spontaneous, low, high, soft, loud, breathy, and pressed voice. We considered the unaspirated voiceless and voiced consonants /p, b, f, v/ with the middle open vowel /a/. As expected, the RFF was lower for voiced than for voiceless consonants. In addition, it was lower for stops than for fricatives. The RFF was also lower for the high, loud, and pressed conditions while it was higher for the low, soft, and breathy conditions in comparison to the values for the spontaneous voice. The RFF measurement seems to be efficient to discern subtle levels of vocal effort in normal subjects.

Consonant-tone interactions in Gengbe

Gengbe is an under-documented and understudied Gbe language spoken as a lingua franca in Southern Togo and Benin. Few resources for Gengbe exist, especially in the domain of empirical acoustic phonetic research. To this end, we present an overview of its consonant, vowel, and tonal inventories. Of particular interest is the fact that its two register tones, (L)ow and (H)igh, show systematic phonological variation based on the voicing of onset consonants. Like many other tone languages in Africa and beyond, voiced obstruents act as so-called “depressor consonants,” triggering lower f0 on subsequent vowels than do their voiceless counterparts. This lowering is phonologized in many H tone contexts, resulting in a Rising tone in many (but not all) morphophonological environments. The distinction is phonetically present in low tone as well, where it perseverates across the entire vowel and results in a lower register L (by approx. 20 Hz). We survey the phonological environments where such lowering effects are realized, and probe the interaction between obstruent voicing, tone, vowel height, and nasality via instrumental acoustic analysis.

Asymmetry in incomplete neutralization

Neutralizing patterns, such as final devoicing, are known to often be incomplete: “devoiced” final obstruents in languages such as Afrikaans may retain, e.g., longer preceding vowels than their voiceless counterparts. A common explanation for this phenomenon is that these partially devoiced obstruents are influenced by paradigmatically related obstruents that are fully voiced (e.g., Afrikaans hoe[t] ~ hoe[d]e, “hat(s)”). This proposal raises the question of whether such influence goes in the other direction too: is the [d] of hoe[d]e slightly devoiced, compared to a non-alternating [d] as in roe[d]e (“rod”)? The experiment presented here tests this hypothesis in 28 Afrikaans nouns as produced by nine native speakers; vowel length, closure duration, release duration, and glottal pulses were measured as cues for voicing. The results provide no evidence for partial devoicing of voiced stops under the influence of devoiced counterparts elsewhere in the paradigm; that is, the [d] of hoe[d]e is no less voiced than the [d] of roe[d]e. I conclude that incomplete neutralization is an asymmetrical phenomenon: segments subject to neutralization, as in hoe[t], may retain some contrasting cues; but these segments do not in turn encourage partial neutralization in morphologically related forms such as hoe[d]e.

Perception Abilities of L1 Cypriot Greek Listeners - Types of Errors Involving Plosive Consonants in L2 English.

This paper investigates the difficulties adult second language (L2) users of English encounter with plosive consonants in the L2. It presents the results of a task examining the acquisition of plosive voicing contrasts by college students with Cypriot Greek (CG) linguistic background. The task focused on the types of errors involving plosive consonants indicating that performance was significantly better in the voiceless plosive category. Participants were able to perceive voiced plosives but they treated such instances as a /nasal+voiced plosive/ sequence. Therefore, the question raised concerns different phonological contrasts realised through similar phonetic cues. The patterns observed suggested that this gap between phonetic cues and phonological contrast might explain why CG users have difficulties perceiving voiced English plosives. In this context, voice onset time (VOT) differences between the L1 and L2 are of crucial importance. In English, voiced plosives are characterised by short lag VOT while their voiceless counterparts fall within the long lag VOT continuum. The same phonetic contrast is used in CG to differentiate between single and geminate voiceless plosives. The results are discussed in relation to the frameworks of second language phonology and speech perception suggesting that the difficulties faced by the L2 listeners support the operation of a phonetic-phonological challenge.

A fraction too much friction

Typological work shows that voiced fricatives like /β ð/ occur more often without their voiceless counterparts than with them, contrary to what would be expected on the basis of markedness relations between voicing and obstruents. This paper suggests that many of the offending fricatives are more appropriately viewed as sonorants, whose unmarked status is to be voiced. This view has an important consequence for the interpretation of intervocalic voicing (e.g. afa > ava), which we suspect is the diachronic origin of most of the fricatives in our corpus. We propose that intervocalic voicing is sonorization, formalized in terms of the suppression of melodic material.

The effects of first-language sound change on second-language speech production

Recent studies have shown that the stop system of Korean is undergoing a sound change in which a consonantal opposition between lax and aspirated stops is merging in terms of voice onset time (VOT) whereas the contrast between the two stops is being maximized in terms of fundamental frequency (f0). This study investigates how the ongoing sound change of acoustic parameters in L1 Korean influences L2 English stop production. Results showed that, unlike the VOT merger in L1 Korean, it does not occur in L2 speech production. In contrast, similar to onset-f0 interaction in L1 Korean, there is a strong onset-f0 interaction in L2 English: voiced-low f0 and voiceless-high f0. Korean English learners use not only VOT but also f0 in contrasting an underlying [voice] distinction. The results suggest that f0 differences between lax and aspirated stops in L1 Korean are transferred to those between voiced and voiceless counterparts in L2 English. The findings are discussed with respect to cross-language phonetic effects and synchronic sound change.

Re-examining the Devoicing of Middle Chinese Voiced Initials in Hakka: When and Where?

The voiced stops and affricates of Middle Chinese have basically shifted to their voiceless aspirated counterparts (henceforth, “devoicing”) regardless of tone categories in the following dialects: 1. the Hakka dialects;2. the Gan dialects;3. various Mandarin dialects spoken along the Shanxi-Shaanxi-Henan border;4. a small group of Mandarin dialects in southeastern Jiangsu; and5. a northwestern dialect spoken in the Late Tang period.It has been claimed that the above-mentioned dialects are closely related, based on the fact that they have undergone the same development of the Middle Chinese voiced stops and affricates. In this paper, we argue that the devoicing of Hakka took place in southern China, probably in modern-day southern Jiangxi, some time between the early 10th century and the late 17th century. The devoicing pattern shared by Hakka and other Chinese dialects should therefore be treated as parallel development rather than as evidence for closer genetic affinity among all these dialects.

The effect of voice onset time differences on lexical access in dutch.

Effects on spoken-word recognition of prevoicing differences in Dutch initial voiced plosives were examined. In 2 cross-modal identity-priming experiments, participants heard prime words and nonwords beginning with voiced plosives with 12, 6, or 0 periods of prevoicing or matched items beginning with voiceless plosives and made lexical decisions to visual tokens of those items. Six-period primes had the same effect as 12-period primes. Zero-period primes had a different effect, but only when their voiceless counterparts were real words. Listeners could nevertheless discriminate the 6-period primes from the 12- and 0-period primes. Phonetic detail appears to influence lexical access only to the extent that it is useful: In Dutch, presence versus absence of prevoicing is more informative than amount of prevoicing.

Perception of correlations between acoustic cues in category tuning and speaker adaptation

In English and many other languages, fundamental frequency (f0) varies with voicing such that voiced consonants are produced with lower f0’s than their voiceless counterparts. This regularity robustly influences perception, such that sounds synthesized or spoken with a low f0 are more often perceived as voiced than are sounds with a higher f0. This series of studies exploited these observations to investigate category tuning as a function of incidental exposure to correlations among speech cues and adaptation to speaker idiosyncrasies or accent. Manipulation of f0 across sets of natural speech utterances produced stimulus sets varying in their inherent f0/voicing relationship. Listeners were exposed to these different f0/voicing patterns via spoken word and nonword items in a lexical decision task, and their resulting categorization of ambiguous consonants varying in f0 and voice onset time (VOT) was measured. The results suggest listeners adapt quickly to speaker-specific cues but also remain influenced by more global, naturally occurring covariance patterns of f0 and voicing in English. This pattern contrasts somewhat with studies where idiosyncrasy is represented instead by manipulation of primary, first-order cues to speech sounds, in which listeners are seen to adapt more straightforwardly to the cues they are presented.