Voiceless Obstruents Research Articles

Acoustic and kinematic estimates of laryngeal stiffness

Vocal fold movements differ between individuals with typical voices and those with voice disorders associated with increased laryngeal stiffness. Modeling suggests that changes in vocal fold kinematics correspond to changes in laryngeal muscle stiffness. In this study, 12 healthy adults produced repetitions of /ifi/ while varying their self-perceived vocal effort during simultaneous acoustic and nasal-endoscopic recordings, in order to compare a kinematic estimate of laryngeal stiffness to an acoustic measure. The acoustic measure, relative fundamental frequency (RFF), was determined from the last ten voicing cycles before the voiceless obstruent (offset) and the first ten voicing cycles of the following vowel (onset). A kinematic stiffness ratio was calculated by normalizing the maximum angular velocity by the maximum value of the glottic angle during vocal fold adductory gestures. A linear mixed-effect model found that RFF accounted for 52% of the variance in the kinematic data. Examined within-subject, 83% of participants exhibited at least a moderate negative linear relationship (r = −0.5 to −0.91) between the offset cycle 10 RFF and the kinematic stiffness ratio. Overall, the relationship between the acoustic and kinematic measures was strong and both measures showed consistent changes during self-modulated changes in vocal effort.

Variation in nasal–obstruent clusters and its influence on price and mouth in Scouse

This article has two main goals: (i) to show how nasal–obstruent clusters interact with a Canadian-Raising-type pattern in Liverpool English and (ii) to provide evidence that fine phonetic variation in the realisation of nasal–obstruent clusters influences the production of the preceding vowels. I present quantitative evidence from an acoustic study on price and mouth vowel realisations before nasal–obstruent clusters in Liverpool English. The investigation looks at price and mouth separately before obstruents, nasals and nasal–obstruent clusters, in order to demonstrate that nasal–obstruent clusters influence vowels differently depending on the quality of the vowel. Price realisations before nasal–obstruent clusters are similar to productions before singleton obstruents with the same voicing. Specifically, price has a raised realisation before nasal–voiceless obstruent clusters, but a non-raised realisation before nasal–voiced obstruent clusters, which is the same pattern as before singleton obstruents. Mouth realisations preceding nasal–obstruent clusters show evidence of a greater influence from the nasal. The nucleus formant measurements are similar to those before singleton obstruents, but there is frequent monophthongisation preceding nasal–obstruent clusters in mouth, which is mainly found before singleton nasals. Furthermore, I show that the variation in nasal–obstruent clusters in Liverpool English helps to explain the differences in realisation of the target vowels. Nasal deletion is more frequent in nasal–voiceless obstruent clusters following price, leading to vowel productions similar to those before singleton voiceless obstruents. However, nasal durations are longer in nasal–obstruent clusters following mouth, leading to a greater influence of the nasal in the form of more monophthongal vowel productions.

Assessing respiratory contributions to f0 declination in German across varying speech tasks and respiratory demands

Many past studies have investigated the factors that affect f0 declination and its physiological underpinnings. This study assessed the relation between respiration and f0 declination by means of simultaneous acoustic and respiratory recordings of read and spontaneous speech from speakers of German. We analysed the effect of the number of syllables and voiceless obstruents within each Intonational Phrase unit. Both factors could influence the slope of f0 declination and/or rib cage movement. If respiration and f0 declination are related physiologically, their relationship might also be modulated by either or both factors. Our results show consistently, for read and spontaneous speech, that the slope of the rib cage movement is not related to f0 declination. F0 slopes are shallower in spontaneous than in read speech. F0 declination was affected by utterance length, but rib cage slope was not. Finally, although a higher number of voiceless obstruents yielded a greater rib cage compression, it did not affect f0 declination. These results suggest that although f0 declination occurs in many languages, it might not have a purely physiological origin in breathing. Other factors such as speech planning and communicative constraints might interact with physiological constraints to shape f0 declination.

Acoustic and articulatory characteristics of “weak” and “strong” initial sibilants in Chamalal (Andic)

In the phonological descriptions of a number of Caucasian languages appears a “weak” vs. “strong” contrast for otherwise voiceless obstruents, which was previously described as a lenis-fortis contrast, but recently attributed as geminate. Hence, we investigate field and lab data from the Gigatli dialect of Chamalal (CJI), a language belonging to the Andic branch of Avar-Andic-Tsezic group in the Nakh-Dagestanian family, spoken in Dagestan (Russian Federation). The weak-strong contrast in Chamalal involves glottalic and pulmonic fricatives at the same place of articulation. Concretely the series of central alveolar sibilant fricatives (/s/, /sː/, and /sː’/) is focused, of which all can occur in initial position. Sagittal ultrasound-articulatography of one female speaker demonstrates wide consistency in place of articulation of the tongue tip, although differences in pre-dorsal curvatures between /sː’/ and /s, sː/ are observed. The acoustic data are based on word list elicitations of six speakers (two males/four females): the ejectives show pronounced central envelope peaks and highest intensity slopes of the following vowel, but take a middle position in duration. Two distant peaks are frequently observed in the longer envelopes of “strong” /sː/. /s/ and /sː’/ differ strongest for (>2kHz) weighted COG, whereas /sː/ ranges widely in between.

Production of pre-fortis clipping in English by Korean and English speakers

The term pre-fortis clipping refers to the phenomenon in English of vowels being shorter before voiceless obstruents than before voiced ones. This paper examines whether ratios of duration for vowels before voiceless versus voiced obstruents are affected by speakers’ L1 and segmental properties such as consonantal manner of articulation, vowel height, and phonemic vowel length. Nine Korean speakers and four native speakers of English were recorded reading 30 minimal pairs consisting of English monosyllabic CVC words differing in coda voicing. The mean ratio of duration for vowels preceding voiceless and voiced obstruents respectively was greater for Korean speakers than for English speakers, but mixed-effects model analyses with speaker and item random effects indicate that the effect of L1 was not significant, though there was greater variation for Korean speakers than for English speakers. The ratio of vowel duration significantly differs between Korean and English speakers only before fricatives. Vowels before voiced fricatives are not sufficiently long for Korean speakers as compared to English speakers. It is suggested that, due to their lack of experience with released fricatives, Korean speakers fail to vary vowel durations sufficiently depending on the consonant manner, before stops and fricatives.

NASALITY AND VOICING IN NON-STANDARD DIALECT OF MALAY

Este estudio analiza la nasalidad y sonoridad en un dialecto no estandar del malayo, el dialecto Perak. Como es ampliamente reivindicado por previos estudios sobre el malayo, la sustitucion nasal se aplica cuando hay una secuencia de nasal y obstruyente sorda que no evita de ningun modo el cluster emergente en la representacion superficial. En este analisis, se argumenta que la sustitucion nasal no siempre se aplica en el dialecto Perak cuando hay una secuencia de nasal y obstruyente sorda, la cual se permite que aparezca en el radical subyacente del dialecto. En este analisis, tambien se argumentara que la sustitucion nasal no solo se aplica a las obstruyentes sordas sino tambien a las sonoras despues de segmentos nasales. Se sugiere que la aplicacion de la sustitucion nasal en obstruyentes sonoras y en sordas como ocurre en el dialecto es para satisfacer CRISPGEDGE[s], cuyas reglas descarta candidatos con clusters de nasal y de obstruyente sorda/sonora en la representacion superficial.

Perception of incompletely neutralized voicing cues in word-final obstruents: The role of differences in production context

AbstractExperimental data on final devoicing in languages such as German and Russian usually show that speakers produce incompletely neutralized acoustic differences between words ending in phonologically voiced versus voiceless obstruents (e.g., /kod/ ‘code’ vs. /kot/ ‘cat’ in Russian) and that listeners can use these differences to identify the underlying specification of final consonants at an above-chance level. The current study examines how the seemingly successful perceptual identification of voicing varies across stimulus items recorded in reading vs. non-reading procedures and with and without full minimal pairs present in the experimental list. Results of a series of identification tasks reveal that Russian listeners’ identification responses are more in line with underlying voicing for the stimuli recorded during word-reading and with minimal pairs included among the experimental items. This shows that voicing judgments are strongly influenced by the acoustic differences produced when speakers encounter orthographic forms or lexical competition. At the same time, perceptual neutralization is also not complete for the items recorded without such exposure, which indicates that listeners’ ability to recover underlying voicing is not limited to the production contexts involving written forms or minimal pairs.

Agreement, dependencies, and Surface Correspondence in Obolo and beyond

Obolo, a lower cross-river language spoken in the Niger Delta, exhibits an implicational dependency between the onset and coda of a syllable: if a syllable has a nasal onset, then it cannot also have an oral coda (Faraclas 1984, Rowland-Oke 2003). Vowel nasalisation facts reveal this to be a long-distance, consonant-to-consonant interaction. Vowels are predictably nasalised before a nasal consonant, but not after one, so the ban on disharmonic NVT syllables cannot be attributed to incremental local spreading of nasality to attain a long-distance result. The analysis proposed here explains the Obolo facts using the theory of Surface Correspondence (Rose and Walker 2004, Hansson 2010a, Bennett 2013) as similarity-driven agreement. Limits on this agreement prevent it from applying in certain conditions, which cause it to present as a one-way dependency rather than full bidirectional agreement. These limitations fall out from pre‑existing concepts in the harmony literature, namely position control and value dominance. The combination of these two effects in the same harmony system can serve to derive certain implicational dependencies from the same mechanism as agreement. This approach seems quite generalisable, as this paper demonstrates by applying it to a long-distance voicing dependency in Afrikaans (Coetzee 2014), in which root-medial voiced obstruents may not occur when this would produce disagreement with a voiceless root-initial obstruent.

Biomechanically Conditioned Variation at the Origin of Diachronic Intervocalic Voicing.

This paper addresses the question of how synchronic variation in intervocalic voicing of voiceless obstruents, as observed in several languages (e.g., Rome Italian /lato/ [lato] - [lado]), may initiate and give rise to a regular sound change (e.g., /t/ > /d/ between vowels). We hypothesize that a biomechanically motivated linkage between male gender, speech rate, and voicing may provide a way to accelerate the spread of the phenomenon and lead to an eventual generalized recategorization. In order to explore this hypothesis, first we reanalyze the results of a previous study on intervocalic voicing in Spanish, focusing on individual differences and, in particular, the possible role of gender. Then we report on a study of the same phenomenon in Basque, focusing also on interspeaker variation. Finally, we report on a controlled experiment where speech rate was manipulated.

Final voicing and devoicing in American English

English is typically described as a language in which voicing contrast is not neutralized in word-final position. However, a tendency towards devoicing (at least partial) of final voiced obstruents in English has been reported by the previous studies (e.g., Docherty (1992) and references therein). In the present study, we examine a number of acoustic correlates of obstruent voicing and the robustness with which each one is able to differentiate between voiced and voiceless obstruents in the word-final position in the speech recorded by twenty native speakers of the Mid-Western dialect of American English. The examined acoustic properties include preceding vowel duration, closure or frication duration, duration of the release portion, and duration of voicing during the obstruent closure, frication, and release. Initial results indicate that final voiced obstruents are significantly different from the voiceless ones in terms of preceding vowel duration and closure/frication duration. However, release duration for stops does not appear to correlate with voicing in an equally reliable fashion. A well-pronounced difference in terms of closure voicing between voiced and voiceless final stops is significantly reduced in fricative consonants, which indicates a tendency towards neutralization of this particular correlate of voicing in the word-final fricatives of American English.

The Michigan Upper Peninsula English Vowel System in Finnish American Communities in Marquette County

This article investigates the acoustic properties of the American English vowel spaces of 65 Finnish Americans from Marquette County in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP). The author compares the general system of these UP vowel spaces to substrate Finnish and neighboring English vowel systems and examines the subsystems of these UP vowel spaces along the sociolinguistic variables of language dominance, age, sex, and educational attainment to ascertain whether the internal system dynamics show any substrate or exogenous characteristics. The apparent-time evidence in this study indicates a potential change in progress in this UP speech community, with younger speakers using variants typically associated with neighboring Canada (e.g., low-back merger of /ᵅ, ᵓ/, the lowering and retraction of /ᴵ, ε, æ/, the raising of /aᴵ, aᶷ/ nuclei before voiceless obstruents). Consequently, Michigan’s UP more closely aligns with the Canadian English’s regional boundary than the proposed “residual territory” as defined by Labov, Ash, and Boberg.

Developing biases.

German nouns may alternate from singular to plural in two different ways. Some singular forms that end in a voiceless obstruent have a plural in which this obstruent is voiced. Another alternation concerns the vowel. Some singular forms with a back vowel have a plural form in which this back vowel is front. For each noun it has to be established individually whether it alternates or not. The voicing alternation is phonetically grounded, but the vowel alternation is not. Knowledge about such alternations involves two things. First, it involves knowledge of which words alternate and which words do not and second, it involves the ability to extend the alternations to novel words. We studied the knowledge of which words alternate and the proportion to which they alternate in two corpus studies. We studied the knowledge of speakers concerning which words alternate and what generalizations can be based upon these words by means of a production study. The production study involved words and nonces. We asked twenty 5 year-olds, twenty 7 year-olds, and ten adults to produce the plural for a given singular word and a plural for a given singular nonce. In the corpus study we found that both alternations occur with the same frequency. In the production of alternations in words we found that participants in all age groups make few mistakes. With respect to the production of alternations in nonce words, we found that the proportion of voicing alternations decreases with age, while the proportion of vowel alternations increases. We explain this change in the ability to generalize the alternations to nonces on the basis of the confidence speakers can have in a generalization. Young children have a small lexicon and they can form relatively unreliable generalizations on lexical distributions. They are, however, proficient users of language and have great phonetic experience. They can more confidently form generalizations on the basis of this experience. Adults have a large lexicon and, as a consequence, they can confidently form generalizations based on their lexicon. In addition, they know that many alternations are not based on phonetic considerations.

Incomplete neutralization of the voicing contrast in word-final obstruents in Russian: Phonological, lexical, and methodological influences

Acoustic data from languages with word-final devoicing show that words ending in phonologically voiced versus voiceless obstruents (e.g., код /kod/ ‘code’ vs. кот /kot/ ‘cat’ in Russian) are seldom homophonous at the phonetic level. The present study examines how such incomplete neutralization of the underlying contrast varies across (i) different types of obstruents and stimulus words (plosives vs. fricatives; labials/coronals vs. dorsals; monosyllables vs. disyllables; minimal vs. non-minimal pairs) and (ii) different types of experimental tasks and stimulus lists (word-reading vs. picture-naming/word-guessing; presence vs. absence of minimal pairs among the stimuli). Results from Russian show that underlying voicing affects consonantal duration and glottal pulsing but not preceding vowel duration. For consonantal duration, voicing effects are found regardless of speakers' exposure to orthography or minimal pairs and more differences are seen in minimal pairs and monosyllables than non-minimal pairs or disyllables. For glottal pulsing, comparable effects are observed for all types of obstruents and stimulus words but they are significant only during word-reading or when speakers encounter full minimal pairs. This shows that incomplete neutralization has different sources for different acoustic parameters. Some differences are the result of phonological and lexical pressures. Other differences arise due to methodological influences.

A Phonetic Basis for the Sonority of [χ

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2014) A Phonetic Basis for the Sonority of [X] Sarah Bakst and Jonah Katz Background: French rhotics and sonority Sonority is a property of segments that relates to phonotactics and syllable shape but whose nature remains in dispute. Clements (1990) uses this property to define the order that segments may occur in a syllable in what he calls the sonority sequencing principle (SSP), which says that “between any member of a syllable and the syllable peak, only sounds of higher sonority rank are permitted.” His principle relies on a sonority scale, which ranks segments by their natural class, with obstruents registering low on the scale, followed by nasals, liquids, glides, and finally vowels. The classes are defined by the features vocoid, approximant, sonorant, and what Clements calls “syllabic” (only vowels are [+syllabic]). The sum of the positive values of features for a given class yields the sonority value. Syllables are usually arranged with the sonority peak at the nucleus with falling sonority to- wards either syllable edge, so that low-sonority segments tend to precede higher-sonority segments in onsets but the opposite is usually true in codas. Some languages allow sonority plateaux, or mul- tiple consecutive segments of the same sonority, such as a sequence of two stops or a stop plus a fricative. The implication is that languages that allow plateaux, which violate the SSP, also allow sequences that do not violate the SSP, but the reverse does not hold: there should not be languages that only allow SSP violations. Most accounts agree on the segment ranking above (or a close variant), though the basis for the hierarchy varies. Some definitions are based in phonological features, as in Clements, but others make more reference to phonetics. Parker (2002) creates a hierarchy that is mainly based on acoustics and aerodynamics and defines sonority as a function of intensity. This is later extended to create a universal phonological scale. Wright (2004) maintains that a sonority scale is not a phonological entity but rather a natural organization of sound patterns that falls out from how well place, manner, and voicing cues can be recovered by the listener from the acoustic signal. In contrast to the other definitions mentioned here, Wright does not relate sonority to phonology at all. French rhotics present a problem for the sonority hierarchy. The rhotic is usually realized as a voiced uvular approximant or occasionally a trill, both of which are considered liquids, but after a voiceless obstruent, the rhotic surfaces as a voiceless uvular fricative. The rhotic patterns like the other liquid in French [l]; both are permitted to be the second member of a complex onset. In theory, French does not allow sonority plateaux in onsets, yet the fricative realization of the rhotic, to the exclusion of all other fricatives, occurs as the second member of a complex onset, such as in /kKem/ [kXEm] ‘cream’. The sonority scale for French is thus internally inconsistent: other fricatives are not allowed in French complex onsets, but there seems to be an exception for this realization of the rhotic.

Factors underlying short-term fundamental frequency variation during vocal onset and offset

Fundamental frequency (F0) typically decreases during vocal cycles immediately preceding and following voiceless obstruents for reasons that remain unclear. One explanation is that aerodynamic changes surrounding obstruent production underlie F0 variation. Alternatively, laryngeal maneuvers used to adduct/abduct the vocal folds may change vocal fold tension, leading to F0 variation. In this study, cycle-to-cycle variation in F0 was examined in several phonetic contexts that differ in aerodynamic and laryngeal factors. Results showed that at F0 onset, F0 variation depended more upon laryngeal factors than aerodynamic factors. At F0 offset, there were no significant differences across phonetic contexts. It is suggested that the factors influencing F0 variation at phonation onset may differ from those influencing F0 variation at phonation offset.

Neutralizing differences in jaw displacement for English vowels

Maximum jaw displacement in the syllable varies primarily by vowel quality, syllable position in the phrase, lexical and phrasal stress, prosodic conditions, and the syllable consonantal periphery. EMA recordings were made of CVC syllables in 3-word phrases uttered by an American English speaker, where three target CVC words occurred in phrase initial, middle, and final positions, in order to ascertain the effect of vowel quality and syllable phrase position on jaw displacement, independent of other factors. Eleven English vowels, omitting diphthongs, formed the syllable nuclei, voiceless obstruents /p, t, k/ formed the syllable periphery, and the intonation pattern was kept constant for each phrase. Jaw displacement was measured by coil placement at the midline of the base of the lower incisors. The maximum vertical mandibular displacement on the vertical axis (z-axis for 3D EMA) was measured for each target CVC word. For each of the 11 vowels, an algorithm was developed to neutralize differences in the contribution of the mandibular vertical excursion in each of the three phrasal positions, i.e., 33 neutralization measures. These results indicate that this method may neutralize the mandibular contribution to differences in phonological vowel quality and phrasal position.

Nasal Substitution in Sarawak Malay Dialect

This study discusses a phonological strategy, i.e. nasal substitution, which is regularly applied to eliminate nasal and voiceless obstruent clusters from emerging in the surface representation. As claimed in previous studies, the clusters are disallowed from emerging in the surface representation. Nasal substitution is therefore applied as a strategy to get rid of those clusters. In this paper, I will present how nasal substitution is applied in the Sarawak Malay dialect by focusing on two morphological environments in which the clusters emerge, i.e. within roots and at prefix junctures. The data obtained from interviews show that nasal and voiceless obstruent clusters are not completely disallowed in the dialect, as nasal substitution is only active at prefix junctures and not within roots. Furthermore, in this dialect, voiced obstruents also undergo nasal substitution. These phenomena are accounted for in this study by proposing CRISP-EDGE [?] and UNIFORMITY-ROOT in the grammar of the Sarawak dialect of Malay.

On the Role of Phonetic Motivation and Frequency in the Acquisition of Alternations

German nouns may alternate in two ways: a final word-final voiceless obstruent in the singular may correspond to a voiced one in the plural and a back vowel in the singular may correspond to a front one in the plural. We investigate the role of phonetic motivation and frequency in the acquisition of these alternations. The voicing alternation has a phonetic motivation, but the vowel alternation does not. On the basis of two corpus studies, we conclude that both alternations occur with equal frequency in the ambient language. In two production experiments, one with 5-yearolds and one with adults, we asked both populations to form plurals for given singular words and nonces. The children produce more voicing alternations in nonces than adults and fewer vowel alternations than adults. We conclude that children rely more on phonetic motivation than adults.

Optimality theory and historical phonology: an example from nasal harmony in Mundurukú

This paper offers an account of diachronic changes in nasal harmony in Mundurukú, a Tupian language from Brazil. It attempts to show that the Optimality Theory provides new ways of accounting for sound change, other than constraint re-ranking. A comparison of Mundurukú and Kuruaya's modern systems points out that the source system, Proto-Mundurukú, had similar properties to those currently observed in Kuruaya. In particular, nasal spread targets were voiced stops and sonorants, whereas voiceless obstruents were transparent. This system was developed into another in Pre-Mundurukú, because new contrasts were introduced in the language, turning obstruents into opaque segments, thus blocking nasalization. Formal OT account of both cases relies on restricting harmony constraints, as shown by the relative chronology that gave rise to Mundurukú's modern system. In addition, this study discusses the consequences of this change to synchronic grammar, and how it explains the process' irregularities.

Comparing chiShona loanwords of monolingual and bilingual speakers: An Optimality Theory analysis

ChiShona is a southern Bantu language spoken mainly in Zimbabwe. In Guthrie (1948) chiShona is classified as an S.10 language, an area which includes other Bantu languages such as chiKalanga and chiNambya. ChiShona like any other language has expanded its lexical stock by borrowing, mainly from the English language. The two languages have different phonologies; English has a much more complex syllable structure than chiShona. There are three major differences: first, chiShona allows open syllables only while English allows closed syllables. Second, chiShona does not allow complex onsets while English can have as many as three consonants in the onset position. Third, chiShona does not permit complex syllable nuclei while English allows long vowels and diphthongs in its syllable structure. This article compares the realisation of loanwords in the speech of chiShona monolinguals and chiShona- English bilinguals. Our findings show that monolingual loanwords are completely assimilated to suit the chiShona phonological structures while in the speech of bilinguals some marked features of the English language such as complex onsets, the lateral approximant and postnasal voiceless obstruents are retained. Both monolinguals and bilinguals do not allow closed syllables and diphthongs which they repair through vowel epenthesis and spreading respectively. The article demonstrates that monolinguals and bilinguals have different constraint hierarchies. The former rank markedness constraints higher than faithfulness constraints while the reverse is true for the latter.