Voiceless Obstruents Research Articles

Segmental Influences on the Perception of High Pitch Accent Scaling in American English.

Researchers investigating a broad array of questions in spoken language prosody routinely base their arguments on measurements taken from the F0 contours of representative speech samples. These analyses, however, frequently involve abstracting F0 contours away from the segmental strings that bear them, potentially overlooking in the process the role played by segmental qualities such as sonority or periodicity in the realization of F0 patterns by speakers and their interpretation by listeners. This paper reports the results of two experiments investigating how perception of F0 contours is affected by the segmental string over which those contours are realized. The first focuses on gaps in F0 contours created by voiceless obstruents such as stops and fricatives, while the second investigates F0 intervals spanning lower-sonority voiced segments, such as nasals and voiced fricatives. While these two scenarios might at first seem unrelated, we argue that listeners treat both with a single mechanism in perception, namely, by reducing (potentially to zero) the amount of weight accorded to those portions of the contour for determination of the speaker's intended F0 scaling level. We present an account of both effects within a unified model of F0 scaling perception called TCoG-F, with discussion of its implications for phonetic and phonological intonation research going forward.

Effects of obstruent voicing on vowel fundamental frequency in Dutch.

It has been known for a long time and a wide variety of languages that vowel fundamental frequency (F0) following voiceless obstruents tends to be significantly higher than F0 following voiced obstruents. There has been a long-standing debate about the cause of this phenomenon. Some evidence in previous work is more compatible with an articulatory account of this effect, while others support the auditory enhancement account. This paper investigates these consonant-related F0 perturbations in Dutch after initial fricatives (/v, f/) and stops (/b, p/), as compared to after the nasal /m/. Dutch is particularly interesting because it is a "true voicing" language, and because fricatives are currently undergoing a process of devoicing. Results show that F0 was raised after voiceless, but largely unaffected after voiced obstruents. Fricative voicing in /v/ and F0 level tend to covary: the less voicing in /v/, the higher F0 at onset. There was no trace of an active gesture to explicitly lower pitch after highly devoiced fricatives, as would be predicted by an auditory account. In conclusion, F0 perturbations after Dutch obstruents and their covariation patterns are taken as additional evidence to support an articulatory cause of consonant-related F0 effects.

English pre-fortis clipping by L2 Saudi speakers

The current study is a partial replication of Flege and Port (Language Speech 24(2):125–146, 1981), which examined the production of pre-fortis clipping (i.e., vowel shortening before voiceless obstruents) by Saudi L2 English speakers. In addition, it examined whether language experience operationalized as the length of residence in an English-speaking country, had any positive effect on the production of the pre-fortis clipping by the Saudi L2 English speakers. 16 Saudi L2 English speakers were requested to produce the English vowels /æ/, /ɪ/ and /i:/ in a carrier word, once before the voiceless stop /t/ and once before the voiced stop /d/. The same vowels in the same context were also elicited from a reference group of native English speakers. Similar vowels in a similar context were also obtained in Arabic from Saudi native speakers. A durational ratio of each vowel before /t/ to the same vowel before /d/ was calculated for each speaker in the native and nonnative groups. Similar to the findings of Flege and Port (1981), both the Saudi native Arabic and L2 English speakers showed broadly less durational contrast between the vowels in the two contexts than did the native English speakers. However, the results varied across the three examined vowels. In addition, no significant correlation was found between the length of residence and the L2 speakers’ production.

Acoustic correlates of aspirated consonants in Maranao

Aspirated obstruents are rare in Austronesian languages, one exception being the southern Philippine language Maranao, as reported by Lobel and Riwarung [Oceanic Linguist. 48, 403–438 (2009)]. In Maranao, aspirated consonants occur as a reflex of a cluster of a former voiced stop and a homorganic obstruent (*bp > p’, *dt > t’, *ds > s’, *gk> k ’). The most obvious correlate to non-Maranao speakers is a dramatic raising of the following vowel, which also occurs after voiced obstruents, but not after historic single voiceless obstruents—e.g., /təkaw/ [təkaw] ‘startled’ (earlier *təkaw) vs. /tək’aw/ [təkʰɣw] ‘thief’ (earlier *təɡkaw) However, native Maranao speakers regard the raising as a property of the consonants, not the vowels. We examined the correlates of the apparent aspiration. The vowel raising is realized robustly and consistently, with some overlap in F1/F2 space among contrastive vowels. However, aspirated and unaspirated stops also show differences in VOT and in measures of breathiness of the following vowel, albeit with somewhat less consistency. Differences between /s/ and /s’/ were not evident except for realizations of following vowels. We explore the role of pharyngeal expansion due to voicing in the development of these Maranao segmental realizations.

Lyman’s Law can count only up to two

One long-standing question that is recurrently addressed in contemporary phonological studies is whether phonological systems can count beyond three. The traditional view is that phonological systems can count only up to two but not more (e.g., Ito & Mester, 2003; McCarthy & Prince, 1986); some scholars, however, recently argue that phonological system should actually be able to count beyond three (e.g., Paster, 2019; Kim, 2022). The current experiments address this general question regarding counting by studying Rendaku and Lyman’s Law in Japanese. Rendaku is a morphophonological process in which the morpheme-initial voiceless obstruent of a second member of a compound becomes voiced. The application of Rendaku is significantly reduced if the second member already contains a voiced obstruent, a generalization that is known as Lyman’s Law. Experiment 1 compared the applicability of Rendaku in nonce words which contain one voiced obstruent (e.g., [taguta]) and those which contain two voiced obstruents (e.g., [tegebi]). If Lyman’s Law counts beyond three, Rendaku application is predicted to be more substantially reduced in the latter condition, as Rendaku would create morphemes which contains three voiced obstruents (i.e., [degebi]). The results show, however, that no meaningful differences were observed between the two conditions. Experiment 2 tested the recent claim that two nasal consonants may reduce the applicability of Rendaku (Kim, 2020; Kumagai, 2017), which, if true, suggests that Lyman’s Law disfavors a configuration in which a voiced obstruent is followed by two nasals. The experimental results show that the evidence for the blockage of Rendaku by two nasals is weak at best if present at all. Overall, we conclude that there is no strong evidence that Lyman’s Law counts (Ito & Mester, 2003).

A Reanalysis of the Voicing Effect in English: With Implications for Featural Specification.

The voicing effect is among the most studied and robust of phonetic phenomena. Yet there remains a lack of consensus on why vowels preceding voiced obstruents should be longer than vowels preceding voiceless obstruents. In this paper we provide an analysis of the voicing effect in a corpus of natural speech, and using production data from a metronome-timed word repetition study. From this evidence, as well as the existing literature, we conclude that vowel duration differences follow from consonant duration differences. The characteristic voicing effect in English is largely limited to words of especially long duration, and preceding vowel duration does not reliably cue obstruent voicing under the following circumstances: when obstruent voicing or duration cues conflict; for lax or unstressed vowels; and for most conversational speech. We show that this behavior can be modeled using a competing-constraints framework, where all segments resist expanding or compressing past a preferred duration. Inherent segment elasticity determines the degree of resistance, but segment duration is ultimately determined by the interaction of these segmental constraints with constraints on the distribution of the lengthening force within the syllable, and how closely target durations are matched. This account of the voicing effect has a number of implications for phonological theory, especially the central role that the concept of prominence plays in the analysis of underlying features.

Phonetic Symbolism in First Names

Interest in the phenomenon of sound symbolism, in which certain phonemes might be inherently associated with certain things, dates back to 400 B.C. While it has been assumed in most modern theories of linguistics that the relation between sound and meanings is arbitrary, an increasing number of studies have shown that there can be systematic sound-meaning associations. Among such systematic patterns is phonetic symbolism due to the iconicity between sound and meaning. Building upon earlier findings concerning the correlation between male and female names and certain sound classes found in English language, this study examines phonetic patterns, voiceless obstruents and sonorant consonants of the top 100 first names in four languages. The purpose of this study is to show that these tendencies may generally hold among existing first names in other languages as well. The results show that voiceless obstruents tend to be used more frequently in male names than in female names, and sonorant consonants tend to be used more frequently in female names than in male names. Indeed, this study offers further indications concerning this phenomenon, in which phonetic symbolism is not restricted to nonwords and can be found in real first names across languages. It sheds light on the phonetic factors, namely acoustics and other phonological characteristics that might trigger this systematic association.

How Russian speakers express evolution in Pokémon names: an experimental study with nonce words

Abstract Sound symbolism, systematic and iconic relationships between sounds and meanings, is now a topic that is very actively explored by linguists, psychologists and cognitive scientists. As a new research strategy to study the nature of sound symbolic connections across different languages, a number of scholars have started using Pokémon names, a research paradigm that is now dubbed “Pokémonastics.” The previous Pokémonastics studies have experimentally explored how the evolution status is symbolically expressed by native speakers of English, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese. Building on these studies, the current experiment examined the sound symbolic knowledge of Russian speakers, and found that they are more likely to associate large, post-evolution Pokémon characters with names containing voiced obstruents than with names containing voiceless obstruents, and that they are also more likely to associate post-evolution characters with names containing [a] than with names containing [i]. The experiment also revealed that Russian speakers are less likely to associate post-evolution characters with names having labial consonants than with names having coronal or dorsal consonants. Overall, the current results show that Russian speakers generally have knowledge of sound symbolic associations that is similar to that of English, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese speakers, suggesting that some sound symbolic patterns hold robustly across multiple languages.

The sound change of oralization in Mewahang

AbstractThis paper discusses the sound change of oralization in the Mewahang language (Eastern Kiranti, Trans-Himalayan/Sino-Tibetan) spoken in eastern Nepal. The sound change of oralization turned syllable-final nasals into homorganic oral stops when followed by voiceless obstruents. This sound change constitutes a diagnostic innovation of Mewahang with regard to its closest relatives Lohorung and Yamphu. In this paper, the process of oralization in both compounding as well as derivational and inflectional morphology is described and illustrated with primary data collected in fieldwork. The explanatory potential of the sound change for synchronic peculiarities in the verbal morphology and morphophonology is discussed, and an overview of exceptions to the sound change is provided.

Retention of devoiced vowels in Tokyo Japanese: Evidence from lip articulation

In Tokyo Japanese, high vowels /i/ and /u/ are frequently devoiced when they are surrounded by voiceless obstruents. Controversy remains over whether vowel gestures in devoiced vowels are retained or instead deleted. Both static (Iwasaki et al., 2020) and dynamic (Iwasaki et al., 2022) ultrasound data have indicated that vowel-specific lingual gestures can persist even when vowels are devoiced. This study focuses on the lip articulation of devoiced vowels by examining lateral lip aperture, where lower values index a greater degree of the rounding of vowels. Native speakers of Tokyo Japanese produced nonce word pairs with the form of /C1VC2V2toko/. V1 was either /i/ or /u/. C1 and C2 were either voiced or voiceless, which determined the voicing of V1. Lateral lip aperture during the first mora was calculated by identifying facial landmarks using OpenFace 2.0 (Baltrusaitis et al., 2018), and compared across vowel quality (/i/ vs./u/) and vowel voicing (devoiced vs. voiced). Preliminary results show that lateral lip aperture is larger for /i/ than for /u/ in both devoiced and voiced environments, indicating that these vowels maintain their labial specifications even when devoiced, providing additional evidence that devoiced vowels can retain their articulatory gestures.

An ultrasound study of high vowel devoicing in Tokyo Japanese: Evidence for the vowel gesture retention

High vowels in Tokyo Japanese are typically devoiced between voiceless obstruents, but controversy remains over whether vowel gestures persist when devoiced or are instead deleted. A previous ultrasound study (Iwasaki et al., 2020) showed that the lingual articulation of the release burst of /kV/ differs by vowel context even when the vowels are devoiced. This study uses tongue surface contours derived from midsagittal ultrasound images to investigate the effects of vowel devoicing on changes in quantified tongue shape over time. Native speakers of Tokyo Japanese produced word pairs (/C1VC2e/) that contrasted in the voicing of V, which was either /i/ or /u/. Tongue shape was characterized by Fourier transforming tangent angles along each contour (Dawson et al., 2016). Time-normalized trajectories over the /C1VC2e/ sequence were compared by vowel context (/i/ versus /u/) and voicing environment (devoiced versus voiced). Preliminary results show that the real component of the first Fourier coefficient is sensitive todetecting evolving shape differences between the two vowel contexts over the sequence, not just when the vowels are voiced, but also when they are devoiced. Based on these results, the high vowel contrast persists even in the devoiced environment, suggesting that devoiced vowels are not deleted.

Realizations of Malagasy vowel devoicing

This paper investigates the acoustic realizations of so-called “devoiced” vowels in Merina Malagasy. Malagasy has five monophthongs (/aeiou/; Howe, 2019) of which /a/, /i/, and /u/ have been said to be devoiced. This paper represents the first thorough description of the acoustics of these vowels. In a production experiment, speakers pronounced 115 tokens involving /a/, /i/, and /u/ in prosodic environments described as causing devoicing. Preliminary results indicate that so-called devoiced vowels may be realized as one of at least three variants: devoiced, co-articulated, or deleted. When devoiced, which typically occurs following a voiceless obstruent, the vowel is realized as a lengthening of the aperiodic noise associated with the preceding obstruent. When co-articulated, which is common following some sonorants, the vowel is realized as a gesture on the preceding sonorant without taking up its own time slot; for example, /u/ is realized as a lowered F2 on the preceding sonorant, indicating rounding. Finally, a vowel may be fully deleted, in which case the vowel has no acoustic representation, neither as a gestural overlap with, nor lengthening of the preceding consonant.

Consonants lost: a Swedish girl with protracted phonological development

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the phonology of a Swedish girl, aged 3 years 10 months, with extensive phonological difficulties that include an unusual phonological pattern. She had relatively well-developed phonological building blocks in terms of features, stress pattern and word length (number of syllables), but had extensive difficulties regarding syllable and word shapes, with frequent deletions of both segments and whole syllables. Word-initial position was dominated by non-continuant consonants, both voiced and voiceless, with extensive deletion. Word-medial position was dominated by voiceless obstruents, with extensive use of [j] in place of voiced consonants. Word-final position was similar to word-medial, but with more deletion than [j]. Non-initial stressed syllables resemble word-initial syllables. Consonant clusters mirrored singletons, i.e. with similar substitution patterns or deletions. We present a non-linear analysis of her speech production, and a plan for intervention targeting her special difficulties.

Acoustic and aerodynamic aspects of nasality in Guarani

Guarani presents some interesting characteristics for nasality: nasalization of voiceless and voiced fricatives and long nasal spans in which two types of nasals (strong and weak) are observed. This study is based on recordings made with 4 native Guarani speakers from Paraguay (1 woman and 3 men) using synchronized acoustic and aerodynamic (oral and nasal airflow) recordings. Data show that voiced fricatives lose their frication when nasalized ṽ > ʋ̃ [1]. For voiceless fricatives some nasal airflow can be observed, but no acoustic effects are observed below a certain threshold. Above this threshold, the acoustic spectrum is damped and the frication noise intensity is reduced, creating acoustically predictable phonetic variants s̃ > θ; x̃ > h. Thus, perceptually oral segments can be produced with a velopharyngeal port opening during voiceless fricatives, letting weak nasal airflow passing through (0.1–0.2 dm3/s). Two types of nasals are observed in nasal spans: strong and weak [2]. Strong nasals occurring after voiceless obstruents have a sharp nasal airflow peak, up to 2 dm3/s, after the oral constriction. This shows that the velum closure is achieved after the oral closure. Weak nasals occur in the environment of sonorants and vowels with weaker nasal airflow values. [1] J. J. Ohala and M. Ohala (1993). [2] E. Gregores and J. A. Suarez (1967).

The diachronic origins of Lyman's Law: evidence from phonetics, dialectology and philology

Modern Japanese has a set of morphophonemic alternations known collectively as rendaku that involve initial consonants in second elements of compounds, as in /jama+dera/ ‘mountain temple’ (cf. /tera/ ‘temple’). An alternating element like /tera/ ~ /dera/ has an initial voiced obstruent in its rendaku allomorph and an initial voiceless obstruent in its non-rendaku allomorph. Lyman's Law blocks rendaku in a second element containing a medial voiced obstruent. This paper gives three arguments that Lyman's Law originated as a constraint prohibiting prenasalisation in consecutive syllables. First, constraints on similar consonants in close proximity generally apply not to voicing but to features with phonetic cues that are more spread out, such as prenasalisation. Second, in some Japanese dialects with prenasalised voiced obstruents, rendaku cannot occur if it would result in adjacent syllables containing these marked consonants. Third, phonographically attested Old Japanese compounds are consistent with a constraint on adjacent syllables.

Asymmetrical Realizations of NC Clusters in Malay

This paper deals with non-parallel realizations of NC clusters in Malay from the perspective of phonological positions and morphological affiliation of the NCs. It is argued that asymmetrical realizations of the Malay NCs stem from various combinations of phonological positions such as prominent onset position compared to coda position and morphological membership of the two elements belonging to prominent stem versus affix in the cluster. When a prefix-final nasal is followed by a voiceless obstruent, nasal substitution occurs. If the nasal is followed by a voiced obstruent, regressive place assimilation occurs but if the nasal is followed by a sonorant consonant, the prefix-final nasal is deleted. These processes do not apply to an NC̥ across the stem-suffix boundary. In prefix-prefix boundary, however, place assimilation only occurs when a nasal is followed by a voiceless obstruent. These various asymmetrical realizations of the Malay NCs are explained by constraints which reflect relativity of prominence of phonological positions and morphological affiliations of the NCs.

Even Americans pre-aspirate

AbstractThis paper focuses on a phenomenon known as pre-aspiration, defined as a period of glottal friction found in the sequences of sonorants and phonetically voiceless obstruents, as inhit[hɪht],hat[hæht],hiss[hɪhs], andcash[kæhʃ]. Pre-aspiration has been reported in North American English (Clayards and Knowles 2015); however, there are no systematic studies of pre-aspiration in this part of the English-speaking world. Our study therefore considers the following main questions. 1. Is pre-aspiration present in American English and how frequent is it? 2. Does it vary by region? We also map variation related to speaking task, sex, and a range of language-internal factors. Our analyses of data from the Nationwide Speech Project Corpus (Clopper and Pisoni 2006) confirm that pre-aspiration is a feature of American English, with rates of application reaching between 0–20 percent, depending on the region and the task. Furthermore, the more formal the task, the higher the rate of pre-aspiration application.

О взаимодействии фонетических параметров, реализующих фонологический контраст по голосу в русском языке

The paper reports new data obtained in the experimental study of voice coarticulation of voiced and voiceless obstruents adjacent to sonorant depending on the place and manner of articulation of these consonants in Standard Modern Russian. The experimental results revealed the voice coarticulation of the obstruent in word-internal clusters of [sonorant + obstruent + sonorant] coronal consonants, possibly due to the preceding homorganic nasal consonant. In the case of sonorants [nasal + voiceless stop + vibrant] that are not identical in place and manner of articulation, the closure part of the dental stop becomes voiced throughout, with this phonation type accommodation not leading, nevertheless, to the voiced / voiceless phoneme neutralization since the contrast in question is still maintained by phonetic parameters other than voice (phonation itself). These are closure duration, burst duration, and relative overall intensity. On the contrary, in the case of dental sonorants [nasal + voiceless stop + nasal] being identical in place and manner of articulation, the contrast in burst duration is eliminated since no burst of dental stop is found in the position before homorganic nasal, with the closure part of the stop not acquiring voicing to prevent the voiced / voiceless phoneme neutralization. In conclusion, it is argued that in Standard Modern Russian, the phonetic parameter [relative overall intensity] is less significant in the hierarchical structure of distinctive phonological feature than [closure voicing] and [burst duration] ones since it cannot serve as the only parameter distinguishing the voiced and voiceless obstruents in the intersonorant position.

Three Different Strategies of Voice Coarticulation in Modern Standard Russian

The paper reports some new data based on an experimental study in voice coarticulation of voiced and voiceless obstruents adjacent to sonorants as a function of place and manner of articulation of these consonants in Standard Modern Russian. The results of the experiment based on the 384 tokens collected from 24 participants confirm once again that in word internal clusters of [sonorant + obstruent + sonorant] coronal consonants the voice coarticulation of the obstruent is observed; it may be determined by the surrounding sonorants. The coarticulation in question may be realized in three different ways. In the case of sonorants not identical in place and manner of articulation [dental nasal + dental voiceless stop + alveolar vibrant] the closure part of the dental stop becomes voiced throughout, but this accommodation in phonation type does not lead nevertheless to the voiced/voiceless phonemes’ neutralization since the the contrast in question is still maintained by means of phonetic parameters other than voice (phonation itself), such as closure duration, burst duration (being significantly higher in underlyingly voiceless stops) and relative overall intensity (being noticeably higher in underlyingly voiced obstruents). On the other hand, in the case of dental sonorants identical in place and manner of articulation [nasal + voiceless stop + nasal], where the maximum effect of coarticulation for an homorganic stop was expected, the contrast in burst duration is eliminated since no burst of dental stop is found in the position before an homorganic nasal, but the closure part of the stop does not acquire voicing in order to prevent the voiced/voiceless phonemes’ neutralization. Finally, in the case of [dental nasal + dental voiceless stop + dentalveolar lateral] consonantal clusters the closure part of the dental stop is voiced throughout and the increased burst duration leads to (generally complete) devoicing of the following lateral. The direction of coarticulation in [ntlj] clusters is progressive, it is carried out gradually, left to right.

Planting the seed for sound change: Evidence from real-time MRI of velum kinematics in German

Velum movement signals generated from real-time magnetic resonance imaging videos of thirty-five German speakers were used to investigate the physiological conditions that might promote sound change involving the development of contrastive vowel nasality. The results suggest that, in comparison to when a nasal consonant precedes a voiced obstruent, the velum gesture associated with a nasal consonant preceding a voiceless obstruent undergoes gestural rescaling and temporal rephasing. This further suggests that the diachronic development of contrastive vowel nasality comprises two stages: the first stage involves gestural shortening and realignment, while the second stage involves a trading relationship between source and effect.