Overcoming Moral Deterioration in the Workplace: Insights from a Feminist Re-reading of Camus’ The Voiceless Ones

This study investigates the pronunciation challenges Indonesian EFL learners face with English consonant fricatives. The research aimed to identify common pronunciation errors, explore underlying causes, and propose strategies for improvement. Using an explanatory sequential design, 30 undergraduate students completed a pronunciation test focusing on fricatives, followed by interviews with 10 students who made the most errors. The analysis revealed frequent mispronunciations of fricatives such as /ʒ/, /v/, and /θ/, often substituted with native sounds like /s/, /z/, and /t/. Voiced fricatives posed greater difficulties than voiceless ones, especially in contexts where Indonesian has no phonetic equivalent. Interviews highlighted a lack of familiarity with these sounds and insufficient pronunciation training as primary challenges. Native language interference and limited exposure to correct English pronunciation were significant factors in these difficulties. The findings call for more targeted instruction in English fricatives within the Indonesian EFL context. Further research with larger sample sizes and longitudinal approaches is recommended to explore long-term outcomes.

We present the results of a production experiment that explores the realization of voicing in English stop-nasal sequences, a phonological environment with a low functional load. The results imply a separation between primary and secondary voicing cues. Primary cues – aspiration and vocal fold vibration during stop closure – robustly distinguish underlyingly voiced stops from and underlyingly voiceless ones. Meanwhile, secondary cues – vowel duration and stop closure duration – are limited in their use by phonological position or absent entirely. A principal component analysis of the data indicates that all speakers occasionally produce tokens that are ambiguous in voicing cues.

This paper sets out to examine the pronunciation problems encountered by Cantonese upper-intermediate ESL learners when they are producing English word-final plosives. The primary goal is to identify the basic error pattern and uncover influencing factors. Empirical data were collected in a controlled speech production experiment. Based on the transcription of speech data, the researcher classified the word-final plosives that are not fully retained into four types, namely devoiced, unreleased, deleted and others. The data indicate that the subjects performed much better in the production of voiceless word-final plosives and they are prone to substituting voiced plosives with voiceless ones. It is also found that the subjects tend to omit the release stage of English word-final plosives. In addition, the word-final plosives were totally deleted or pronounced as other irrelevant phonemes in a few cases. It is suggested that the errors of devoicing and unreleasing can be largely attributed to the interference of Cantonese. In light of the findings, remedial teaching programs can be designed and implemented to facilitate Cantonese ESL learners’ overcoming of these problems.

Abstract Do inputs need to be restricted on a language-specific basis? Classic Optimality Theory claims that they do not: the rich base is filtered by constraints that yield full contrast, complementary distributions or positional neutralisation depending on the ranking. The problem arises when positional neutralisation affects a gappy contrast. In Russian, voicing neutralisation works on all obstruents alike, including non-contrastively voiceless ones – but it creates voiced allophones that are otherwise disallowed. In the popular OT account of positional neutralisation, analysing these cases requires handling voicing twice: once for all segments, then again for gaps. I argue that the solution is to relax the rich base assumption by ruling gaps out at the UR level through morpheme structure constraints (Halle 1959 et seq.).

Acoustic investigation on Balinese vowel of non-fluent aphasia (NFA) has not been previously paid attention yet. Thus, this study examined the acoustic abnormalities of vowel articulation for patients with NFA. Therefore, spectral and temporal charateristic of their vowel sound are essentially searched by comparing the formant value and prosodic features with the normal vowel articulation. Speech output of two patients were observed and analyzed by using Praat and the data were described by implementing the theory of clinical phonetics and acoustics. The spectral analysis showed that the inaccurate constriction of the tongue in vowel articulation affected the range of oral tract (F2), pharynx space (F1), and shape of the lips (F3). Furthermore, the lesion in Broca’s area affected the temporal features of the sounds, such as the lower pitch, lower intensity and longer timing especially voicing environment. The vowels preceded by voiced consonants were significantly longer than those preceded by voiceless ones. So, the highly complex vowels tend to be articulated inaccurately due to articulatory implementation deficit. This finding is consistent with previous results that the spectral and temporal distortion are primarily phonetics rather than phonological planning program.

This research examines whether emphatic /ṭ/ and /ṣ/, both voiceless in Jeddah Arabic, show in their other voice feature correlates values that differentiate them from voiceless /t s/ and from voiced /d z/. A data set of a total of 600 words (10 speakers x 6 test words of the form /CVC(C)V:C/ (e.g. /χaṭṭa:ṭ/ ‘calligrapher’, /χaṣa:ṣa/ ‘gap, crevice’) x 10 repetitions) were collected and recorded by ten adult female native speakers of Jeddah Arabic aged 40–49. Results show that, like many languages, the voiced consonants tend to be shorter than the voiceless ones and vowels tend to be longer before them (Chen 1970). Results also indicate that in this parameter, Jeddah Arabic /ṭ/ retains some evidence of its historical non-voicelessness. This could mean that /ṭ/ and /ṣ/ are well on the way to completing a historical change from ejectives to fully voiceless consonants.

Corpus studies of regional variation using raw language data from the internet focus predominantly on lexical variables in writing. However, online repositories such as YouTube offer the possibility of investigating regional differences using phonological variables, as well. This article demonstrates the viability of constructing a naturalistic speech corpus for sociophonetic research by analyzing hundreds of recitations of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. We first replicate a known result of phonetic research, namely, that English vowels are longer in duration before voiced obstruents than before voiceless ones. We then compare /æ/-tensing in recitations from the Inland North and New York City dialect regions. Results indicate that there are significant regional differences in the formant trajectory of the vowel, even in identical phonetic environments (e.g., before nasal codas). This calls into question the uniformity of “/æ/-tensing” as a cross-dialectal phenomenon in American English. We contend that the analysis of spoken data from social media can and should supplement traditional methods in dialectology and variationist analysis to generate new hypotheses about socially conditioned speech patterns.

The spelling conventions for dental fricatives in Anglic languages (Scots and English) have a rich and complex history. However, the various – often competing – graphemic representations (<þ>, <ð>, <y> and <th>, among others) eventually settled on one digraph, <th>, for all contemporary varieties, irrespective of the phonemic distinction between /ð/ and /θ/. This single representation is odd among the languages’ fricatives, which tend to use contrasting graphemes (cf. <f> vs <v> and <s> vs <z>) to represent contrastive voicing, a sound pattern that emerged nearly a millennium ago. Close examinations of the scribal practices for English in the late medieval period, however, have shown that northern texts had begun to develop precisely this type of distinction for dental fricatives as well. Here /ð/ was predominantly represented by <y> and /θ/ by <th> (Jordan 1925; Benskin 1982). In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, this ‘Northern System’ collapsed, due to the northward spread of a London-based convention using exclusively <th> (Stenroos 2004). This article uses a rich body of corpus evidence for fifteenth-century Scots to show that, north of the North, the phonemic distinction was more clearly mirrored by spelling conventions than in any contemporary variety of English. Indeed, our data for Older Scots local documents (1375–1500) show a pattern where <y> progressively spreads into voiced contexts, while <th> recedes into voiceless ones. This system is traced back to the Old English positional preferences for <þ> and <ð> via subsequent changes in phonology, graphemic repertoire and letter shapes. An independent medieval Scots spelling norm is seen to emerge as part of a developing, proto-standard orthographic system, only to be cut short in the sixteenth century by top-down anglicisation processes.

This research elaborates the joint influences of the position relative to the accented prosodic component and syllable composition on the stops VOT in Japanese. Monosyllables and disyllables start with three types of plosives, namely bilabial, alveolar, and velar, are studied on different positions in prosodic sentences—pre-focus, on-focus, and post-focus. Results show that narrow and contrastive focus prolong the voiced on-focus stops (including bilabial, alveolar, and velar) which bear positive values in broad-focus sentences; but compress the on-focus voiceless consonants (including bilabial, alveolar, and velar) which have negative values neutrally. On the position of pre-focus, voiced consonants shorten the VOT towards to zero, especially for the velar voiced consonants; the voiceless ones follow this pattern exactly. On the position of post-focus, noticeably, the voiced and the voiceless plosives always show the opposite patterns—both of narrow and contrastive focus elicit a longer VOT on following voiced stops but reduce the VOT of voiceless consonants following them. The voiced alveolar show the most apparent compression at pre-focus, which always close to zero. Kinds of results describe significant interaction influences among different factors that bear the potential to change consonant VOT in Japanese.This research elaborates the joint influences of the position relative to the accented prosodic component and syllable composition on the stops VOT in Japanese. Monosyllables and disyllables start with three types of plosives, namely bilabial, alveolar, and velar, are studied on different positions in prosodic sentences—pre-focus, on-focus, and post-focus. Results show that narrow and contrastive focus prolong the voiced on-focus stops (including bilabial, alveolar, and velar) which bear positive values in broad-focus sentences; but compress the on-focus voiceless consonants (including bilabial, alveolar, and velar) which have negative values neutrally. On the position of pre-focus, voiced consonants shorten the VOT towards to zero, especially for the velar voiced consonants; the voiceless ones follow this pattern exactly. On the position of post-focus, noticeably, the voiced and the voiceless plosives always show the opposite patterns—both of narrow and contrastive focus elicit a longer VOT on following ...

During the last decade, two competing tendencies — globalization and national identity preservation — produced a considerable impact on the English-speaking World. One of the consequences of that process was a series of drastic changes that occurred in British English. It became the leader of instability and variability of pronunciation standard among the Englishes today. Various patterns of allophonic variation of intervocalic /t/ and its substitute with allophones of other phonemes such as tap / flap and sibilants can be named among those changes. The current perceptual study aimed at determining whether tapping / flapping and spirantization cases can lead to phonological changes and variability of the corresponding word phonemic pattern. 37 stimuli in VCV sequences that represented tapping acoustically similar to /d/, flapping similar to /r/ and /l/, sibilants similar to /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /s/, /z/ were segmented from the acoustic material. 8 realizations of the following phonemes /d/, /r/, /l/, /t/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /s/, /z/ were included into the experiment as a control group. Consequently, 45 stimuli were included into the perceptual study. A web-site was constructed to carry out the on-line perceptual experiment and collect and analyze the obtained data automatically. The randomized tokens for listening were uploaded and a questionnaire was published on the web-site. 16 native speakers took part in the experiment performing a discrimination task. 272 answers were received from the subjects to tap-and-flap-containing tokens. Among the responses, voiced consonant interpretations prevailed over voiceless ones (86 % vs 14 %). 63 % out of 86 % were /d/ responses and 13 % and 10 % were /r/ and /l/ responses correspondingly. 288 responses were obtained for 18 tokens that included sibilants. Among them, only 29 % on average accounted for plosives while 71 % accounted for fricative sibilants. Voiceless/voiced phonological feature and consonant loci feature taken separately were discriminated correctly for 72 % of the tokens.

Previous research on utterance-initial voiced stops in American English (AE) has shown that speakers enlarge the vocal cavity via tongue root advancement whether or not the stop is phonated when compared to voiceless stops (Ahn 2015). The current ultrasound study expands this line of research to examine two further variables: (a) utterance-initial fricatives/affricates and (b) effect of frontness of the following vowel. Participants included both monolingual (n = 4) and simultaneous bilingual (n = 7) AE speakers. Phrase-initial stops (/p,b,t,d,k,g/), fricatives (/f,v,s,z/), and affricates (/tʃ,ʤ/) were followed by /e/ or /u/. Most productions confirmed that both phonated and unphonated voiced stops/affricates had more tongue root advancement than voiceless ones, but a small proportion showed no difference between phonated, unphonated, and voiceless stops/affricates. Fricative productions were divided between no tongue root difference due to either voicing or phonation, and greater advancement for voiced fricatives regardless of phonation. Tongue root advancement may be less prevalent for fricatives because weakening of the frication can also facilitate the conditions for phonation. A prediction that tongue root advancement for voicing before /e/ might be limited by the positioning requirements of the front vowel was weakly supported, especially for fricatives. The potential effects of bilingual speakers are also addressed.

Voiced obstruents have inherent susceptibility for devoicing due to the Aerodynamic Voicing Constraints (AVC), and the susceptibility is higher for geminate obstruents than singletons. As a way to investigate how Japanese speakers realize the contrast between the [ + /-voice] contrast in obstruents, we examined oral and nasal airflow patterns during intervocalic voiced and voiceless stops, in singletons and geminates. The results showed asymmetry between single and geminate stops in realization of the stop voicing contrast. Airflow pattern clearly differentiates voiced vs. voiceless contrast in singletons, but the airflow patterns are similar in geminates. Acoustic signals also shows the same asymmetry between the singletons and geminates. The observed convergence—clear voicing contrast in singletons vs. the lack of the contrast in geminates both in air flow and acoustic signals indicate neutralization of the voiced geminates into voiceless ones. Our results support the idea of phonetic bases in phonological patterning of voicing neutralization in Japanese geminate stops.

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.

Abstract This paper shows that several typologically unrelated languages share the tendency for voiced sibilant affricates to be infrequent or missing altogether. Phonological processes examined in the paper illustrate that (1) voiceless stops undergo affrication more readily than voiced ones, and (2) voiced affricates deaffricate more commonly than voiceless ones, thereby contributing to the asymmetry in frequency between voiced vs. voiceless affricates.Phonetic properties of the sounds may explain these patterns. Affricates in general require complex control over supralaryngeal apertures, and they appear to have long durations in many languages. Long duration and complete oral closure at the beginning of affricates contribute to a buildup of intraoral pressure which impedes phonation. An aerodynamic experiment of obstruents, including affricates, was carried out for Polish and German, languages which differ in their realization of the stop voicing contrast (viz., voicing vs. aspiration). Voiced affricates in Polish had significantly longer voicing than in German; in medial position, they also had shorter durations and lower peak pressure values. We suggest that languages having voiced affricates in their phoneme inventory may tend to limit duration and intraoral pressure buildup in these sounds to allow vocal-fold vibration to continue.

Studies on cross‐language speech perception have found that adults have difficulty discriminating segments that are non‐contrastive in their native language; however, not all non‐native contrasts are equally difficult to perceive. This study investigates whether Buenos Aires Spanish (BAS) listeners can perceive non‐native voicing contrasts. Spanish has a phonemic distinction between voiceless stops /ptk/ and voiced stops /bdg/; however, it lacks a voicing contrast in fricatives, exhibiting only voiceless ones: /fsx/. BAS also has a palato‐alveolar fricative, which is variably realized [∫‐ȝ] depending on social factors, but this difference is not phonemic. To determine whether BAS listeners, possessing a native stop voicing contrast, can perceive the non‐native fricative voicing contrast, they performed a categorial AX discrimination task, with Portuguese voicing pairs (p/b, t/d, k/g, f/v, s/z,;∫/ȝ). The results show that, unsurprisingly, listeners perceive the voicing distinction of stops at ceiling level. However, they are at chance distinguishing the fricative voicing contrast, with one exception: f/v. Listeners are equally accurate distinguishing the f/v contrast as they are with the stop contrasts and equally inaccurate distinguishing s/z,∫/ȝ. This suggests that the non‐native f/v contrast has a different perceptual assimilation pattern than do the other non‐native fricative voicing contrasts, s/z and ∫/ȝ.

Incomplete devoicing in formal phonology

Aerodynamic requirement, a high intra‐oral air pressure (Pio), for the production of stop and fricative consonants delays the nasalization (velum opening) of the subsequent nasal vowel. We call this time delay between the onset of the nasal vowel and that of its nasalization as nasal onset time (NOT). The NOT was expected to be longer after voiceless consonants (higher Pio) than after voiced counterparts. The measurement of NOT on simultaneous recordings of speech and nasal signals for 24 Parisian speakers have unexpectedly shown that a greater NOT after voiced stops (38 ms in average corresponding to 17% of total nasal vowel duration) and voiced fricatives (7%) than after voiceless ones, respectively, 14.5% for stops and 4.1% for fricatives. This order is observed regardless of changes in speech rate: NOT is 11.1% with the voiced and 9.3% with the voiceless stops in slow, 17% and 14.5% in normal, and 22.4% and 18.6% in rapid rate. These results suggest that not only the Pio, but also some other factors are involved in the determination of NOT. We shall discuss possible such factors in perception and in production.

Intrusive vowels are short vowels appearing within consonant clusters that are not treated phonologically like full vowels. Though reported in many languages, few quantititative studies have examined these vowels. Here, an acoustic study of intrusive vowels in obstruent+tap clusters in the Spanish of Santa Cruz, Bolivia is reported. The results support earlier studies in that the intrusive vowel quality resembles that of the following nucleic vowel, rather than a neutral vowel, and intrusive vowels are significantly longer in clusters with voiced obstruents than in those with voiceless ones. However, results do not fully support all previous phonetic descriptions and related theoretical assumptions. In particular, a significant difference is not found in intrusive vowel length based on variables such as place of articulation of the obstruent, quality of the nucleic vowel, or placement of stress in relation to the cluster. In addition, where previous work finds no significance for position in the word, the present work finds that intrusive vowels are significantly longer in word-medial clusters than in word-initial clusters. The data further suggest that the articulation of obstruent+tap does not require an intrusive vowel, as has previously been claimed, as not all obstruent+tap clusters include an intrusive vowel.

This article examines the motivation for phonological stop assibilations, e.g. /t/ is realized as [ts], [s] or [t∫] before /i/, from the phonetic perspective. Hall & Hamann (2006) posit the following two implications: (a) Assibilation cannot be triggered by /i/ unless it is also triggered by by /j/, and (b) voiced stops cannot undergo assibilations unless voiceless ones do. In the following study we present the results of two acoustic experiments with native speakers of German and Polish which support implications (a) and (b). In our experiments we measured the friction phase after the /t d/ release before the onset of the following high front vocoid for four speakers of German and Polish. We found that the friction phase of /tj/ was significantly longer than that of /ti/, and that the friction phase of /t/ in the assibilation context is significantly longer than that of /d/. Furthermore, we unexpectedly found that the friction phase of /tj/ is significantly longer than that of /di/. An additional finding not related to the topic of the present study was that the Polish voiceless stops of the four speakers tested showed aspiration, in contrast to phonetic descriptions of these sounds as unaspirated.