Voiceless Plosives Research Articles

Motor coordination of articulators depends on the place of articulation

Although the sounds/p/and/k/are both voiceless plosives, they have different places of articulation: bilabial and velar, respectively. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship among articulators in plosives with reference to their place of articulation. Ten healthy subjects repeated bilabial and velar plosives in synchronization with magnetic resonance scanning. Each run was measured using a gradient echo sequence. Several linear and angular variables were defined to delineate the individual movements of articulators and to determine the temporal relationships among articulators. These variables showed distinctive changes depending on the place of articulation. In addition, movement of the velum was significantly correlated with that of the lips and the anterior part of the tongue in the bilabial plosive and with the posterior part of the tongue in the velar plosive. We conclude that unitary motor coordination of articulators depends on the place of articulation.

Fricated realisations of /t/ in Dublin and Middlesbrough English: an acoustic analysis of plosive frication and surface fricative contrasts

The frication of the voiceless plosives /p,t,k/ in word-final intervocalic position in Dublin and Middlesbrough English is examined in controlled data, and the acoustic characteristics of fricated realisations of /t/ are compared with other fricatives. The findings are that /t/ is not the only plosive to be fricated in the data sample, but does appear to differ from other plosives in terms of the regularity of frication and its nongradient character for some subjects. The realisation of fricated /t/ at both localities differs from that of other fricatives, and is probably perceptually distinct from other fricative contrasts at each locality, but is not identical across the two localities. On the basis of data presented here, it appears unlikely that fricated /t/ in Middlesbrough English is a direct transfer effect from the language of Irish immigrants to Middlesbrough.

Impact of segmentation rules on the rhythm metrics.

Rhythm of speech in the literature of the past decade is quantified using measures of durations: first order, such as mean duration and percentage of the total sample, or second order, such as variance and pairwise variability index. Results of different studies, however, vary even when the same materials and speech mode are used and imply uncertainty of cross‐study comparisons. Allen (1978) discussed the issue of validity (the criteria used for segmenting) and reliability (how accurately these criteria can be applied) on duration studies. The current paper examines how different segmentation criteria affect the five most commonly used rhythm metrics. All metrics are computed on the segmented sample of the read story (The North Wind and the Sun) for three speakers each of American English, Indonesian, and Serbo‐Croatian. Different segmentation criteria were applied to (1) borders between voiceless plosives and vowels and (2) borders between vowels and trills. As a result, durations of some segments were changed in the range of 10–50 ms. The results show how different metrics are affected by the choice of two segmentation rules at two different speech rates. Implications for cross‐linguistic studies are discussed.

Word-initial voiceless geminate stops: production and perception

Quantity contrasts (i.e., singleton vs geminate consonants, short vs long vowels) are common in the languages of the world. Yet, most singleton-geminate contrasts occur in word-medial position. Languages that allow gemination in other than word-medial position (word-initially or word-finally) are quite few. Even less frequent is the occurrence in the languages of the world of word-initial voiceless geminate stops. Pattani Malay (Abramson, 1986), Turgovian Swiss German (Kraehenmann, 2003), Tashlhiyt Berber (Ridouane, 2007), are the only documented languages that allow singleton-geminate contrasts word-initially for all native consonants, including both voiced and voiceless plosives. In this work we deal with word-initial voiceless geminate stops in Tashlhiyt Berber and present results from 3 experiments: 1) a production study including acoustic and electropalatographic measurements 2) a native-listener experiment with labelling and discrimination, and 3) a cross-language perceptual experiment, with listeners of two languages differing in germination: Italian (in which gemination only occurs word-medially) and French (in which gemination only occurs between words in continuous speech).

Coarticulation in CV sequences: Locus Equation data

Background: Speech sounds are known to be influenced by the context in which they occur, and to be produced in an overlapping way. These processes are referred to by the term "coarticulation". Objective: The aim of the study was to compare the magnitude of anticipatory coarticulation of oral voiceless plosives by following vowels in four Australian languages, Arrernte, Burarra, Gupapuyngu, and Warlpiri. Methods: The corpus consists of approximately six hundred isolated real words spoken by eight female adult speakers of the four languages. Locus equations are calculated for intervocalic consonants /p,c,t,tr,k/ (where "/tr/" represents a voiceless oral retroflex plosive) and all following vowels in consonant-vowel sequences. Measurement points are 0.1 and 0.5 into the vowel. The relationship between these two measurement points is linear and is expressed as a locus equation. The slope of the fitted line associated with the equation is a measure of the magnitude of coarticulation of the consonant by the following vowels. Results: There was a general tendency towards relatively highly coarticulated bilabial and velar plosives, weakly coarticulated retroflex plosives, and moderately coarticulated alveolar plosives. Results were variable for palatal plosives. These results are for the most part in accordance with findings for other Australian languages.

Nederlandse Baby's Gebruiken Statistische Informatie om Spraakklanken te Leren Onderscheiden

Phonemes are perceived categorically and this perception is language-specific for adult listeners. Infants initially are "universal" listeners, capable of discriminating both native and non-native speech contrasts. This ability disappears in the first year of life. Maye et al. (Cognition (2002)) propose that statistical learning is responsible for this change to language-specific perception. They were the first to show that infants of 6 and 8 months old use statistical distribution of phonetic variation in learning to discriminate speech sounds. A replication of this experiment studied 10-11-month-old Dutch infants. They were exposed to either a bimodal or a unimodal frequency distribution of an 8-step speech sound continuum based on the Hindi voiced and voiceless retroflex plosives (/da/ en /ta/). The results show that only infants in the bimodal condition could discriminate the contrast, representing the speech sounds in two categories rather than one.

Uma comparação gramatical, fonológica e lexical entre as famílias Guaikurú, Mataco e Bororo: um caso de difusão areal?

O objetivo desse artigo é fazer uma comparação entre as famílias lingüísticas Guaikurú, Bororo e Mataco com base em (i) uma comparação do morfema relacional em Guaikurú e Bororo; (ii) uma comparação do uso de mecanismos de ar glotal na implementação de plosivas desvozeadas em Kadiwéu (Guaikurú) e Bororo; (iii) a comparação de 350 itens entre Guaikurú e Mataco e 138 itens entre Guaikurú e Bororo. A evidência sugere que essas famílias estiveram em contato intenso, mas um relacionamento genético ainda parece incerto.

A produção de plosivas por crianças de três anos falantes do português brasileiro

OBJETIVO: apresentar as características fonético-acústicas de produção das consoantes plosivas vozeadas e não-vozeadas por crianças de três anos. MÉTODOS: análise qualitativa baseada na inspeção das características fonético-acústicas de eventos fônicos ocorridos no intervalo de obstrução, na liberação da plosão e na transição para a vogal e análise quantitativa das medidas do Voice Onset Time (VOT), de três repetições das seis consoantes plosivas do Português Brasileiro (PB), por quatro crianças, sendo três meninos e uma menina, falantes nativos do PB, por meio de análise fonético-acústica, em espectrograma de banda larga. Os achados foram comparados com estimativas de valores para a faixa adulta de falante nativo do PB. RESULTADOS: as crianças apresentaram produções semelhantes às que são encontradas na fala adulta, tanto para as plosivas vozeadas como para as não-vozeadas, bilabiais, alveolares e velares. Apresentaram também plosivas vozeadas com interrupção de barra de sonoridade e ocorrência de VOT positivo, e qualidade diferenciada de burst. Para as não-vozeadas, ocorreram a presença da breathy vowel no período de obstrução das plosivas e a presença de aspiração no segmento correspondente ao VOT positivo, para os três pontos de articulação pesquisados. CONCLUSÃO: as diferenças encontradas na produção das plosivas vozeadas, quanto às características da barra de sonoridade e qualidade do burst, a presença da breathy vowel nas plosivas não-vozeadas e aspiração, caracterizam a produção das plosivas nessa faixa etária. A diversidade das medidas acústicas, verificada pelos valores dos desvios-padrão sugerem que as crianças realizaram diversas tentativas, com diferentes ajustes para produzir tais sons.

On the phonetics of Cypriot‐Greek geminate plosives

This research provides evidence toward the existence of geminates in Cypriot Greek (hereinafter, CyG). In the existing literature it is reported that the sole or primary cue to gemination, across languages, is closure duration. This phonetic study verifies that this cross‐linguistic phonetic cue is also present in CyG. Toward this end, statistical analyses evidence highly significant durational differences in the voice onset time (VOT) of geminates versus singletons in CyG [F(164)=p<0.0001]. In fact it can safely be argued that VOT is the primary cue to gemination when it comes to CyG geminate plosives. This study contradicts previous claims [Arvaniti and Tserdanelis, 562 (2000); Arvaniti, 602 (1999b)] that argue closure duration to be the primary cue to gemination for CyG geminate stops. Furthermore, durational differences amongst the three voiceless plosives for both VOT and closure duration were highly evident. To the researchers’ knowledge this is the first study on CyG stops that considers durational differences with respect to the place of articulation, not only for singletons but also for geminates. Preliminary statistical analysis suggests an effect of the vowel following the target segment, a fact that could facilitate in resolving the phonological representation of utterance initial geminates.

Aspiration of Plosives in Māori: Change Over Time*

Māori is the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand. Traditionally the Māori plosive consonants are regarded as unaspirated, in contrast to English voiceless plosives which are strongly aspirated in initial position. This paper traces the increase in aspiration in Māori plosives over time by analysing the Māori and English plosive consonants of three speakers born over a span of nearly 100 years. It shows that both the number of aspirated plosives and the degree of aspiration (measured by VOT) have increased from the oldest speaker (born in 1885) to the youngest speaker (born in 1972) in both languages. There may be some language internal factors at work, but influence from English is a likely cause for this change. The youngest speaker was born before the Māori language revitalization programme was established. The results provide a snapshot of the pronunciation of Māori stops before the development of the kōhanga reo revitalization movement (Māori language nests) in 1982.

The Status of Voicing and Aspiration as Cues to Korean Laryngeal Contrast

This study reexamines the typologically unusual three-way laryngeal contrast in Korean among ‘lenis’, ‘fortis’, and ‘aspirated’ voiceless plosives in light of a recent proposal by Kim and Duanmu (2004) that the contrast is really among voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless aspirated categories. The results of a cross-linguistic perception experiment conducted with 24 native Korean speakers are generally consistent with Kim and Duanmu's analysis. The data show that Korean speakers are attuned to voicing in initial position, and this is naturally accounted for by a Korean laryngeal system containing a phonologically voiced category. However, the data also suggest that an important factor in Korean speakers' perception of the ‘lenis’ (~ voiced) plosives word-initially is aspiration. Thus, even if the ‘lenis’ series is analyzed as voiced, it differs in a fundamental way from the phonetic character of other languages' voiced plosives, a finding that severely weakens the cross-linguistic thrust of Kim and Duanmu's argument.

Closure Duration and VOT of Word-initial Voiceless Plosives in English in Spontaneous Connected Speech

This is a corpus study on closure duration and VOT in English voiceless stops in word-initial position. 19 speakers’ (10 female, 9 male) data from the Buckeye Speech corpus are used in the study. The first half of the paper introduces a novel approach of automatically finding the point of stop release in large speech database, using Mel spectral templates and similarity scores. The performance and robustness of the algorithm is discussed in detail. To our knowledge, this is also the first automatic measure of closure duration and VOT that is reported in detail in the literature. The second half of the paper studies the closure duration and VOT as calculated by the procedure described in the first half, and investigate the correlation between these durations and a number of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors.

Speech across the menstrual cycle: A replication and extension study

Whiteside et al. [S.P. Whiteside, A. Hanson, P.E. Cowell, Hormones and temporal components of speech: sex differences and effects of menstrual cyclicity on speech, Neurosci. Lett. 367 (2004) 44–47] documented effects of menstrual cycle phase and sex on voice onset time (VOT) in naturally timed speech using whole words. VOT is a temporal component of speech that plays an important role in production and perception [L.L. Koenig, Laryngeal factors in voiceless consonant production in men, women, and 5-year-olds, J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 43 (2000) 1211–1228; A. Löfqvist, L.L. Koenig, R.S. McGowan, Vocal tract aerodynamics in /aCa/ utterances: measurements, Speech Commun. 16 (1995) 49–66; T.M. Nearey, B. Rochet, Effects of place of articulation and vowel context in VOT production and perception for French and English Stops, J. Int. Phon. Assoc. 24 (1994) 1–18; L.M. Rimol, T. Eichele, K. Hugdahl, The effect of voice-onset-time on dichotic listening with consonant–vowel syllables, Neuropsychologia 44 (2006) 191–196; P.G. Simos, R.L. Diehl, J.I. Breier, M.R. Molis, G. Zouridakis, A.C. Papanicolaou, MEG correlates of categorical perception of a voice onset time continuum in humans, Cogn. Brain Res. 7 (1998) 215–219; S.P. Whiteside, J. Marshall, Developmental trends in voice onset time: some evidence for sex differences, Phonetica 58 (2001) 196–210]. The present study was designed to replicate and expand upon Whiteside et al. [S.P. Whiteside, A. Hanson, P.E. Cowell, Hormones and temporal components of speech: sex differences and effects of menstrual cyclicity on speech, Neurosci. Lett. 367 (2004) 44–47] using a speeded syllable repetition paradigm. VOT measurements for 6 English plosives (/p b t d k g/) were obtained from speech samples of 15 women and 20 men (age 20–25 years). Women were tested across two points in the menstrual cycle (Days 2–5: low estrogen and progesterone/low-EP; Days 18–25: high estrogen and progesterone/high-EP) and men were tested once. Results indicated significant interaction between menstrual cycle phase and voicing ( F(1,14) = 8.239, P < 0.02), whereby the voiced plosives (b, g) displayed shorter VOT values and the voiceless plosives (p, k) displayed longer values at the high-EP phase. Thus, the distinction between the voiced and voiceless plosive was enhanced at high-EP. Significant sex effects ( F(1,33) = 10.080, P < 0.005) were seen with women at high-EP but not the low-EP phase having longer VOT values than men for voiceless plosives. Sex differences between the voiced and voiceless plosives were enhanced at the high-EP phase. This study indicates a role for activational ovarian hormones in regulating temporal features of speech in both whole words and speeded syllable repetition.

Grimm's Law and loanwords*

This article addresses the controversy about the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European consonant inventory, namely the question of whether the traditional, Neo-Grammarian reconstruction or one of the more recent alternatives such as the Glottalic Theory is correct. This question is directly related to that of the proper formulation of Grimm's Law. In the traditional framework the Proto-Germanic voiceless plosives derive from an Indo-European series of plain voiced plosives, whereas in the alternative account they derive from some kind of voiceless plosives, e.g. voiceless glottalics. The article brings to bear on the problem a new kind of evidence: the integration of prehistoric Semitic loanwords. This evidence unambiguously supports the traditional framework, in particular a shift of voiced to voiceless plosives under Grimm's Law.

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.

Control of Voice-Onset Time in the Absence of Hearing

The relation between partial or absent hearing and control of the voicing contrast has long been of interest to investigators, in part because speakers who are born deaf characteristically have great difficulty mastering the contrast and in part for the light it can cast on the role of hearing in the acquisition and maintenance of phonological contrasts in general. One of the phonetic characteristics that distinguish voiced from voiceless plosives in English (p/b, t/d, k/g) is voice onset time (VOT): the interval from plosive release to the onset of voicing of the following vowel. This article first reviews research on VOT anomalies in the speech production of prelingually and postlingually deaf speakers. Then it turns to studies of the mechanisms in speech breathing, phonation and articulation that underlie those anomalies. In both populations of speakers, there is a tendency for the difference between voiced and voiceless VOT to be reduced, to the point for many speakers that there is in effect a substitution of the voiced for the voiceless cognate. The separation of the cognate VOTs can be enhanced when some hearing is restored with a cochlear implant. Both populations also present anomalies in speech breathing that can hinder the development of intraoral pressures and transglottal pressure drops that are required for the production of the VOT contrast. Its successful management further requires critical timing among phonatory and articulatory gestures, most of which are not visible, rendering the VOT contrast a particular challenge in the absence of hearing.

Perceptual effects in final cluster reduction patterns

This study investigates word final deletion patterns in English loanword adaptations and in various other phonological data. By comparing the loanword forms in several languages, preference scales for retention of consonants (covert in the native words) emerged. The most robust pattern is the preference for voiceless plosives (T) over voiced ones (D) in the postnasal context (N_#). The asymmetric deletion patterns are predicted by the relative acoustic and auditory saliency of the plosives in the postsonorant context. Saliency predicts that D will be always deleted before T. Similar patterns of cluster reduction are found in productive synchronic alternations, in the course of language evolution, and also in child acquisition data. It is argued that the perceptibility scales are universally defined through auditory perception. However, auditory perception alone does not determine directly the phonological patterns. Instead, the perceptibility scales are encoded into the grammatical component of each language. This is shown by distinct yet implicationally congruent reduction patterns in loanwords across languages.

Speech Motor Development During Acquisition of the Voicing Contrast

Lip and jaw movements were studied longitudinally in 19-month-old children as they acquired the voicing contrast for /p/ and /b/. A movement tracking system obtained lip and jaw kinematics as participants produced the target utterances /papa/ and /baba/. Laryngeal adjustments were also tracked through acoustically recorded voice onset time (VOT) of the consonants. Across this period of developmental phonological change, the children began to produce VOTs in 2 distinct categories for voiced and voiceless plosives. Specific kinematic differences were observed during oral opening and closing and between spatial and temporal parameters of movement. The development of the voicing contrast was most closely associated with changes in jaw kinematics for oral opening in comparison to that of the lip. Conversely, movements into oral closing were not accompanied by significant increases in jaw, upper lip, or lower lip displacement or velocity, although a decrease in jaw movement variability was found. There was no evidence of phoneme-specific movement differences between /p/ and /b/ in the children or in the adults studied. Spatial coupling between the jaw and upper lip changed significantly across sessions, whereas changes in temporal coupling were not observed. Findings indicate that oral opening and closing have different task requirements and that children modify their articulatory movements to meet the demands of each task. Overall, the findings illustrate how orofacial movements and laryngeal function change in parallel during linguistic development.

Sex differences in voice onset time: a developmental study of phonetic context effects in British English.

Voice onset time (VOT) data for the plosives /p b t d k g/ in two vowel contexts (/i a/) for 5 groups of 46 boys and girls aged 5; 8 (5 years, 8 months) to 13;2 years were investigated to examine patterns of sex differences. Results indicated that there was some evidence of females displaying longer VOT values than the males. In addition, these were found to be most marked for the data of the 13;2-year olds. Furthermore, the sex differences in the VOT values displayed phonetic context effects. For example, the greatest sex differences were observed for the voiceless plosives, and within the context of the vowel /i/.

Hormones and temporal components of speech: sex differences and effects of menstrual cyclicity on speech

Voice onset time (VOT) is a salient acoustic parameter of speech which signals the ‘voiced’ and ‘voiceless’ status of plosives in English (e.g. the initial sound in ‘bat’ versus the initial sound in ‘pat’). As a micro-temporal acoustic parameter, VOT may be sensitive to changes in hormones which may affect the neuromuscular systems involved in speech production. This study adopted a novel approach by investigating the effects of menstrual cycle phase and sex on VOT. VOT data representing the six plosives of English (/p b t d k g/) were examined for seven women (age 20–23 years) at two phases of the menstrual cycle (day 18–25: high estrogen and progesterone; day 2–5: low estrogen and progesterone). Results indicated that menstrual cycle phase had a significant interaction with the identity of the plosive ( F (5,30) = 5.869, P < 0.002). Menstrual cycle phase also had significant effects on the contrasts between cognate voiced and voiceless plosives ( F (1,6) = 11.444, P < 0.02); samples from the high hormone phase displayed an enhanced voiced/voiceless contrast. Subsequently, VOT data samples from the two phases of the menstrual cycle were compared with those from five men in order to explore sex differences at different phases of the menstrual cycle. Low hormone phase samples displayed no significant sex differences for either VOT values ( F (1,10) = 2.085, P > 0.05), or the contrast between voiced and voiceless cognates ( F (1,10) = 0.407, P > 0.05). In contrast, the high hormone phase VOT samples displayed significant plosive by sex interactions ( F (5,50) = 4.442, P < 0.005). In addition, significant sex differences were found for the contrasts between cognate voiced and voiceless plosives ( F (1,10) = 5.019, P < 0.05); the women displayed a more marked voiced/voiceless contrast. The findings suggest that ovarian hormones play some role in shaping some temporal components of speech.