Vowel Formant Research Articles

Acoustic differentiation of allophones of /aɪ/ in Chicagoland English: Statistical comparison of formant trajectories

Diphthongs have a dynamic formant structure. Nevertheless, many quantitative studies of diphthongs are based on measurements at only two points, somewhere in the nucleus and somewhere in the glide. The question arises as to whether analyses based on values at only two points provide an adequate understanding of the dynamics of diphthongs. Wieling (2018) mentions the analysis of /aɪ/ raising in Chicago English in Hualde, Luchkina & Eager (2017) as one of several examples of recent studies where potentially interesting patterns may have been missed because of limited sampling of formant values, and proposes using Generalized Additive Mixed Models (GAMM) to allow a more complete understanding of diphthong dynamics. In this paper, we examine the acoustic nature of the (quasi-)phonemic differentiation between two originally allophonic variants of the diphthong /aɪ/ in the US English of Chicago and the surrounding area. We offer an acoustic analysis based on full formant trajectories of diphthongs with data obtained from a group of 53 speakers. The results of a GAMM analysis are then compared with those obtained in Hualde et al. (2017), which considered values at only two points and from a smaller set of speakers (17). We also discuss the main advantages of GAMM analysis over other techniques that have being proposed for the analysis of differences in vowel formant dynamics.

Musical Hearing and Musical Experience in Second Language English Vowel Acquisition.

Purpose Former studies suggested that music perception can help produce certain accentual features in the first and second language (L2), such as intonational contours. What was missing in many of these studies was the identification of the exact relationship between specific music perception skills and the production of different accentual features in a foreign language. Our aim was to verify whether empirically tested musical hearing skills can be related to the acquisition of English vowels by learners of English as an L2 before and after a formal accent training course. Method Fifty adult Polish speakers of L2 English were tested before and after a two-semester accent training in order to observe the effect of musical hearing on the acquisition of English vowels. Their L2 English vowel formant contours produced in consonant-vowel-consonant context were compared with the target General British vowels produced by their pronunciation teachers. We juxtaposed these results with their musical hearing test scores and self-reported musical experience to observe a possible relationship between successful L2 vowel acquisition and musical aptitude. Results Preexisting rhythmic memory was reported as a significant predictor before training, while musical experience was reported as a significant factor in the production of more native-like L2 vowels after training. We also observed that not all vowels were equally acquired or affected by musical hearing or musical experience. The strongest estimate we observed was the closeness to model before training, suggesting that learners who already managed to acquire some features of a native-like accent were also more successful after training. Conclusions Our results are revealing in two aspects. First, the learners' former proficiency in L2 pronunciation is the most robust predictor in acquiring a native-like accent. Second, there is a potential relationship between rhythmic memory and L2 vowel acquisition before training, as well as years of musical experience after training, suggesting that specific musical skills and music practice can be an asset in learning a foreign language accent.

Using browser-based software to teach acoustic theory of speech production

I will demonstrate how I use browser-based software authored by Mark Huckvale to promote active learning of the acoustic theory of speech production. Students create the complex glottal tone using ESynth, filter the glottal tone with various vocal tract filters with ESystem, explore the impact of vocal tract shapes on formants using VTDemo, and examine their own vowel formants with ESection.

Course structure and projects for undergraduate CSD Acoustic Phonetics courses

Virtually all undergraduate communication sciences and disorders programs require a course in acoustic phonetics (sometimes titled speech science). In our undergraduate program, students have a separate phonetics (transcription) course prior to taking the acoustic phonetics course. My acoustic phonetics course splits the content into two halves: In the first half of the course we focus on the source, including basic acoustics (SHM, harmonics), vocal fold vibration, modes of phonation, and intonation. In the second half of the course, we focus on the filter, including resonance and tube models, vowel formants, and consonant acoustics. In this way, more abstract and basic acoustic properties are interwoven with specific examples of speech-related acoustics. Students complete one project using Praat that focuses on intrinsic F0. The project is divided into four components across the semester. The talk will focus on changes in course structure and the project.

Neural coding of formant-exaggerated speech and nonspeech in children with and without autism spectrum disorders.

The presence of vowel exaggeration in infant-directed speech (IDS) may adapt to the age-appropriate demands in speech and language acquisition. Previous studies have provided behavioral evidence of atypical auditory processing towards IDS in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), while the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms remain unknown. This event-related potential (ERP) study investigated the neural coding of formant-exaggerated speech and nonspeech in 24 4- to 11-year-old children with ASD and 24 typically-developing (TD) peers. The EEG data were recorded using an alternating block design, in which each stimulus type (exaggerated/non-exaggerated sound) was presented with equal probability. ERP waveform analysis revealed an enhanced P1 for vowel formant exaggeration in the TD group but not in the ASD group. This speech-specific atypical processing in ASD was not found for the nonspeech stimuli which showed similar P1 enhancement in both ASD and TD groups. Moreover, the time-frequency analysis indicated that children with ASD showed differences in neural synchronization in the delta-theta bands for processing acoustic formant changes embedded in nonspeech. Collectively, the results add substantiating neurophysiological evidence (i.e., a lack of neural enhancement effect of vowel exaggeration) for atypical auditory processing of IDS in children with ASD, which may exert a negative effect on phonetic encoding and language learning. LAY SUMMARY: Atypical responses to motherese might act as a potential early marker of risk for children with ASD. This study investigated the neural responses to such socially relevant stimuli in the ASD brain, and the results suggested a lack of neural enhancement responding to the motherese even in individuals without intellectual disability.

The Effect of Bimaxillary Orthognathic Surgery on Voice Characteristics in Skeletal Class 3 Deformity Patients: An Evaluation Using Acoustic Analysis.

The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of bimaxillary orthognathic surgery on the acoustic voice characteristics of skeletal class 3 patients. All healthy nonsyndromic patients with Class 3 deformity who were eligible for bimaxillary orthognathic surgery, were included in this before and after quasi-experimental study. This experiment's main intervention was mandibular setback surgery by bilateral sagittal split osteotomy plus maxillary advancement using LeFort 1 osteotomy. Age, sex, and intraoperative jaw movements were recorded. Acoustic analysis of voice samples (vowels /a/ and /i/) was performed with Praat software as outcome variables. The formant frequencies (F0, F1, F2, and F3) of these vowels were extracted 1 week preoperatively (T0), 1 and 6 months (T1, T2) postoperatively by a speech therapist. The significance level was set at 0.05 using SPSS 19. The study sample comprised 20 patients including 11 women (55%) and 9 men (45%) with a mean age of 31.95 ± 4.72 years. The average mandibular setback and maxillary advancement were 3.30 ± 0.86 and 2.85 ± 0.74 mm, respectively. The fundamental frequency (F0) and the first, second, and third formants (F1, F2, F3) of vowels /i/ and /a/ were significantly decreased over time intervals, postoperatively (P < 0.05). The finding revealed that bimaxillary orthognathic surgery (maxillary advancement and mandibular setback with bilateral sagittal split osteotomy) might reduce the acoustic formant parameters of voice to the normal frequency ranges, in patients with class 3 skeletal deformities. More clinical trials with greater sample sizes and long-term follow-ups are suggested in the future.

Perceptual validation of vowel normalization methods for variationist research

AbstractThe evaluation of normalization methods sometimes focuses on the maximization of vowel-space similarity. This focus can lead to the adoption of methods that erase legitimate phonetic variation from our data, that is, overnormalization. First, a production corpus is presented that highlights three types of variation in formant patterns: uniform scaling, nonuniform scaling, and centralization. Then the results of two perceptual experiments are presented, both suggesting that listeners tend to ignore variation according to uniform scaling, while associating nonuniform scaling and centralization with phonetic differences. Overall, results suggest that normalization methods that remove variation not according to uniform scaling can remove legitimate phonetic variation from vowel formant data. As a result, although these methods can provide more similar vowel spaces, they do so by erasing phonetic variation from vowel data that may be socially and linguistically meaningful, including a potential male-female difference in the low vowels in our corpus.

Acoustic analysis of vowel formant frequencies in genetically-related and non-genetically related speakers with implications for forensic speaker comparison.

The purpose of this study was to explore the speaker-discriminatory potential of vowel formant mean frequencies in comparisons of identical twin pairs and non-genetically related speakers. The influences of lexical stress and the vowels’ acoustic distances on the discriminatory patterns of formant frequencies were also assessed. Acoustic extraction and analysis of the first four speech formants F1-F4 were carried out using spontaneous speech materials. The recordings comprise telephone conversations between identical twin pairs while being directly recorded through high-quality microphones. The subjects were 20 male adult speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP), aged between 19 and 35. As for comparisons, stressed and unstressed oral vowels of BP were segmented and transcribed manually in the Praat software. F1-F4 formant estimates were automatically extracted from the middle points of each labeled vowel. Formant values were represented in both Hertz and Bark. Comparisons within identical twin pairs using the Bark scale were performed to verify whether the measured differences would be potentially significant when following a psychoacoustic criterion. The results revealed consistent patterns regarding the comparison of low-frequency and high-frequency formants in twin pairs and non-genetically related speakers, with high-frequency formants displaying a greater speaker-discriminatory power compared to low-frequency formants. Among all formants, F4 seemed to display the highest discriminatory potential within identical twin pairs, followed by F3. As for non-genetically related speakers, both F3 and F4 displayed a similar high discriminatory potential. Regarding vowel quality, the central vowel /a/ was found to be the most speaker-discriminatory segment, followed by front vowels. Moreover, stressed vowels displayed a higher inter-speaker discrimination than unstressed vowels in both groups; however, the combination of stressed and unstressed vowels was found even more explanatory in terms of the observed differences. Although identical twins displayed a higher phonetic similarity, they were not found phonetically identical.

The Variability of Vowels' Formants in Forensic Speech

Speech analysis plays a pivotal role in the exploitation of forensic recordings in resolving a wide range of questions. Although this topic may include a large set of methodologies based on varied digital features (MFCC, Centroid, Harmonicity, VOT, etc., cf. [1]), this work approaches the theme from a phonetic perspective, taking into consideration the vowel formants, and focusing on their variability and difficulty of measurement. Formants correspond to the resonant frequencies of the vocal tract and are, therefore, sensible to specific speaker-related variations such as age and sex. In this respect, formants' variation contributes to characterizing the subjective timbre of the person. For this reason, formants' values are largely used in forensics [2], with all the practical problems that come with them, and in particular when dealing with speaker recognition or discrimination [3], [4]. Indeed, formants' values correspond to specific frequencies of the sound signal and are usually reported in Hertz. They are, however, affected by numerous internal and external variables, so that although on average they are characteristic of the individual speaker, they always vary within frequency bands that cannot be defined in absolute terms [5]. How, then, is it possible to provide reliable answers to forensic questions? In essence, it is up to the specialist to determine if there are the conditions to carry out an analysis, and to understand, for example, whether the differences between formants' values could be ascribed to two different speakers or the difference is too subtle to justify this claim. What should be measurable today, and must be defined at the level of jurisprudence, is therefore the professionalism of the expert. However, this is still heterogeneous in different countries, although several codes of practice such as the International Association for Forensic Phonetics or engineering society ones have been validated.

Speech compensation responses and sensorimotor adaptation to formant feedback perturbations.

Control of speech formants is important for the production of distinguishable speech sounds and is achieved with both feedback and learned feedforward control. However, it is unclear whether the learning of feedforward control involves the mechanisms of feedback control. Speakers have been shown to compensate for unpredictable transient mid-utterance perturbations of pitch and loudness feedback, demonstrating online feedback control of these speech features. To determine whether similar feedback control mechanisms exist in the production of formants, responses to unpredictable vowel formant feedback perturbations were examined. Results showed similar within-trial compensatory responses to formant perturbations that were presented at utterance onset and mid-utterance. The relationship between online feedback compensation to unpredictable formant perturbations and sensorimotor adaptation to consistent formant perturbations was further examined. Within-trial online compensation responses were not correlated with across-trial sensorimotor adaptation. A detailed analysis of within-trial time course dynamics across trials during sensorimotor adaptation revealed that across-trial sensorimotor adaptation responses did not result from an incorporation of within-trial compensation response. These findings suggest that online feedback compensation and sensorimotor adaptation are governed by distinct neural mechanisms. These findings have important implications for models of speech motor control in terms of how feedback and feedforward control mechanisms are implemented.

Acoustic vowel analysis and speech intelligibility in young adult Hebrew speakers: Developmental dysarthria versus typical development.

Developmental dysarthria is a motor speech impairment commonly characterized by varying levels of reduced speech intelligibility. The relationship between intelligibility deficits and acoustic vowel space among these individuals has long been noted in the literature, with evidence of vowel centralization (e.g., in English and Mandarin). However, the degree to which this centralization occurs and the intelligibility-acoustic relationship is maintained in different vowel systems has yet to be studied thoroughly. In comparison with American English, the Hebrew vowel system is significantly smaller, with a potentially smaller vowel space area, a factor that may impact upon the comparisons of the acoustic vowel space and its correlation with speech intelligibility. Data on vowel space and speech intelligibility are particularly limited for Hebrew speakers with motor speech disorders. To determine the nature and degree of vowel space centralization in Hebrew-speaking adolescents and young adults with dysarthria, in comparison with typically developing (TD) peers, and to correlate these findings with speech intelligibility scores. Adolescents and young adults with developmental dysarthria (secondary to cerebral palsy (CP) and other motor deficits, n = 17) and their TD peers (n = 17) were recorded producing Hebrew corner vowels within single words. For intelligibility assessments, naïve listeners transcribed those words produced by speakers with CP, and intelligibility scores were calculated. Acoustic analysis of vowel formants (F1, F2) revealed a centralization of vowel space among speakers with CP for all acoustic metrics of vowel formants, and mainly for the formant centralization ratio (FCR), in comparison with TD peers. Intelligibility scores were correlated strongly with the FCR metric for speakers with CP. The main results, vowel space centralization for speakers with CP in comparison with TD peers, echo previous cross-linguistic results. The correlation of acoustic results with speech intelligibility carries clinical implications. Taken together, the results contribute to better characterization of the speech production deficit in Hebrew speakers with motor speech disorders. Furthermore, they may guide clinical decision-making and intervention planning to improve speech intelligibility. What this paper adds What is already known on the subject Speech production and intelligibility deficits among individuals with developmental dysarthria (e.g., secondary to CP) are well documented. These deficits have also been correlated with centralization of the acoustic vowel space, although primarily in English speakers. Little is known about the acoustic characteristics of vowels in Hebrew speakers with motor speech disorders, and whether correlations with speech intelligibility are maintained. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This study is the first to describe the acoustic characteristics of vowel space in Hebrew-speaking adolescents and young adults with developmental dysarthria. The results demonstrate a centralization of the acoustic vowel space in comparison with TD peers for all measures, as found in other languages. Correlation between acoustic measures and speech intelligibility scores were also documented. We discuss these results within the context of cross-linguistic comparisons. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The results confirm the use of objective acoustic measures in the assessment of individuals with motor speech disorders, providing such data for Hebrew-speaking adolescents and young adults. These measures can be used to determine the nature and severity of the speech deficit across languages, may guide intervention planning, as well as measure the effectiveness of intelligibility-based treatment programmes.

Extending automatic vowel formant extraction to New Englishes

Abstract While different automated procedures for vowel formant prediction have recently been proposed, it is unclear how reliably these methods perform in the phonetic study of vowels in New Englishes and how such approaches could be applied to specific varieties. This paper compares different automatic methods for vowel formant prediction in New Englishes, using manual measurements of Trinidadian English as a baseline. The results show that all methods perform significantly better than default formant parameters often used in speech analysis packages, and that a Bayesian formant tracker calibrated with American (US-FAVE) and Trinidadian English (TRINI-FAVE) generally provides better results than an automatic procedure that optimizes formant ceilings on a vowel- and speaker-specific level. TRINI-FAVE measures vowels characteristic of Trinidadian English most accurately. Phonetic studies of vowels in New Englishes can benefit from these methods.

Prosodic prominence effects in the processing of spectral cues

ABSTRACT Two experiments test how phrasal prominence influences listeners' perception of vowel contrasts and how prominence information and vowel formant cues are integrated in processing. Experiment 1 finds that listeners incorporate phrasal prominence in their perception of vowels, in line with how spectral structure is modulated by prominence in speech. Experiment 2 explores how prominence information is integrated with formant cues in a visual world eyetracking task. Prominence shows an overall later influence in processing in line with current models of prosodic and segmental integration. However, listeners' perception of formants was also impacted more subtly by prominence immediately in processing such that prominence information directly shapes how formant cues are perceived. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for models of prosodic effects in segmental perception and possible differences between prosodic prominence and prosodic boundaries in this regard.

A Simple Speech Production System Based on Formant Estimation of a Tongue Articulatory System Using Human Tongue Orientation

An algorithm for a potentially non-obtrusive speech production system was developed and characterized. The algorithm is primarily based on the articulation of the human tongue referred as tongue articulatory system (TAS) and was cascaded with a previously developed laryngeal model. We developed and optimized statistical formulae for formants of vowels and consonants and studied the model for different ages and genders. The difference between the formant frequencies obtained using both the established vocal tract system and proposed cascaded system was found to be < 5%. The proposed model shows the significance of the articulatory nature of the tongue in human speech production. An algorithmic speech synthesizer was developed, and its output was matched with original speech signals for English vowels and consonants with an Normalized Root-Mean-Square deviation error (NRMSE) of < 0.15ms. Further, an experimental implementation of the developed algorithm was done, with flex-sensors emulating the tongue in an artificial oral cavity. The experimental test results further confirmed the effectiveness of the algorithm, revealing interesting features under tolerance analyses. This idea relates to a means for compensating for a whole or partial loss of speech. Such a model can be useful to interpret speech for tracheostomised patients who have undergone larynx surgery, speech-disabled due to accidents or voice disorders, medical rehabilitation and for robotics.

Sensorimotor adaptation of speech depends on the direction of auditory feedback alteration.

A hallmark feature of speech motor control is its ability to learn to anticipate and compensate for persistent feedback alterations, a process referred to as sensorimotor adaptation. Because this process involves adjusting articulation to counter the perceived effects of altering acoustic feedback, there are a number of factors that affect it, including the complex relationship between acoustics and articulation and non-uniformities of speech perception. As a consequence, sensorimotor adaptation is hypothesised to vary as a function of the direction of the applied auditory feedback alteration in vowel formant space. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments where auditory feedback was altered in real time, shifting the frequency values of the first and second formants (F1 and F2) of participants' speech. Shifts were designed on a subject-by-subject basis and sensorimotor adaptation was quantified with respect to the direction of applied shift, normalised for individual speakers. Adaptation was indeed found to depend on the direction of the applied shift in vowel formant space, independent of shift magnitude. These findings have implications for models of sensorimotor adaptation of speech.

Building an Elliptic Curve Cryptography to Encode and Decode Vietnamese Texts

This article presents building an Elliptic curve cryptography and using it to encode and decode Vietnamese text. Here we have illustrated the prime number p = 151 in the future, which will use a large prime number. We consider an elliptic curve with a total score of 172 points. Encode and decode with standard Vietnamese text and combine with the special characters in ASCII code. The program is designed and installed and on the C# environment to give the correct result of the encryption algorithm.&#x0D; KeywordsData sequence, Decryption, Discrete logarithm, Elliptic curve, Elliptic curve cryptosystem, Encryption, Public key&#x0D; References[1] Koblitz, “Elliptic curve cryptosystems”, Mathematics of Computation”, 203 - 209, 1987.[2] Miller, “Uses of elliptic curves in cryptography, Advances in Cryptology - Crypto”, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, SpringerVerlag, 1986, pp. 417-426.[3] Sugantha Priya, Dr.M. Mohanraj, “A Review on Secure Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Dynamic Secure Routing Link Path Detection Algorithm (DSRLP) Under Jamming Attack”, ISSN 68(30) (2020) 0474-9030.[4] Negin Dinarvand, Hamid Barati, “An efficient and secure RFID authentication protocol using ellipticcurvecryptography”,SpringerfScience+Business Media, LLC, 2017[5] Utku Gulen, Selcuk Baktir, “Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Wireless Sensor Networks Using the Number Theoretic Transform”, journal-sensors, Published: 9 March, 2020.[6] Sravana Kumar, C.H. Suneetha, A.R. Chandrasekh, “Encryption of Data Using Elliptic Curve Over Finite Fields”, International Journal of Distributed and Parallel Systems (IJDPS). 3(1) (2012) 301-308.[7] Amounas, E.H. El Kinani, ECC Encryption and Decryption with a Data Sequence, Applied Mathematical Sciences 6(101) (2012) 5039-5047.[8] Vu Thi Hai Ha, Dinh Thi Hang, Bui Dang Binh, “The influence of volume on the formant of vowels and the identification of Vietnamese speakers”, Vietnam Institute of Linguistics, 2015.[9] Enge, “Elliptic curves and their applications to cryptography”, Norwell, MA: Kulwer Academic publishers, 1999.[10] Neil Koblitz, “An Elliptic Curve implementation of the finite field digital signature algorithm”, in Advances in cryptology,(CRYPTO 1998), SpringerLecture Notes in computer science, 1462 (1998) 327-337.[11] S. Sandeep, Kumar, “Elliptic curve cryptography for constrained devices”, PhD thesis, Ruhr-University Bochum, June, 2006.

Cross-Gender Differences in English/French Bilingual Speakers: A Multiparametric Study.

The present study concerns speech productions of female and male English/French bilingual speakers in both reading and semi-spontaneous speech tasks. We investigated various acoustic parameters: average fundamental sound frequency (F0), F0 range, F0 variance (SD), vowel formants (F1, F2, and F3), voice onset time (VOT) and H1-H2 (intensity difference between the first and the second harmonic frequencies, used to measure phonation type) in both languages. Our results revealed a significant effect of gender and language on all parameters. Overall, average F0 was higher in French while F0 modulation was stronger in English. Regardless of language, female speakers exhibited higher F0 than male speakers. Moreover, the higher average F0 in French was larger in female speakers. On the other hand, the smaller F0 modulation in French was stronger in male speakers. The analysis of vowel formants showed that overall, female speakers exhibited higher values than males. However, we found a significant cross-gender difference on F2 of the back vowel [u:] in English, but not on the vowel [u] in French. VOT of voiceless stops was longer in Female speakers in both languages, with a greater difference in English. VOT contrast between voiceless stops and their voiced counterparts was also significantly longer in female speakers in both languages. The scope of this cross-gender difference was greater in English. H1-H2 was higher in female speakers in both languages, indicating a breathier phonation type. Furthermore, female speakers tended to exhibit smaller H1-H2 in French, while the opposite was true in males. This resulted in a smaller cross-gender difference in French for this parameter. All these data support the idea of language- and gender-specific vocal norms, to which bilingual speakers seem to adapt. This constitutes a further argument to give social factors, such as gender dynamics, more consideration in phonetic studies.

The Formant Bandwidth as a Measure of Vowel Intelligibility in Dysphonic Speech

The current paper examined the impact of dysphonia on the bandwidth of the first two formants of vowels, and the relationship between the formant bandwidth and vowel intelligibility. Speaker participants of the study were 10 adult females with healthy voice and 10 adult females with dysphonic voice. Eleven vowels in American English were recorded in /h/-vowel-/d/ format. The vowels were presented to 10 native speakers of American English with normal hearing, who were asked to select a vowel they heard from a list of /h/-vowel-/d/ words. The vowels were acoustically analyzed to measure the bandwidth of the first and second formants (B1 and B2). Separate Wilcoxon rank sum tests were conducted for each vowel for normal and dysphonic speech because the differences in B1 and B2 were found to not be normally distributed. Spearman correlation tests were conducted to evaluate the association between the difference in formant bandwidths and vowel intelligibility between the healthy and dysphonic speakers. B1 was significantly greater in dysphonic vowels for seven of the eleven vowels, and lesser for only one of the vowels. There was no statistically significant difference in B2 between the normal and dysphonic vowels, except for the vowel /i/. The difference in B1 between normal and dysphonic vowels strongly predicted the intelligibility difference. Dysphonia significantly affects B1, and the difference in B1 may serve as an acoustic marker for the intelligibility reduction in dysphonic vowels. This acoustic-perceptual relationship should be confirmed by a larger-scale study in the future.

An acoustic study of Russian affricated dental plosive /t′/

This paper aims to examine some acoustic properties of Russian affricated dental plosive /t′/. Russian language has ‘palatalized’ consonants, and they are produced by raising the front of the tongue so as to touch the hard palate. Palatalized labial consonants are different from dental plosives. When dental plosives are palatalized, they are merged with another articulation which is frication. To analyze Russian affricated dental plosive /t′/, recordings were made of 5 native Russian male speakers producing 5 vowels (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/) in isolation and in CV syllables. Measurements were made of duration, intensity, CoG, formant vowel transitions, spectrogram and spectral shapes. The results showed that /t′/ is affricated, the place and manner of articulation were similar to affricate /c/ and /&#269;/. However, when succeeded by vowels, /t′/ still had the acoustic characteristics of dental plosive /t/. This study contributes to a better understanding of acoustic characteristics of Russian affricated /t′/.

An analysis of the relationship between linguistic performance and general cognitive abilities in bilingual speakers

A major issue in bilingualism research is how the bilingual mind processes and reconciles two languages without apparent difficulty when trying to use only one. Research has revealed that when bilinguals produce speech, cross-linguistic competition induced by simultaneous activation of both languages is circumvented by inhibitory and selection mechanisms that allow for phonological articulation of the desired language. Such language-specificprocesses are presumed to derive from domain-general mechanisms that monitor and regulate behavior, to ensure high levels of cognitive performance. To examine the connection between language-specific and domain-general processes, performance on linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks are compared. In our study, Spanish-English participants perform linguistic tasks that induce competition, inhibition, and selection (e.g., production of translation equivalents that are phonologically similar in the two languages) as well as non-linguistic tasks that induce similar challenges (e.g., alternating between visual or auditory stimuli depending on the task requirements). A fine-grained acoustic analysis of timing and accuracy in verbal production (i.e., VOT, vowel formants, frication spectral peak) will be performed. Positive correlations between performances on the two task categories would support the theoretical view that efficient mental manipulation of two languages relies on control mechanisms that are generally involved in higher-order cognitive behavior.