An Experimental Study on Societal Factors Affecting VOT of English Plosives

Plosives are integral components of English consonants. In phonetics, English plosives are classified into voiceless plosives /p, t, k/ and /b, d, g/. VOT (voice onset time) was defined as “the time interval between the burst that marks release of the stop closure and the onset of quasi-periodicity that reflects laryngeal vibration”. VOT is a significant acoustic feature and analytic parameter of plosives. Referring to Labov’s experimental model of linguistic variation analysis, this study investigates the influences of societal factors have on the VOT of English plosives.In this study, 15 English words with word-initial voiceless plosives /p, t, k/ and 15 word-initial voiced plosives /b, d, g/ were selected as reading material; meanwhile, 30 subjects were randomly recruited to read, and audio samples were collected. It is found that the two social factors (gender and regional dialect) selected in this experiment have influences in different degrees on the English plosive VOT of the subjects. The specific results are as follows.For gender, no significant difference exists between males and females, but the mean VOT of females is longer than that of males, which is basically consistent with previous research results. The underlying reasons of the gender VOT differences inferred by this paper can be physiological and sociophonetical. For regional dialects, the VOT of the subjects were primarily influenced by Southwest Mandarin and Min Dialect, in which the mean value of voiceless plosives was higher and the difference was greater for speakers of Southwest Mandarin, and the mean value of voiced plosives was higher and the difference was greater for speakers of Min Dialect. The results of this empirical study theoretically provide some reference for acoustic researches, and pedagogically, provide some implications for optimizations of English curriculums in university

Crosslinguistic trends in tone change A review of tone change studies in East and Southeast Asia

Ground-breaking studies on how Bangkok Thai tones have changed over the past 100 years (Pittayaporn 2007, 2018; Zhu et al. 2015) reveal a pattern that Zhu et al. (2015) term the “clockwise tone shift cycle:” low > falling > high level or rising-falling > rising > falling-rising or low. The present study addresses three follow-up questions: (1) Are tone changes like those seen in Bangkok Thai also attested in other languages? (2) What other tone changes are repeated across multiple languages? (3) What phonetic biases are most likely to be the origins of the reported changes? A typological review of 52 tone change studies across 45 Sinitic, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, and Tibeto-Burman languages reveals that clockwise changes are by far the most common. The paper concludes by exploring how tonal truncation (Xu 2017) generates synchronic variation that matches the diachronic patterns; this suggests that truncation is a key mechanism in tone change

Effects of errorless learning on the acquisition of velopharyngeal movement control

Session 1pSC - Speech Communication: Cross-Linguistic Studies of Speech Sound Learning of the Languages of Hong Kong (Poster Session)The implicit motor learning literature suggests a benefit for learning if errors are minimized during practice. This study investigated whether the same principle holds for learning velopharyngeal movement control. Normal speaking participants learned to produce hypernasal speech in either an errorless learning condition (in which the possibility for errors was limited) or an errorful learning condition (in which the possibility for errors was not limited). Nasality level of the participants’ speech was measured by nasometer and reflected by nasalance scores (in %). Errorless learners practiced producing hypernasal speech with a threshold nasalance score of 10% at the beginning, which gradually increased to a threshold of 50% at the end. The same set of threshold targets were presented to errorful learners but in a reversed order. Errors were defined by the proportion of speech with a nasalance score below the threshold. The results showed that, relative to errorful learners, errorless learners displayed fewer errors (50.7% vs. 17.7%) and a higher mean nasalance score (31.3% vs. 46.7%) during the acquisition phase. Furthermore, errorless learners outperformed errorful learners in both retention and novel transfer tests. Acknowledgment: Supported by The University of Hong Kong Strategic Research Theme for Sciences of Learning © 2012 Acoustical Society of Americapublished_or_final_versio

Tones in Zhangzhou: Pitch and Beyond

This study draws on various approaches—field linguistics; auditory and acoustic phonetics; and statistics—to explore and explain the nature of Zhangzhou tones, an under-described Southern Min variety. Several original findings emerged from the analyses of the data from 21 speakers. The realisations of Zhangzhou tones are multidimensional. The single parameter of pitch/F0 is not sufficient to characterise tonal contrasts in either monosyllabic or polysyllabic settings in Zhangzhou. Instead, various parameters, including pitch/F0, duration, vowel quality, voice quality, and syllable coda type, interact in a complicated but consistent way to code tonal distinctions. Zhangzhou has eight tones rather than seven tones as proposed in previous studies. This finding resulted from examining the realisations of diverse parameters across three different contexts—isolation, phrase-initial, and phrase-final—, rather than classifying tones in citation and in terms of the preservation of Middle Chinese tonal categories. Tonal contrasts in Zhangzhou can be neutralised across different linguistic contexts. Identifying the number of tonal contrasts based simply on tonal realisations in the citation environment is not sufficient. Instead, examining tonal realisations across different linguistic contexts beyond monosyllables is imperative for understanding the nature of tone. Tone sandhi in Zhangzhou is syntactically relevant. The tone sandhi domain is not phonologically determined but rather is aligned with a syntactic phrase XP. Within a given XP, the realisations of the tones at non-phrase-final positions undergo alternation phonologically and phonetically. Nevertheless, the alterations are sensitive only to the phrase boundaries and are not affected by the internal structure of syntactic phrases. Tone sandhi in Zhangzhou is phonologically inert but phonetically sensitive. The realisations of Zhangzhou tones in disyllabic phrases are not categorically affected by their surrounding tones but are phonetically sensitive to surrounding environments. For instance, the pitch/F0 onsets of phrase-final tones are largely sensitive to pitch/F0 offsets of preceding tones and appear to have diverse variants. The mappings between Zhangzhou citation and disyllabic tones are morphologically conditioned. Phrase-initial tones are largely not related to the citation tones at either the phonological or the phonetic level while phrase-final tones are categorically related to the citation tones but phonetically are not quite the same because of predictable sensitivity to surrounding environments. Each tone in Zhangzhou can be regarded as a single morpheme having two alternating allomorphs (tonemes), one for non-phrase-final variants and one for variants in citation and phrase-final contexts, both of which are listed in the mental lexicon of native Zhangzhou speakers but are phonetically distant on the surface. In summary, the realisations of Zhangzhou tones are multidimensional, involving a variety of segmental and suprasegmental parameters. The interactions of Zhangzhou tones are complicated, involving phonetics, phonology, syntax, and morphology. Neutralisation of Zhangzhou tonal contrasts occurs across different contexts, including citation, phrase-final, and non-phrase-final. Thus, researchers must go beyond pitch to understand tone thoroughly as a phenomenon in Southern Min

Neutral Tone in Mandarin: Representation and Interaction with Utterance-level Prosody

In Standard Mandarin, there are syllables that do not carry any of the four citation tones (T1: High-level tone, T2: Mid-rising tone, T3: Low-convex tone and T4: High-falling tone), and they are said to have a neutral tone (NT). These syllables are usually shorter, lighter, prosodically grouped with the preceding CT-bearing syllables. These characteristics of NT have led to a prevailing view that it has no underlying phonological specification. However, research has focused more on how the surface pitch variations of NT are realized rather than the underlying representation of NT. In contrast, morphological, sociolinguistic and diachronic work on NT has suggested that NT may not be a homogeneous entity. In this thesis, I provide acoustic and psycholinguistic evidence that there are two types of NT, Intrinsic NT and Derived NT. Intrinsic NT refers to morphemes that were lexicalized as tone-deleted, unstressed syllables even before the formation of the four CTs of modern Mandarin. Derived NT refers to morphemes derived from the CTs via stress-related tone-deletion. In Part A, the phonological representation of Intrinsic and Derived NT is explored through two production and two processing experiments. The results show that Intrinsic NT is likely to have an underspecified tonal target while Derived NTs are underlyingly CTs. In addition, both subtypes of NT are metrically light, unlike heavy CTs. Part B explores the interaction between NTs and utterance-level prosody in production and perception experiments. NT-bearing syllables have lengthening patterns under focus similar to CT-bearing syllables, in contrast to the realization of unstressed syllables in English. In perception, the identification of intonation (Statement vs. Question) on Intrinsic NT was similar to Derived NT. When compared to CTs, the NTs elicit less bias towards question than T4, and higher accuracy than T2, which may result from their simpler surface representations.CHINA Scholarship COUNCIL (CSC) and Cambridge Trus

Proceedings of the fifth International Conference on Asian Geolinguistics

This volume contains papers presented at the fifth International Conference on Asian Geolinguistics (ICAG) held at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU, Ha Noi, Vietnam, from 4 to 5 May, 2023

Sibilant Contrast: Perception, Production, and Sound Change

This study examines sibilant place contrast in the [_i] context in terms of its typology across Chinese dialects and its role in the historical development of Mandarin sibilants. The typology across 170 Chinese dialects reveals that (i) for dialects that have sibilants at three places (dental, palatal, and retroflex), place contrasts in the [_i] context are generally avoided, e.g., */si-ɕi-i/; (ii) for dialects that have sibilants at two places, mostly dental vs. palatal, place contrasts in the [_i] context also tend to be avoided, e.g., */si-ɕi/; (iii) for dialects that do have contrastive dental vs. palatal sibilants in the [_i] context, the place contrast of affricates implies that of fricatives. The first two patterns are mirrored in the sound changes of Mandarin in that contrastive dental and palatal sibilants in the [_i] context that emerged from independent processes have always been enhanced or avoided. In addition, the sound changes also showed an avoidance of contrastive dental vs. palatal in the [_i] context with the shift of palatal sibilants into retroflex sibilants from the 11th to the 14th century. The connection between the synchronic typology and the diachronic changes raises a number of research questions: (i) Does the vowel context affect the perceptual distinctiveness of sibilant place contrasts, e.g., is [si-ɕi] less distinct than [sa-ɕa]? (ii) Do place contrasts differ in perceptual distinctiveness, e.g., is [si-ɕi] less distinct than [si-i]? (iii) Do different manners of articulation differ in perceptual distinctiveness, e.g., is [tsi-tɕi] less distinct than [si-ɕi]? These issues were investigated through a speeded AX-discrimination experiment, which has been shown to be able to evaluate the relative perceptual distinctiveness of sound pairs independent of the listener’s native phonology. Twenty-nine listeners were put under time pressure to judge if a CV pair is the same or not, where the sibilant onsets of the CV pairs contrast in place (e.g., [si-ɕi]) and the vowels were [i] vs. other vowels (e.g., [si-ɕi] vs. [sa-ɕa] vs. [sɹ̩-ɕi]). Assuming that a longer response time indicates less perceptual distinctiveness, the results showed that (i) the [_i] context reduces the perceptual distinctiveness of the place contrasts of dental vs. palatal sibilants; (ii) the introduction of the apical vowel enhances the perceptual distinctiveness between the contrastive sound pairs; (iii) the dental vs. retroflex contrasts are more distinct than the dental vs. palatal contrasts. These findings match the observations in the cross-linguistic typology and the historical development of Mandarin and support the claim that perceptual distinctiveness regulates the phonological system. The reduced distinctiveness of dental vs. palatal sibilants in the [_i] context suggests that contrastive dental vs. palatal sibilants are unstable and are likely to be avoided in sound change. A phonetic study was conducted on the sibilants in Xiangtan, a Chinese dialect reported to have the same sound system as 18th century Mandarin (i.e., [sɹ̩ si i ɻ̩]) with fully contrastive dental vs. palatal sibilants in the [_i] context. It is predicted that in Xiangtan, the pre-[i] dentals in /si tsi tsʰi/ may show signs of being palatalized and thus neutralized with the palatals. Natural productions of /si tsi tsʰi/, /ɕi tɕi tɕʰi/, and /sɹ̩ tsɹ̩ tsʰɹ̩/ syllables with matched tones were recorded from 11 native female speakers of Xiangtan. Center of gravity, energy dispersion, intensity, and duration were extracted for three types of sibilants: Canonical dentals as in /sɹ̩/, canonical palatals as in /ɕi/, and pre-[i] dentals as in /si/. A discriminant analysis was performed by first training a classifier on the canonical dentals and canonical palatals and then using the classifier to predict the place (dental vs. palatal) of the pre-[i] dentals. Native Mandarin listeners were also recruited to identify the isolated first half of the pre-[i] dental sibilants as being dental vs. palatal. The results from both studies showed that (i) some Xiangtan speakers have palatalized the dentals in /si tsi tsʰi/, and (ii) certain speakers variably produce dental and palatal sibilants for the same lexical item. Therefore, the results support the contention that dental and palatal contrasts are perceptually less distinct in the [_i] context and the variation in the realization of the pre-[i] dentals indicates that a merger replicating the development of Mandarin is in process. In general, the perceptual experiment reveals that dental vs. palatal sibilants in the [_i] context form weak contrasts, based on the psychoacoustic similarity of the contrastive elements. The avoidance of weak contrasts is observed in cross-linguistic typology, historical sound change, and speech production. This study thus establishes an empirical connection among the perceptual distinctiveness of sibilant place contrasts, the production of these contrasts, cross-linguistic typology, and historical sound changes

Language-specificity in auditory perception of Chinese tones

PL1213, LoC Subject Headings: Auditory perception, Chinese language--Tone, Chinese language--Phonolog

Variation in Nanchang Gan

Contemporary China is an ideal sociolinguistic setting for investigating the interaction between a national standard language and regional speech varieties. In this study, I focus on a quantitative analysis of phonological variation in Nanchang Gan, a sub-topolect spoken in a provincial capital in Southern China. Three variables included in the discussion are: (1) diglossic alternation between two syllable initials: [w] and [f]; (2) rusheng tonal merger: [5] and [2] merging to [5]; (3) loss of historical breathy voice. Results reveal that the three variables I examined differ in their rates/states of change as well as their availability to doing social work: the consonant initials variable ([w] → [f]) has reached a relatively stable stage, indexing an urban-rural division; the checked tonal variable indicates a merger in process (towards the high-pitch variant), the progress of which was best predicted by age and occupation; on the other hand, voice quality does not seem to perform any social work yet, as most of the inter-speaker variation in this variable can by accounted for in terms of sexual dimorphism. In addition, a closer look at individual employment of these three variables successfully captured some subtle information that escaped the examination by institutional social factors. Therefore, I suggest that each speaker has to be treated as an individual linguistic agent; personal history must be carefully and episodically examined along with the quantitative methods. Furthermore, the analysis of the tonal merger variable reveals that older speakers are more advanced in the process of merging than the younger generation. This is probably due to the pressure of socialization in a wider society during one's adulthood

Cognitive factors in perception and imitation of Thai tones by Mandarin versus Vietnamese speakers

The thesis investigates how native language phonological and phonetic factors affect non-native lexical tone perception and imitation, and how cognitive factors, such as memory load and stimulus variability (talker and vowel context variability), bias listeners to a phonological versus phonetic mode of perception/imitation. Two perceptual experiments and one imitation experiment were conducted with Thai tones as the stimuli and with Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners, who had no experience with Thai (i.e., naive listeners/imitators). The results of the perceptual experiments (Chapters 5 and 6) showed phonological effects as reflected in assimilation types (Categorised vs. UnCategorised assimilation) and phonetic effects indicated by percent choice and goodness ratings in tone assimilation, largely in line with predictions based on the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best, 1995). In addition, phonological assimilation types and phonological overlap of the contrasts affected their discrimination in line with predictions based on PAM. The thesis research has revealed the influence of cognitive factors on native language influences in perception and imitation of non-native lexical tones, which contribute differently to different tasks. The findings carry implications for current non-native speech perception theories. The fact that non-native tone imitation deviations can be traced back to native phonological and phonetic influences on perception supports and provides new insights about perception-production links in processing non-native tones. The findings uphold the extrapolation of PAM and ASP principles to non-native tone perception and imitation, indicating that both native language phonological and phonetic influences and their modulation by cognitive factors hold implications for non-native speech perception/learning theories, as well as for second language instruction