Acoustic correlates of fortis/lenis in San Francisco Ozolotepec Zapotec

Analyses of the Zapotec family of languages often divide consonants into categories of strong and weak consonants, more commonly known as fortis and lenis. These given categories usually correspond to voiceless and voiced, respectively. In San Francisco Ozolotepec Zapotec (SFOZ) and Santa Catarina Xanaguía Zapotec (SCXZ), prior analyses describe the fortis/lenis distinction in terms of duration, voicing, and articulatory force. This description parallels other impressionistic descriptions in Isthmus-Valley and Southern Zapotec variants. However, no study has objectively identified the acoustic patterns of the fortis/lenis contrast in SFOZ or in any Southern, Valley, or Isthmus Zapotec language. A previous instrumental study of the northern Zapotec variant of Yateé describes the fortis/lenis contrast in terms of duration, glottal width, and closure width. A similar experimental study of the northern variant spoken in Yalálag describes the fortis/lenis contrast in terms of duration, voice onset time (VOT) and voicing, and amplitude. Both conclusions reject the terms fortis/lenis and point to characterization of the contrast in terms of geminate/single. My intention in this thesis is to present acoustic analyses of recordings made by native Zapotec speakers of both SFOZ and SCXZ. I analyze the acoustic properties of the word-final fortis/lenis consonant contrast of SFOZ, with occasional reference to data from SCXZ. Parallel to instrumental results for Yalálag Zapotec (Avelino 2001) and Yateé Zapotec (Jaeger 1983), duration is a primary characteristic differentiating fortis and lenis consonants in SFOZ and SCXZ. Data from six adult male speakers of SFOZ reveal a second acoustic correlate of fortis and lenis segments in word-final position, quality of the preceding vowel. Voicing and VOT add to the phonetic contrast, but are not reliable cues in SFOZ. In contrast with Jaeger\u27s results, which found that fortis consonants have consistently higher ... average amplitudes than those of the lenis consonants (1983:183), I found no difference in the average amplitude of fortis/lenis sonorants. In contrast with variation in sonorants in Yalálag, SFOZ sonorants--both nasals and laterals--match the duration patterns of obstruents: fortis consonants are long and lenis consonants are short. In SCXZ, obstruents can be defined in terms of voicing; however this distinction is considerably less reliable in SFOZ

The class of semivowels in Sanskrit

In Sanskrit, both liquids /l r/ and glides /j w/ alternate with their syllabic counterparts and form a single class of semivowels in the traditional grammar. The four semivowels, however, show distinct behaviors in various phonological processes. That is, in consonantclusters, /w/ but not the others may occur before another semivowel in the onset. As a target of sandhis, final /r/ merges with the dental sibilant /s/ in most contexts. As a trigger of sandhis, /l/ showscomparable behaviors to oral stops in causing oral gesture assimilation while /r/ tends to cause debuccalization of the preceding consonant. In gemination, /w/ and /l/ may become the target instead of the adjacent non-continuant while /r/ is excluded from the target. In Middle Indo-Aryan assimilation and initial cluster simplification, the four semivowels show different degrees of resistance to loss.Asymmetrical behaviors of semivowels are attributed to the phonetic differences of these four sounds instead of the universal feature system, sonority, or the prosodic structure. The phonetic properties that lead to idiosyncratic behaviors are: /l/ with a lingual contact in parallelwith stops, /w/ realized as a voiced fricative instead of an approximant, and /r/ with a wider aperture than the other three semivowels. These articulatory properties lead to the hierarchy /l/ < /w/ < /j/ < /r/ with an ascending order of vocalicity, which in turn dominates theirphonological behaviors

Evidence for active control of tongue lateralization in Australian English /l/

Research on the temporal dynamics of /l/ production has focused primarily on mid-sagittal tongue movements. This study reports how known variations in the timing of mid-sagittal gestures are related to para-sagittal dynamics in /l/ formation in Australian English (AusE), using three-dimensional electromagnetic articulography (3D EMA). The articulatory analyses show (1) consistent with past work, the temporal lag between tongue tip and tongue body gestures identified in the mid-sagittal plane changes across different syllable positions and vowel contexts; (2) the lateral channel is largely formed by tilting the tongue to the left/right side of the oral cavity as opposed to curving the tongue within the coronal plane; and, (3) the timing of lateral channel formation relative to the tongue body gesture is consistent across syllable positions and vowel contexts, even as the temporal lag between tongue tip and tongue body gestures varies. This last result is particularly informative with respect to theoretical hypotheses regarding gestural control for /l/s, as it suggests that lateral channel formation is actively controlled as opposed to resulting as a passive consequence of tongue stretching. These results are interpreted as evidence that the formation of the lateral channel is a primary articulatory goal of /l/ production in AusE

Rhotics.New Data and Perspectives

This book provides an insight into the patterns of variation and change of rhotics in different languages and from a variety of perspectives. It sheds light on the phonetics, the phonology, the socio-linguistics and the acquisition of /r/-sounds in languages as diverse as Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Kuikuro, Malayalam, Romanian, Slovak, Tyrolean and Washili Shingazidja thus contributing to the discussion on the unity and uniqueness of this group of sounds

On Characterizing Sanskrit Gemination

In Sanskrit, various intervocalic biconsonantal clusters are affected by gemination, which istypically summarized by phonetic treatises as follows. First, postvocalic consonants followedby another consonant is geminated as in sapta- `seven\u27 > sappta- and cakra- `wheel\u27 > cakkra- .Second, consonants that follow r or h is geminated, as in artha- `purpose\u27 > arttha- and jihma-`oblique\u27 > jihmma- . In addition to these two major rules, there are subsidiary processes anddifferent dialects show different variations. Given that Sanskrit gemination affects consonantclusters, earlier studies have analyzed the process in terms of syllable structure, but there arecounterexamples that indicate that the syllable-only approaches are inadequate. This paper reexamines the conditioning factors and restrictions of Sanskrit geminationand concludes that the following three tendencies, which are independent and partly overlapor contradict, interact to produce the observed extensiveness and variations. First, as some ofthe earlier syllable-based approaches claim, syllable-initial and especially word-initial consonantis geminated. Second, consonants with an oral gesture, especially an oral closure, are preferredtargets over those without one, which is in accordance with the cross-linguistic tendency ofgemination. Third, the first consonant of the cluster tends to be geminated, which is attributedto the articulatory and perceptual problems associated with preconsonantal consonants

Dynamic acoustic-articulatory relations in back vowel fronting:Examining the effects of coda consonants in two dialects of British English

This study examines dynamic acoustic-articulatory relations in back vowels, focusing on the effect of different coda consonants on acoustic-articulatory dynamics in the production of vowel contrast. This paper specifically investigates the contribution of the tongue and the lips in modifying F2 in the FOOT-GOOSE contrast in English, using synchronized acoustic and electromagnetic articulography data collected from 16 speakers. The vowels FOOT and GOOSE were elicited in pre-coronal and pre-lateral contexts from two dialects that are reported to be at different stages of back vowel fronting: Southern Standard British English and West Yorkshire English. The results suggest similar acoustic and articulatory patterns in pre-coronal vowels, but there is stronger evidence of vowel contrast in articulation than acoustics for pre-lateral vowels. The lip protrusion data do not help to resolve these differences, suggesting that the complex gestural makeup of a vowel-lateral sequence problematizes straightforward accounts of acoustic-articulatory relations. Further analysis reveals greater between-speaker variability in lingual advancement than F2 in pre-lateral vowels

Phonological Contrast in Bai

This dissertation presents an account of synchronic phonological contrast for the Bai language. Bai is a Sino-Tibetan language primarily spoken in Yunnan Province in Southwest China. There is a sizable amount of published research on this language due to the large amount of Chinese-related basic vocabulary in Bai, which is of considerable interest in the field of Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics. However, most of the available references prioritize the ability to transcribe the observed contrastive syllables as distinct from one another instead of offering synchronic phonological analysis of this language. The proposal I present in this dissertation intends to fill this gap in the literature with phonological analysis of the consonant, vowel, and tone systems of the Erhai (Dali), Jianchuan, and Heqing varieties of Bai. My phonological analysis assumes articulator-based distinctive features, syllable structure, time slots, and other commonly assumed phonological architecture to generate all well-formed phonological representations in this language. The proposal fundamentally differs from prior descriptions in that pre-nuclear glides are consistently treated as constituents of the onset and not as constituents of the rime of the Bai syllable. Along with this fixed syllable structure, underspecification and economy in underlying representations are argued to optimize the ratio of attested-to-possible syllables within the space of predicted syllable types. Furthermore, these principles are suggested to limit the range of surface phonological variation attested across speakers. Specific phonemena addressed in detail include spreading processes (such as palatalization), identification of merged tone categories, representation of the rhotic vowel, and epenthetic segments. The generalizations I identify are supported by descriptions of word-based evidence and phonetic data – both from the literature and collected through lexical elicitation in the field. The Zhaozhuang variety is explored in thorough detail and a syllable inventory of this variety with lexical examples for each syllable type glossed in English and Chinese is included in the appendicies of this dissertationPHDLinguisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137117/1/opper_1.pd

Loan Phonology

For many different reasons, speakers borrow words from other languages to fill gaps in their own lexical inventory. The past ten years have been characterized by a great interest among phonologists in the issue of how the nativization of loanwords occurs. The general feeling is that loanword nativization provides a direct window for observing how acoustic cues are categorized in terms of the distinctive features relevant to the L1 phonological system as well as for studying L1 phonological processes in action and thus to the true synchronic phonology of L1. The collection of essays presented in this volume provides an overview of the complex issues phonologists face when investigating this phenomenon and, more generally, the ways in which unfamiliar sounds and sound sequences are adapted to converge with the native language’s sound pattern. This book is of interest to theoretical phonologists as well as to linguists interested in language contact phenomena

Syllabification and phonological rule application in Tashlhiyt Berber

Tashlhiyt variety of Berber, spoken in the southern part of Morocco has drawn particular attention from phonologists for its admittance of complex consonant sequences and of vowelless phonological words. The way words should be analysed into syllable constituents in these cases is by no means trivial and depends on which segments are identified as nuclear. Dell & Elmedlaoui raised the question at the heart of the problem: 'are there languages in which any segment can occur as a syllable nucleus?' One such a language is the variety of Tashlhiyt Berber where even a voiceless stop may act as a syllable nucleus. The fact that any segment can form the nucleus of a syllable causes potential ambiguity in syllabification. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the process of syllabification through various phonological and morphological processes which are affected by the results drawn from the syllabification algorithm in the language

Compression effects, perceptual asymmetries, and the grammar of timing

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 272-279).This dissertation reports the results of two English experiments on timing and perception. The first experiment demonstrates asymmetries in timing between consonants and vowels, which depend on the manner of the consonant. The second experiment shows that these asymmetries in speech production are mirrored by perceptual asymmetries among consonants with different manner features. We argue that these phenomena are best described in terms of auditory rather than articulatory representations. A formal analysis is developed using weighted, gradiently-violable constraints on segment and syllable duration. Because the constraints make reference to the auditory features of segments, the analysis can derive the relationship between asymmetries in speech production and asymmetries in speech perception. The patterns of timing discovered here appear to interact in limited ways with systems of phonological contrast. We incorporate the duration constraints proposed here into a phonetically-driven model of phonology, examining the predictions that such an approach makes about phonological typology.by Jonah Katz.Ph.D