The production and perception of peripheral geminate/singleton coronal stop contrasts in Arabic

Gemination is typologically common word-medially but is rare at the periphery of the word (word-initially and -finally). In line with this observation, prior research on production and perception of gemination has focused primarily on medial gemination. Much less is known about the production and perception of peripheral gemination. This PhD thesis reports on comprehensive articulatory, acoustic and perceptual investigations of geminate-singleton contrasts according to the position of the contrast in the word and in the utterance. The production component of the project investigated the articulatory and acoustic features of medial and peripheral gemination of voiced and voiceless coronal stops in Modern standard Arabic and regional Arabic vernacular dialects, as produced by speakers from two disparate and geographically distant countries, Morocco and Lebanon. The perceptual experiment investigated how standard and dialectal Arabic gemination contrasts in each word position were categorised and discriminated by three groups of non-native listeners, each differing in their native language experience with gemination at different word positions. The first experiment used ultrasound and acoustic recordings to address the extent to which word-initial gemination in Moroccan and Lebanese dialectal Arabic is maintained, as well as the articulatory and acoustic variability of the contrast according to the position of the gemination contrast in the utterance (initial vs. medial) and between the two dialects. The second experiment compared the production of word-medial and -final gemination in Modern Standard Arabic as produced by Moroccan and Lebanese speakers. The aim of the perceptual experiment was to disentangle the contribution of phonological and phonetic effects of the listeners’ native languages on the categorisation and discrimination of non-lexical Moroccan gemination by three groups of non-native listeners varying in their phonological (native Lebanese group and heritage Lebanese group, for whom Moroccan is unintelligible, i.e., non-native language) and phonetic-only (native English group) experience with gemination across the three word positions. The findings in this thesis constitute important contributions about positional and dialectal effects on the production and perception of gemination contrasts, going beyond medial gemination (which was mainly included as control) and illuminating in particular the typologically rare peripheral gemination

Cues to gemination in word-initial position in Maltese

In this study we investigated word-initial geminates in Maltese, focusing on sub-segmental acoustic durations: constriction duration and, where appropriate, VOT; and the duration of adjacent segments: the tonic vowel duration and the duration of the inter-consonantal interval spanning the word boundary. This latter interval, between the consonant in the previous word and the singleton/geminate consonant, is measured so as to capture the presence and duration of a vocalic element, which has been referred to as epenthetic, and reportedly precedes word-initial geminates in the language. Whilst constriction duration plays an important role in distinguishing geminates from singletons (a ratio of 1.7:1), VOT does not. Moreover, although the duration of the following tonic vowel plays no role, the duration of the preceding context – the inter-consonantal interval – is a strong cue to gemination word-initially.peer-reviewe

An acoustic investigation of the developmental trajectory of lexical stress contrastivity in Italian

We examined whether typically developing Italian children exhibit adult-like stress contrastivity for word productions elicited via a picture naming task (n=25 children aged 3\u20135 years and 27 adults). Stimuli were 10 trisyllabic Italian words; half began with a weak\u2013strong (WS) pattern of lexical stress across the initial 2 syllables, as in patata, while the other half began with a strong\u2013weak (SW) pattern, as in gomito. Word productions that were identified as correct via perceptual judgement were analysed acoustically. The initial 2 syllables of each correct word production were analysed in terms of the duration, peak intensity, and peak fundamental frequency of the vowels using a relative measure of contrast\u2014the normalised pairwise variability index (PVI). Results across the majority of measures showed that children\u2019s stress contrastivity was adult-like. However, the data revealed that children\u2019s contrastivity for trisyllabic words beginning with a WS pattern was not adult-like regarding the PVI for vowel duration: children showed less contrastivity than adults. This effect appeared to be driven by differences in word-medial gemination between children and adults. Results are compared with data from a recent acoustic study of stress contrastivity in English speaking children and adults and discussed in relation to language-specific and physiological motor-speech constraints on production

Syllable structure and gemination in Maltese

Little is known on the phonetics and the phonotactic constraints of Maltese. This dissertation sheds light on aspects of syllable structure and geminates in Maltese in order to contribute to understanding how the sound system of the language is structured. The study begins by describing the possible syllable structures in Maltese, carefully defining the onsets, nuclei and codas attested in its syllables. Furthermore, the syllabification processes employed in Maltese are discussed. The dissertation then moves on to its primary focus: geminates in Maltese. In relation to syllable structure, geminates in word-medial position are considered to be ambisyllabic, however, the syllable affiliation of word-initial and word-final geminates is under scrutiny. In addition to word-medial geminates, Maltese also has word-initial and word-final geminates. Previous descriptions of Maltese word-initial geminates (e.g, Azzopardi 1981) have claimed that such geminates are preceded by the epenthetic vowel [ɪ]. Based on a series of production studies, I provide acoustic evidence to examine the articulation of word-initial geminates, and show that this epenthesis occurs almost always when the preceding word ends in a consonant. However, when the preceding word ends in a vowel, there are a number of strategies which speakers employ. Subsequently, in a perception experiment, I show that native speakers of Maltese are insensitive to true word-initial geminates (#ss); results indicate that native speaking Maltese listeners could not discriminate between true word-initial geminates (#ss) and word-initial singletons (#s). However, they were able to discriminate between word-initial geminates that were preceded by the epenthetic vowel (#ɪss) and word-initial singletons (#s). Therefore, I argue that this vowel is part of the phonological representation of word-initial geminates, and I discuss implication of these results for lexical access. In addition, I compare word-initial and word-medial geminates and word-final and word-medial geminates. As expected, the most robust correlate is constriction duration as geminates are always longer than singletons. Other correlates, such as voice onset time, does not serve as a correlate to gemination in Maltese. However, the duration of the vowel before word-medial geminates is shorter than the vowel before word-medial singletons and this can serve as a correlate to gemination in production. Finally, I address the consequences that these results have for phonological representation. Following the current literature on gemination, I propose a moraic representation for geminates in Maltese, regardless of their position in the word

Non-durational acoustic correlates of word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay: The potential roles of amplitude and f0

This study reports on non-durational acoustic correlates of typologically rare word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay (KM) by focusing on two acoustic parameters – amplitude and f0. Given the unusual characteristics of the word-initial consonant contrast and its potential maintenance in domain-initial environments, this study sets to examine the extent to which amplitude and f0 can potentially characterise such a contrast in KM in addition to the cross-linguistically established acoustic correlate of closure duration. The production data involved elicited materials from sixteen KM native speakers. RMS and f0 values were measured at the start of the vowel following stops and sonorants produced in isolation (i.e. utterance-initial position) and in a carrier sentence (i.e. utterance-medial position). Results indicate that the consonant contrast is reflected in systematic differences in (i) vowel onset amplitude and f0 following the target consonant and (ii) the ratios of amplitude and f0 across two syllables of disyllabic words. There are also effects of utterance position, manner of articulation and voicing type on the magnitude of contrast between singletons and geminates with utterance-initial voiceless stops generally showing the greatest magnitude difference. The conclusion is drawn that the KM word-initial singleton/geminate consonant contrast can be associated with a set of acoustic parameters alongside closure duration

Konsonandikeskne vältesüsteem eesti ja inarisaami keeles

Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsiooneKolme pikkuskategooriaga konsonandikeskne vältesüsteem esineb väga vähestes keeltes, teadaolevalt ainult soome-ugri keeltes: eesti, liivi ja inarisaami keeles ning veel mõningates saami keeltes. Doktoritöö keskendub neist kahele – eesti ja inarisaami keelele, millest esimene kuulub soome-ugri keelte läänemeresoome ja teine saami keelterühma. Eesti keeles esineb keerukas kolmevältesüsteem, kus vastandus moodustatakse nii vokaalide, konsonantide kui ka mõlema põhjal. Inarisaami keeles leiab kolm pikkuskategooriat vaid konsonantide puhul, vokaalidel esineb kahene vastandus. Eksperimentaalfoneetiline väitekiri uurib, kuidas kolmene konsonandikeskne kvantiteedisüsteem nendes keeltes foneetiliselt avaldub kõnetaktis. Vaadeldakse omadusi, mis kolme väldet üksteisest eristavad. Teise suurema teemana käsitleb doktoritöö segmentaalse konteksti rolli eesti keele konsonandivälte avaldumisel. Töö tulemused näitavad, et kolme konsonandikeskset väldet eristab nii eesti kui ka inarisaami keeles konsonandi enda kestus, mis on suuremas vältes pikem. Keeltevahelised erinevused tulevad välja kategooriate omavaheliste kestussuhete kaudu: eesti keeles eristuvad teineteisest rohkem esimene ja teine välde, inarisaamis aga teine ja kolmas välde. Kui eesti keeles lüheneb konsonandile järgnev rõhutu silbi vokaal vastavalt konsonandivälte kasvades, siis inarisaamis lühenevad mõlemad, nii konsonandile eelnev rõhulise silbi vokaal kui ka sellele järgnev rõhutu silbi vokaal. Põhitoonikontuurid inarisaami eri struktuuriga kahesilbilistes sõnades märkimisväärselt ei varieeru, kuid konsonandivälte kasvades intensiivsuse väärtuste erinevus esimese ja teise silbi vokaali vahel suureneb. Samas eri vältes oleva vokaalidevahelise helilise konsonandi enda intensiivsus ei muutu. Põhitoon on eesti keeles oluline teise ja kolmanda välte eristamisel, kuid klusiilide puhul, kus põhitooni liikumist jälgida ei saa, on ka leitud, et välte tajumiseks piisab kestuslikest tunnustest. Doktoritöö eesti keele artikulatsioonikatse tulemused näitavad, et kolmese konsonandikeskse välte avaldumisel on oluline osa segmentaalsel kontekstil. Kui mõningate artikulatoorsete liigutuste puhul saab näha vältega seotud kolmeseid mustreid (huulte sulgemisliigutuse kestuses konsonandi hääldamisel, keeleliigutuste kestuses üleminekul konsonandile eelnevalt vokaalilt järgnevale), siis erineva sõnaalgulise konsonandi ja ümbritseva vokaalikonteksti tõttu esineb varieerumist, kus esimene ja teine välde vastanduvad kolmandale või vastandub esimene välde teisele ja kolmandale. Ka spontaankõne materjali põhjal tehtud akustiline analüüs näitas, et erinevate konsonantide puhul realiseerub kolmene välde mõnevõrra erinevalt ning sealjuures on oluline seos konsonandi ja seda ümbritsevate vokaalide omaduste vahel.Quantity systems with three length categories for consonants can be found in a small number of languages, all of which belong to the Finno-Ugric languages: Estonian, Livonian, Inari Saami, and some other Saami languages. The focus of this dissertation is on two of them, Estonian and Inari Saami, the former belonging to the Finnic and the latter to the Saamic branch. Estonian exhibits a complex quantity system forming ternary length categories with vowels, consonants, or combinations of both. In Inari Saami, ternary length distinction is found for consonants, while vocalic quantity shows binary oppositions. This thesis comprises experimental phonetic studies answering two main questions: how is ternary consonantal quantity in Estonian and Inari Saami realized phonetically, and how does quantity interact with segmental context. The results showed that, in both languages, the three-way consonantal quantity is manifested in consonant durations that are longer in higher quantity degrees. While Estonian first and second quantity are further apart from each other, in Inari Saami second and third quantity are more distinct. Cross-linguistic differences also appear in the relations between intervocalic consonants and neighboring vowels. In Estonian, the vowel following the consonant is shorter after a long and overlong consonant than after a short one. Quantity differences in Inari Saami are realized in shorter durations of both vowels in terms of increasing consonantal quantity. Fundamental frequency contours in Inari Saami are roughly the same in words with different structures. Intensity measures, however, show greater differences between the vowels surrounding the consonant when the quantity of the consonant increases. The intensity of the sonorant consonant does not change in different quantities. The results of the articulatory study of this thesis show variation in quantity manifestations in Estonian geminate consonants due to varied segmental context. Some articulatory movements exhibit three-way patterns associated with quantity categories (in the duration of the lip closing gesture for the consonant and tongue transition gesture from the preceding vowel to the following vowel); for others the first and second quantity are opposed to the third quantity or the first quantity degree is opposed to the second and third ones. Similar patters were found in the acoustic data from spontaneous speech. The durational properties of ternary quantity are realized differently for different intervocalic consonants, and variation is also caused by coarticulatory effects of the surrounding vowels.https://www.ester.ee/record=b524109

QUESTIONS AMAZIGHES (TACHLHIT) À L'INTERFACE DE LA PHONÉTIQUE ET DE LA PHONOLOGIE

The main concern of my research activities bears on phonological units and questions their physical manifestations and psychological reality as well as their role in phonological grammar. My main source of evidence for my theoretical analyses is drawn from Tashlhiyt, an Amazigh (Berber) language spoken in Morocco. This summary, meant as a complement to my Habilitation mémoire « Questions amazighes (tachlhit) – A l’interface de la phonétique et de la phonologie », provides a synthesis of my work on three main topics. The first topic deals with syllable without vowels. The second topic is concerned with the phonetics and phonology of geminated phonemes. The third topic deals with laryngeal distinctive features and extends to the general issue of laryngeal-supralaryngeal coordination in speech.La préoccupation majeure de mes recherches porte sur la structure et le contenu des catégories phonologiques – trait, phonème, syllabe – et pose la triple question de la place de ces unités de base dans les systèmes phonologiques, de leurs manifestations physiques, et de leur réalité psychologique. Cette problématique, qui constitue un des objectifs fondamentaux de la recherche actuelle à l’interface de la phonétique et de la phonologie, est explorée en examinant plus spécifiquement le tachlhit, langue amazighe (berbère) parlée au Maroc. Au-delà de la richesse de son inventaire consonantique, c’est notamment l’extrême souplesse que cette langue offre pour former de séquences consonantiques qui l’a fait connaître à la communauté des phonologues et des phonéticiens. Locuteur natif du tachlhit, je me suis intéressé depuis ma thèse aux questions soulevées par cet embarras de consonnes dans une démarche alliant questionnements théoriques et investigations expérimentales. L’écriture de ce mémoire a été guidée par le désir de mettre en perspective mes recherches par rapport aux questionnements théoriques généraux sur les unités de représentation. En cela, elle reflète le souci constant de partir du tachlhit pour aborder des questions théoriques dépassant largement le cadre restreint des études amazighes

The Role of Perception in the Typology of Geminate Consonants: Effects of Manner of Articulation, Segmental Environment, Position, and Stress

The present study seeks to answer the question whether consonant duration is perceived differently across consonants of different manners of articulation and in different contextual environments and whether such differences may be related to the typology of geminates. The results of the crosslinguistic identification experiment suggest higher perceptual acuity in labeling short and long consonants in sonorants than in obstruents. Duration categories were also more consistently and clearly labelled in the intervocalic than in the preconsonantal environment, in the word-initial than in the word-final position, and after stressed vowels than between unstressed vowels. These perceptual asymmetries are in line with some typological tendencies, such as the crosslinguistic preference for intervocalic and post-stress geminates, but contradict other proposed crosslinguistic patterns, such as the preference for obstruent geminates and the abundance of word-final geminates

Emergent consonantal quantity contrast and context-dependence of gestural phasing

Embodied Task Dynamics is a modeling platform combining task dynamical implementation of articulatory phonology with an optimization approach based on adjustable trade-offs between production efficiency and perception efficacy. Within this platform we model a consonantal quantity contrast in bilabial stops as emerging from local adjustment of demands on relative prominence of the consonantal gesture conceptualized in terms of closure duration. The contrast is manifested in the form of two distinct, stable inter-gestural coordination patterns characterized by quantitative differences in relative phasing between the consonant and the coproduced vocalic gesture. Furthermore, the model generates a set of qualitative predictions regarding dependence of kinematic characteristics and inter-gestural coordination on consonant quantity and gestural context. To evaluate these predictions, we collected articulatory data for Finnish speakers uttering singletons and geminates in the same context as explored by the model. Statistical analysis of the data shows strong agreement with model predictions. This result provides support for the hypothesis that speech articulation is guided by efficiency principles that underlie many other types of embodied skilled action.Peer reviewe