249 research outputs found
An MRI study of the articulatory properties of italian consonants
MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) data have been collected for three male speakers of Italian producing sustained consonants in VCV-context (with V=/{i, a, u}/). For one speaker the resulting database consists of a midsagittal set of 42 Italian articulations (/p/, /f/, /tŃ/, /t/, /Ń/, /â«/, /tâ«/, /k/, /λ/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ and /Ć/) plus 9 dialectal sound configurations and 12 scans for specific nasal allophones. It is associated with vowels, jaw and teeth references and dental casts. A subset of images is also available, however, for a limited selection of articulations produced by two other control speakers. It has been collected in view of dialect studies and it includes midsagittal and coronal scans. As in previous partial publications of these data, the aim of the present paper is to discuss only place and manner of articulation in a descriptive framework.MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) data have been collected for three male speakers of Italian producing sustained consonants in VCV-context (with V=/{i, a, u}/). For one speaker the resulting database consists of a midsagittal set of 42 Italian articulations (/p/, /f/, /tŃ/, /t/, /Ń/, /â«/, /tâ«/, /k/, /λ/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ and /Ć/) plus 9 dialectal sound configurations and 12 scans for specific nasal allophones. It is associated with vowels, jaw and teeth references and dental casts. A subset of images is also available, however, for a limited selection of articulations produced by two other control speakers. It has been collected in view of dialect studies and it includes midsagittal and coronal scans. As in previous partial publications of these data, the aim of the present paper is to discuss only place and manner of articulation in a descriptive framework.Los datos de MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) han sido reunidos a partir de consonantes sostenidas, emitidas por tres hablantes de italiano masculinos, en un contexto de VCV (donde V = /{i, a, u}/). Para cada emisor la base de datos resultante consta de un conjunto midsagital de 42 articulaciones en italiano (/p/, /f/, /tŃ/, /t/, /Ń/, /â«/, /tâ«/, /k/, /λ/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ y /Ć/) junto con 9 configuraciones fĂłnicas dialectales y 12 registros sobre ciertos alĂłfonos nasales. Se asocia con vocales, tomando referencias dentales, maxilares y dentales. Dispone asimismo de un grupo de imĂĄgenes para una selecciĂłn limitada de articulaciones producidas por dos hablantes controles. Todo ello estĂĄ orientado hacia los estudios dialectales y comprende muestras midsagitales y coronales. Al igual que en publicaciones monogrĂĄficas anteriores, la finalidad de este artĂculo consiste en analizar solo el lugar y el modo de articulaciĂłn en un marco descriptivo
VOT merger and f0 contrast in Heritage Korean in California
Recordings of read speech in Korean and English were made by native South Koreans and Korean Americans of varying generational status ( second-generation American-born or 1.5-generation foreign-born) and analyzed for differences in usage of VOT and fundamental frequency to contrast production of Korean lenis and aspirated stops and affricates. Results show that second-generation Korean speakers, especially females, are not showing the collapse of VOT contrast found in the other two groups, which is part of a sound change nearing completion in Seoul. Female second-generation speakers are also not using f0 to differentiate between the stops to the extent that first- and 1.5-generation speakers are. It is concluded that second generation Korean Americans are not participating in the sound change that their same-age peers in Seoul are, and that second generation and 1.5 generation Korean Americans do not pattern together phonologically as a heritage speaker category. The analysis makes a stronger case for applying new models of language acquisition, speech production, and identity formation to heritage language speakers that differ from those used for bilingual speakers
Early phonological acquisition by Kuwaiti Arabic children
PhD ThesisThis is the first exploration of typical phonological development in the speech of
children acquiring Kuwaiti-Arabic (KA) before the age of 4;0. In many of the
wordâs languages, salient aspects of the ambient language have been shown to
influence the childâs initial progress in language acquisition (Vihman, 1996,
2014); however, studies of phonological development of Arabic lack adequate
information on the extent of the influence of factors such as frequency of
occurrence of certain features and their phonological salience on the early
stages of speech acquisition. A cross-sectional study design was adapted in
this thesis to explore the speech of 70 typically developing children. The
children were sampled from the Arabic-speaking Kuwaiti population; the
children were aged 1;4 and 3;7 and gender-balanced. Spontaneous speech
samples were obtained from audio and video recordings of the children while
interacting with their parent for 30-minutes. The production accuracy of KA
consonants was examined to explore the influence of type and token
frequencies on order of consonant acquisition and the development of error
patterns. The sonority index was also used to predict the order of consonant
acquisition cross-linguistically. The findings were then compared with those of
other dialects of Arabic to identify within-language variability and with studies on
English to address cross-linguistic differences between Arabic and English early
phonological development.
The results are partially consistent with accounts that argue for a significant role
of input frequency in determining rate and order of consonant acquisition within
a language. The development of KA error patterns also shows relative
sensitivity to consonant frequency. The sonority index does not always help in
the prediction of all Arabic consonants, and the developmental error patterns
and early word structures in Arabic and English are significantly distinct. The
outcomes of this study provide essential knowledge about typical Arabic
phonological development and the first step towards building a standardised
phonological test for Arabic speaking children
Vowel duration and the voicing effect across dialects of English
The âvoicing effectâ â the durational difference in vowels preceding voiced and voiceless consonants â is a well-documented phenomenon in English, where it plays a key role in the production and perception of the English final voicing contrast. Despite this supposed importance, little is known as to how robust this effect is in spontaneous connected speech, which is itself subject to a range of linguistic factors. Similarly, little attention has focused on variability in the voicing effect across dialects of English, bar analysis of specific varieties. Our findings show that the voicing of the following consonant exhibits a weaker-than-expected effect in spontaneous speech, interacting with manner, vowel height, speech
rate, and word frequency. English dialects appear to demonstrate a continuum of potential voicing effect sizes, where varieties with dialect-specific phonological rules exhibit the most extreme values. The results suggest that the voicing effect in English is both substantially weaker than previously assumed in spontaneous connected speech, and subject to a wide range of dialectal variability
The Effect of Instructed Second Language Learning on the Acoustic Properties of First Language Speech
This paper reports on a comprehensive phonetic study of American classroom learners of Russian, investigating the influence of the second language (L2) on the first language (L1). Russian and English productions of 20 learners were compared to 18 English monolingual controls focusing on the acoustics of word-initial and word-final voicing. The results demonstrate that learnersâ Russian was acoustically different from their English, with shorter voice onset times (VOTs) in [âvoice] stops, longer prevoicing in [+voice] stops, more [âvoice] stops with short lag VOTs and more [+voice] stops with prevoicing, indicating a degree of successful L2 pronunciation learning. Crucially, learners also demonstrated an L1 phonetic change compared to monolingual English speakers. Specifically, the VOT of learnersâ initial English voiceless stops was shortened, indicating assimilation with Russian, while the frequency of prevoicing in learnersâ English was decreased, indicating dissimilation with Russian. Word-final, the duration of preceding vowels, stop closures, frication, and voicing during consonantal constriction all demonstrated drift towards Russian norms of word-final voicing neutralization. The study confirms that L2-driven phonetic changes in L1 are possible even in L1-immersed classroom language learners, challenging the role of reduced L1 use and highlighting the plasticity of the L1 phonetic system
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The production and perception of domain-initial strengthening in Seoul, Busan, and Ulsan Korean
Korean exhibits one of the most consistent examples of the cross-linguistic phenomenon of domain-initial strengthening (hereafter DIS; T. Cho & Keating, 2001; Keating, Cho, Fougeron, & Hsu, 2004). DIS is defined as temporal and/or spatial enhancement of segmental articulation in the initial position of prosodic domains. Broadly, this dissertation serves as a detailed case study of the production patterns and the perceptual benefits of this phenomenon.
The recent findings of denasalisation and devoicing of the initial nasals in Korean (Young Shin Kim, 2011; Yoo, 2015a) suggest that there is a striking parallelism between the lenis stops /p, t, k/ and the nasal consonants /m, n/ in their patterns of DIS. Nevertheless, we currently lack an account that captures this parallelism. In addition, there is disagreement over the categorical nature of lenis stop voicing (S.-A. Jun, 1993; Docherty, 1995) and denasalisation (Yoshida, 2008; Young Shin Kim, 2011). Despite the obvious similarities between the arguably discrete processes of lenis stop voicing and denasalisation, and the kind of gradient effects widely reported for DIS, there has been no explicit investigation of the links among them. Thus, I examined the hypothesis that DIS, operating in the phonetic component, has given rise to the categorical rules of lenis stop voicing and denasalisation in the phrase-level phonology through rule scattering, as predicted by the theory of the life cycle of phonological processes (BermĂșdez-Otero & Trousdale, 2012; Turton, 2014).
Recordings were collected in Seoul, Busan, and Ulsan, and various auditory and acoustic analyses were conducted to examine the phonetic variation of the relevant stops. The study adopted the three-city design as these varieties were expected to be at different stages in the life cycle, particularly with regard to the stabilisation of denasalisation. In the second part of this dissertation, I conducted a perception experiment to investigate if listeners are able to use DIS patterns as a cue to a prosodic boundary.
According to the results, Seoul showed the most advanced patterns in the stabilisation of DIS. As predicted by rule scattering, speakers who showed evidence of categorical lenis stop voicing and/or denasalisation also showed an overlaid effect of a gradient phonetic process. The perception study strongly supported the hypothesis that listeners exploit DIS cues to detect the beginning of a prosodic domain. Based on these findings, this dissertation offers a unified account of lenis stop voicing, denasalisation, and DIS within a single framework, offering insights into the nature of DIS as well as its functional role in prosodic parsing.Cambridge Trust International Scholarshi
The production and perception of coronal fricatives in Seoul Korean: The case for a fourth laryngeal category
This article presents new data on the contrast between the two voiceless coronal fricatives of Korean, variously described as a lenis/fortis or aspirated/fortis contrast. In utterance-initial position, the fricatives were found to differ in centroid frequency; duration of frication, aspiration, and the following vowel; and several aspects of the following vowel onset, including intensity profile, spectral tilt, and F1 onset. The between-fricative differences varied across vowel contexts, however, and spectral differences in the vowel onset especially were more pronounced for /a/ than for /i, ÉŻ, u/. This disparity led to the hypothesis that cues in the following vowel onset would exert a weaker influence on perception for high vowels than for low vowels. Perception data provided general support for this hypothesis, indicating that while vowel onset cues had the largest impact on perception for both high- and low-vowel stimuli, this influence was weaker for high vowels. Perception was also strongly influenced by aspiration duration, with modest contributions from frication duration and f0 onset. Taken together, these findings suggest that the 'non-fortis' fricative is best characterized not in terms of the lenis or aspirated categories for stops, but in terms of a unique representation that is both lenis and aspirated
Sociophonetic factors of speakersâ sex differences in Voice Onset Time: a Florentine case study
The paper shows the results of a sociophonetic analysis of the so-called gorgia enfatica (Castellani, 1960), i.e. the allophonic presence of voiceless aspirated plosives in strong positions attested in the vernacular variety of the city of Florence. 24 native speakers were involved in a production test (read speech) followed by a perceptional counterpart (matched-guise and open-ended interview). A statistically significant relationship between male speakers and longer Voice Onset Times emerged from our quantitative analysis of production. This distribution was recognized by the speakers, that evaluated the trait using comments fit for a tentative reconstruction of an indexical field (Eckert, 2008). Our data corroborated the need for a sociophonetic shift in the research methods concerning the relation between speakersâ sex and VOT production (Oh, 2011
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