Gestural Phasing as an Explanation for Vowel Devoicing in Turkish

Recent work in phonetics has suggested that vowel devoicing or schwa deletion, observed in various languages, is a gradient process. This study provides evidence for the previously undocumented process of high vowel devoicing in Turkish. The prosodic and segmental factors rate, stress, preceding environment, following environment, vowel type, and syllable type were investigated. The factors are described, evaluated and ranked according to the results of a multiple regression (Variable Rule) analysis. Where applicable, results are contrasted with findings for i.e., Japanese and Korean. Furthermore, VOT (voice onset time) measurements of the three voiceless stops [p t k] were obtained, as well as duration measurements of vowels in open and closed syllables where vowels are significantly longer in Turkish. Generally, most devoicing occurred when the vowel was shorter (i.e., as a result of faster rates of speech, lack of stress, in closed syllables, ect.). These findings accord well with predictions made by a model assuming gradual gestural overlap of adjacent consonantal and vocalic gestures. It will be attempted to explain the findings with differences in phasing between articulatory gestures

On the social and linguistic implications of unstressed vowel weakening in cochabambino spanish

Resum: Sobre les implicacions socials i lingüístiques del debilitament vocàlic en l’espanyol de Cochabamba. Aquest article ofereix una anàlisi dels factors socials i lingüístics que afecten el debilitament vocàlic de les vocals, fenomen existent en un dialecte poc estudiat dels Andes, l’espanyol de Cochabamba. Aquest treball és, a més, la primera anàlisi del dit debilitament en l’espanyol, basat en dades compilades a partir d’una tasca de lectura en veu alta

When is a Syllable not a Syllable?

This paper reviews evidence for unifying two seemingly disparate types of syllable reduction phenomena: the elision of reduced vowels in English and German, and the devocalization of high vowels in Japanese, Korean, and Montreal French. Both types of "casual speech rule" can be understood as extreme endpoints of a phonetic continuum of gestural overlap. The vowel is seemingly deleted or devoiced when the gestures of neighboring consonants encroach so completely into the space for the affected vowel that the relevant vowel gesture(s) leave no salient acoustic trace. However, in some cases in some of these languages, the reduction has been phonologically reanalyzed, so that the word loses a syllable. The paper explores the circumstances under which such reanalysis can occur

Syllables without vowels: Phonetic and phonological evidence from Tashlhiyt Berber

International audienceIt has been proposed that Tashlhiyt is a language which allows any segment,including obstruents, to be a syllable nucleus. The most striking and controversialexamples taken as arguments in favour of this analysis involve series of wordsclaimed to contain only obstruents. This claim is disputed in some recent work,where it is argued that these consonant sequences contain schwas that can besyllable nuclei. This article presents arguments showing that vowelless syllablesdo exist in Tashlhiyt, both at the phonetic and phonological levels. Acoustic,fibrescopic and photoelectroglottographic examination of voiceless words (e.g.[tkkststt]) provide evidence that such items lack syllabic vocalic elements. In addition,two types of phonological data, metrics and a spirantisation process, arepresented to show that in this language schwa is not a segment which can beindependently manipulated by phonological grammar and which can be referredto the syllable structure

Mechanisms of vowel devoicing in Japanese

The processes of vowel devoicing in Standard Japanese were examined with respect to the phonetic and phonological environments and the syllable structure of Japanese, in comparison with vowel reduction processes in other languages, in most of which vowel reduction occurs optionally in fast or casual speech. This thesis examined whether Japanese vowel devoicing was a phonetic phenomenon caused by glottal assimilation between a high vowel and its adjacent voiceless consonants, or it was a more phonologically controlled compulsory process. Experimental results showed that Japanese high vowel devoicing must be analysed separately in two devoicing conditions, namely single and consecutive devoicing environments. Devoicing was almost compulsory regardless of the presence of proposed blocking factors such as type of preceding consonant, accentuation, position in an utterance, as long as there was no devoiceable vowel in adjacent morae (single devoicing condition). However, under consecutive devoicing conditions, blocking factors became effective and prevented some devoiceable vowels from becoming voiceless. The effect of speaking rate was also generally minimal in the single devoicing condition, but in the consecutive devoicing condition, the vowels were devoiced more at faster tempi than slower tempi, which created many examples of consecutively devoiced vowels over two morae. Durational observations found that vowel devoicing involves not only phonatory change, but also slight durational reduction. However, the shorter duration of devoiced syllables were adjusted at the word level, so that the whole duration of a word with devoiced vowels remained similar to the word without devoiced vowels, regardless of the number of devoiced vowels in the word. It must be noted that there was no clear-cut distinction between voiced and devoiced vowels, and the phonetic realisation of a devoiced vowel could vary from fully voiced to completely voiceless. A high vowel may be voiced in a typical devoicing environment, but its intensity is significantly weaker than those of vowels in a non-devoicing environment, at all speaking tempi. The mean differences of vowel intensities between these environments were generally higher at faster tempi. The results implied that even when the vowel was voiced, its production process moved in favour of devoicing. However, in consecutive devoicing conditions, this process did not always apply. When some of the devoiceable vowels were devoiced in the consecutive devoicing environment, the intensities of devoiceable vowels were not significantly lower than those of other vowels. The results of intensity measurements of voiced vowels in the devoicing and nondevoicing environments suggested that Japanese vowel devoicing was part of the overall process of complex vowel weakening, and that a completely devoiced vowel was the final state of the weakening process. Japanese vowel devoicing is primarily a process of glottal assimilation, but the results in the consecutive devoicing condition showed that this process was constrained by Japanese syllable structure

Vowel Devoicing in Tokyo Japanese

This paper proposes a phonological analysis for vowel devoicing in Tokyo Japanese using the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993). Generally speaking, in Japanese the high vowels /i, u/ are devoiced when they occur between two voiceless consonants. However, there are some contexts where such a simple generalization does not hold, e.g., so called “word-final devoicing” and when devoiceable vowels are accented. This paper attempts to provide a unified analysis for such issues as well as for the canonical context

일본어 고모음 무성음화에서 나타나는 적극 중첩

학위논문(석사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 인문대학 언어학과, 2023. 2. 전종호.본고는 일본어 고모음 무성음화의 변이 양상에 기여하는 음운론적인 요소를 탐구하고자 한다. 고모음 무성음화란, 무성 자음 사이에서 고모음이 유성성을 잃는 현상으로, 이는 종종 음성학적인 현상으로 간주되어 왔다. 예컨대 Jun et al. (1998)과 같은 기존 연구에 따르면, 고모음 무성음화는 고모음을 둘러싼 무성 자음의 성문 개방 동작이 겹쳐짐에 따라 고모음의 유성성이 실현되지 못하는 것으로 이해되었다. 이러한 음성학적 설명은 고모음 무성음화의 실현이 오로지 주변 자음의 조음적 특성 및 대상 모음과 주변 자음 사이의 시간적 배열에 따라 결정될 것임을 가정한다. 따라서, 이러한 설명은 일본어 고모음 무성음화가 일본어의 음운론적 구조와 무관할 것임을 예측한다. 이러한 예측과는 반대로, 본고는 인접 음절 간의 유사성에 대한 구조적 지식이 고모음 무성음화의 실현에 중요한 역할을 한다는 것을 보인다. 일본어 발화 코퍼스(Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese; Maekawa et al. 2000)에서 추출한 대규모의 자료를 기반으로, 본고는 고모음 무성음화의 빈도에 영향을 주는 음운론적 경향성을 다음과 같이 밝혀내었다. (i) 무성음화는 마찰음이나 파찰음이 대상 모음에 선행하고, 마찰음이 후행할 때 저지된다.(조음 양식의 일치 조건) (ii) 조음 양식의 일치 조건 하에서, 무성음화는 대상 모음에 후행하는 음절이 또다른 고모음을 포함할 때 더욱 더 저지된다.(모음 높이의 일치 조건) (iii) 무성음화는 대상 모음이 액센트를 지닐 때 덜 일어난다. (iv) 무성음화는 중자음이 대상 모음에 후행할 때 덜 일어난다. (v) 무성음화 환경이 연속적으로 일어나는 환경에서, 인접 음절의 두 모음이 모두 무성음화되는 것은 회피되는 경향이 있다. 본고는 위의 경향성들을 최적성이론(Optimality Theory; Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004)에 입각하여 형식적으로 분석하고자 한다. 먼저, 본고는 무성음화가 변이음적 교체를 산출해내는 일반적인 제약의 위계(ranking)에 의해 도출된다고 주장한다. 즉, 이는 환경의존적 유표성(context-sensitive markedness) 제약 (DEVOICE: 무성 자음 사이에서 짧은 유성 고모음을 금함) >> 환경독립적 유표성(context-free markedness) 제약(SONVOI: 무성 공명음을 금함) >> 충실성(faithfulness) 제약(IO-ID(vce): 입력형의 [유성성]([voice]) 값을 출력형에서 바꾸는 것을 금함)으로 나타난다. 추가적으로, 연속 무성음화가 회피되는 경향성을 설명하기 위해 OCP-V̥ (인접 음절 내의 두 무성 모음을 금함)을 제안한다. 위의 경향성 중, 조음 양식과 모음 높이의 일치 조건은 음절 구조를 참조하여 분석될 수 있다. V1이 무성음화의 대상이 되는 고모음이고 C1과 C2가 무성 자음이라고 할 때, /C1V1C2V2/ 연속은 일본어에서 [C1V1]σ1[C2V2]σ2 의 두 음절로 나뉜다. 이를 바탕으로, 무성음화는 인접 음절의 두음(onset), 즉 C1과 C2가 [+지속성]([+continuant])로 일치할 때 저지된다고 할 수 있다. ((예) suso 옷자락) 파찰음은 위치에 따라 다른 행동을 보이는데, 모음에 선행하는 환경(즉, C1)에서는 마찰음과 함께 [+지속성]로 행동하고 모음에 후행하는 환경(즉, C2)에서는 파열음과 함께 [-지속성]로 행동한다. 조음 양식의 일치 조건에 더하여, 무성음화는 인접 음절의 음절핵(nuclei), 즉 V1과 V2의 [고설성]([high]) 자질이 일치할 때 더욱 더 저지된다고 할 수 있다. 조음 양식과 모음 높이 간의 부가적인 효과는 인접 음절 간의 유사도가 높아질수록 무성음화 빈도가 낮아짐을 시사한다. 본고는 위와 같이 유사성에 의한 저지 효과가 인접하고 서로 유사한 음절 내에 있는 모음 간의 유성성 일치를 보존하기 위해 일어난다고 주장한다. 이러한 주장을 형식화하기 위해, 본고는 Zuraw(2002)의 적극 중첩(Aggressive Reduplication)을 차용한 분석을 제시한다. McCarthy and Prince(1995)에서 어기와 중첩어 사이의 동일성이 대응(correspondence)에 의해 발생한다고 주장되는 것처럼, 적극 중첩 이론은 단어 내 하위 연쇄(substring)간의 대응이 REDUP 이라는 제약에 의해 부과되고, REDUP 에 의해 촉발된 대응 제약들(κκ-CORR)이 대응 연쇄 간의 상호유사성이 떨어지는 것을 막는다고 주장한다. 이 주장에 따라, 본고는 유사성에 의한 저지 효과가 인접 음절 간에서 작용하는 대응 제약들이 무성음화가 일어났을 때 발생하는 대응 모음 간의 유성성 불일치를 비선호하기 때문에 일어난다고 설명한다. 나아가서, κκ-CORR 제약이 REDUP 제약보다 상위에 놓이게 되면, 대응 구조가 상호유사한 음절에만 놓이게 되고, 따라서 무성음화가 이러한 환경에서만 저지되는 결과를 도출해 낸다. 본고는 유사성과 관련한 대안적 이론인 의무 굴곡 원리(Obligatory Contour Principle; McCarthy 1986)와 대응을 통한 일치 이론(Agreement by Correspondence; Rose and Walker 2004)을 살펴보고, 오로지 적극 중첩 이론만이 분절음보다 더 큰 단위의 대응을 허용하기 때문에 일본어 고모음화에서 나타나는 유사성에 의한 저지 효과를 성공적으로 설명할 수 있다고 주장한다. 본고는 고저 액센트와 중자음의 효과를 설명하기 위한 추가적인 제약들 또한 제시한다. 액센트를 지닌 음절의 심리언어학적, 청취적 현저성을 바탕으로, 액센트를 지닌 음절이 더 큰 위치적 충실성(positional faithfulness; Beckman 1998)을 요구하기에 무성음화를 저지한다고 보고, 이러한 위치적 충실성을 반영하여 (IO-ID(vce)/σ́(액센트를 지닌 음절 내의 입력형 [유성성] 값을 출력형에서 바꾸는 것을 금함)을 제시한다. 중자음이 무성음화를 저지하는 효과는 일본어에서 중자음에 선행하는 모음이 길이가 길어진다는 사실(Kawahara 2015)로부터 기인한다고 주장한다. 청취적 사상 가설(P-map hypothesis; Steriade 2001, 2009)에 입각하여, 유성성의 청취적 차이가 짧은 모음과 그것의 무성음 짝 사이보다 장음화된 모음과 그것의 무성음 짝 사이에서 더 클 것이라고 가정한다. 이에 따라 또다른 위치적 충실성 제약인 IO-ID(vce)/_GEM(중자음에 선행하는 모음에 대해, 입력형의 [voice] 값을 출력형에서 바꾸는 것을 금함)을 제시한다. 마지막으로, 고모음 무성음화에서 나타나는 변이를 설명하기 위해, 본고는 Anttila(1997)의 부분 위계 이론(Partially Ordered Constraints)을 차용한다. 이에 입각하여, 제약의 일부 위계는 고정되어 있지만, 다른 부분은 매 산출 시마다 바뀔 수 있다고 가정한다. 본고는 음절 간의 유사성이라는 구조적 지식이 일본어 고모음 무성음화에 영향을 준다는 것을 발견하고, 이는 기존에 이 현상이 음성적이거나 어휘부 외적(post-lexical)이라는 주장과 상충됨을 보인다. 본고의 발견은 일본어 화자들에게 모음의 유성성에 대한 정보가 순전히 변이음적일지라도, 화자들이 모음 간의 유성성이 서로 같거나 다른지에 대한 지식을 가지고 있음을 시사한다.In this study, I investigate the phonological factors that contribute to the variable pattern of Japanese high vowel devoicing. High vowel devoicing, whereby high vowels lose voicing between voiceless consonants, has often been considered to be a phonetic process; it has been claimed that this process occurs because voicing of high vowels fails to be achieved due to an overlap of the glottal opening gestures of the surrounding voiceless consonants (Jun et al. 1998). Such an account assumes that the application of high vowel devoicing is solely conditioned by the articulatory characteristics of the surrounding consonants, and the temporal organization of the target vowel with the surrounding consonants. As such, it predicts that Japanese high vowel devoicing will be insensitive to the phonological structure of Japanese. Contrary to this prediction, the current study shows that the structural knowledge of similarity between adjacent syllables plays an important role in the application of high vowel devoicing. Using a large-scale dataset from a Japanese speech corpus (Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese; Maekawa et al. 2000), I report the following phonological tendencies that affect the rate of high vowel devoicing: (i) Devoicing is less likely if the target vowel is preceded by a fricative or affricate and followed by a fricative. (Matching manner condition) (ii) In the matching manner condition, devoicing is even less likely if the syllable following the target vowel contains another high vowel. (Matching height condition) (iii) Devoicing is less likely if the target vowel is accented. (iv) Devoicing is less likely if the target vowel is followed by a geminate. (v) In the environment where the devoicing context occurs consecutively, devoicing of two vowels in adjacent syllables tends to be avoided. I then provide a formal analysis of the observed tendencies within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004). First, I claim that devoicing is derived by a typical ranking of constraints for allophonic variation: Context-sensitive Markedness (DEVOICE: No voiced short high vowel between voiceless consonants) >> Context-free Markedness (SONVOI: No voiceless sonorant) >> Faithfulness (IO-ID(vce): No change of the input [voice] in the output). Additionally, I propose OCP-V̥ (No voiceless vowels in adjacent syllables) to account for the tendency of consecutive devoicing to be avoided. The matching manner and matching height conditions among the tendencies above can be generalized by making reference to the syllable structure. /C1V1C2V2/ sequences, where V1 is a target high vowel and C1 and C2 are voiceless consonants, are parsed into [C1V1]σ1[C2V2]σ2 in Japanese. Given this, it can be said that devoicing is suppressed if the onsets of the adjacent syllables (i.e., C1 and C2) match in [+continuant] (e.g., suso hem). Affricates show a position-specific behavior, patterning with fricatives in prevocalic position (i.e., C1) as [+continuant], and with stops in postvocalic position (i.e., C2) as [−continuant]. In addition to the matching manner condition, devoicing is further suppressed if the height of the nuclei (i.e., V1 and V2) agrees in [high] (e.g., susi sushi). This additive effect of the matching height condition to the matching manner condition suggests that devoicing rates decrease as the degree of similarity between two adjacent syllables increases. I claim that these similarity-driven blocking effects arise due to an effort to preserve the voicing identity between the vowels in adjacent, self-similar syllables. To formalize this claim, I provide an analysis adopting Zuraws (2002) Aggressive Reduplication. As much as reduplicative identity is argued to be driven by correspondence between a base and reduplicant (McCarthy and Prince 1995), the Aggressive Reduplication account proposes that correspondence between word-internal substrings is imposed by the constraint REDUP, and correspondence constraints (κκ-CORR) that are invoked by REDUP prevent any disruption of self-similarity between the correspondent strings. Under this account, the similarity-driven blocking effects are explained by the effects of correspondence constraints operating between adjacent syllables, which disprefer a mismatch of [voice] between the correspondent vowels when the target vowel devoices. In addition, the ranking of κκ-CORR over REDUP derives the results where correspondence structure is only posited in self-similar syllables, and thus blocks devoicing only in those environments. I discuss alternative similarity-related theories such as the Obligatory Contour Principle (McCarthy 1986) and Agreement by Correspondence (Rose and Walker 2004), and argue that only Aggressive Reduplication successfully accounts for the similarity-driven effects in Japanese high vowel devoicing, since it allows correspondence beyond the segmental level. On top of the above constraints, I provide additional constraints for the effects of pitch accent and geminacy. Based on the psycholinguistic and perceptual salience of accented syllables, I claim that pitch accent impedes devoicing since accented syllables require greater positional faithfulness (IO-ID(vce)/σ́; Do not change the input [voice] of an accented syllable in the output, following Beckman 1998). I further claim that the inhibitory effect of geminates is based on pre-geminate vowel lengthening in Japanese (Kawahara 2015). Based on the P-map hypothesis (Steriade 2001, 2009), I assume that the perceptual difference in voicing between a lengthened vowel and its voiceless counterpart is greater than that between a short vowel and its voiceless counterpart. As such, I propose another positional faithfulness constraint, IO-ID(vce)/_GEM, which bans a voicing change of a vowel before a geminate. Finally, to account for variation, I employ Anttilas (1997) Partially Ordered Constraints approach. Based on this, I assume some parts of the constraint ranking are fixed, while others can change at each production. The current study finds that structural knowledge such as similarity relations across syllables plays a crucial role in Japanese high vowel devoicing, which has often been treated as a phonetic or post-lexical process. This suggests that Japanese speakers are sensitive to the (dis)similarity of vowel voicing, even when this information is purely allophonic.1. Introduction 1 2. Data 7 2.1. Corpus 7 2.2. Phonological tendencies 13 2.2.1. C1 and C2 manner 13 2.2.2. V2 height 17 2.2.3. Pitch accent 20 2.2.4. Geminacy of C2 21 2.2.5. Morpheme boundary 22 2.2.6. Consecutive devoicing environment 24 2.2.7. Statistical analysis 25 3. Analysis 29 3.1. Basic mechanism of high vowel devoicing 30 3.2. Aggressive Reduplication 35 3.3. Accent and geminacy 52 3.4. Calculating ranking probabilities 55 4. Potential alternatives 63 4.1. OCP 63 4.2. ABC 67 5. Conclusion 72 References 76 국문 초록 87석

Korean laryngeal contrast revisited:An electroglottographic study on denasalized and oral stops

In several Korean dialects, domain-initial nasal onsets undergo denasalization as a recent sound change. Nasal stops may be realized as prevoiced or even devoiced stops. This makes it necessary to examine the interplay of phonetic properties of the denasalized and the three oral stop series as a whole, in synchrony and diachrony. What are their concomitant and conflicting properties? Our study provides a bigger picture of the laryngeal contrast in Seoul and Gyeonggi Korean by examining the acoustic distributions related to the laryngeal properties of the four stop series, using acoustic and electroglottographic data. VOT and 'f'0 play important roles in the distinction of the four stop series, in line with previous studies. While the contribution of voice quality is relatively minor, we show that it plays an essential role of disambiguation when the VOT–'f'0 space gets crowded: When lenis stops can be confused with other stops, there is an enhancement of breathy voice. Finally, we discuss stop variation according to prosodic contexts. We highlight the basis of both syntagmatic variation and paradigmatic contrast in their phonetic implementations. They illustrate a constant reorganization to reconcile contrast maintenance with constraints from articulatory and perceptual systems, as well as language-specific structures

Sampling the progression of domain-initial denasalization in Seoul Korean

Word-initial nasals in Korean are known to exhibit prosody-sensitive denasalization. The literature on the subject is still scarce and even the basic description of the process is debated. This study tested the speculation that inconsistencies in the literature may be explained if certain features of denasalization have developed relatively recently as part of an ongoing sound change. Based on apparent-time data from thirty-two speakers of Seoul Korean, the study explored the development of denasalization over a fifty-year period. The phonetic manifestations of domain-initial nasals were examined, along with the effects of prosodic position, place of articulation, and the height of the following vowel. The results revealed that denasalization has advanced rapidly over time, acquiring more plosive-like features of devoicing as well as a complete lack of nasality. Alveolar nasals before a high vowel were most likely to show denasalization and devoicing. Interestingly, the cumulative effect of prosody became weakest and partial denasalization was least likely for the younger group. Based on these results, we speculate that Korean denasalization is in the process of being stabilized into a discrete phrase-level process from a more general, gradient phenomenon of domain-initial strengthening, consistent with the theory of the life cycle of phonological processes. Keywords: denasalization; domain-initial strengthening; articulatory strengthening; fortition; Korean; sound change; rule scattering; life cycle of phonological processes; apparent tim

Transphonologization of voicing in Chru:Studies in production and perception

Chru, a Chamic language of south-central Vietnam, has been described as combining contrastive obstruent voicing with incipient registral properties (Fuller, 1977). A production study reveals that obstruent voicing has already become optional and that the voicing contrast has been transphonologized into a register contrast based primarily on vowel height (F1). An identification study shows that perception roughly matches production in that F1 is the main perceptual cue associated with the contrast. Structured variation in production suggests a sound change still in progress: While younger speakers largely rely on vowel height to produce the register contrast, older male speakers maintain a variety of secondary properties, including optional closure voicing. Our results shed light on the initial stages of register formation and challenge the claim that register languages must go through a stage in which breathiness or aspiration is the primary contrastive property (Haudricourt, 1965; Wayland & Jongman, 2002; Thurgood, 2002). This article also complements several recent studies about the transphonologization of voicing in typologically diverse languages (Svantesson & House, 2006; Howe, 2017; Coetzee, Beddor, Shedden, Styler, & Wissing, 2018)