7,739 research outputs found

    Vernacular universals and the regularisation of hiatus resolution

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    Speaking Rate Effects on Locus Equation Slope

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    A locus equation describes a 1st order regression fit to a scatter of vowel steady-state frequency values predicting vowel onset frequency values. Locus equation coefficients are often interpreted as indices of coarticulation. Speaking rate variations with a constant consonant–vowel form are thought to induce changes in the degree of coarticulation. In the current work, the hypothesis that locus slope is a transparent index of coarticulation is examined through the analysis of acoustic samples of large-scale, nearly continuous variations in speaking rate. Following the methodological conventions for locus equation derivation, data pooled across ten vowels yield locus equation slopes that are mostly consistent with the hypothesis that locus equations vary systematically with coarticulation. Comparable analyses between different four-vowel pools reveal variations in the locus slope range and changes in locus slope sensitivity to rate change. Analyses across rate but within vowels are substantially less consistent with the locus hypothesis. Taken together, these findings suggest that the practice of vowel pooling exerts a non-negligible influence on locus outcomes. Results are discussed within the context of articulatory accounts of locus equations and the effects of speaking rate change

    Feedforward and feedback control in apraxia of speech: effects of noise masking on vowel production

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    PURPOSE: This study was designed to test two hypotheses about apraxia of speech (AOS) derived from the Directions Into Velocities of Articulators (DIVA) model (Guenther et al., 2006): the feedforward system deficit hypothesis and the feedback system deficit hypothesis. METHOD: The authors used noise masking to minimize auditory feedback during speech. Six speakers with AOS and aphasia, 4 with aphasia without AOS, and 2 groups of speakers without impairment (younger and older adults) participated. Acoustic measures of vowel contrast, variability, and duration were analyzed. RESULTS: Younger, but not older, speakers without impairment showed significantly reduced vowel contrast with noise masking. Relative to older controls, the AOS group showed longer vowel durations overall (regardless of masking condition) and a greater reduction in vowel contrast under masking conditions. There were no significant differences in variability. Three of the 6 speakers with AOS demonstrated the group pattern. Speakers with aphasia without AOS did not differ from controls in contrast, duration, or variability. CONCLUSION: The greater reduction in vowel contrast with masking noise for the AOS group is consistent with the feedforward system deficit hypothesis but not with the feedback system deficit hypothesis; however, effects were small and not present in all individual speakers with AOS. Theoretical implications and alternative interpretations of these findings are discussed.R01 DC002852 - NIDCD NIH HHS; R01 DC007683 - NIDCD NIH HH

    Between-word junctures in early multi-word speech

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    Most children aged 1;6 to 2;0 begin to use utterances of two words or more. It is therefore important for child phonologists to consider the development of phonetic and phonological phenomena that characterize connected speech. The longitudinal case study reported here investigated three juncture types – assimilation, elision and liaison – in the speech of a typically-developing child between the ages of 2;4 and 3;4. Attempts at production of these adult juncture types occurred from the onset of two-word utterances. However, for some juncture types, the child still had to perfect the intergestural relationships and gestural articulations that the adult between-word junctures demand. This process of phonetic development was largely accomplished by the age of 3;4. With one exception, between-word junctures appear not to be the result of learned phonological rules or processes. The exception is liaison involving /r/, which did not occur until the child was three years old

    Prosodic description: An introduction for fieldworkers

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    This article provides an introductory tutorial on prosodic features such as tone and accent for researchers working on little-known languages. It specifically addresses the needs of non-specialists and thus does not presuppose knowledge of the phonetics and phonology of prosodic features. Instead, it intends to introduce the uninitiated reader to a field often shied away from because of its (in part real, but in part also just imagined) complexities. It consists of a concise overview of the basic phonetic phenomena (section 2) and the major categories and problems of their functional and phonological analysis (sections 3 and 4). Section 5 gives practical advice for documenting and analyzing prosodic features in the field.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

    The evolution of auditory contrast

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    This paper reconciles the standpoint that language users do not aim at improving their sound systems with the observation that languages seem to improve their sound systems. Computer simulations of inventories of sibilants show that Optimality-Theoretic learners who optimize their perception grammars automatically introduce a so-called prototype effect, i.e. the phenomenon that the learner’s preferred auditory realization of a certain phonological category is more peripheral than the average auditory realization of this category in her language environment. In production, however, this prototype effect is counteracted by an articulatory effect that limits the auditory form to something that is not too difficult to pronounce. If the prototype effect and the articulatory effect are of a different size, the learner must end up with an auditorily different sound system from that of her language environment. The computer simulations show that, independently of the initial auditory sound system, a stable equilibrium is reached within a small number of generations. In this stable state, the dispersion of the sibilants of the language strikes an optimal balance between articulatory ease and auditory contrast. The important point is that this is derived within a model without any goal-oriented elements such as dispersion constraints

    Sociolinguistic Conditioning of Phonetic Category Realisation in Non-Native Speech

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    The realisation of phonetic categories reflects a complex relationship between individual phonetic parameters and both linguistic and extra-linguistic conditioning of language usage. The present paper investigates the effect of selected socio-linguistic variables, such as the age, the amount of language use and cultural/social distance in English used by Polish immigrants to the U.S. Individual parameters used in the realisation of the category ‘voice’ have been found to vary in their sensitivity to extra-linguistic factors: while the production of target-like values of all parameters is related to the age, it is the closure duration that is most stable in the correspondence to the age and level of language proficiency. The VOT and vowel duration, on the other hand, prove to be more sensitive to the amount of language use and attitudinal factors

    Book Reviews

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