The Status of Coronals in Standard American English . An Optimality-Theoretic Account

Coronals are very special sound segments. There is abundant evidence from various fields of phonetics which clearly establishes coronals as a class of consonants appropriate for phonological analysis. The set of coronals is stable across varieties of English unlike other consonant types, e.g. labials and dorsals, which are subject to a greater or lesser degree of variation. Coronals exhibit stability in inventories crosslinguistically, but they simultaneously display flexibility in alternations, i.e. assimilation, deletion, epenthesis, and dissimilation, when it is required by the contradictory forces of perception and production. The two main, opposing types of alternation that coronals in SAE participate in are examined. These are weakening phenomena, i.e. assimilation and deletion, and strengthening phenomena, i.e. epenthesis and dissimilation. Coronals are notorious for their contradictory behavior, especially in alternations. This type of behavior can be accounted for within a phonetically grounded OT framework that unites both phonetic and phonological aspects of alternations. Various sets of inherently conflicting FAITHFULNESS and MARKEDNESS constraints that are needed for an OT analysis of SAE alternations are intoduced

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

Palatalization in Romanian — Acoustic properties and perception

This paper presents the results of an acoustic study of fricatives from four places of articulation produced by 31 native speakers of Romanian, as well as those of a perceptual study using the stimuli from the acoustic experiment, allowing for a direct comparison between acoustic properties and perception. It was found that there are greater acoustic differences between plain and palatalized labials and dorsals as compared to coronals. The acoustic results were paralleled by the perceptual findings. This pattern departs from cross-linguistic generalizations made with respect to the properties of secondary palatalization. A likely source of the differences is the fact that previous studies of secondary palatalization typically involved stops which tend to exhibit various enhancement phenomena at the coronal place of articulation. Since the enhancement generally involves additional frication, this is not a useful strategy for fricatives at the coronal, or any other place of articulation. These findings form the basis of a discussion highlighting the differences between enhanced and non-enhanced secondary palatalization

Constraints on infant speech acquisition : a cross-language perspective

textThis study explored the relative contributions of child-internal production factors and perceptual influences from the ambient language on early speech-+ acquisition. Research has suggested that both articulatory complexity and perceptual distinctiveness impact a language's phonetic inventory; however, the ways these two properties interact during speech acquisition is not well understood. Quichua, spoken in Highland Ecuador, differs from English in many phonological properties. Babbling and early words of seven Quichua-learning infants between 9 and 16 months at the onset were followed longitudinally for 6 months. They were compared to the babbling and early words of Englishlearning infants and to Quichua and English adult speech samples. Production factors predominated in the babbling and early words of the Quichua infants. The infants' productions in the two language environments were more similar than the Quichua infants' speech productions were to the Quichua adult language models. Infants from both language environments primarily produced coronal stops and nasals, lower left quadrant vowels, simple consonantvowel syllables, one-syllable utterances, as well as similar predicted intrasyllabic consonant-vowel co-occurrence and intersyllabic consonant-consonant and vowel-vowel variegation patterns. Evidence of ambient language influences was apparent in consonant and vowel inventories and utterance length in the older infants. Dorsals, fricatives, and affricates occurred more frequently, and labials and liquids occurred less frequently in Quichua than English-learning infants. Quichua infants also produced more low vowels in late babbling and more two- and three-or-more syllable words. These findings all mirror Quichua properties. In addition, the Quichua infants' lower level of word use and shorter babbling length appear to reflect cultural influences. These findings indicate that child-internal production factors, ambient language influences and cultural norms must all be considered in an attempt to understand early speech acquisition. Many of the production patterns observed in the infants' utterances also occurred in the adult ambient language, although not to the same extent as in the infants. Based on the parallel findings in infants and adults, it appears that production-based factors are a principle underlying factor in babbling and first words, and are so basic to the production mechanism that they are retained to a lesser extent in modern languages.Communication Sciences and Disorder

The articulatory basis of positional asymmetries in phonological acquisition

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 250-276).Child phonological processes that lack counterparts in adult phonological typology have long posed a problem for formal modeling of phonological acquisition. This dissertation investigates child-specific processes with a focus on the phenomenon of neutralization in strong position, whereby children preferentially neutralize phonemic contrast in precisely those contexts seen to support maximal contrast in adult systems. These processes are difficult to model without making incorrect predictions for adult typology. Here, it is argued that all genuinely child-specific processes are driven by constraints rooted in child-specific phonetic factors. In a phonetically-based approach to phonology, if there are areas of divergence in phonetic pressures across immature and mature systems, differences across child and adult phonologies are predicted rather than problematic. The phonetically-based approach also explains the developmental elimination of child-specific processes, since in the course of typical maturation, the phonetic pressures driving these effects will cease to apply. Because children's speech-motor control capabilities are known to diverge from those of the skilled adult speaker, it is posited that articulatory factors play the dominant role in shaping child-specific phonological processes. Here it is argued that children have difficulty executing discrete movements of individual articulators, notably the tongue. By moving the tongue-jaw complex as a single unit, the child speaker can reduce the number of degrees of movement freedom and also rely on the action of the motorically simpler mandible to achieve articulatory targets.(cont.) The effects of mandibular dominance have previously been argued to play a role in shaping sound patterns in babbling and early words (MacNeilage & Davis, 1990). The preference for jaw-dominated movement can be seen to recede over time as the child establishes more reliable articulatory control. However, here evidence from the productions of older children is presented indicating that these effects continue to have an influence in later stages of development than has been previously documented. The pressure to use simultaneous movements of the tongue-jaw complex, formalized in a constraint MOVE-AS-UNIT, is argued to play a role in shaping child-specific processes including positional velar fronting, prevocalic fricative gliding, and consonant harmony. In the present approach, children's tendency to neutralize contrast in strong positions arises as MOVE-AS-UNIT interacts with asymmetries in the force and duration of articulatory gestures across different prosodic contexts. The incorporation of child-specific phonetic factors makes it possible to account for complex patterns of conditioning in child speech processes that would under other assumptions be extremely challenging to model.by Tara K. McAllister.Ph.D

Variable Glide Formation in Hexagonal French

This thesis examines phonetic and phonological aspects of gliding in Hexagonal French. In particular, we ask: Are glide phenomena as predictable as portrayed in modern descriptions? Do all three glides /j, w, ɥ/ or corresponding high vowels /i, u, y/ behave alike in all potential glide contexts? Given the duality of French glides (vowel and consonant), we use the term vocoid and the archiphoneme convention /I, U, Y/ in our discussion of glide contexts and glide phenomena. Our historical survey shows the glides of French (/j, ɥ, w/) evolve separately and during this period the high front vocoid /I/ occurs early and is involved in greater variety of contexts showing considerable variability. The other two glides emerge later, primarily through diphthongisation, and show less variability. In a study of glide contexts in the spontaneous speech of native speakers from three regions of France (data from the Phonologie du Français Contemporain project), we examine the distribution of all three high vocoids and their surface realisations. For 3415 tokens identified, we determine if HVV (high vocoid plus vowel) tokens are realised with dieresis, with syneresis, or with the high vocoid deleted. Our findings show glide contexts are consistently distributed at a rate of about 85% lexicalised and 15% derived. The limited variability in lexicalised contexts involves mainly the non-round vocoid /I/ realised with dieresis. Distribution across the three-glide inventory of French shows that lexicalised glide contexts follows a general markedness hierarchy: I ⨠ U ⨠ Y. Tokens involving the front non-round vocoid /I/ are most prevalent followed by the back rounded vocoid /U/ and finally the front rounded /Y/. Derived contexts include word medial tautomorphemic high vowel + vowel /HV+V/ sequences resulting from suffixation or inflection, and also cross-word-boundary /HV+V/ sequences which have very rarely been studied before; we show that cross-word-boundary data largely follow the same phonological constraints as derivational data. In each of these contexts the general markedness hierarchy observed above is changed, giving preference to the front rounded /Y/ over the back rounded /U/ while /I/ remains most prevalent

An Investigation of Coarticulation Resistance in Speech Production Using Ultrasound

Sound segments show considerable influence from neighbouring segments, which is described as being the result of coarticulation. None of the previous reports on coarticulation in vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) sequences has used ultrasound. One advantage of ultrasound is that it provides information about the shape of most of the midsagittal tongue contour. In this work, ultrasound is employed for studying symmetrical VCV sequences, like /ipi/ and /ubu/, and methods for analysing coarticulation are refined. The use of electropalatography (EPG) in combination with ultrasound is piloted in the study. A unified approach is achieved to describing lingual behaviour during the interaction of different speech sounds, by using the concept of Coarticulation Resistance, which implies that different sounds resist coarticulatory influence to different degrees. The following research questions were investigated: how does the tongue shape change from one segment to the next in symmetrical VCV sequences? Do the vowels influence the consonant? Does the consonant influence the vowels? Is the vocalic influence on the consonant greater than the consonantal influence on the vowels? What are the differences between lingual and non-lingual consonants with respect to lingual coarticulation? Does the syllable/word boundary affect the coarticulatory pattern? Ultrasound data were collected using the QMUC ultrasound system, and in the final experiment some EPG data were also collected. The data were Russian nonsense VCVs with /i/, /u/, /a/ and bilabial stops; English nonsense VhV sequences with /i/, /u/, /a/; English /aka/, /ata/ and /iti/ sequences, forming part of real speech. The results show a significant vowel influence on all intervocalic consonants. Lingual consonants significantly influence their neighbouring vowels. The vocalic influence on the consonants is significantly greater than the consonantal influence on the vowels. Non-lingual consonants exhibit varying coarticulatory patterns. Syllable and word boundary influence on VCV coarticulation is demonstrated. The results are interpreted and discussed in terms of the Coarticulation Resistance theory: Coarticulation Resistance of speech segments varies, depending on segment type, syllable boundary, and language. A method of quantifying Coarticulation Resistance based on ultrasound data is suggested.sub_shsunpub143_ethesesunpu