Orthographic vs. morphological incomplete neutralization effects

This study, following up on work on Dutch by Warner, Jongman, Sereno, and Kemps (2004. Journal of Phonetics, 32, 251–276), investigates the influence of orthographic distinctions and underlying morphological distinctions on the small sub-phonemic durational differences that have been called incomplete neutralization. One part of the previous work indicated that an orthographic geminate/singleton distinction could cause speakers to produce an incomplete neutralization effect. However, one interpretation of the materials in that experiment is that they contain an underlying difference in the phoneme string at the level of concatenation of morphemes, rather than just an orthographic difference. Thus, the previous effect might simply be another example of incomplete neutralization of a phonemic distinction. The current experiment, also on Dutch, uses word pairs which have the same underlying morphological contrast, but do not differ in orthography. These new materials show no incomplete neutralization, and thus support the hypothesis that orthography, but not underlying morphological differences, can cause incomplete neutralization effects

Revisiting Incomplete Neutralization: The Case of Puerto Rican Spanish

Recent advances in phonetic analysis have led researchers to re-examine sounds that were previously assumed to be contextually neutralized, or merged into a single pronunciation. By using fine-grained spectrographic analysis, linguists have discovered that in many cases where neutralization was assumed, sounds are actually incompletely neutralized. That is, there are small differences in the articulation of these sounds such that they are in fact not merged, even though impressionistic descriptions report them as such. However, many researchers argue that the differences in pronunciation found in linguistic experiments are the result of hyperarticulation induced by the formality of the laboratory setting. In order to test whether or not incomplete neutralization exists in spontaneous speech, this study utilizes sociolinguistic interview data to examine coda liquid neutralization in Puerto Rican Spanish. The results from this study provide evidence that incomplete neutralization occurs outside of the laboratory context shows that the degree of neutralization and distinction between coda and in this dialect is conditioned by social and linguistic factors

Incomplete Neutralization in American English Flapping: A Production Study

This paper presents a production study of incomplete neutralization in American English flapping. In flapping, /d/ and /t/ both become a voiced flap in certain prosodic contexts (see, e.g., Kahn 1980). A number of studies show that this neutralization is incomplete: /d/-flaps can be distinguished from /t/-flaps on the surface (Fox and Terbeek 1977). Other studies, however, have found conflicting results (Port 1976). This study finds that flapping is an incompletely neutralizing process—/d/-flaps and /t/-flaps can be distinguished on the surface by the duration of the preceding vowel, at least for some speakers. Additionally, some studies find evidence that hyperarticulation and orthography have an effect on whether neutralization is complete or incomplete (Fourakis and Iverson 1984, Warner et al. 2006). The present study employed two tasks: a minimal pair reading task, designed to increase these potential effects, and a morphological paradigm completion/ wug task, designed to reduce these effects. No significant differences between the two tasks were found, thus failing to support the claim that incomplete neutralization is due to these extragrammatical factors

Assessing incomplete neutralization of final devoicing in German

It has been claimed that the long established neutralization of the voicing distinction in domain final position in German is phonetically incomplete. However, many studies that have advanced this claim have subsequently been criticized on methodological grounds, calling incomplete neutralization into question. In three production experiments and one perception experiment we address these methodological criticisms. In the first production study, we address the role of orthography. In a large scale auditory task using pseudowords, we confirm that neutralization is indeed incomplete and suggest that previous null results may simply be due to lack of statistical power. In two follow-up production studies (Experiments 2 and 3), we rule out a potential confound of Experiment 1, namely that the effect might be due to accommodation to the presented auditory stimuli, by manipulating the duration of the preceding vowel. While the between-items design (Experiment 2) replicated the findings of Experiment 1, the between-subjects version (Experiment 3) failed to find a statistically significant incomplete neutralization effect, although we found numerical tendencies in the expected direction. Finally, in a perception study (Experiment 4), we demonstrate that the subphonemic differences between final voiceless and devoiced stops are audible, but only barely so. Even though the present findings provide evidence for the robustness of incomplete neutralization in German, the small effect sizes highlight the challenges of investigating this phenomenon. We argue that without necessarily postulating functional relevance, incomplete neutralization can be accounted for by recent models of lexical organization. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Resilabificación incompleta y acoplamiento gestual ambisilábico en español

In the generative literature, the pattern of coronal fricative lenition found in the traditional Chinato Spanish dialect is commonly cited as a phonological argument that the resyllabification of word-final prevocalic consonants is complete, in the sense that onsets derived by resyllabification are structurally identical to canonical (word-level) onsets. However, recent acoustic studies of Northern-Central Peninsular Spanish have problematized the completeness of resyllabification with experimental evidence that /s̺/ is shorter and more voiced as a derived onset than as a canonical onset. Using a split-gesture, competitive, coupled oscillator model of the syllable in Articulatory Phonology, which divides consonants into a separate constriction and release gesture, we propose a novel representation of ambisyllabicity that predicts the phonetic behavior of derived onset /s̺/ in Northern-Central Peninsular Spanish. We then show that ambisyllabic coupling permits a simpler phonological analysis of coronal fricative lenition in Chinato Spanish as compared to alternative accounts. Our analysis makes typological predictions that are confirmed by patterns from other contemporary Spanish varieties. Lastly, we examine the consequences of ambisyllabicity for the analysis of Spanish rhotic consonants, which have also been argued to support complete resyllabification. We offer an analysis of rhotics that is entirely compatible with an ambisyllabic representation of incomplete resyllabification.En la literatura generativa, el debilitamiento de fricativas coronales en el dialecto chinato del español peninsular se cita comúnmente como un argumento fonológico a favor de la resilabificación completa de consonantes prevocálicas finales de palabra, o sea que los arranques derivados por resilabificación son idénticos estructuralmente a los arranques canónicos a nivel de palabra. Sin embargo, algunos estudios acústicos recientes han problematizado la resilabificación completa en el español peninsular centro-norteño al presentar evidencia experimental de que la /s̺/ es más corta y sonorizada como arranque derivado que como arranque canónico. Utilizamos un modelo de acoplamiento competitivo desde la Fonología Articulatoria, el cual divide a las consonantes en un gesto de constricción y de soltura, para proponer una nueva representación de la ambisilabicidad que predice el comportamiento fonético de la /s̺/ como arranque derivado en el español peninsular centro-norteño. Luego, demostramos que el acoplamiento ambisilábico permite analizar mejor el debilitamiento de fricativas coronales en el español chinato, en comparación con otras explicaciones alternativas. Confirmamos las predicciones tipológicas de nuestro análisis para otras variedades contemporáneas del español. Por último, examinamos las consecuencias de la ambisilabicidad para el análisis de las consonantes róticas del español, también citadas como otro argumento a favor de la resilabificación completa. Ofrecemos un análisis de las róticas que es totalmente compatible con una representación ambisilábica de la resilabificación incompleta

Phonological contrasts are maintained despite neutralization: an intracranial EEG study

The existence of language-specific abstract sound-structure units (such as the phoneme) is largely uncontroversial in phonology. However, whether the brain performs abstractions comparable to those assumed in phonology has been difficult to ascertain. Using intracranial electroencephalography (EEG) recorded during a passive listening task, this study investigates the representation of phonological units in the brain and the relationship between those units, auditory sensory input, and higher levels of language organization, namely  morphology. Leveraging the phonological neutralization of coronal stops to tap in English, this study provides evidence of a dissociation between acoustic similarity and phonemic identity in the neural response to speech. Moreover, leveraging morphophonological alternations of the regular plural and past tense, this study further demonstrates early (<500ms) evidence of dissociation between phonological form and morphological exponence. Together these results highlight the central nature of language-specific knowledge in sublexical language processing and improve our understanding of the ways language-specific knowledge structures and organizes speech perception in the brain

Phonological and phonetic properties of nasal substitution in Sasak and Javanese

Austronesian languages such as Sasak and Javanese have a pattern of morphological nasal substitution, where nasals alternate with homorganic oral obstruents—except that [s] is described as alternating with [ɲ], not with [n]. This appears to be an abstract morphophonological relation between [s] and [ɲ] where other parts of the paradigm have a concrete homorganic relation. Articulatory ultrasound data were collected of productions of [t, n, ʨ, ɲ], along with [s] and its nasal counterpart from two languages, from 10 Sasak and 8 Javanese speakers. Comparisons of lingual contours using a root mean square analysis were evaluated with linear mixed-effects regression models, a method that proves reliable for testing questions of phonological neutralization. In both languages, [t, n, s] exhibit a high degree of articulatory similarity, whereas postalveolar [ʨ] and its nasal counterpart [ɲ] exhibited less similarity. The nasal counterpart of [s] was identical in articulation to [ɲ]. This indicates an abstract, rather than concrete, relationship between [s] and its morphophonological nasal counterpart, with the two sounds not sharing articulatory place in either Sasak or Javanese.published_or_final_versio

Coarticulation with alveopalatal sibilants in Mandarin and Polish: Phonetics or phonology?

Previous work has shown that vowels following alveopalatal sibilants typically exhibit raised second formant (F2) values, typically attributed to coarticulatory vowel fronting (e.g. Stevens, 2004 in Mandarin; Bukmaier & Harrington, 2016 in Polish). This paper re-examines the palatalizing coarticulatory effects of the alveopalatal sibilant in Mandarin and Polish. While previous studies have focused on differences in F2 transitions or values at vowel onset, I find that the raised F2 values following alveopalatal sibilants frequently persist through the entire duration of following vowels in Mandarin. This raises the question of whether this is a phonetic coarticulation effect or a phonological assimilation effect. I review diagnostics for such a distinction and provide evidence from speech rate which suggests that the raised F2 effect should be analyzed as phonological assimilation in Mandarin, but phonetic coarticulation in Polish. These results have implications for phonological representations and perception in both languages