Stop Release in Polish English — Implications for Prosodic Constituency

Although there is little consensus on the relevance of non-contrastive allophonic processes in L2 speech acquisition, EFL pronunciation textbooks cover the suppression of stop release in coda position. The tendency for held stops in English is in stark opposition to a number of other languages, including Polish, in which plosive release is obligatory. This paper presents phonetic data on the acquisition of English unreleased stops by Polish learners. Results show that in addition to showing a tendency for the target language pattern of unreleased plosives, advanced learners may acquire more native-like VC formant transitions. From the functional perspective, languages with unreleased stops may be expected to have robust formant patterns on the final portion of the preceding vowel, which allow listeners to identify the final consonant when it lacks an audible release burst (see e.g. Wright 2004). From the perspective of syllabic positions, it may be said that ‘coda’ stops are obligatorily released in Polish, yet may be unreleased in English. Thus, the traditional term ‘coda’ is insufficient to describe the prosodic properties of post-vocalic stops in Polish and English. These differences may be captured in the Onset Prominence framework (Schwartz 2013). In languages with unreleased stops, the mechanism of submersion places post-vocalic stops at the bottom of the representational hierarchy where they may be subject to weakening. Submersion produces larger prosodic constituents and thus has phonological consequences beyond ‘coda’ behavior

Effect of temporal parameters on the perception of foreign accent in synthesized speech

Previous research investigating the parameters that affect accent have concentrated mainly on talker characteristics (e.g Flege, 1988). Those studies that do attempt to investigate acoustic parameters rely on post-hoc analysis of signals already judged to be accented. Any acoustic differences between these signals are said to be the basis of accent judgments. The current investigation attempts to rectify this methodological flaw by manipulating acoustic parameter previously implicated in perceived foreign accent within synthesized speech. In a two experiment study we investigate the effect of consonant duration and consonant initial frequency (Experiment 1) along with voice onset time, vowel duration and stop closure duration (Experiment 2). All stimuli were presented to participants over headphones using E-prime 2.0 experimental software. Participants were asked to perform two tasks: an initial phoneme identification task and an accent rating task. Identification accuracy was not expected to change based on our manipulation. Accent ratings were expected to increase as parameters approached non-native values. Consonant duration and initial frequency failed to have any effect on accent due to flaws in our synthesis. This could be a by-product of synthesis issues apparent by unexpected detrimental effects of our manipulation on identification accuracy. VOT and vowel duration significantly impacted accent ratings while stop closure duration did not. These finding suggest that listeners do rely on temporal parameters of speech in their judgment of accent. Suggestions for methodological standards are given

Speech Communication

Contains research objectives and summary of research on six research projects and reports on three research projects.National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 RO1 NS04332-13)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 MH5825-01)National Institutes of Health (Grant 1 T32 NS07040-01)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 NS007960)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 HD019120)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 HD01919-01)U. S. Army (Contract DAAB03-75-C-0489)National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 RO1 NS04332-12

Routes to Lenition: An Acoustic Study

BACKGROUND: Vowel lenition and its link with coarticulation have been the subject of extensive debate in the literature. The aims of the present paper are to demonstrate how vowel lenition and coarticulation are linked in Cypriot Greek (henceforth CG), to determine the nature of vowel lenition, and to illustrate how vowel lenition and coarticulation result from aerodynamic phenomena. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Eight speakers were recorded producing utterances ending in either /i/ or /u/. Acoustic measures such as V(1)F2 and stop duration were employed to determine whether lenition of the vowels results in coarticulation with the preceding consonant. Results show that there is extensive stop-vowel coarticulation in CG and that stop production is as variable as vowel production, with full vowels never co-occurring with canonical consonants, indicating the existence of two routes to lenition in CG. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These findings suggest that lenition in the final syllable is a consequence of the supralaryngeal articulation coupled with a marginal glottal setting

Stop Identity Cues As A Cue To Language Identity

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether language membership could potentially be cued by the acoustic-phonetic detail of word-initial stops and retained all the way through the process of lexical access to aid in language identification. Of particular interest were language-specific differences in CE and CF word-initial stops. Experiment 1 consisted of an interlingual homophone production task. The purpose of this study was to examine how word-initial stop consonants differ in terms of acoustic properties in Canadian English (CE) and Canadian French (CF) interlingual homophones. The analyses from the bilingual speakers in Experiment 1 indicate that bilinguals do produce language-specific differences in CE and CF word-initial stops, and that closure duration, voice onset time, and burst spectral SD may provide cues to language identity in CE and CF stops. Experiment 2 consisted of a Phoneme and Language Categorization task. The purpose of this study was to examine how stop identity cues, such as VOT and closure duration, influence a listener to identify word-initial stop consonants as belonging to Canadian English (CE) or Canadian French (CF). The RTs from the bilingual listeners in this study indicate that bilinguals do perceive language-specific differences in CE and CF word-initial stops, and that voice onset time may provide cues to phoneme and language membership in CE and CF stops. Experiment 3 consisted of a Phonological-Semantic priming task. The purpose of this study was to examine how subphonetic variations, such as changes in the VOT, affect lexical access. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that language-specific cues, such as VOT, affects the composition of the bilingual cohort and that the extent to which English and/or French words are activated is dependent on the language-specific cues present in a word. The findings of this study enhanced our theoretical understanding of lexical structure and lexical access in bilingual speakers. In addition, this study provides further insight on cross-language effects at the subphonetic level

An exploration of the rhythm of Malay

In recent years there has been a surge of interest in speech rhythm. However we still lack a clear understanding of the nature of rhythm and rhythmic differences across languages. Various metrics have been proposed as means for measuring rhythm on the phonetic level and making typological comparisons between languages (Ramus et al, 1999; Grabe & Low, 2002; Dellwo, 2006) but the debate is ongoing on the extent to which these metrics capture the rhythmic basis of speech (Arvaniti, 2009; Fletcher, in press). Furthermore, cross linguistic studies of rhythm have covered a relatively small number of languages and research on previously unclassified languages is necessary to fully develop the typology of rhythm. This study examines the rhythmic features of Malay, for which, to date, relatively little work has been carried out on aspects rhythm and timing. The material for the analysis comprised 10 sentences produced by 20 speakers of standard Malay (10 males and 10 females). The recordings were first analysed using rhythm metrics proposed by Ramus et. al (1999) and Grabe & Low (2002). These metrics (∆C, %V, rPVI, nPVI) are based on durational measurements of vocalic and consonantal intervals. The results indicated that Malay clustered with other so-called syllable-timed languages like French and Spanish on the basis of all metrics. However, underlying the overall findings for these metrics there was a large degree of variability in values across speakers and sentences, with some speakers having values in the range typical of stressed-timed languages like English. Further analysis has been carried out in light of Fletcher’s (in press) argument that measurements based on duration do not wholly reflect speech rhythm as there are many other factors that can influence values of consonantal and vocalic intervals, and Arvaniti’s (2009) suggestion that other features of speech should also be considered in description of rhythm to discover what contributes to listeners’ perception of regularity. Spectrographic analysis of the Malay recordings brought to light two parameters that displayed consistency and regularity for all speakers and sentences: the duration of individual vowels and the duration of intervals between intensity minima. This poster presents the results of these investigations and points to connections between the features which seem to be consistently regulated in the timing of Malay connected speech and aspects of Malay phonology. The results are discussed in light of current debate on the descriptions of rhythm

The Interaction of Domain-initial Effects with Lexical Stress: Acoustic Data from English, Spanish, and Portuguese

The phonetic implementation of domain-initial boundaries has gained considerable attention in the literature. However, most studies of the phenomenon have investigated small samples of articulatory data in which target syllables were lexically prominent and/or phrasally accented, introducing important potential confounds. This dissertation tackles these issues by examining how domain-initial effects operate on the acoustic properties of fully unstressed word-initial CV syllables in phrasally unaccented words. Similar materials were designed for a reading task in which 14 speakers of English, Spanish and Portuguese, languages that differ in how lexical prominence affects segmental makeup, took part. Results from the acoustic analyses show that domain-initial effects extend further than previously suggested, and that these interact with lexical stress in language-specific ways. These findings highlight how the marking of domain-initial boundaries relates to both the prominence and grouping functions of prosody, and suggest a linguistic, rather than purely biomechanical, motivation for domain-initial effects

Phonemic categorization and phonotactic repair as parallel sublexical processes : evidence from coarticulation sensitivity

Phonemic perception exhibits coarticulation sensitivity, phonotactic sensitivity and lexical sensitivity. Three kinds of models of speech perception are found in the literature, which embody different answers to the question of how the three kinds of sensitivity are related to each other: two-step models, one-step models and lexicalist models. In two-step models (Church, 1987), phonemes are first extracted, and phonotactic repairs are subsequently made on the obtained phoneme string; both phonemic categorization and phonotactic repair are sublexical, and coarticulation sensitivity should only affect initial (prephonotactic) phonemic categorization. In one-step models (Dehaene-Lambertz et al., 2000; Dupoux et al., 2011; Mehler et al., 1990), phonemic categorization and phonotactic repair are sublexical and simultaneous; phonotactic repairs themselves depend on coarticulation cues. Such models can be implemented in two different versions: suprasegmental matching, according to which a speech signal is matched against phonotactics-respecting suprasegmental units (such as syllables), rather than phonemes, and slot filling, according to which a speech signal is matched against phonemes as fillers for slots in phonotactics-respecting suprasegmental units. In lexicalist models (Cutler et al., 2009; McClelland & Elman, 1986), coarticulation sensitivity and/or phonotactic sensitivity reduce to lexical sensitivity. McClelland & Elman (1986) claim a lexicalist reduction of phonotactic sensitivity; Cutler et al.’s (2009) make a claim implying lexicalist reductions both of phonotactic sensitivity and of coarticulation sensitivity. This thesis attempts to distinguish among those models. Since different perceptual processes are assumed in these three models (whether sublexical units are perceived, or how many stages are involved in perceptual processing), our understanding of how speech perception works crucially depends on the relative superiority of those three kinds of models. Based on the results available in the past literature on the one hand, and on the results of perceptual experiments with Japanese listeners testing their coarticulation sensitivity in different settings on the other, this thesis argues for the superiority of the slot filling version of one-step models over the others. According to this conclusion, phonemic parsing (categorization) and phonotactic parsing (repair) are separate but parallel sublexical processes