Effects of age, sex, context, and lexicality on hyperarticulation of Korean fricatives

Seoul Korean is known for a rare three-way laryngeal contrast among lenis, fortis, and aspirated voiceless stops, which has recently undergone a change in phonetic implementation: whereas older speakers rely more on voice onset time (VOT) to distinguish lenis and aspirated stops, younger speakers rely more on onset fundamental frequency (f 0) in the following vowel. This production difference is reflected in disparate strategies for enhancing the contrast in clear speech, supporting the view that younger and older speakers represent the three laryngeal categories differently in terms of VOT and f 0 targets (Kang & Guion, 2008). In the current study, we used the clear speech paradigm to test for change in the representation of the two-way contrast between fortis (/s*/) and non-fortis (/s/) fricatives. Native Seoul Korean speakers (n = 32), representing two generations and both sexes, were recorded producing the coronal stops and fricatives in different vowel contexts, item types (real vs. nonce words), and speech registers (plain citation vs. clear). We report acoustic data on how the above factors influence production of the fricative contrast and discuss implications for the phonological categorization of non-fortis /s/ as lenis, aspirated, or a hybrid lenis-aspirated category.https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1_NoAiLQlnkZ2RtdEtuYTlaMkkOthe

An MRI study of the articulatory properties of italian consonants

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) data have been collected for three male speakers of Italian producing sustained consonants in VCV-context (with V=/{i, a, u}/). For one speaker the resulting database consists of a midsagittal set of 42 Italian articulations (/p/, /f/, /tѕ/, /t/, /ѕ/, /∫/, /t∫/, /k/, /λ/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/) plus 9 dialectal sound configurations and 12 scans for specific nasal allophones. It is associated with vowels, jaw and teeth references and dental casts. A subset of images is also available, however, for a limited selection of articulations produced by two other control speakers. It has been collected in view of dialect studies and it includes midsagittal and coronal scans. As in previous partial publications of these data, the aim of the present paper is to discuss only place and manner of articulation in a descriptive framework.MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) data have been collected for three male speakers of Italian producing sustained consonants in VCV-context (with V=/{i, a, u}/). For one speaker the resulting database consists of a midsagittal set of 42 Italian articulations (/p/, /f/, /tѕ/, /t/, /ѕ/, /∫/, /t∫/, /k/, /λ/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/) plus 9 dialectal sound configurations and 12 scans for specific nasal allophones. It is associated with vowels, jaw and teeth references and dental casts. A subset of images is also available, however, for a limited selection of articulations produced by two other control speakers. It has been collected in view of dialect studies and it includes midsagittal and coronal scans. As in previous partial publications of these data, the aim of the present paper is to discuss only place and manner of articulation in a descriptive framework.Los datos de MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) han sido reunidos a partir de consonantes sostenidas, emitidas por tres hablantes de italiano masculinos, en un contexto de VCV (donde V = /{i, a, u}/). Para cada emisor la base de datos resultante consta de un conjunto midsagital de 42 articulaciones en italiano (/p/, /f/, /tѕ/, /t/, /ѕ/, /∫/, /t∫/, /k/, /λ/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ y /ŋ/) junto con 9 configuraciones fónicas dialectales y 12 registros sobre ciertos alófonos nasales. Se asocia con vocales, tomando referencias dentales, maxilares y dentales. Dispone asimismo de un grupo de imágenes para una selección limitada de articulaciones producidas por dos hablantes controles. Todo ello está orientado hacia los estudios dialectales y comprende muestras midsagitales y coronales. Al igual que en publicaciones monográficas anteriores, la finalidad de este artículo consiste en analizar solo el lugar y el modo de articulación en un marco descriptivo

The production and perception of coronal fricatives in Seoul Korean: The case for a fourth laryngeal category

This article presents new data on the contrast between the two voiceless coronal fricatives of Korean, variously described as a lenis/fortis or aspirated/fortis contrast. In utterance-initial position, the fricatives were found to differ in centroid frequency; duration of frication, aspiration, and the following vowel; and several aspects of the following vowel onset, including intensity profile, spectral tilt, and F1 onset. The between-fricative differences varied across vowel contexts, however, and spectral differences in the vowel onset especially were more pronounced for /a/ than for /i, ɯ, u/. This disparity led to the hypothesis that cues in the following vowel onset would exert a weaker influence on perception for high vowels than for low vowels. Perception data provided general support for this hypothesis, indicating that while vowel onset cues had the largest impact on perception for both high- and low-vowel stimuli, this influence was weaker for high vowels. Perception was also strongly influenced by aspiration duration, with modest contributions from frication duration and f0 onset. Taken together, these findings suggest that the 'non-fortis' fricative is best characterized not in terms of the lenis or aspirated categories for stops, but in terms of a unique representation that is both lenis and aspirated

Phonetic variability and grammatical knowledge: an articulatory study of Korean place assimilation.

The study reported here uses articulatory data to investigate Korean place assimilation of coronal stops followed by labial or velar stops, both within words and across words. The results show that this place-assimilation process is highly variable, both within and across speakers, and is also sensitive to factors such as the place of articulation of the following consonant, the presence of a word boundary and, to some extent, speech rate. Gestures affected by the process are generally reduced categorically (deleted), while sporadic gradient reduction of gestures is also observed. We further compare the results for coronals to our previous findings on the assimilation of labials, discussing implications of the results for grammatical models of phonological/phonetic competence. The results suggest that speakers’ language-particular knowledge of place assimilation has to be relatively detailed and context-sensitive, and has to encode systematic regularities about its obligatory/variable application as well as categorical/gradient realisation

Supralaryngeal control in Korean velar stops

International audienceThe aim of this study was to investigate the supralaryngeal control of the production of the Korean three-way contrast in velar stops. First, an EMA-experiment with three Korean speakers was carried out, and the kinematic properties of the tongue back were analyzed (length of the deceleration phase of the movement, peak velocity, peak acceleration, amplitude and duration of the looping movement during consonantal closure, and angle of incidence between tongue and palate at contact onset). To understand the potential motor control mechanisms underlying the production of the three-way contrast, the target hypothesis which suggests that articulator movements in stops are directed towards a target at or beyond the palate, was evaluated by comparing its predictions with our experimental findings. Evidence was found in support of this hypothesis. Hence, the hypothesis was further explored in a modeling study. The results suggest that variability in the articulatory parameters can be explained by a single control parameter, namely the target position of the tongue. In a third step the Korean velar stops were simulated by varying the target position. The results show that the main trends of the simulated consonants are in good agreement with the experimental findings

Interactive Development Of F0 As An Acoustic Cue For Korean Stop Contrast

Korean stop contrasts (lenis, fortis, and aspirated) have been phonetically differentiated by Voice Onset Time (VOT), but with a tonogenetic sound change in progress, the role of fundamental frequency (F0) has been amplified for distinguishing between Korean stop contrasts with the loss of VOT differentiation in young adults’ production. The present study explores how F0 is perceptually acquired and how it phonetically operates in toddler speech in relation to Korean stop contrasts according to age. In order to determine the relationship between F0 developmental patterns and age in child stop production, this study uses a quantitative acoustic model to examine the word-initial stop productions of 58 Korean monolingual children aged 20 to 47 months. The production experiment confirmed that VOT is useful for distinguishing fortis stops, but F0 is required for distinguishing between lenis and aspirated stops, and this tendency is significantly related to age. As F0 becomes a determinant acoustic parameter for articulatory distinction, the role of F0 in perceptual distinction was investigated through a perceptual identification test with the F0 continuum. Children were provided with selected lenis-aspirated pairs of images in which they would point to one or the other image in response to given synthetic sounds with different F0 values. This allowed us to observe how phonetic boundaries in the F0 dimension for aspirated stops change with age. A comparative analysis between children’s production and perception of F0 indicates that articulatory skills depend on perceived F0 differences depending on the phonemic categories. Additionally, the analysis indicates that once F0 is acquired, VOT differentiation diminishes for distinction between lenis and aspirated stops, and this trade-off between VOT and F0 would occur around the age of 3 years. These findings suggest that phonemic categorization of lenis and aspirated stops should be processed in the F0 dimension and that phonemic processing in perceptual acoustic space is directly linked to phonetic discrimination between the non-fortis stops in production. This study provides experimental evidence for understanding a developmental trajectory of F0 as an acoustic cue for native phonological contrasts

The production and perception of domain-initial strengthening in Seoul, Busan, and Ulsan Korean

Korean exhibits one of the most consistent examples of the cross-linguistic phenomenon of domain-initial strengthening (hereafter DIS; T. Cho & Keating, 2001; Keating, Cho, Fougeron, & Hsu, 2004). DIS is defined as temporal and/or spatial enhancement of segmental articulation in the initial position of prosodic domains. Broadly, this dissertation serves as a detailed case study of the production patterns and the perceptual benefits of this phenomenon. The recent findings of denasalisation and devoicing of the initial nasals in Korean (Young Shin Kim, 2011; Yoo, 2015a) suggest that there is a striking parallelism between the lenis stops /p, t, k/ and the nasal consonants /m, n/ in their patterns of DIS. Nevertheless, we currently lack an account that captures this parallelism. In addition, there is disagreement over the categorical nature of lenis stop voicing (S.-A. Jun, 1993; Docherty, 1995) and denasalisation (Yoshida, 2008; Young Shin Kim, 2011). Despite the obvious similarities between the arguably discrete processes of lenis stop voicing and denasalisation, and the kind of gradient effects widely reported for DIS, there has been no explicit investigation of the links among them. Thus, I examined the hypothesis that DIS, operating in the phonetic component, has given rise to the categorical rules of lenis stop voicing and denasalisation in the phrase-level phonology through rule scattering, as predicted by the theory of the life cycle of phonological processes (Bermúdez-Otero & Trousdale, 2012; Turton, 2014). Recordings were collected in Seoul, Busan, and Ulsan, and various auditory and acoustic analyses were conducted to examine the phonetic variation of the relevant stops. The study adopted the three-city design as these varieties were expected to be at different stages in the life cycle, particularly with regard to the stabilisation of denasalisation. In the second part of this dissertation, I conducted a perception experiment to investigate if listeners are able to use DIS patterns as a cue to a prosodic boundary. According to the results, Seoul showed the most advanced patterns in the stabilisation of DIS. As predicted by rule scattering, speakers who showed evidence of categorical lenis stop voicing and/or denasalisation also showed an overlaid effect of a gradient phonetic process. The perception study strongly supported the hypothesis that listeners exploit DIS cues to detect the beginning of a prosodic domain. Based on these findings, this dissertation offers a unified account of lenis stop voicing, denasalisation, and DIS within a single framework, offering insights into the nature of DIS as well as its functional role in prosodic parsing.Cambridge Trust International Scholarshi

The problem of phonology of Hittite stops in terms of modern linguistics

Tato práce se zabývá laryngální fonologií, ozvlástě laryngálním realizmem, novým přístupem k reprezentaci rysů, který rozlišuje strukturně dvojí kontrast jazyků na jazyky s distinkcí znělosti (čeština, 3 španělština) a jazyky s distinkcí aspirace (němčina). Laryngální realizmus je pro účely vysvětlení laryngálních kontrastů v jazycích se dvěma sériemi okluziv mnohem vhodnější než tradiční přístup. Další část disertace se zabývá termínem fortis a lenis. Tyto termíny jsou sporné, jelikož lingvisté se dosud neshodli na jejich definici a platnosti. Je možné, že tento fonetický jev by mohl být důsledkem zvýraznění sekundárních korelátů hlásek v případě, že primární koreláty jsou oslabené. Poslední část této práce se pokouší přispět do k dlouhodobému problému chetitské fonologie: fonemické opozici dvojí série okluziv.The thesis deals with laryngeal phonology, especially laryngeal realism, an new approach to feature representation which distinguishes structurally tho-way contrasts of "voice" languages (Czech, Spenish) from those of "aspiration" languages (German). Laryngeal realism is the better 4 way of accounting for the laryngeal contrasts in languages with two series of obstruents than traditional approach. The next part of dissertation deals with the the terms fortis and lenis. These terms are controversial, as linguists disagree about their definition and their validity. It is argued that it is a phonetic phenomenon which could emerges when the primary correlates of speech sounds are suppressed and the second correlates are enhanced. The last part of this work is an attempt to contribute to the explanation of the longstanding issue of the Hittite phonology a phonemic opposition between two series of stops.Institute of Comparative LinguisticsÚstav srovnávací jazykovědyFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art