Pre-pausal devoicing and glottalisation in varieties of the south-western Arabian peninsula

A wide range of modern Arabic dialects exhibit devoicing in pre-pausal (utterance-final) position. These include Cairene [20], Gulf Arabic, San’ani [8], [18], Manaxah [19], Central Highland Yemeni dialects [1], Rijal Alma‘ (Asiri p.c.), Central Sudanese (Dickins p.c.), Çukurova [15], Kinderib [9], E. Fayyum [2]. In some dialects, pausal devoicing is reported to be accompanied by aspiration (e.g. Cairene, [19]), in others by glottalisation (e.g. Fayyum, [2]; Manaxah, [18]; San’ani, [8], [18]). As preliminary work to a study of pausal phenomena in the south-western Arabian Peninsula, we examine data from two Arabic dialects – San’ani (SA), spoken in the Old City of San’a, Yemen, and the Asiri dialect of Rijal Alma‘ (RA) – and from Mehriyōt, an eastern dialect of the modern south Arabian language, Mehri, spoken in Yemen. We begin by presenting a summary of pausal phenomena in SA. We then consider the behaviour of final oral stops – velar, coronal and labial – final coronal fricatives, final nasals and liquids, and final vowels. Initial comparison with data from RA and Mehriyōt indicates that utterance-final devoicing is more advanced in SA than in the other varieties, and involves a greater range of segment types. The first set of pausal examples were extracted from Watson’s recordings of spontaneous SA monologues on the Semitic Spracharchiv. The main speaker is a young semi educated woman.1 Those forms which exist as lexemes in RA, plus lexemes involving similar pre-pausal segments in comparable syllable types, were recorded utterance-finally by Yahya Asiri, a native speaker of RA. Pausal forms for Mehriyōt were extracted from the late Alexander Sima’s recordings of spontaneous speech on the Semitic sound archive [16]. The Mehriyōt speaker is a low- to semi-educated early middle-aged man. Data were analysed using the phonetic analysis programme PRAAT (www.praat.org)

Liverpool English.

Liverpool English (LE) is the variety of English spoken in Liverpool and much of the surrounding county of Merseyside, in the north-west of England. After London, the north-west of England is the most densely populated of all regions in England and Wales, with the population of Liverpool standing at around 450,000. LE itself is said to have developed in the middle of the 19th century, after rapid immigration from Ireland during the Irish potato famines of 1845–1847 (see Knowles 1973). Arguably as a result of this immigration, as we will see, there are some similarities between LE's phonological system and those of Irish Englishes. Of course, as we might expect, the phonological system of LE maintains its connection with other northern Englishes, too

An Information Theoretic perspective on perceptual structure: cross-accent vowel perception

Analytical tools from Information Theory were used to quantify behaviour in cross-accent vowel perception by Australian, London, New Zealand, Yorkshire and Newcastle UK listeners. Results show that Australian listeners impose expected patterns of perceptual similarity from their own accent experience on unfamiliar accents, regardless of the actual phonetic distance between accents

Consonant-vowel coarticulation patterns in Swedish and Mandarin

This paper reports a cross linguistic study that compares the coarticulation patterns between consonant and vowel (CV) in Mandarin Chinese and Southern Swedish. Kinematic data were collected using the Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) for both languages and were subjected to three types of CV time lag measurement, based on more or less equivalent landmarks on lips and tongue, and partially adopted in previous studies [1, 2, 3]. We found rather consistent CV coordination patterns in these two typologically different languages with both the velocity-based and the acceleration-based measurements on the lips and the tongue body. The most striking result to emerge from the data is the same effect of gender on the variation of CV coarticulation in both languages, which has not been reported previously. In addition, only when gender was added as a factor, did we find the language differences on the CV time lags

The Acquisition of Variable Coda (r) in the Speech Community of Rio de Janeiro

This paper addresses the emergence of complex syllables with coda consonant (r) in the acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese in the speech community of Rio de Janeiro. Acquisition of words containing complex syllabic types implies the diminishment or abandonment of the CV pattern, but what happen when the competing variable forms alternate different syllable shapes? Since variants are competing forms of the same word, in some cases, they also reflect competing phonological patterns and sociophonetic variation plays a role in abstracting mental representation. Studies about the speech community showed that the coda is variably realized alternating a phonetic velar/glottal variant with its absence and that internal codas are much more realized than final ones (Callou, 1987; Votre, 1978). There is no stigma related to the zero variant in final coda (noun and verbs). The study is based on a cross-sectional sample of 11 typically-developing children (from high and low middle class) distributed in age levels but not in relation to gender or class. The age grading ranges from 2;1 to 5;0. The analysis showed different distributions of frequency of variants as a reflex of the structured variation observed in the speech community. The results reveal that (r) is almost categorically absent in final verbs in all age levels, which can be taken as evidence that children are developing the CV pattern as the main representation of infinitives. Children’s behavior for medial codas is more consistent with a CV(r) pattern as the central representation than word final coda in all ages. The results obtained in this study for final verb coda is consistent with a final stage of a change in the direction of the loss of the infinitive morpheme in the speech community

Singing accent Americanisation in the light of frequency effects: LOT unrounding and PRICE monophthongisation in focus

The paper investigates – within the framework of usage-based phonology – the significance of lexical frequency effects in singing accent Americanisation. The accent of Joe Elliott of a British band, Def Leppard is analysed with regard to LOT unrounding and PRICE monophthongisation. Both auditory and acoustic methods are employed; PRAAT is used to provide acoustic verification of the auditory analysis whenever isolated vocal tracks are available. The statistical significance of the obtained results is verified by means of a chi-square test. In both analysed cases the percentage of frequent words undergoing the change is higher compared with infrequent ones and in the case of PRICE monphthongisation the result is statistically significant, which suggests that word frequency may affect singing style variation

Sexo, espacio acústico y centralización de las vocales del español de Bogotá

The present study analyses sex-specific differences in acoustic vowel space area (VSA), formant centralization ratio (FCR) and vowel dispersion in Bogota Spanish. In addition, we explore the relationship between speaking fundamental frequency (f0), an acoustic parameter that conveys speaker sex information, and VSA. Results suggest that, in line with previous research, females have a larger VSA than males. However, some speakers produce vowels that show the opposite pattern to the gender stereotype. Formant centralization and vowel dispersion are related to individual phonetic differences and vowel type respectively. Finally, results show that speakers with a higher average f0 also have larger vowel spaces.En este estudio analizamos las diferencias fonéticas entre hombres y mujeres en la producción de las vocales del español de Bogotá (Colombia). En particular, nos interesa abordar las diferencias relacionadas con el área del espacio vocálico (AEV), la tasa de centralización de los formantes (TCF) y la dispersión de las vocales. Además, en esta investigación buscamos determinar si hay una correlación estadística entre la frecuencia fundamental (f0), un parámetro acústico conocido por transmitir información sobre el sexo de los hablantes, y el AEV. Los resultados muestran, en línea con trabajos anteriores, que las mujeres tienen un AEV más amplia que los hombres, sin embargo, algunos hablantes producen vocales con el patrón opuesto al estereotipo de género predominante. La tasa de centralización y la dispersión varían en función de las características fonéticas individuales y del timbre vocálico respectivamente. Finalmente, los resultados sugieren que los hablantes con una f0 alta también tienen espacios acústicos más amplios

Mapping Production and Perception in Regional Vowel Shifts

Drawing from data from a multi-region US vowel production and perception study, we investigate the extent to which vowel production and perception are related for talkers from Memphis, Tennessee. Focusing on the mid-front vowels and the variable degree of Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) exhibited productively by thirteen individuals, the study investigates the role of individual variation in perception. We show both that individuals who participate more strongly in the SVS have more shifted perceptual systems and that perceptual shift can operate somewhat independently from productive shift. We further consider our data in terms of the proposal by Sumner and Samuel (2009) that dialects should be understood as having three components, production, perception, and representation, and not simply in terms of production

Social Differentiation of Inter-word Yod Coalescence in Spoken Nigerian English

This study attempts to track the incidence of inter-word yod coalescence and possibility of its correlation with social factors in Nigerian English. Three hundred and sixty educated Nigerian speakers of English, evenly distributed into social variables of gender, age and social class, provided data for the study. They were guided to voice five utterances and a short passage into digital recording devices. Tokens of yod coalescence produced at different word boundaries were extracted and analysed statistically, using percentages and the univariate Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The findings reveal a very low usage (3.6%) of inter-word yod coalescence. The process was, however, more prevalent among young speakers and members of high social class who seem to be importing it into the accent. This finding points in the direction of some ongoing innovation in the NigE accent, which possibly suggests the onset of socially conditioned phoneticphonological variation