The effect of word-initial glottalization on word monitoring in Slovak speakers of English

The study investigates the impact of glottal elements before word-initial vowels on the speed of processing of the phrases taken from natural continuous speech. In many languages a word beginning with a vowel can be preceded by a glottal stop or a short period of creaky voice. However, languages differ in the extent of use and functions of this glottalization: it may be used to mark the word boundary, for instance, or to add special prominence to the word. The aim of the experiment was to find out whether the presence of the glottal element can influence reaction times in a word-monitoring paradigm. Users of different languages - Slovak and Czech learners of English, as well as native speakers of English - were participating in perception testing so that the influence of the mother tongue could be determined. The results confirm the effect of both glottalization and the L1 of the listeners. In addition, a significant effect of test item manipulations was found. Although the phrases with added or deleted glottal stops displayed no obvious acoustic artefacts, they produced longer reaction times than items with naturally present or absent glottalizations. We believe that this finding underlines the importance of inherent stress patterns, whose alterations lead to the increase in processing load

Optimality Theoretic Analysis of Non-Rhoticity in English

Moreover, the paper demonstrates a way in which r-liaison might be incorporated in the synchronic grammar of non-rhotic accents. Simply put, r-liaison could be perceived as another instantiation of VSpread conspiracy, where vowels tend to spread their melodic content onto the following segments. The OT machinery was also employed to account for the differences between various subtypes of non-rhotic accents, in terms of re-ranking of several constraints. The peculiar phenomena of hyper-rhoticity have, too, been demonstrated to fit the proposal

Phonological Factors Affecting L1 Phonetic Realization of Proficient Polish Users of English

Acoustic phonetic studies examine the L1 of Polish speakers with professional level proficiency in English. The studies include two tasks, a production task carried out entirely in Polish and a phonetic code-switching task in which speakers insert target Polish words or phrases into an English carrier. Additionally, two phonetic parameters are studied: the oft-investigated VOT, as well as glottalization vs. sandhi linking of word-initial vowels. In monolingual Polish mode, L2 interference was observed for the VOT parameter, but not for sandhi linking. It is suggested that this discrepancy may be related to the differing phonological status of the two phonetic parameters. In the code-switching tasks, VOTs were on the whole more English-like than in monolingual mode, but this appeared to be a matter of individual performance. An increase in the rate of sandhi linking in the code-switches, except for the case of one speaker, appeared to be a function of accelerated production of L1 target items

How widespread is preaspiration in Italy?

Preaspiration is a comparatively rare phonetic feature, almost entirely confined to languages spoken in far northwestern Europe (Andersen 2002; Helgason 2002). A recent acoustic phonetic investigation into consonant gemination in Sienese Italian (e.g. Stevens & Hajek 2007), however, found that preaspiration occurred in one third of geminate /pp tt kk/ tokens. Up until that point preaspirated stops had not been reported to occur in Sienese or any other variety of Italian including the standard language. With this in mind, the present paper presents the results of an acoustic phonetic investigation into voiceless geminate stops /pp tt kk/ in a controlled corpus of words read by speakers from 15 other Italian cities. Results are analysed according to city as well as factors (e.g. speaker sex, vowel type) known to favour occurrences of preaspiration in other better known preaspirating languages. Preliminary duration values are presented and results are discussed in terms of two specific hypotheses regarding the rise of preaspiration in Sienese Italian

The weight of phonetic substance in the structure of sound inventories

In the research field initiated by Lindblom & Liljencrants in 1972, we illustrate the possibility of giving substance to phonology, predicting the structure of phonological systems with nonphonological principles, be they listener-oriented (perceptual contrast and stability) or speaker-oriented (articulatory contrast and economy). We proposed for vowel systems the Dispersion-Focalisation Theory (Schwartz et al., 1997b). With the DFT, we can predict vowel systems using two competing perceptual constraints weighted with two parameters, respectively λ and α. The first one aims at increasing auditory distances between vowel spectra (dispersion), the second one aims at increasing the perceptual salience of each spectrum through formant proximities (focalisation). We also introduced new variants based on research in physics - namely, phase space (λ,α) and polymorphism of a given phase, or superstructures in phonological organisations (Vallée et al., 1999) which allow us to generate 85.6% of 342 UPSID systems from 3- to 7-vowel qualities. No similar theory for consonants seems to exist yet. Therefore we present in detail a typology of consonants, and then suggest ways to explain plosive vs. fricative and voiceless vs. voiced consonants predominances by i) comparing them with language acquisition data at the babbling stage and looking at the capacity to acquire relatively different linguistic systems in relation with the main degrees of freedom of the articulators; ii) showing that the places “preferred” for each manner are at least partly conditioned by the morphological constraints that facilitate or complicate, make possible or impossible the needed articulatory gestures, e.g. the complexity of the articulatory control for voicing and the aerodynamics of fricatives. A rather strict coordination between the glottis and the oral constriction is needed to produce acceptable voiced fricatives (Mawass et al., 2000). We determine that the region where the combinations of Ag (glottal area) and Ac (constriction area) values results in a balance between the voice and noise components is indeed very narrow. We thus demonstrate that some of the main tendencies in the phonological vowel and consonant structures of the world’s languages can be explained partly by sensorimotor constraints, and argue that actually phonology can take part in a theory of Perception-for-Action-Control

How pervasive is preaspiration? Investigating sonorant devoicing in Sienese Italian

We have recently found that voiceless geminates in Sienese Italian are frequently preaspirated, eg. /sette/ > [sehte] 'seven'. Within the few (mostly Scandinavian) languages that are reported to have preaspirated voiceless stops, a phonetically similar process of sonorant devoicing before voiceless stops is often reported to occur, eg. Icelandic /vitt/ [viht] ‘breadth’ and /lampi/ [lam8pI] 'lamp' (Hansson, 2001:157). Given that voiceless geminate stops are also frequently preaspirated in Sienese Italian, in this pilot study we investigate whether devoicing of sonorants might also occur, given the cooccurrence of the two phenomena in other preaspirating languages. Our preliminary investigation of /lt/ sequences in spontaneous speech (6 speakers) shows that sonorant devoicing is very frequent, occurring in 85% of all tokens analysed. We provide specific details of its frequency according to speaker, and context, as well as information about its acoustic characteristics

Inherent causes of language change

The inevitable causes of language change are considered in this article. It gives an up-to-date view of the phonetic natural tendencies which are the predictable result of a human’s anatomical, physiological and psychological make-up. В статті розглядаються неминучі причини зміни мови. Вона пропонує сучасний погляд на природні тенденції у фонетиці, які є передбачуваним результатом анатомічної, фізіологічної та психологічної будови людини

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

‘Pitch accent’ and prosodic structure in Scottish Gaelic: Reassessing the role of contact

This paper considers the origin of ‘pitch accents’ in Scottish Gaelic with a view to evaluating the hypothesis that this feature was borrowed from North Germanic varieties spoken by Norse settlers in medieval Scotland. It is shown that the ‘pitch accent’ system in Gaelic is tightly bound with metrical structure (more precisely syllable count), certainly diachronically, and probably (at least in some varieties) synchronically. Gaelic ‘pitch accent’ is argued to be a plausible internal development, parallel to similar phenomena in other branches of Celtic (specifically in Breton), as well as in Germanic. This conclusion may appear to undermine the contact hypothesis, especially in the absence of reliable written sources; nevertheless, a certain role for Norse-Gaelic contact in the appearance of the pitch accent system cannot be completely exclude