Field Sessions 2011-09-07

consonant inventory, vowel inventory, phoneticsrecorder: Marantz Professional PMD 660, microphone: Audio-Technica ATM 75Recorded at Department of Linguistics, New York University, 10 Washington Place, New York, NY 1000

Field Session 2011-10-12

adjective suffixes, determiners, syntaxecorder: Marantz Professional PMD 660, microphone: Audio-Technica ATM 75Recorded at Department of Linguistics, New York University, 10 Washington Place, New York, NY 1000

“Please say what this word is”: Linguistic experience and acoustic context interact in vowel categorization

Ladefoged and Broadbent [(1957). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 29(1), 98–104] is a foundational study in speech perception research, demonstrating that acoustic properties of earlier sounds alter perception of subsequent sounds: a context sentence with a lowered first formant (F1) frequency promotes perception of a raised F1 in a target word, and vice versa. The present study replicated the original with U.K. and U.S. listeners. While the direction of the perceptual shift was consistent with the original study, neither sample replicated the large effect sizes. This invites consideration of how linguistic experience relates to the magnitudes of these context effects

Acoustic-phonetic and auditory mechanisms of adaptation in the perception of sibilant fricatives

Listeners are highly proficient at adapting to contextual variation when perceiving speech. In the present study, we examined the effects of brief speech and nonspeech contexts on the perception of sibilant fricatives. We explored three theoretically motivated accounts of contextual adaptation, based on phonetic cue calibration, phonetic covariation, and auditory contrast. Under the cue calibration account, listeners adapt by estimating a talker-specific average for each phonetic cue or dimension; under the cue covariation account, listeners adapt by exploiting consistencies in how the realization of speech sounds varies across talkers; under the auditory contrast account, adaptation results from (partial) masking of spectral components that are shared by adjacent stimuli. The spectral center of gravity, a phonetic cue to fricative identity, was manipulated for several types of context sound: /z/-initial syllables, /v/-initial syllables, and white noise matched in long-term average spectrum (LTAS) to the /z/-initial stimuli. Listeners’ perception of the /s/–/ʃ/ contrast was significantly influenced by /z/-initial syllables and LTAS-matched white noise stimuli, but not by /v/-initial syllables. No significant difference in adaptation was observed between exposure to /z/-initial syllables and matched white noise stimuli, and speech did not have a considerable advantage over noise when the two were presented consecutively within a context. The pattern of findings is most consistent with the auditory contrast account of short-term perceptual adaptation. The cue covariation account makes accurate predictions for speech contexts, but not for nonspeech contexts or for the absence of a speech-versus-nonspeech difference

Field Methods 2011-10-17

We elicited how the possessives are expressed in Kazakh. Different tenses and aspects were also tested.ecorder: Marantz Professional PMD 660, microphone: Audio-Technica ATM 75Recorded at Department of Linguistics, New York University, 10 Washington Place, New York, NY 1000

Subsegmental representation in child speech production: structured variability of stop consonant voice onset time in American English and Cantonese

Voice onset time (VOT) of aspirated stop consonants is marked by variability and systematicity in adult speech production. The present study investigated variability and systematicity of voiceless aspirated stop VOT from 161 two- to five-year-old talkers of American English and Cantonese. Overall, many aspects of child VOT productions parallel adult patterns, the analysis of which can help inform our understanding of early speech production. For instance, VOT means were comparable between children and adults, despite greater variability. Further, across children in both languages, talker-specific VOT means were strongly correlated between [t$^{h}$] and [k$^{h}$]. This correlation may reflect a constraint of “target uniformity” that minimizes variation in the phonetic realization of a shared distinctive feature. Therefore findings suggest that target uniformity is not merely a product of a mature grammar, but may instead shape speech production representations in children as young as two years of age

Field Session 2011-11-16

recording of high front and back unrounded vowels following [k] and [q] in various wordsRecorder: Marantz Professional PMD 660, microphone: Audio-Technica ATM 75Recorded at Department of Linguistics, New York University, 10 Washington Place, New York, NY 1000

Consonant voicing and quantity effects on vowel f0: A corpus study of Hungarian stops

Abstract not availabl