Durational variation in Polish fricatives provides evidence for hybrid models of phonology

The neighborhood density of a word is the number of words that sound similar to it. Phonotactic probability is a measure of how typical (for a given language) the phoneme sequences in a word are. These two factors are known to affect speech perception in opposing directions: high neighborhood density slows down processing while high phonotactic probability speeds it up [30]. This finding supports hybrid models of phonological representation [24], as neighborhood density effects operate on lexical, and phonotactic probability effects on sublexical representations. The present paper, investigating word-initial double clusters retrieved from the Greater Poland Spoken Corpus [14], tests the predictions for durational variation in fricatives following from Vitevitch and Luce [30]. It has been found that high neighborhood density is associated with longer - while high phonotactic probability with shorter - fricative durations. Thus, further support for hybrid models of phonological storage is provided.19972001Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 201

Prevocalic t-glottaling across word boundaries in Midland American English

Rates of t-glottaling across word boundaries in both preconsonantal and prevocalic contexts have recently been claimed to be positively correlated with the frequency of occurrence of a given word in preconsonantal contexts (Eddington & Channer, 2010). Words typically followed by consonants have been argued to have their final /t/s glottaled more often than words less frequently followed by consonants. This paper includes a number of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ predictors in a mixed-effects logistic regression model and has two goals: (1) to replicate the positive correlation of the frequency of occurrence of a word in preconsonantal contexts (its ‘contextual frequency’) with its rates of t-glottaling in both preconsonantal and prevocalic contexts postulated by Eddington and Channer (2010), and (2) to quantify the factors influencing the likelihood of t-glottaling across word boundaries in Midland American English. The effect of contextual frequency has been confirmed. This result is argued to support a hybrid view of phonological storage and processing, one including both abstract and exemplar representations. T-glottaling has also been found to be negatively correlated with bigram frequency and speech rate deviation, while positively correlated with young age in female speakers.NCN; UMO-2017/26/D/HS2/0002711112313Laboratory Phonolog

On the role of perception in the acquisition of the peach - pitch contrast by Polish learners of English

1822441Vienna English Working Paper

Assessing the effect of ambiguity in compositionality signaling on the processing of diphones

Consonantal diphones differ as to their ambiguity (whether or not they indicate morphological complexity reliably by occurring exclusively either within or across morphemes) and lexicality (how frequently they occur within morphemes rather than across morpheme boundaries). This study empirically investigates the influence of ambiguity and lexicality on the processing speed of consonantal diphones in speech perception. More specifically, its goal is to test the predictions of the Strong Morphonotactic Hypothesis, which asserts that phonotactic processing is influenced by morphological structure, and to clarify the two conceptions thereof present in extant research. In two discrimination task experiments, it is found that the processing speed of cross-morpheme diphones decreases with their ambiguity, but there is no processing difference between primarily crossmorphemic and morpheme-internal diphones. We conclude that the predictions of the Strong Morphonotactic Hypothesis are borne out only partially, and we discuss the discrepancies

Educated Poznań Speech 30 years later

The study compares educated Poznań speech on the basis of a study by Witaszek-Samborska (1985, 1986) and a corpus compiled 30 years later. The features of Poznań speech, examined on 14 speakers from the corpus, include: voicing of obstruents before heterolexical sonorants (okszygemocji), realization of word-final ‹-ą› as [-ɔm] (idom tom drogom), realization of /stʂ tʂ dʐ/ as /ʂt͡ʂ t͡ʂ d͡ʐ/ (szczelać), the presence of the velar nasal [ŋ] before a heteromorphemic velar plosive /k/ (okienko), realization of word-final ‹-ej› as /-i(j)/ or /-ɨ(j)/ (lepi(j)), presence of prothetic [w] before word-initial /ɔ/ (łojciec), presence of voiced /v/ in clusters with preceding voiceless consonants (trwały), and realization of ‹-śmy› as [ʑmɨ] (słyszelˈiśmy). The results suggest a change in Poznań speech and point towards dialect levelling.1364245264Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensi

Word-final /ɔ̃/ in Greater Poland Polish: A Cumulative Context Effect?

An empirical corpus-based study of the likelihood of realizing the Polish nasal vowel /ɔ̃/ word-finally as [ɔm] (i.e. of 'nasal stopping') is presented. The goal was to verify whether the phenomenon exhibits a cumulative context effect, with words typically occurring in an environment favoring a particular phonetic variant showing higher rates of that variant regardless of environment. The results show that nasal stopping is more likely before stop-initial words than before words beginning in other sounds, if there is no intervening pause. Results with regard to the hypothesis that words typically followed by stops will show higher likelihood of nasal stopping, however, remain inconclusive

Automatic English phoneme recognition from articulatory data generated by EPG systems with grid and anatomical layout of contact sensors

The aim of the study was to conduct automatic phoneme identification from articulatory data that accompanied the production of these phonemes in continuous speech. The articulatory data were obtained from 2 electropalatographic systems, Palatometer by Complete Speech and Linguagraph by Rose-Medical. Palatometer was used with the artificial palate containing 124 contact sensors in a grid layout, including 2 sensors monitoring the lip contact. The palate included a vacuum-thermoformed flexible printed circuit. Linguagraph was used with the acrylic artificial palate designed and developed for the purpose of this study, containing 62 electrodes in anatomical layout. Palatometer was used by one native of General American and Linguagraph by one native of General British, each reading 140 phonetically balanced sentences that included Harvard Sentences and TIMIT prompts. The EPG data were parametrised into dimensionality reduction indexes, which were analysed by means of linear discriminant analysis and a probabilistic neural network. The results of classifications are discussed.National Science Centre (grant no. 2013/11/B/HS2/03151

Validation of Galileo orbits using SLR with a focus on satellites launched into incorrect orbital planes

The space segment of the European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Galileo consists of In-Orbit Validation (IOV) and Full Operational Capability (FOC) spacecraft. The first pair of FOC satellites was launched into an incorrect, highly eccentric orbital plane with a lower than nominal inclination angle. All Galileo satellites are equipped with satellite laser ranging (SLR) retroreflectors which allow, for example, for the assessment of the orbit quality or for the SLR–GNSS co-location in space. The number of SLR observations to Galileo satellites has been continuously increasing thanks to a series of intensive campaigns devoted to SLR tracking of GNSS satellites initiated by the International Laser Ranging Service. This paper assesses systematic effects and quality of Galileo orbits using SLR data with a main focus on Galileo satellites launched into incorrect orbits. We compare the SLR observations with respect to microwave-based Galileo orbits generated by the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE) in the framework of the International GNSS Service Multi-GNSS Experiment for the period 2014.0–2016.5. We analyze the SLR signature effect, which is characterized by the dependency of SLR residuals with respect to various incidence angles of laser beams for stations equipped with single-photon and multi-photon detectors. Surprisingly, the CODE orbit quality of satellites in the incorrect orbital planes is not worse than that of nominal FOC and IOV orbits. The RMS of SLR residuals is even lower by 5.0 and 1.5 mm for satellites in the incorrect orbital planes than for FOC and IOV satellites, respectively. The mean SLR offsets equal −44.9,−35.0, and −22.4 mm for IOV, FOC, and satellites in the incorrect orbital plane. Finally, we found that the empirical orbit models, which were originally designed for precise orbit determination of GNSS satellites in circular orbits, provide fully appropriate results also for highly eccentric orbits with variable linear and angular velocities

Dynamic Targets in the Acquisition of L2 English Vowels

This paper presents acoustic data on the dynamic properties of the FLEECE and TRAP vowels in the speech of two groups of Polish users of English. Results reveal that the more proficient group users, made up of teachers and professors with professional-level proficiency in English, produce more dramatic patterns of formant movement, reminiscent of native productions, than first year students. It is argued that vowel inherent spectral change (VISC) is an inherent aspect of English phonology, originated in interactions between vowels and neighboring consonants, and later generalized to the vowel system as a whole. By contrast, Polish is a language with a minimal role of VISC. Consequently, successful acquisition of L2 English vowels involves not only the mastery of vowels in F1- F2 space, but also formant trajectories over time