Assimilation of Voicing in Czech Speakers of English: The Effect of the Degree of Accentedness

Czech and English are languages which differ with respect to the implementation of voicing. Unlike in English, there is a considerable agreement between phonological (systemic) and phonetic (actual) voicing in Czech, and, more importantly, the two languages have different strategies for the assimilation of voicing across the word boundary. The present study investigates the voicing in word-final obstruents in Czech speakers of English with the specific aim of ascertaining whether the degree of the speakers’ foreign accent correlates with the way they treat English obstruents in assimilatory contexts. L2 speakers, divided into three groups of varying accentedness, were examined employing categorization and a voicing profile method for establishing the presence/absence of voicing. The results suggest that speakers with a different degree of Czech accent do differ in their realization of voicing in the way predicted by a negative transfer of assimilatory habits from Czech

More on the voicing of English obstruents: voicing retention vs. voicing loss

In Gonet (2010), one of the present authors found out that English word-final phonologically voiced obstruents in the voicing-favouring environment exhibit asymmetrical, if not erratic, behaviour in that voicing in plosives is most often retained while in fricatives voicing retention concerns only about 1/3 of the cases, with the other possibilities (partial and complete devoicing) occurring in almost equal proportions. The present study is an attempt at exploring the intricacies of devoicing in English to examine to what extent the general tendency towards obstruent devoicing is overridden by voicing retention triggered by adjacent voiced segments both within words and across word boundaries. This study is based on a relatively large knowledge base obtained from recordings of spontaneous R. P. pronunciation

Voicing classification of visual speech using convolutional neural networks

The application of neural network and convolutional neural net- work (CNN) architectures is explored for the tasks of voicing classification (classifying frames as being either non-speech, unvoiced, or voiced) and voice activity detection (VAD) of vi- sual speech. Experiments are conducted for both speaker de- pendent and speaker independent scenarios. A Gaussian mixture model (GMM) baseline system is de- veloped using standard image-based two-dimensional discrete cosine transform (2D-DCT) visual speech features, achieving speaker dependent accuracies of 79% and 94%, for voicing classification and VAD respectively. Additionally, a single- layer neural network system trained using the same visual fea- tures achieves accuracies of 86 % and 97 %. A novel technique using convolutional neural networks for visual speech feature extraction and classification is presented. The voicing classifi- cation and VAD results using the system are further improved to 88 % and 98 % respectively. The speaker independent results show the neural network system to outperform both the GMM and CNN systems, achiev- ing accuracies of 63 % for voicing classification, and 79 % for voice activity detection

Loretta Lynn: Voicing Feminism

The goal was to examine country music artist Loretta Lynn – how did her music reflect feminist ideals of the ‘60s and ‘70s, how did her life correspond to these ideals, and what impact did she have for women in country music

Contributions of temporal encodings of voicing, voicelessness, fundamental frequency, and amplitude variation to audiovisual and auditory speech perception

Auditory and audio-visual speech perception was investigated using auditory signals of invariant spectral envelope that temporally encoded the presence of voiced and voiceless excitation, variations in amplitude envelope and F-0. In experiment 1, the contribution of the timing of voicing was compared in consonant identification to the additional effects of variations in F-0 and the amplitude of voiced speech. In audio-visual conditions only, amplitude variation slightly increased accuracy globally and for manner features. F-0 variation slightly increased overall accuracy and manner perception in auditory and audio-visual conditions. Experiment 2 examined consonant information derived from the presence and amplitude variation of voiceless speech in addition to that from voicing, F-0, and voiced speech amplitude. Binary indication of voiceless excitation improved accuracy overall and for voicing and manner. The amplitude variation of voiceless speech produced only a small increment in place of articulation scores. A final experiment examined audio-visual sentence perception using encodings of voiceless excitation and amplitude variation added to a signal representing voicing and F-0. There was a contribution of amplitude variation to sentence perception, but not of voiceless excitation. The timing of voiced and voiceless excitation appears to be the major temporal cues to consonant identity. (C) 1999 Acoustical Society of America. [S0001-4966(99)01410-1]

Analisis Voicing Piano Jazz Bill Evans pada Lagu Waltz for Debby

Voicing atau harmonisasi akor adalah menyusun nada secara vertikal dengan tepat. Jenis voicing dibagi menjadi dua tipe yakni rooted dan rootles voicings dimana masing – masing tipe terbagi menjadi bermacam-macam jenis voicing seperti shell voicing, drop 2, slash/hybrid chord, harmony quartal, polychord voicing, harmonization melody, dll. Voicing juga dapat dimainkan dengan satu tangan (one hand voicing) atau dengan kedua tangan (two hand voicing principles) dalam piano jazz. Terdapat perbedaan prinsip ketika bermain solo dan ketika bermain bersama rhythm section dimana pada permainan solo biasanya menggunakan rooted voicing dan ketika bersama rhythm section, biasanya musisi lebih menggunakan rootless voicing. Dalam penelitian ini penulis akan membahas tentang pengertian voicing dan anilisis voicing pada lagu Waltz For Debby karya Bill Evans dengan metode kualitatif melalui tahap pengumpulan dilanjutkan analisis dan penyusunan data. Penulis juga akan membahas dasar-dasar dan jenis-jenis voicing untuk mendukung proses analisis lagu Waltz For Debby. Kata Kunci : Voicing, Piano Jazz, Bill Evans, Waltz For Debb

Managerial practices that promote voice and taking charge among frontline workers

Process-improvement ideas often come from frontline workers who speak up by voicing concerns about problems and by taking charge to resolve them. We hypothesize that organization-wide process-improvement campaigns encourage both forms of speaking up, especially voicing concern. We also hypothesize that the effectiveness of such campaigns depends on the prior responsiveness of line managers. We test our hypotheses in the healthcare setting, in which problems are frequent. We use data on nearly 7,500 reported incidents extracted from an incident-reporting system that is similar to those used by many organizations to encourage employees to communicate about operational problems. We find that process-improvement campaigns prompt employees to speak up and that campaigns increase the frequency of voicing concern to a greater extent than they increase taking charge. We also find that campaigns are particularly effective in eliciting taking charge among employees whose managers have been relatively unresponsive to previous instances of speaking up. Our results therefore indicate that organization-wide campaigns can encourage voicing concerns and taking charge, two important forms of speaking up. These results can enable managers to solicit ideas from frontline workers that lead to performance improvement.

On the avoidance of voiced sibilant affricates

In this paper it is argued that several typologically unrelated languages share the tendency to avoid voiced sibilant affricates. This tendency is explained by appealing to the phonetic properties of the sounds, and in particular to their aerodynamic characteristics. On the basis of experimental evidence it is shown that conflicting air pressure requirements for maintaining voicing and frication are responsible for the avoidance of voiced affricates. In particular, the air pressure released from the stop phase of the affricate is too high to maintain voicing which in consequence leads to a devoicing of the frication part

Why are voiced affricates avoided cross-linguistically? : evidence from an aerodynamic study

This paper shows that several typologically unrelated languages share the tendency to avoid voiced sibilant affricates. This tendency is explained by appealing to the phonetic properties of the sounds, and in particular to their aerodynamic characteristics. On the basis of experimental evidence it is shown that conflicting air pressure requirements for maintaining voicing and frication are responsible for the avoidance of voiced affricates. In particular, the air pressure released from the stop phase of the affricate is too high to maintain voicing, which in consequence leads to a devoicing of the frication part

Laryngeal stop systems in contact: connecting present-day acquisition findings and historical contact hypotheses

This article examines the linguistic forces at work in present-day second language and bilingual acquisition of laryngeal contrasts, and to what extent these can give us insight into the origin of laryngeal systems of Germanic voicing languages like Dutch, with its contrast between prevoiced and unaspirated stops. The results of present-day child and adult second language acquisition studies reveal that both imposition and borrowing may occur when the laryngeal systems of a voicing and an aspirating language come into contact with each other. A scenario is explored in which socially dominant Germanic-speaking people came into contact with a Romance-speaking population, and borrowed the Romance stop system