Browsing by Subject "Phonetics"

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Acoustic correlates of [voice] in two dialects of Venezuelan Spanish
(2009-08) Lain, Stephanie; Birdsong, David; Kelm, Orlando R., 1957-
The present study is an investigation of acoustic correlates corresponding to the category [voice] in two dialects of Venezuelan Spanish. The Andean mountain dialect Mérida (MER) and Caribbean coastal dialect Margarita (MAR) are thought to differ systematically in the phonetic implementation of the Spanish phonological stop series along the lines of lowland and highland divides commonly reported for Latin American Spanish. Specifically, MER has been characterized by a greater percentage of occlusive pronunciations, MAR by more fricative and/or approximant realizations of phonological stops. To test what repercussions these differences in consonant articulation have on the acoustic correlates that encode [voice], a production experiment was run. Informants were 25 adult monolingual speakers of Venezuelan Spanish from the areas of El Tirano (Margarita Island) and San Rafael de Mucuchíes (Mérida state). The materials were 44 CV syllable prompts. Target syllables were analyzed with respect to the following: consonant closure duration, VOT, %VF, RMS, preceding vowel duration, CV ratio, F1 onset frequency, F0 contour, and burst. Statistical analysis using a linear mixed model ANOVA tested for fixed effects of voicing category, dialect and condition (speeded/unspeeded) and interactions of voicing category * dialect and dialect * condition. Results showed that the dialects MER and MAR vary significantly in RMS. In addition, the following correlates were significant for the interaction of voicing category * dialect: consonant duration, VOT, %VF, RMS, CV ratio and burst. Generally, the nature of the differences indicates a greater separation between [± voice] values in MER than in MAR (notably divergent are VOT and RMS). These results imply that while the same acoustic correlates of [voice] are operative in both fortis and lenis dialects of Spanish, [± voice] categories relate differently. Furthermore, with regard to prosody and rate of speech, most significant differences in condition occurred in initial position while most significant differences in the interaction of voicing category * dialect were linked to medial position. The results of this study are relevant to current research on the specifics of dialectal variation in consonant systems. They also have wider implications for the general mapping of phonetics to phonology in speech.
Automated Pattern Recognition for Intonation (PRInt) : an essay on intonational phonology and categorization
(2012-12) Bacuez, Nicholas; Montreuil, Jean-Pierre; Blyth, Carl; Bullock, Barbara; Erk, Katrin; Smiljanic, Rajka
This dissertation provides experimental evidence for the validity of an intonational phonology. The widely used Autosegmental-Metrical theory con- tends that the phonological structure of intonation can be expressed with two tonal targets (L/H tones and derivatives) and retrieved from its phonetic im- plementations. However, it has not been specifically demonstrated so far in a systematic way. This dissertation argues that this view on intonational phonol- ogy considers the phonetic forms of intonation as instances of phonologically structured intonational units forming functionally discrete categories (tones and derivatives). The model of Pattern Recognition for Intonation (PRInt) applies the concepts of categorization (vagueness, prototype, degrees of typicality) to in- tonation in order to abstract the phonological structure of intonational cate- gories from the ranking, by degree of typicality, of their variations in phonetic implementation. First, instances belonging to an intonation category are collected. Sec- ond, a pattern recognition module, relying on the 4-layer structure protocol, extracts a feature vector from the phonetic data of each instance: a sequence of structurally organized tones (L/H tones and derivatives). Third, a fuzzy classifier, using two functions (frequency and similar- ity), organizes the data from the feature vectors of all instances by degree of typicality (grade of membership of values in multisets) and generates the phonological structure of the intonation category, the prototypical pattern, ex- tracted from all instances, and that subsumes them all. It also re-creates the phonetic implementations of the phonological structure but with their features ranked by degree of typicality. This allows the model to distinguish phono- logically distinct structures from phonetic variations of the same phonological structure. The model successfully extracted the phonological intonation structure associated to three modalities of closed questions in French: neutral, doubt- ful, and surprised. It found that neutral and doubtful closed questions are phonologically distinct while surprise is a phonetic allocontour of the neutral modality, in line with prior characterizations of these patterns. It demon- strated that a bi-tonal phonological structure of intonation can be retrieved from phonetic variations. A versatile modeling tool, PRInt will be developed to use its acquired knowledge to evaluate the categorical status of novel instances and to extract multiple phonological units from mixed corpora.
Bilingual language contexts : variable language switching costs and phonetic production
(2012-08) Olson, Daniel James; Ortega-Llebaria, Marta; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-; Bullock, Barbara; Griffin, Zenzi; Hensey, Frederick; Kelm, Orlando; Sussman, Harvey
Bilinguals are generally adept at segregating their two competing languages and switching between them when contextually appropriate, although it has been shown that switching languages incurs a reaction time delay, or switch cost (Kolers, 1966). These switch costs are modulated by language dominance, with bilinguals evidencing greater delays when switching into their dominant language relative to their non-dominant language (e.g. Meuter & Allport, 1999). While these asymmetrical switch costs have formed the basis for theories of bilingual language separation and selection, the key factor of language context, the degree to which each language is employed in a given paradigm or conversation, has yet to be considered. In addition, previous research and subsequent theories of language selection have focused exclusively on the lexical level, yet given the distinct phonetic categories in a bilingual’s two languages (Caramazza et al., 1973), selection must also occur at the phonetic level. Addressing these gaps in the literature, this dissertation investigates the language switching costs and phonetic production of Spanish-English bilinguals in two experimental paradigms: a cued picture-naming task and an oral production task. In both studies, bilinguals (English-dominant, Spanish-dominant, and balanced bilinguals) produced language switches in varying language contexts, from monolingual to bilingual. Analyses focus on switch costs, error rates, and phonetic production, as a means to further the understanding of the language switching mechanism at the lexical and phonetic levels. Drawing on results from the two experimental paradigms, this dissertation makes several major contributions to the ongoing discussion regarding bilingual language selection. First, this study provides evidence for a gradient nature of the language switching mechanism at the lexical level. Second, it contributes an examination of the effects of language switching at the phonetic level, demonstrating asymmetrical phonetic transfer. And third, parallels are drawn between the underlying effects of language switching and the phonetic realizations produced in connected speech. Implications are considered for theories of bilingual language selection, and a gradient account of the Inhibitory Control Model (Green, 1986) is proposed at both the lexical and phonetic levels.
Contrast enhancements of vowels in standard German
(2005-08-15) Coren, Amy Elizabeth; Diehl, Randy L.
In an earlier cross-language study (Hay et al. 2003), three possible means of contrast enhancement were examined for vowels in focused words. It was found that languages use some, but not all, means of contrast enhancement to signal new, or focused, information in an utterance. These findings support the Theory of Adaptive Dispersion (Lindblom 1986,1990; Diehl & Lindblom 2002), which states that talkers seek to provide a sufficient degree of distinctiveness while minimizing the effort needed to achieve this distinctiveness. In the current study, the same means of contrast enhancement, viz. enlargement of the vowel space, greater use of vowel inherent spectral change, (VISC) (Nearey & Assmann 1986), and greater systematic variation in duration across vowel categories, were examined in Standard German. It was predicted that when phonetic differences are phonologically distinctive (rather than merely allophonic), those differences will tend to be exaggerated when they occur in utterance focus. Hay et al. (2003) reported evidence supporting this prediction. Vowel duration differences in Japanese, a language in which vowel length is phonemic, were increased in utterance focus position. However this did not occur in either English or French, languages in which differences in vowel duration are allophonic. Results from the current study are supportive of the earlier Hay et al. (2003) research. In Standard German, where length is phonemic, speakers make less use of VISC and greater use of durational variation to enhance vowel distinctions. These results suggest that the phonological properties of a language (e.g. phonemic vowel length difference) are predictive of the particular means used by the language to enhance vowel contrasts in utterance focus
Emphasis and pharyngeals in Palestinian Arabic : an experimental analysis of their acoustic, perceptual, and long-distance effects
(2020-05-06) Faircloth, Laura Rose; Crowhurst, Megan Jane; Myers, Scott; Smiljanic, Rajka; Meier, Richard; Watson, Janet
Arabic has a phonemic contrast between plain coronal obstruents and emphatic coronal obstruents, which have a secondary [+ back] feature with a debated uvular or pharyngeal constriction. These consonants are known to affect F1 and F2 in adjacent low /a/, but the effects on other vowels, the role of these cues in perception, and the long-distance acoustic effects have not been studied. A production study of emphatic consonants (Experiment 1) in Palestinian Arabic compared F1 and F2 of the vowels /a: i: u:/ following plain /s/, emphatic /s [superscript ç]/, and pharyngeal /[h with stroke]/. In comparison to vowels adjacent to plain coronals, F1 was higher adjacent to pharyngeal /[h with stroke]/ and lower adjacent to emphatic /s [superscript ç]/ at the onset, but this effect decreased at the midpoint and offset. F2 was lower adjacent to emphatic /s [superscript ç]/, in comparison to adjacent to plain /s/, and this effect was consistent at the onset, midpoint, and offset. The effects of emphatic consonants were greater in low /a/ than in high /i u/. A perception experiment (Experiment 2) explored the role of these acoustic correlates in the identification of plain /s/ and emphatic /s [superscript ç]/ before low /a:/ and high front /i:/, where stimuli had a frication segment from /s/ or /s [superscript ç]/ and F1 and F2 values varied. Listeners used F2 lowering as a cue to emphatic consonants, but they were also able to rely on slight differences in F1 and the frication to improve their identification overall. A second production experiment (Experiment 3) examined the long-distance effects of emphatic and pharyngeal consonants. Speakers produced F2 lowering in all emphatic environments compared to a plain control, regardless of directionality or locality. Speakers only produced localized F1 raising with pharyngeal consonants in immediately adjacent vowels. These experiments suggest that emphasis is uvularization in Palestinian Arabic, which causes F1 and F2 lowering in adjacent and non-adjacent vowels in comparison to vowels in plain environments, and that listeners use these cues to identify emphatic consonants. Pharyngeal /[h with stroke]/ raised F1 briefly, suggesting that pharyngeals do not have the same phonological effects as emphatic consonants in this dialect.
An experimental approach to phonetic transfer in the production and perception of early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals
(2013-05) Amengual Watson, Marcos; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-; Bullock, Barbara E.
This dissertation examines the production, perception and processing of the Catalan-specific mid-vowel categories (/e/-/[open-mid front unrounded vowel]/ and /o/-/[open-mid back rounded vowel]/) by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Majorca (Spain). The analyses focus on the lexical as well as the segmental levels to analyze cognate effects in the production and lexical representations of these early bilinguals, and they explore how their production and perception abilities are related. This study provides evidence that early and highly proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Majorca maintain two independent phonetic categories in the Catalan mid-vowel space. The first significant finding is that production patterns in Majorca differ from those previously reported in Barcelona, as the Catalan mid-vowel contrasts are not merging into a single Spanish-like mid-vowel for either Catalan-dominants or Spanish-dominants. Additionally, these bilinguals are not 'deaf' to the Catalan-specific mid-vowel contrasts: both language dominance groups perceive the contrast between the Catalan mid-vowel categories despite the overlap with one phonetic category in Spanish. Even though Spanish-dominant bilinguals as a whole are indistinguishable from Catalan-dominant bilinguals in the perception and production tasks, they are found to have a higher error rate in the lexical decision task. The comparison of the acoustic properties of the target vowels in Catalan cognate and non-cognate experimental items reveals that the production of the mid-vowels is affected by cognate status, and that these cognate effects are also found in the word recognition of aurally presented stimuli. Finally, bilinguals who produced the mid-vowels with a smaller Euclidean distance are more likely than bilinguals who maintain a more robust contrast in their productions to have a higher error rate in the AXB discrimination and lexical decision tasks. The present study contributes to the discussion regarding the organization of early bilinguals' dominant and non-dominant phonetic systems, and implications are considered for cross-linguistic models of bilingual speech production and perception. It is proposed that the exemplar model of lexical representation (Bybee, 2001; Pierrehumbert, 2001) can be extended to include bilingual lexical connections that can account for the interactions between the phonetic and lexical levels of early bilingual individuals.
An instrumental study of pausal vowels in Il-Ǧillī Arabic (Southern Turkey)
(2015-08) Zúñiga, Emilie Pénélope Elisabeth Durand; Brustad, Kristen; Al-Batal, Mahmoud; Huehnergard, John; Bullock, Barbara; Myers, Scott; Arnold, Werner
This phonetic study explores the pausal form, a very old feature of Arabic. More specifically, it looks at the effect of the pause on vowels in word-final syllables in a non-emphatic environment. Five female native Arabic speakers from the village of Il-Ǧillī in Southern Turkey were interviewed by the author and their speech was recorded. After a canonical pausal environment and a canonical non-pausal environment were defined based on existing literature and the present data, the non-emphatic vowels in word-final syllables found in the five interviews were selected and organized into one of two categories: pausal and non-pausal. The following features of each vowel was measured in PRAAT: vowel duration, amount of formant movement throughout the vowel, and F1, F2 and F3 values at three different time points throughout the vowel. The data were analyzed using a series of linear mixed model analyses. The results show that pausal vowels differ significantly from non-pausal vowels in the following ways: first, pausal vowels have greater duration than non-pausal vowels. Second, pausal vowels undergo more formant movement than non-pausal vowels. Finally, pausal vowels occupy a different area of the vowel space than non-pausal vowels, and this effect varies based on vowel quality (a/i/u) and syllable type (CV/CVC). This dissertation ends with a brief discussion of the distribution of pausal forms in the data.
Language contexts in speech categorization: testing the double phonetic standard in bilinguals
(2007) Garcia-Sierra, Adrián, 1973-; Champlin, Craig A.
Speech sounds are typically perceived categorically. The acoustic information in speech sounds is perceptually grouped into phonetic categories. It is widely known that language influences the way speech sounds are categorized. That is, one's native language influences where category boundaries are placed. However, it is less understood how bilingual listeners categorize speech sounds. There is evidence showing that bilinguals have different category boundaries from monolinguals, but there is also evidence suggesting that bilinguals have different category boundaries depending on the language they are using at the moment. This phenomenon has been referred as the double phonetic boundary. The goal of this investigation was to verify the existence of the double phonemic boundary in bilingual listeners. As has been done in other studies, bilingual speakers of Spanish and English were asked to identify the speech sound /ta/ from a 10-token speech continuum ranging in VOT from /da/ to /ta/ in two language contexts. In this study, however, two additional procedures were carried out. First, English monolinguals were asked to identify the continuum in two language contexts. It was expected that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, would show a double phonetic boundary. Second, while participants' behavioral measures were assessed, electrophysiological measures [event-related potentials, (ERPs)] also were recorded. This was done in order to observe how speech sounds are represented in the brain. It as expected that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, would show different ERP amplitudes across language contexts. The behavioral results showed that phonemic boundaries did not differ across language contexts for either bilinguals or monolinguals. Further analyses showed bilinguals, but not monolinguals, perceived specific speech sounds--in the "ambiguous zone"--differently across language contexts. The electrophysiological results showed that the ERPs of bilinguals, but not monolinguals, differed across language contexts. Interestingly, behavioral measures correlated significantly with electrophysiological measures only in bilinguals. This result showed that the ERP amplitude was in accordance with the number of sounds perceived as 'ta' across language contexts. The challenges of testing the double phonemic boundary are discussed, along with the limitations of the methodology used in this study.
Letter from Emmett L. Bennett Jr. to Carl W. Blegen, December 06, 1949
(1949-12-06) Bennett, Emmett L., Jr.
The denasalization of French nasal vowels in liaison
(2017-09-14) McBride, Adam Frank; Bullock, Barbara E.; Birdsong, David P; Blyth, Carl S; Smiljanic, Rajka
Traditional descriptions have characterized nasal vowels in Northern Metropolitan French (NMF) as either maintaining nasality or denasalizing completely in position of liaison. However, while research in both vowel nasality and liaison has progressed greatly in recent decades, little has been said of their intersection, particularly at an acoustic level. This study uses a variety of acoustic measures to describe how nasal vowels are produced in liaison and how vowel denasalization is manifested acoustically for speakers of NMF. Findings indicate that many speakers seem to fully denasalize in liaison but other patterns emerge. A few speakers seem to denasalize very little in liaison, while others produce partially nasalized vowels that appear to be neither fully oral nor fully nasal. This suggests a possible, partially-nasalized allophone for oral-nasal vowel pairs. Additionally, an alternative production for the possessive determiner son ‘his/her/one’s’ in liaison is observed. The nasal vowels of these determiners are traditionally described as maintaining nasality in liaison, but in a considerable number of the determiners, the nasal vowel was deleted in liaison, with the nasal onset consonant syllabifying with the onset of the following vowel. Just as the realization of liaison has been shown in recent years to vary from speaker to speaker and word to word, the acoustic findings presented in this work imply that nasal vowels in liaison are not always denasalized as predicted. The implication is that other factors such as phonological context, frequency of collocation, and social/individual difference influence whether or not a vowel is denasalized.
The phonetics, phonology, and morphology of Chajul Ixil (Mayan)
(2019-06-20) Adell, Eric James; England, Nora C.; Law, Danny, 1980-; Woodbury, Anthony C; Epps, Patience L; Beavers, John T; Zavala Maldonado, Roberto
This dissertation presents a systematic analysis and description of the phonetics, phonology, and morphology of the Chajul dialect of Ixil, an indigenous Mayan language of Guatemala. Following an introduction to the language and speakers, and the methods and presentation of this study, the phonetics and phonology are treated together, with the remainder of the work dedicated to morphology. The treatment of the phonetics of Chajul Ixil includes descriptions of the physical characteristics of sounds utilized by the language, and of the acoustic correlates of both segmental and suprasegmental phenomena. Phonetic topics are interwoven throughout the phonological description. Major phonological topics include the phonology of the segmental inventory, syllable structure and phonotactics, phonological processes, issues in morphophonology, and an overview of the prosodic structures of Chajul Ixil. Issues of the history of phonological developments are discussed at times as well. The morphological chapters begin with an overview of morphological structure, followed by a description of the morphology of verbs and elements of the verb phrase, then a treatment of nouns, pronouns, and demonstratives, and then the morphology of modification within the noun phrase. After this, other root and word classes are described before finishing the work with an overview of aspect, temporality, and modality. One of the highlights of the work is a description of a previously unattested phonological contrast, namely, the alveo-postalveolar sibilants, which are a series of phonologically unitary segments in which the primary place of articulation shifts from alveolar to postalveolar during their production. Other major contributions include the presentation of a systematic and coherent analysis of the prosodic system and its relation to the general morphophonological structure of the language, and an in-depth treatment of the rich system of temporal and modal contrasts in Chajul Ixil.
The second column (secunda) of Origen's Hexapla in light of Greek pronunciation
(2017-11-13) Kantor, Benjamin Paul; Pat-El, Na'ama; Huehnergard, John; Hackett, Jo Ann; Khan, Geoffrey
This dissertation addresses the phonology and orthography of the second column (Secunda) of Origen's (185–254 ce) Hexapla, which constitutes a Greek transcription of Biblical Hebrew. The transcription text is analyzed in light of its Hellenistic/Roman Near Eastern background, the phonology and orthography of Roman Palestinian Koine Greek, and roughly contemporary Greek transcription conventions for other languages. Aside from the brief introduction (chapter 1) and conclusion (chapter 7), this dissertation is comprised of five substantial chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 address the historical and social background of the text of the Secunda. In chapter 2, I argue that Origen did not have enough Hebrew knowledge to compose the text himself. In chapter 3, on the basis of comparative evidence from the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Near East, I argue that the Secunda originated among the Jewish scholarly community of Caesarea as a didactic aid in the second or third century ce. Chapters 4 and 5 address the linguistic background of the text of the Secunda. Chapter 4, based on a thorough analysis of the epigraphic evidence from ancient Palestine, provides a reconstruction of contemporary Greek pronunciation. Chapter 5, based on a linguistic analysis of comparative transcription material, surveys typical Greek transcription conventions from roughly the same period. Chapter 6 applies the data from the previous sections to the Hebrew vocalization tradition reflected in the text of the Secunda, addressing the phonemic and phonetic value of the consonants, vowels, and shewa as well as the syllable structure. Methodologically, the phonology and orthography of Secunda Hebrew are approached from the perspective of historical (Hebrew) linguistics, Greek pronunciation and orthography, linguistic studies on cross-language perception, and moraic phonology.