Amanda L. Miller

Planned Parenthood? Fertility Intentions and Experiences Among Cohabiting Couples

Most research on nonmarital births focuses on disadvantaged populations. This study examined the childbearing expectations and experiences of a working-class sample, drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 cohabiting couples. Few couples in the sample were attempting to conceive; most desired to defer parenting. Three responses emerged to how a pregnancy would be resolved. The largest group would be dismayed but would bear the child. A smaller set indicated that it would terminate a pregnancy. The third group disagreed on the outcome. Relationship context and partner attributes were key factors in fertility decisions. Couples who believed that they had a future together were most likely to agree that they would have the child, though not necessarily preceded by marriage; they were the most consistent users of contraception. Couples of the second and third groups (termination, nonconcurrence) were less regular or less effective contraceptors. Results are discussed in light of public policy interest in reducing nonmarital births.

Guttural vowels and guttural co-articulation in Ju∣’hoansi

Abstract The Khoesan language Ju∣’hoansi has a rich set of phonation type contrasts: aspirated, glottalized, uvularized and epiglottalized consonants, as well as breathy, glottalized and epiglottalized vowels. These sounds form a natural class of gutturals, based on their participation in several phonotactic constraints. Gutturals are articulated in the laryngeal or pharyngeal region of the vocal tract, and are difficult to characterize as a unified group on the basis of a common articulator. This study reports on three experiments investigating the acoustic realization of gutturals. Results show that guttural vowels exhibit a range of marked (non-modal) acoustic voice quality attributes, and vowels following guttural consonants exhibit the same range of voice quality attributes through guttural co-articulation. Guttural co-articulation is sustained over a relatively long interval in Ju∣’hoansi. The timing of acoustic voice quality attributes associated with guttural consonants covers almost the same extent of the following vowels as the analogous acoustic attributes associated with diphthongs differing in voice quality (e.g., vowels that are breathy in the first mora and modally voiced on the second mora). Harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) captures the similarity of all gutturals, and spectral slope differentiates sounds involving glottal or pharyngeal stricture from those involving glottal opening.

Tongue dorsum location and tongue root retraction in alveolar and palatal clicks in the endangered language N/uu

Traill (1985) describes Xoo clicks as having velar posterior constriction locations (PCL). Miller et al. (to appear) show that the PCLs of Khoekhoe alveolar and palatal clicks are uvular and uvulo‐pharyngeal. Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) discuss clicks involving a uvular posterior release location (PRL) (and an implied velar PCL). An ultrasound investigation of velar and uvular pulmonic stops, alveolar and palatal velar clicks, and palatal uvular clicks, in the endangered language N/uu is presented. Results are for 15 repetitions of each consonant in the u context by four of the remaining speakers. The alveolar click has the tongue dorsum (TD) between the velar and uvular stops, and tongue root retraction (TRR) like the uvulars. The TD in the palatal click is also similar to the velar and uvular stops, but there is no TRR. The TD in the uvular palatal click is at the uvulo‐phrayngeal location, and there is TRR similar to the uvular stop, in both the closure and the release. TRR in the alveolar‐uvular an...

Posterior lingual gestures and tongue shape in Mangetti Dune !Xung clicks

Abstract Clicks differ from pulmonic stops in that, in addition to containing lingual gestures that shape the filtering mechanism of the vocal tract, they also contain lingual “rarefaction gestures” that form the source of the lingual ingressive airstream. The current study uses mid-sagittal lingual ultrasound imaging to investigate (1) overall tongue shape, (2) tongue dorsum and root positions, and (3) dynamic rarefaction gestures involving the tongue dorsum and root, in the four coronal click types recognized by the IPA. The study provides quantitative evidence that the four click types differ in overall tongue shape. Additionally, results show that the palatal click has a farther back dorsal constriction than the three pre-palatal clicks, and the tongue root is raised and bunched in the upper pharynx in one variant of the palatal click, but involves retraction of the tongue root proper in the lower pharynx in the alveolar click. A second variant of the palatal click involves posterior gestures more similar to those found in the alveolar click. Results provide evidence that the kinematics of the posterior part of the tongue are important in describing click production, and shed light on synchronic and diachronic sound patterns involving the palatal click in Kx’a languages.

C-V coarticulation in consonants with multiple lingual constrictions

C-V coarticulation in monosyllabic words containing initial clicks and /i:/ vowels is investigated in Mangetti Dune !Xung with 114 fps lingual ultrasound and acoustic data collected using the CHAUSA method (Miller and Finch 2011). The 114 fps rate yields an image of the tongue every 9 ms (+/-4.5 ms). Vowels following clicks have three lingual gestures involving the tongue tip/blade (TT), tongue body (TB) and tongue root (TR). TT and TB constrictions carried over from the clicks merge into a single vowel constriction at consonant specific rates. The second formant (F2) distinguishes each word type through the vowel midpoint. In regression analyses, TBCL and TRCL best predict F2 for alveolar click initial words, while TTCL best predicts F2 for dental / palatal click initial words. The more open constriction is acoustically inert. In the palatal click initial word, both constrictions are equally close for some speakers, and the gestures undergo blending (Browman and Goldstein 1990). I argue that these patter...

Contrastive apical post-alveolar and laminal alveolar click types in Ekoka !Xung

Ekoka !Xung has four contrastive click types—dental, alveolar, lateral, and “retroflex.” We provide acoustic and ultrasound results of five speakers’ productions of the typical alveolar click and the contrastive “retroflex” click. Ultrasound results show that the “alveolar” click is apical post-alveolar and the “retroflex” click is laminal alveolar. The burst duration of the post-alveolar click averages 12 ms which is “abrupt,” while the burst duration of the alveolar click averages 30 ms, which is “noisy.” Mixed effects logistic regression models tested the effects of rise time and burst duration. Burst duration differed significantly among the two clicks (p < 0.001), while the effect of rise time was not significant. The ratio of energy in the click noisebursts below 20 ERB to the energy above 20 ERB is between 1.0 and 1.5 for the post-alveolar click, but between 0.5 and 1.0 for the alveolar click. The ratio was a significant predictor of click type (p = 0.014). The highest concentration of energy for t...

C-V coarticulation in velar plosives

We present 114 fps lingual ultrasound data of three speakers’ productions of words containing the initial velar plosive, and the following [a] and [i] vowels, in Mangetti Dune !Xung (N = 95 for [k] in the [a] context, N = 36 for [k] in the [i] context). We traced the midsaggital tongue edge at the frame just prior to the [k] release, and measured the tongue dorsum (TD) and tongue root (TR) constriction locations (CL’s). The TRCL was measured 1 cm below the [k] peak. Results show that [k] in the [i] context has a 1.1 cm further forward TDCL than [k] in the [a] context for one speaker, and 1.2 cm further forward for the second speaker. The results are similar to those found for English by Stevens and House (1963). The TRCL is retracted 0.3 cm in [k] in the [a] context compared with [k] in the [i] context for the first speaker, and 0.6 cm more retracted for the second speaker. A third speaker had a retracted TDCL and TRCL in both vowel contexts. These results confirm that [k] is less resistant to coarticulat...

Palatal click allophony in Mangetti Dune !Xung: Implications for sound change

Click consonants are well known for lacking allophonic variation. This lack of variation has been attributed to the existence of articulatory constraints on the coronal constrictions that are imposed by the existence of a second dorsal constriction. The current study investigates temporal acoustic differences among the four contrastive coronal click types in the /i/ and /u/ contexts in Mangetti Dune !Xung. Clicks have been described as being either non-affricated or affricated. However, when vowel context is taken into consideration, the typology is more complex. The alveolar click is non-affricated in both vowel contexts. The dental and lateral clicks are fricated in both contexts. The palatal click in the /i/ context has two clear anterior and posterior transients, followed by palatal frication, while in the /u/ context it is non-affricated. Results are consistent with an analysis of the palatal click in the /i/ context as involving allophonic secondary palatalization. There are trading relations between the duration of the click burst, frication noise and aspiration noise phases. Results have implications for understanding the synchronic and diachronic phonology of click consonants.

Click reduction in fluent speech: a semi-automated analysis of Mangetti Dune !Xung

We compare click production in fluent speech to previously analyzed clear productions in the Namibian Kx’a language Mangetti Dune !Xung. Using a rule-based software system, we extract clicks from recorded folktales, with click detection accuracy about 65% f-score for one storyteller, reducing manual annotation time by two thirds; we believe similar methods will be effective for other loud, short consonants like ejectives. We use linear discriminant analysis to show that the four click types of !Xung are harder to differentiate in the folktales than in clear productions, and conduct a feature analysis which suggests that rapid production obscures some acoustic cues to click identity. An analysis of a second storyteller suggests that clicks can also be phonetically reduced due to language attrition. We argue that analysis of fluent speech, especially where it can be semi-automated, is an important addition to analysis of clear productions in understanding the phonology of endangered languages.

Investigating phonetic bases of sound patterns in Mangetti Dune !Xung: Contributions of high frame rate ultrasound to the description of endangered languages

High frame rate lingual ultrasound methods (Miller and Finch 2011) allow investigations of consonant and vowel kinematics outside of the laboratory. I summarize the results of a number of studies that investigate place and manner of articulation in consonants produced with the pulmonic and lingual airstream mechanisms in the endangered Namibian language Mangetti Dune !Xung. Results show that clicks, like dorsal stops, exhibit different postures of the posterior part of the tongue when they precede [i] and [ɑ]. The tongue dorsum and root are retracted in the production of all four coronal clicks when they precede [ɑ], but differ in their postures when they precede [i]. Further, tongue dorsum and root postures are less variable within click types before [ɑ], than they are preceding [i]. Clicks also differ in the timing of the anterior and posterior releases, resulting in different constrictions being adjacent to following vowels, thus leading to different co-articulation patterns. Timing patterns of the two...