Daniel Pape

(Non-)retroflex Slavic affricates and their motivation: Evidence from Czech and Polish

The Slavic affricate represented by /c/ is tacitly or explicitly assumed to be / / for all Slavic languages. In this paper we revise the affricate inventories of Polish and Czech, showing that the symbol /c/ stands for two different sounds: the palatoalveolar / / in Czech and the retroflex / / in Polish. This conclusion is supported by acoustic results for Polish and Czech data. The fact that COG (centre of gravity) values of frication are not significantly different for Polish and Czech /c/ appears a bit surprising especially in light of the fact that COG is generally seen as a parameter contributing to the distinction of fricatives (including sibilants, see e.g. Gordon, Barthmaier & Sands 2002). Our results show that other parameters such as duration of the frication phase, F1 and F2 of the following vowel as well as spectral slopes are more reliable cues for distinguishing the small differences between affricates examined here.

Stop and Fricative Devoicing in European Portuguese, Italian and German

This paper describes a cross-linguistic production study of devoicing for European Portuguese (EP), Italian, and German. We recorded all stops and fricatives in four vowel contexts and two word positions. We computed the devoicing of the time-varying patterns throughout the stop and fricative duration. Our results show that regarding devoicing behaviour, EP is more similar to German than Italian. While Italian shows almost no devoicing of all phonologically voiced consonants, both EP and German show strong and consistent devoicing through the entire consonant. Differences in consonant position showed no effect for EP and Italian, but were significantly different for German. The height of the vowel context had an effect for German and EP. For EP, we showed that a more posterior place of articulation and low vowel context lead to significantly more devoicing. However, in contrast to German, we could not find an influence of consonant position on devoicing. The high devoicing for all phonologically voiced stops and fricatives and the vowel context influence are a surprising new result. With respect to voicing maintenance, EP is more like German than other Romance languages.

Estimação das características espectrais relacionadas com o ponto de articulação de oclusivas utilizando a técnica multitaper

This study focuses on the spectral characteristics of the European Portuguese stops /p, b, t, d, k, g/ produced by six native speakers. We analysed the spectral peaks and troughs by means of multitaper spectra and performed a parameterisation of the stop spectra using slope and moment measures. In comparison to traditional spectral estimations, multitaper is more exact and, more importantly, not limited to a stationary signal length necessary for the analysis window. Therefore, it is well-suited for the rather short duration of the burst of a stop. Results show that the burst characteristics vary with place of articulation. While the global spectral frequencies match the data in classical literature, it is shown that other spectral measures in our data do not follow the typical classical spectral patterns. It is discussed whether these differences are due to the use of different methodology, or substantial cross-linguistic differences in the spectral characteristics.

Speech planning and dynamics

What do we do when we are about to utter speech? On which linguistic units do we rely? How do these units evolve from childhood to adulthood, or across time for a given language? How do we assemble these units under the influences of syntactic, phonological and prosodic rules? Do we plan the whole sequence at once? Do we plan the movements of the tongue, jaw, and lips underlying speech in the same way that we plan other movements? What tools have scientists developed to investigate these questions using observation of articulatory and acoustic signals? This book addresses these issues in eight chapters. Written by specialists in the field, these chapters provide the readers with a large overview of the literature, and illustrate the research challenges using selected examples of experimental studies.

Intervocalic fricative perception in European Portuguese

Fricative voicing distinction was tested for European Portuguese.Stimuli were generated with articulatory synthesis.Voicing maintenance is main perceptual cue, but other acoustic cues strongly interact. This study examined the conditions under which European Portuguese (EP) intervocalic fricatives are perceived as voiced/voiceless with respect to varying voiced-to-devoiced fricative portions, durations, pharyngeal widths and glottal heights. Articulatory speech synthesis incorporating a sophisticated noise source model was used to produce /aCa/ sequences (C=/f v s z ? ?/) for two perception experiments (forced choice voiced/voiceless decision). This approach has the main advantage that all relevant articulatory settings can be manipulated independently. The proportion of fricative voicing was varied between fully devoiced to fully voiced; phoneme durations were varied corresponding to natural EP speech. Glottal height and pharyngeal width each varied amongst three different states. The results showed strong interaction between the cues phoneme duration and voicing maintenance. A voiced-to-devoiced ratio of only 25% was enough to guarantee robust perception of fricative voicing. Phoneme duration and place of articulation had a significant effect on listener decisions, but only for voiced-to-devoiced ratios of 25-50%. Vowel duration, pharyngeal width and glottis height had no significant effect. The study provides new evidence for cue-trading in fricative perception. Furthermore, new insights into laryngeal vs. supra-laryngeal gestural coordination are gained which may facilitate the development of fricative models.

The Table to Tablet (T2T) therapy software development approach

This paper presents the Table to Tablet (T2T) project therapy software development approach, which aims to provide a reliable and valid solution for speech and language therapists to work with children with speech sound disorders (SSD). The currently available intervention materials for this kind of paediatric disorder have not been tested or validated and digital materials are scarce. For the T2T project, new tabletop materials and web based intervention software have been developed and results from testing them in a group of seven children with SSD are currently being analysed. Future work will compare the effectiveness of a tabletop approach versus a digital one.

Constructing physically realistic VCV stimuli for the perception of stop voicing in European Portuguese

In this book chapter we present the generation of physically realistic stimuli with a biomechanical speech production model, with the aim to produce perceptually appropriate VCV sets for the European Portuguese (EP) voicing distinction. The duration measures necessary for the biomechanical model were extracted from an extensive EP speech production database, recorded for this aim. The same database was used to generate realistic voicing extinction contours for the perceptual continuum. To assess the realistic accuracy of the biomechanically generated stimuli, we compared the biomechanical stimuli set to linear interpolation between articulatory targets, traditionally used for speech synthesis.

Segmental cues to intonation of statements and polar questions in whispered, semi-whispered and normal speech modes

Abstract This paper examines how acoustic characteristics of vowels and consonants reflect intonational differences between polar questions and statements in Polish whispered, semi-whispered and normal speech modes, with particular focus on the spectral characteristics of voiceless consonants as a function of intonation, and across speech modes. The results reveal significant differences in spectral properties of both utterance-final vowels and consonants across statements and polar questions. Questions have higher vowel intensities and show differences in formant frequencies that vary with speech mode. Regarding the consonants, both fricatives and affricates are produced with higher intensity, spectral peaks at higher frequencies, and higher Centre of Gravity and Spectral Standard Deviation values in questions than in statements. Conversely, skewness and kurtosis are lower in questions than in statements. Some spectral features of sibilants, including spectral slopes, show greater question-statement differences in the whispered speech mode than in other speech modes. The finding that some cues are more pronounced in whispered speech suggests that they may compensate for the absence of fundamental frequency in this mode. Most generally, the study shows that speakers produce intended intonation patterns by varying the type and magnitude of cues depending on speech mode.

Acoustic Evidence of New Sibilants in the Pronunciation of Young Polish Women

Abstract We present the results of an acoustic study showing that the Polish sibilant system is undergoing changes in the speech of young university-educated women. The results based on the acoustic analysis of 16 speakers’ pronunciation, reveal that the new variants of alveolo-palatals are characterised by spectral peaks at higher frequencies and higher centre of gravity values than their Standard Polish counterparts. In addition, spectral moments, spectral slopes and the formants of preceding vowels differentiate the new variants from Standard Polish alveolo-palatals. We provide the rationale for the development of the new variants by referring to (i) a functional approach involving contrast optimisation in the sibilant system, (ii) a sociolinguistic approach that makes use of a sound-symbolic association between energy concentration in higher frequency regions and smallness and (iii) a speech disorder.

Individual Differences in Speech Production and Perception

Inter-individual variation in speech is a topic of increasing interest both in human sciences and speech technology. It can yield important insights into biological, cognitive, communicative, and social aspects of language. Written by specialists in psycholinguistics, phonetics, speech development, speech perception and speech technology, this volume presents experimental and modeling studies that provide the reader with a deep understanding of interspeaker variability and its role in speech processing, speech development, and interspeaker interactions. It discusses how theoretical models take into account individual behavior, explains why interspeaker variability enriches speech communication, and summarizes the limitations of the use of speaker information in forensics.