Elizabeth C. Zsiga

Articulatory Timing in a Second Language: Evidence from Russian and English

This study compares patterns of consonant-to-consonant timing at word boundaries in English and Russian and investigates the roles of transfer and the emergence of linguistic universals in second language (L2) articulation. Native Russian speakers learning English and native English speakers learning Russian produced phrases in English and Russian contrasting VC#CV, VC#V, and V#CV sequences. The duration of all stop closures was measured as well as the percentage of consonant sequences in which the first consonant was audibly released. In their native language (L1), Russian speakers had a higher percentage of released final consonants than did English speakers in their L1 as well as a higher ratio of sequence-to-singleton duration. Examination of the timing patterns across different clusters revealed different articulatory strategies for the two languages. The native Russian pattern transferred to L2 English, but the native English pattern did not transfer to L2 Russian. Evidence was found for both articulatory transfer and the emergence of a default pattern of articulation, characteristic of neither L1 nor L2.

Tone features, tone perception, and peak alignment in thai

This paper investigates the relationship between the phonological features of tone and tone perception in Thai. Specifically, it tests the hypothesis (proposed by Morén & Zsiga, 2006) that the principle perceptual cues to the five-way tonal contrast in Thai are high and low pitch targets aligned to moras. Results of four perception studies, one using natural speech and three using digitally-altered speech, are presented in support of the hypothesis. It is argued that, by associating tones to moras, a straightforward mapping from the abstract autosegmental features H and L to the production and perception of Thai tones, a heretofore elusive goal, can be accomplished. This result has consequences for theories of contour tone perception, the distinctive features of tone, and the alignment of pitch targets to the segmental string.

On the Status of Voiced Stops in Tswana: Against ND

According to Hayes (1999), some phonological constraints are informed by phonetic scales: physically-based hierarchies of phonetic difficulty that predict the articulations that will be phonologically marked. For example, Ohala (1983), Westbury and Keating (1986), and others observe that difficulty of voicing in obstruents is influenced by, among other things, place of articulation, adjacent segments, and phrasal position (“f” means “is more harmonic than”):

A mismatch between morphological and prosodic domains: evidence from two Igbo rules

In order to adequately describe the application of phonological rules across word boundaries, phonologists have appealed to the notion of prosodic domains (Selkirk 1980, 1986; Nespor & Vogel 1982, 1986; Kaisse 1985; Inkelas & Zee 1990). This research has suggested that the domains within and across which rules apply cannot be defined in purely syntactic terms, but rather that a domain structure consisting of prosodic entities such as the phonological word, phonological phrase and intonational phrase must be built up from the syntactic structure. It is to these prosodic categories that phonological rules refer. Prosodic domains are derived from but not necessarily coextensive with syntactic or morphological domains. In fact, some of the best evidence for the necessity of a prosodic structure in addition to a syntactic structure comes from cases where the two do not match, and where the correct phonological generalisations can only be captured in terms of the prosodic structure. Igbo presents just such a mismatch. This paper will examine two rules - ATR vowel harmony and vowel assimilation - that make the mismatch clear. These two rules apply in complementary situations: harmony applies only within the word, assimilation only between words. Both rules delineate the same domain, although one operates within the domain boundaries, one across them.

Contextual Evidence for the Representation of Pitch Accents in Standard Serbian

This paper reports the results of an experiment that elicits contextual effects on Rising and Falling accents in Standard Serbian, with the goal of determining their acoustic correlates and their phonological representation. Materials systematically vary the distance between pitch accents, inducing “tone crowding,” in order to identify the phonetic dimensions that consistently distinguish the two pitch accent types, to examine the association between accents and the segmental string, as well as the timing relationship between accent minima and maxima, and to investigate the interaction between lexical accents and boundary tones. On the basis of the phonetic findings, a unified analysis of the phonological distribution and phonetic realization of Falling and Rising accents in Standard Serbian is proposed. It is proposed that both Rising and Falling accents consist of a single lexical High (H). The restricted distribution of the two accents emerges from the interaction of stress and tone: Falling accents are monosyllabic, such that stress and pitch prominence coincide; Rising accents are bisyllabic, such that the stressed syllable precedes the pitch-accented syllable. The phonetic differences between the Falling and Rising accents follow from the place of lexically designated H, the location of stress, and the effects of boundary tones. The larger issue we address concerns the phonological characterization of tone/stress interactions. Given the two general types of interactions, one in which the place of stress is predictable from the place of tone, and the other with the reversed direction of influence, we analyze Standard Serbian as belonging to the former type. While both types can be characterized in systems of tonal phonology, which allow free interaction of tone and stress, the type exemplified by Standard Serbian, with contrastive tonal specifications governing the distribution of stress, cannot be captured in an Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) framework, in which stress serves as anchor for tonal melodies.

Perception of Thai tones in citation form and connected speech

F0 contour shapes of the five tones of Thai differ from citation form to connected speech [Potisuk et al., Phonetica 54, 2242 (1997)]. ‘‘Falling’’ tones have a rise‐fall contour in citation, but may be realized as a rise in fluent speech. This study investigates whether Thai listeners can reliably distinguish tones in connected speech, and whether any cues to tone identity remain stable across contexts. In four experiments, ten Thai listeners identified naturally produced and digitally altered tones in a forced‐choice task. In experiment one, listeners identified naturally produced ‘‘falling’’ tones with 100% accuracy in citation forms and 96% accuracy in sentences, despite differing contours. In experiments 2–4 (replicating and extending Abramson [Lg&Sp 21, 319325 (1978)]), F0 onset and offset, peak height, and peak alignment were systematically modified on syllables in citation and sentence contexts. In all contexts, tones identified as high or low had an F0 peak or valley aligned to the right edge of t...

Labio‐coronal fricatives in Sengwato

This paper will present evidence for the existence of doubly articulated labio‐coronal fricatives in Sengwato (a northern dialect of the Bantu language Setswana). The existence of stops and fricatives that incorporate all two‐way combinations of labial, coronal, and dorsal articulations is predicted by phonological feature‐geometry models [E. Sagey, MIT dissertation, 1986]. According to Ladefoged and Maddieson [Sounds of the World’s Languages (1996), p. 331], however, ‘‘the world’s languages do not use segments that combine two fricative elements.’’ Ladefoged and Maddieson analyzed reported labio‐coronal fricatives in Sepedi, a sister language to Setswana, and concluded that the fricative articulations were sequenced. In this presentation, spectrographic analysis and video images from two speakers of Sengwato will be presented, demonstrating that in words like [o/sa] ‘‘to burn,’’ speakers do use two simultaneous fricative articulations. Spectrographic analysis shows a steady‐state fricative, not a sequenc...

Acoustic evidence of overlap in consonant sequences

Acoustic evidence for temporal overlap of the two closure gestures in the environment VC♯CV was investigated. It was hypothesized that evidence of C2 would be found in the VC formant transitions and would increasingly dominate the transitions as rate (and by hypothesis, overlap) increased. Twenty repetitions (ten at a normal rate and ten at a rapid rate) of word pairs where the first word ended in /d/ and the second began with /p/, /t/, or /k/ were elicited in a sentence context from four subjects. Here, F2 and F3 transitions from the midpoint of V1 to just before closure were then measured. In all environments, C2 had a clear influence on the VC formant transitions. In the d♯k environment, the velar transitions were more prominent at the rapid than at the slow rate; however, the rate effects for d♯p were less clear. The acoustic influence of C2 on V1 suggests considerable temporal overlap of the two closure gestures, and at least for the d♯k case, increasing overlap as a function of rate. [Work supported...

Relearning consonant timing: Evidence from English and Russian

Advocates of the gestural approach to phonetic or phonological representations argue that degree of overlap between articulatory gestures can account for many phonetic regularities (such as assimilation, deletion, or release of consonants in clusters) that can contribute to the perception of a ‘‘foreign accent’’ [C. P. Browman and L. Goldstein, Phonetica 49, 155–180 (1992); E. C. Zsiga, GURT 1995, pp. 575–587 (1995)]. The research reported here compares patterns of consonant overlap at word boundaries in English and Russian, and investigates the extent to which adult language learners transfer the timing patterns of their native language to the second language. Native Russian speakers learning English and native English speakers learning Russian produced phrases in English and Russian contrasting VC♯CV, VC♯V, and V♯CV sequences, with varying stress patterns and syntactic configurations. The ratio of closure duration in clusters as compared with single consonants [E. C. Zsiga, J. Phon. 22, 121–140 (1994)] is examined, in order to determine patterns of consonant timing in the two languages (including effects of stress and boundary strength) and to elucidate the extent to which the timing patterns of second‐language speakers resemble that of native speakers.

A connection between coarticulation and variable rule application: Coda r’s in Brooklyn English

Ohala (1975, 1981) has proposed that sound changes are caused by listeners misperceiving coarticulatory effects. This paper examines variable ‘‘r‐dropping’’ in Brooklyn English, and discusses the coarticulatory exigencies that may encourage speakers toward weakened forms. It is argued that production strategies do play a role in driving sound change apart from creating misperceptions. Recordings were made of speakers of Brooklyn and other dialects as part of the development of a larger multidialect database (Hertz et al., 1994). Analyses of nuclear r’s (as in bird, and burl) show that neighboring l’s both lower the second formant and raise the third formant, obscuring the r. Analyses of coda r’s in ‘‘r‐ful’’ speakers also show following coronals raise the r’s third formant. Analyses of three Brooklyn speakers show one consistently produces coda r’s, one never does, and a third does so variably as evident in a bimodal distribution of formant patterns. The variable speaker produced r‐less tokens particularl...