Eun Jong Kong

Cross-linguistic studies of children’s and adults’ vowel spaces

This study examines cross-linguistic variation in the location of shared vowels in the vowel space across five languages (Cantonese, American English, Greek, Japanese, and Korean) and three age groups (2-year-olds, 5-year-olds, and adults). The vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ were elicited in familiar words using a word repetition task. The productions of target words were recorded and transcribed by native speakers of each language. For correctly produced vowels, first and second formant frequencies were measured. In order to remove the effect of vocal tract size on these measurements, a normalization approach that calculates distance and angular displacement from the speaker centroid was adopted. Language-specific differences in the location of shared vowels in the formant values as well as the shape of the vowel spaces were observed for both adults and children.

Aligning the timelines of phonological acquisition and change

Abstract This paper examines whether data from a large cross-linguistic corpus of adult and child productions can be used to support an assumed corollary of the Neogrammarian distinction between two types of phonological change. The first type is regular sound change, which is assumed to be incremental and so should show continuity between phonological development and the age-related variation observed in the speech community undergoing the change. The second type is dialect borrowing, which could show an abrupt discontinuity between developmental patterns before and after the socio-historical circumstances that instigate it. We examine the acquisition of two contrasts: the Seoul Korean contrast between lax and aspirated stops which is undergoing regular sound change, and the standard Mandarin contrast between retroflex and dental sibilants which has been borrowed recently into the Sōngyuán dialect. Acquisition of the different contrasts patterns as predicted from the assumed differences between continuous regular sound change and potentially abrupt dialect borrowing. However, there are substantial gaps in our understanding both of the extent of cross-cultural variability in language socialization and of how this might affect the mechanisms of phonological change that must be addressed before we can fully understand the relationship between the time courses of the two.

Voiced stop prenasalization in two dialects of Greek

This study examined the phonetic realization of voiced stops in the Cretan and Thessalonikan dialects of Modern Greek. Six males and six females of each dialect were recorded in a sentence-reading task. Duration and amplitude were measured to compare the degree of nasality of voiced stops to that of nasals in different phonetic contexts. Results showed that amplitude changes during the voicing bar of the voiced stops varied both within and across speakers. In some instances, there was consistently low amplitude throughout the voicing bar (characteristic of voiced stops), whereas in other instances, there was high amplitude at the closure onset followed by decreasing amplitude toward the burst (characteristic of prenasalization). By contrast, nasals had consistently high amplitude throughout the murmur. The mixed-effects models suggest that there were complex and interactive influences of dialect, gender, prosodic position, and stress in realizing prenasality in the voiced stops. In particular, Cretan male speakers showed the least clear tendency of prenasalization consistent with earlier impressionistic studies. Furthermore, productions of Cretan males showed less prenasalization than those of females in both prosodic positions. The procedures in this study can be used to describe prenasalization in other dialects or languages where prenasalization has been observed.

L2 Proficiency Effect on the Acoustic Cue-Weighting Pattern by Korean L2 Learners of English: Production and Perception of English Stops

This study explored how Korean L2 learners of English utilize multiple acoustic cues (VOT and F0) in perceiving and producing the English alveolar stop with a voicing contrast. Thirty-four 18-year-old high-school students participated in the study. Their English proficiency level was classified as either ‘high’ (HEP) or ‘low’ (LEP) according to high-school English level standardization. Thirty different synthesized syllables were presented in audio stimuli by combining a 6-step VOTs and a 5-step F0s. The listeners judged how close the audio stimulus was to /t/ or /d/ in L2 using a visual analogue scale. The L2 /d/ and /t/ productions collected from the 22 learners (12 HEP, 10 LEP) were acoustically analyzed by measuring VOT and F0 at the vowel onset. Results showed that LEP listeners attended to the F0 in the stimuli more sensitively than HEP listeners, suggesting that HEP listeners could inhibit less important acoustic dimensions better than LEP listeners in their L2 perception. The L2 production patterns also exhibited a group-difference between HEP and LEP in that HEP speakers utilized their VOT dimension (primary cue in L2) more effectively than LEP speakers. Taken together, the study showed that the relative cue-weighting strategies in L2 perception and production are closely related to the learner’s L2 proficiency level in that more proficient learners had a better control of inhibiting and enhancing the relevant acoustic parameters.

Evaluating the sources and functions of gradiency in phoneme categorization: An individual differences approach.

During spoken language comprehension listeners transform continuous acoustic cues into categories (e.g., /b/ and /p/). While long-standing research suggests that phonetic categories are activated in a gradient way, there are also clear individual differences in that more gradient categorization has been linked to various communication impairments such as dyslexia and specific language impairments (Joanisse, Manis, Keating, & Seidenberg, 2000; López-Zamora, Luque, Álvarez, & Cobos, 2012; Serniclaes, Van Heghe, Mousty, Carré, & Sprenger-Charolles, 2004; Werker & Tees, 1987). Crucially, most studies have used 2-alternative forced choice (2AFC) tasks to measure the sharpness of between-category boundaries. Here we propose an alternative paradigm that allows us to measure categorization gradiency in a more direct way. Furthermore, we follow an individual differences approach to (a) link this measure of gradiency to multiple cue integration, (b) explore its relationship to a set of other cognitive processes, and (c) evaluate its role in individuals’ ability to perceive speech in noise. Our results provide validation for this new method of assessing phoneme categorization gradiency and offer preliminary insights into how different aspects of speech perception may be linked to each other and to more general cognitive processes.

Psychoacoustic measures of stop production in Cantonese, Greek, English, Japanese, and Korean.

Spectral analyses of stop bursts have revealed that the place of articulation can be predicted based on both invariant and time‐varying cues present within the acoustic signal (e.g., Stevens and Blumstein, 1978; Forrest et al., 1988). While prior studies have had some success in uncovering such cues for American English, it is not clear whether these parameters are equally pertinent in stoping consonant classification in other languages. Furthermore, one of the main limitations of a linear acoustic analysis is that it imposes different scales of loudness and frequency on the acoustic signal than does the human ear, thus generating power spectra with different frequency distributions than are produced by the auditory system (e.g., Zwicker 1961; Kewley‐Port, 1983). In the present study of word‐initial stops produced in Cantonese, English, Greek, Japanese, and Korean, measures derived from a psychoacoustic model of auditory perception were developed in order to more accurately isolate the front cavity resona...

Dialectal variation in affricate place of articulation in Korean

The place of articulation (POA) of Korean affricates has been a topic of much discussion in Korean linguistics. The traditional view is that the affricates were dental in the 15th century and then changed to a posterior coronal place in most dialects of Korean but the anterior articulation is retained in major dialects of North Korea, most notably Phyengan and Yukjin. However, recent instrumental studies on Seoul Korean and some impressionistic descriptions of North Korean dialects cast doubt on the validity of this traditional view. Our study examines the POA of /c/ (lenis affricate) and /s/ (anterior fricative) before /a/ in Seoul Korean (26 younger and 32 older speakers) and in two North Korean varieties, as spoken by ethnic Koreans in China (14 Phyengan and 21 Yukjin speakers). The centre of gravity of the frication noise of /c/ and /s/ was examined. The results show that in both North Korean varieties, both sibilants are produced as anterior coronal and comparable in their POA. In Seoul Korean, while...

Age- and gender-related variation in voiced stop prenasalization in Japanese

Modern Japanese is generally described as having phonologically voiced (versus voiceless) word-initial stops. However, phonetic details vary across dialects and age groups; in Takadas (2011) measurements of recordings of 456 talkers from multiple generations of talkers across five dialects, Osaka-area speakers and older speakers in the Tokyo area (Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, and Kanagawa prefectures) typically show pre-voicing (lead VOT), but younger speakers show many “devoiced” (short lag VOT) values, a tendency that is especially pronounced among younger Tokyo-area females. There is also variation in the duration of the voice bar, with very long values (up to -200 ms lead VOT) observed in the oldest female speakers. Spectrograms of such tokens show faint formants during the stop closure, suggesting a velum-lowering gesture to vent supra-glottal air pressure to sustain vocal fold vibration. Further evidence of pre-nasalization in older Tokyo-area females comes from comparing amplitude trajectories for the voice bar to amplitude trajectories during nasal consonants, adapting a method proposed by Burton, Blumstein, and Stevens (1972) for exploring phonemic pre-nasalization contrasts. Differences in trajectory shape patterns between the oldest males and females and between older and younger females are like the differences that Kong, Syrika, and Edwards (2012) observed across Greek dialects.

Gradient perception of laryngeal contrast of stops in English and Korean: Eye‐tracking evidence.

Categorical perception implies that listeners discard subphonemic acoustic variation and attend only to higher‐level phonemic representations. However, a number of studies have shown that listeners are also sensitive to subphonemic fine phonetic detail, given the appropriate task. The current study aimed to investigate gradient perception of the stop voicing contrast using an anticipatory eye movement paradigm. Specifically, our study examined English‐ and Korean‐speaking adults’ sensitivity to changes in VOT and f 0 parameters that differentiated their native stop voicing categories. The stimuli varied VOT values in six steps (9–59‐ms) and f 0 in five steps (98–114 Hz) in synthesized CV syllables, with a vocalic source from either a male speaker of English or Korean. Adult listeners’ anticipatory eye movements to the target categories were collected, as they listened to a series of stimuli. Looking latencies were assessed in a mixed‐effect regression model. Preliminary results found gradient responses to...

Why [spa] not [psa]? On the perceptual salience of initial /s/‐stop and stop‐/s/ sequences.

Initial /s/‐stop clusters occur frequently in the world’s languages, but initial stop‐/s/ clusters are relatively infrequent. Furthermore, there appear to be no languages that contain initial stop‐/s/ clusters, but not /s/‐stop clusters, while the reverse is not true [Morelli, (1999) and (2003)]. This study aims at uncovering a perceptual explanation for these patterns by examining the salience of initial /s/‐stop and stop‐/s/ clusters in Greek, where both sequences are common. Twenty naive Greek adult listeners identified syllables beginning with /sp/, /st/, /sk/, /ps/, /ts/, or /ks/, in two vowel contexts, /a/ and /i/, in real words spoken by ten Greek adult native speakers. The syllables were mixed with parts of Greek multitalker babble using SNRs of −6, 0, and +6 dB and presented to listeners for identification. Results showed significantly poorer identification for the /ps/ and /ks/ clusters than the /ts/ and /s/‐stop clusters, particularly in the −6 and 0 SNRS. There was also a significant interacti...