Man Gao

Gestural intrusions in Taiwanese and English.

Kinematic studies of repetitive speech production tasks involving English sequences such as “cop top” have provided abundant evidence for gestural intrusion errors: errorful constrictions that are co‐produced with intended target constrictions (Pouplier and Goldstein, 2005; Goldstein et al., 2007). These intrusions have been analyzed as transitions to more dynamically stable coordination modes. This work investigates Taiwanese speakers’ production of similar repetitive sequences such as [kap tap]. If the speech sequences are planned and executed in Taiwanese in the same way as in English, similar patterns of intrusive speech errors should be observed. However, analysis of the kinematic data from three speakers shows that these effects in Taiwanese differ from those in English in a number of ways. A systematic comparison of Taiwanese and English intrusions is presented in terms of frequency of occurrence (much higher in Taiwanese), standard deviation of magnitude (smaller in Taiwanese), and temporal relati...

A regional survey of the relationship between vowel and consonant duration in Shetland Scots

Abstract The local dialect spoken in the Shetland Isles constitutes a form of Lowland Scots. It has been suggested that stressed syllables in Shetland Scots tend to contain either a long vowel followed by a short consonant (V:C) or a short vowel followed by a long consonant (VC:), and furthermore that this pattern constitutes a trace of complementary quantity in Norn, a Nordic language spoken in Shetland approximately until the end of the eighteenth century. The existence of such a pattern has also been supported by acoustic measurements. Following a summary and overview of Norn’s demise in the Shetland Isles, this paper presents a regional survey of the relationship between vowel and consonant duration in stressed syllables in Shetland Scots. Based on acoustic data from 43 speakers, representing ten separate regions across the Shetland Isles, the inverse correlation between vowel and consonant duration is assessed. The results reveal that the inverse correlation is strongest in the northern part of Shetland and weakest in the south, and displays a general north-to-south decline across Shetland. The results are thus generally consistent with predictions that follow from regional variation concerning Norn’s death; evidence suggests that it survived the longest in the northern parts of Shetland.

An acoustic study of front rounded vowels in Shetland dialect.

This paper presents an acoustic analysis of front rounded vowels (FRVs) in the dialect spoken in the Shetland Islands, the northernmost locality of the British Isles. FRVs are typologically marked ...

An acoustic analysis of pulmonic ingressive speech in the Shetland Islands.

The use of a pulmonic ingressive airstream mechanism in the pronunciation of certain discourse particles, typically variants of “yes” and “no,” is a well‐known and salient feature of Scandinavian languages. It has been suggested, however, that this may be a more general North Atlantic phenomenon—occurring as far west as Newfoundland and New England—which spread via migration and trade routes. Unfortunately, there seem to be very few audio recordings available from areas other than Scandinavia and Newfoundland (perhaps partly attributable to various elicitation difficulties) and very little acoustic analysis has been presented [E. Thom, MA thesis, UCL (2005); R. Eklund, J. Int. Phonetic Assoc. 38, 235–325 (2008)]. This paper contains a study of ingressive discourse particles in the Shetland Islands, which have strong historical links to Scandinavia. A significant number of ingressives were found in field recordings from 1980–1982. This paper presents an acoustic pilot study of ingressive discourse particle...

Effects of syllable structure on reaction times in a delayed naming task

Syllable complexity has been found to affect the time the speaker needs for planning and initiating utterance production. Shorter latencies for complex onsets (CCV) as compared to simple onsets (CV) have been explained by effects of segment‐specific biomechanical constraints at the level of motor execution, and by neighborhood density at the planning level. Within the framework of Articulatory Phonology, shorter planning latencies for CV syllables (compared to VC) have been attributed to quicker stabilization for tighter gestural coupling hypothesized for in‐phase coupling of the onset consonant and release with the vowel. We attempted to test both onset complexity (C vs CC) and coda complexity (open vs. closed syllables) within a single experiment, so that we could evaluate the relative magnitudes of these effects and uncover potential interactions. To do so, American English monosyllabic words varying in syllable structure were presented using a delayed naming paradigm. The results replicated both effec...

The role of intonational phrasing in the elicitation of speech errors

Recent work has proposed that some speech errors arise from an underlying coordination process in speech production in which gestures can assume grammatically illegal but dynamically stable coordination modes. The general premise is that shared gestural structure within a prosodic domain sets up the conditions under which stable coordination modes spontaneously emerge and produce errors. If certain gestures (e.g., coda consonants) recur every word but others recur less frequently (e.g., alternating initial consonants), the lower frequency gestures will increase in occurrence, resulting in gestural intrusion errors. This suggests that manipulation of the rhythmic domain through intonational phrasing should determine error patterns differentially. Since the gestural coupling which lies at the heart of the rhythmic synchronization approach takes time to establish, it is predicted that continuous repetitions of e.g. ‘‘cop tap tube cub’’ will lead to a maximum buildup of coupling strength and thus the most err...