Olga Dmitrieva

Phonological neutralization by native and non-native speakers: The case of Russian final devoicing

The present study investigates the extent of word-final devoicing in Russian for three groups of speakers: monolingual native Russian speakers (4 Ss), native Russian speakers with knowledge of English (7 Ss), and American English learners of Russian (9 Ss). Thirty-four minimal pairs of Russian words differing in the underlying voicing of word-final obstruents were recorded. Acoustic analysis focused on four measures: preceding vowel duration, closure/frication duration, duration of voicing into closure/frication, and duration of release portion. Results indicate the absence of complete neutralization of underlying voicing for all three groups. Native Russian speakers showed sizeable differences in each of the four measures. While Russian monolingual speakers produced significant durational differences in closure/frication duration and release duration, native Russians with knowledge of English in addition maintained a difference through vowel duration and duration of voicing into closure/frication. Moreover, correlations indicated that speakers with higher English proficiency produced greater differences for vowel duration. In addition, native speakers of English learning Russian also distinguished final obstruents in terms of preceding vowel duration, closure/frication duration, duration of voicing into closure/frication, and duration of release portion, with greater durational differences for these second language learners than for Russian native speakers. The more proficient speakers of Russian decreased the durational differences and the most proficient second language learners were closer to complete neutralization than monolingual speakers of Russian. The neutralization data will be discussed in terms of the interaction between first and second language in the production of final devoicing.

Auditory enhancement and second language experience in Spanish and English weighting of secondary voicing cues

The role of secondary cues in voicing categorization was investigated in three listener groups: Monolingual English (n = 20) and Spanish speakers (n = 20), and Spanish speakers with significant English experience (n = 16). Results showed that, in all three groups, participants used onset f0 in making voicing decisions only in the positive voice onset time (VOT) range (short lag and long lag tokens), while there was no effect of onset f0 on voicing categorization within the negative VOT range (voicing lead tokens) for any of the participant groups. These results support an auditory enhancement view of perceptual cue weighting: Onset f0 serves as a secondary cue to voicing only in the positive VOT range where it is not overshadowed by the presence of pre-voicing. Moreover, results showed that Spanish learners of English gave a significantly greater weight to onset f0 in their voicing decisions than did listeners in either of the other two groups. This result supports the view that learners may overweight secondary cues to distinguish between non-native categories that are assimilated to the same native category on the basis of a primary cue.

Phonological status, not voice onset time, determines the acoustic realization of onset f0 as a secondary voicing cue in Spanish and English

Abstract The covariation of onset f0 with voice onset time (VOT) was examined across and within phonological voicing categories in two languages, English and Spanish. The results showed a significant co-dependency between onset f0 and VOT across phonological voicing categories but not within categories, in both languages. Thus, English short lag and long lag VOT stops, which contrast phonologically, were found to differ significantly in onset f0. Similarly, Spanish short lag and lead VOT tokens are phonologically contrastive and also differed significantly in terms of onset f0. In contrast, English short lag and lead VOT stops, which are sub-phonemic variants of the same phonological category, did not differ in terms of onset f0. These results highlight the importance of phonological factor in determining the pattern of covariation between VOT and onset f0.

Automatic measurement of voice onset time and prevoicing using recurrent neural networks

Voice onset time (VOT) is defined as the time difference between the onset of the burst and the onset of voicing. When voicing begins preceding the burst, the stop is called prevoiced, and the VOT is negative. When voicing begins following the burst the VOT is positive. While most of the work on automatic measurement of VOT has focused on positive VOT mostly evident in American English, in many languages the VOT can be negative. We propose an algorithm that estimates if the stop is prevoiced, and measures either positive or negative VOT, respectively. More specifically, the input to the algorithm is a speech segment of an arbitrary length containing a single stop consonant, and the output is the time of the burst onset, the duration of the burst, and the time of the prevoicing onset with a confidence. Manually labeled data is used to train a recurrent neural network that can model the dynamic temporal behavior of the input signal, and outputs the events’ onset and duration. Results suggest that the proposed algorithm is superior to the current state-of-the-art both in terms of the VOT measurement and in terms of prevoicing detection.

Final voicing and devoicing in American English

English is typically described as a language in which voicing contrast is not neutralized in word-final position. However, a tendency towards devoicing (at least partial) of final voiced obstruents in English has been reported by the previous studies (e.g., Docherty (1992) and references therein). In the present study, we examine a number of acoustic correlates of obstruent voicing and the robustness with which each one is able to differentiate between voiced and voiceless obstruents in the word-final position in the speech recorded by twenty native speakers of the Mid-Western dialect of American English. The examined acoustic properties include preceding vowel duration, closure or frication duration, duration of the release portion, and duration of voicing during the obstruent closure, frication, and release. Initial results indicate that final voiced obstruents are significantly different from the voiceless ones in terms of preceding vowel duration and closure/frication duration. However, release durati...

Perception of consonant length by Russian and American listeners.

An experimental investigation of Russian geminates revealed that intervocalic, post‐stress, and word‐initial geminates have an earlier perceptual boundary in relation to the average singleton duration in these positions. This provides an articulatory and perceptual advantage for geminate production and discrimination, which may explain cross‐linguistic preference for these types of geminates. The proximity of the boundary to the average singleton means that a smaller articulatory effort is needed to reach the geminate status; its greater distance from the average geminate means that fewer intended geminates are misperceived as singletons, hence less danger of perceptually driven neutralization. To confirm that this generalization holds across languages a group of monolingual American English listeners was tested in addition to Russian listeners. The results strongly suggest that perception of the contrast between geminates and singletons has a linguistically universal basis. Speakers of American English—a...

Final devoicing in Russian: Acoustic evidence of incomplete neutralization

A number of acoustic and perceptual studies conducted on German, Polish, Catalan, and Dutch found evidence of incomplete neutralization of the voicing contrast of obstruents in word‐final position. The present study investigates the acoustic correlates of word‐final stops and fricatives in Russian. 34 minimal pairs differing in the underlying voicing characteristics of the final segment were incorporated into the body of filler items organized as a stream of associations. This word list was presented to 14 native speakers of Russian. Measurements were obtained for the duration of the vowel preceding the final obstruent, the closure/frication portion of the final obstruent, the burst for the final stops, and duration of the voicing into closure/frication of the final obstruent. Statistical analysis revealed that the effect of underlying voicing, as well as manner of articulation, was significant for all parameters measured. The results strongly suggest that final devoicing in Russian represents a case of i...

The Role of Perception in the Typology of Geminate Consonants: Effects of Manner of Articulation, Segmental Environment, Position, and Stress:

The present study seeks to answer the question of whether consonant duration is perceived differently across consonants of different manners of articulation and in different contextual environments and whether such differences may be related to the typology of geminates. The results of the cross-linguistic identification experiment suggest higher perceptual acuity in labeling short and long consonants in sonorants than in obstruents. Duration categories were also more consistently and clearly labeled in the intervocalic than in the preconsonantal environment, in the word-initial than in the word-final position, and after stressed vowels than between unstressed vowels. These perceptual asymmetries are in line with some typological tendencies, such as the cross-linguistic preference for intervocalic and post-stress geminates, but contradict other proposed cross-linguistic patterns, such as the preference for obstruent geminates and the abundance of word-final geminates.

Acoustics of Tatar vowels: Articulation and vowel-to-vowel coarticulation

Volga Tatar is a Turkic language spoken by 5 million people in Central Russia for which instrumental acoustic descriptions are lacking. This study uses formant analysis of acoustic recordings from 27 native speakers of Volga Tatar to describe the vowels of Tatar and evaluate the accuracy of previous impressionistic phonetic descriptions. In addition to describing the acoustic vowel space of Tatar, the study uses carefully chosen target words to evaluate vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in height and backness among the Tatar vowels /i, ae, ɑ/. Examining vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Tatar is of particular theoretical interest due to the presence of vowel harmony in the language. While the majority of native Tatar words are subject to backness, and possibly rounding, harmony, a large class of disharmonic lexical items, mostly from borrowings, provides insight into the coexistence of long-distance phonological vowel assimilation (vowel harmony) and long-distance phonetic vowel assimilation (coarticulation) in the same language. Previous research (Banerjee, Dutta, & S., 2017; Beddor & Yavuz, 1995) suggests that vowel harmony may suppress coarticulation proceeding in the same direction. However, the current results indicate that direction of coarticulation in Tatar is mediated primarily by other factors, such as target and trigger vowel identity.Volga Tatar is a Turkic language spoken by 5 million people in Central Russia for which instrumental acoustic descriptions are lacking. This study uses formant analysis of acoustic recordings from 27 native speakers of Volga Tatar to describe the vowels of Tatar and evaluate the accuracy of previous impressionistic phonetic descriptions. In addition to describing the acoustic vowel space of Tatar, the study uses carefully chosen target words to evaluate vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in height and backness among the Tatar vowels /i, ae, ɑ/. Examining vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Tatar is of particular theoretical interest due to the presence of vowel harmony in the language. While the majority of native Tatar words are subject to backness, and possibly rounding, harmony, a large class of disharmonic lexical items, mostly from borrowings, provides insight into the coexistence of long-distance phonological vowel assimilation (vowel harmony) and long-distance phonetic vowel assimilation (coarticulation) in...

Voice onset time and onset f0 as correlates of voicing in American learners of French

Voice Onset Time (VOT) and onset f0 are known correlates of voicing distinctions in stops and both contribute to the perception of voicing (House & Fairbanks, 1953; Abramson & Lisker, 1965). The values of VOT and onset f0 which correspond to voicing categories vary cross-linguistically. Second language (L2) learners often have to acquire a novel use of these acoustic cues to produce and perceive L2 voicing. The acquisition of primary voicing cue, VOT, has been studied extensively in L2 research (Flege & Eefting, 1988; Flege 1991; Birdsong et al. 2007) but less is known about the acquisition of secondary cues. The present study compares the use of VOT and onset f0 in French and English speech produced by American learners of French (22). The study also examines the role of back transfer in L2 learners by comparing their English productions to a monolingual control group (33). The results demonstrate that although learners’ VOT values in French were heavily influenced by English, their onset f0 production i...