Patricia A. Keating

Articulatory strengthening at edges of prosodic domains

In this paper it is shown that at the edges of prosodic domains, initial consonant and final vowels have more extreme (less reduced) lingual articulations, which are called articulatory strengthening. Linguopalatal contact for consonants and vowels in different prosodic positions was compared, using reiterant-speech versions of sentences with a variety of phrasings read by three speakers of American English. Four prosodic domains were considered: the phonological word, the phonological (or intermediate) phrase, the intonational phrase, and the utterance. Domain-initial consonants show more linguopalatal contact than domain-medial or domain-final consonants, at three prosodic levels. Most vowels, on the other hand, show less linguopalatal contact in domain-final syllables compared to domain-initial and domain-medial. As a result, the articulatory difference between segments is greater around a prosodic boundary, increasing the articulatory contrast between consonant and vowels, and prosodic domains are marked at both edges. Furthermore, the consonant initial strengthening is generally cumulative, i.e., the higher the prosodic domain, the more linguopalatal contact the consonant has. However, speakers differed in how many and which levels were distinguished in this way. It is suggested that this initial strengthening could provide an alternative account for previously observed supralaryngeal declination of consonants. Acoustic duration of the consonants is also affected by prosodic position, and this lengthening is cumulative like linguopalatal contact, but the two measures are only weakly correlated.

Articulatory and acoustic studies on domain-initial strengthening in Korean

Abstract This study examines the effect of prosodic position on segmental properties of Korean consonants /n, t, t h , t * / along the articulatory parameters peak linguopalatal contact and stop seal duration, and several acoustic parameters. These parameters were compared in initial position in different domains of the Korean prosodic hierarchy. The first result is that consonants initial in higher prosodic domains are articulatorily stronger than those in lower domains, in the sense of having more linguopalatal contact. Second, there is a strong correlation between linguopalatal contact and duration (both articulatory and acoustic), suggesting that “strengthening” and “lengthening” is a single effect in Korean. We interpret this relation as one of undershoot: in weaker positions, consonants are shorter and undershoot contact targets. The different consonant manners of Korean can be characterized as varying in both duration and contact in this way. Third, there is another, less consistent, kind of lengthening and strengthening specific to Korean, namely that tense and aspirated consonant oral articulations can be longer and stronger word-medially than word-initially. Fourth, the acoustic properties VOT, total voiceless interval, %voicing during closure, nasal energy minimum, and to a lesser extent stop burst energy and voicing into closure, were found to vary with prosodic position and, in some cases, to correlate with linguopalatal contact. They could thus potentially provide cues to listeners about prosodic structure.

Underspecification in phonetics

It is often assumed in work on the phonological underspecification of segments that while representations may at first be underspecified, they end up fully specified. Various kinds of rules are posited to ensure that in output forms all features have values for all segments. In this paper I will consider an alternative view: that underspecification may persist into phonetic representations. I begin by reviewing some of the relevant phonological phenomena and mechanisms, and some of the history of underspecification in phonetic studies. I then show how phonetic data may be taken to reflect the presence or absence of feature values in surface forms. Finally, the extent to which surface specification depends on segmental contrasts is examined. The aim of this paper is to present some phonetic phenomena that are potentially relevant to any theory of underspecification. I Underspecification in phonological representations i.I Phonological behaviour of underspecified segments Two types of arguments are often offered in support of phonological underspecification: what I will call arguments from variability and arguments from transparency. It is worthwhile to characterise these types of arguments as they are used in phonology, so that their use with respect to phonetic data can be considered later. An example of a phonological argument from variability is that a vowel undergoes vowel harmony, where a vowels value for a certain feature depends on values of other vowels in the word. Because the vowel that varies seems to have no particular original value of its own, it may be analysed as being unspecified for that feature, and subject to a rule of harmony. That is, the segment is analysed as being underspecified because it takes on more than one value for a feature, as a result of some kind of feature assigning rule. Steriade (I987) dismisses this kind of argument because a segment could be originally specified, but undergo a delinking rule before subsequent feature assignment. However, Clements (i 987) and others are more willing to argue from such cases. By contrast, Steriade stresses the value of arguments from transparency. In these cases, a segment is analysed as being unspecified for a feature because it seems to have no value at all. An

Effects of initial position versus prominence in English

Abstract This study investigates effects of three prosodic factors—prosodic boundary (Utterance-initial vs. Utterance-medial), lexical stress (primary vs. secondary) and phrasal accent (accented vs. unaccented)—on articulatory and acoustic realizations of word-initial CVs (/ne/, /te/) in trisyllabic English words. The consonantal measures were linguopalatal Peak contact and Release contacts (by electropalatography), Seal duration, Nasal duration and Nasal energy for /n/, VOT, RMS burst energy and spectral Center of Gravity at the release for /t/; and the vocalic measures were linguopalatal Vowel contact, Vowel F1, Vowel duration and Vowel amplitude. Several specific points emerge. Firstly, domain-initial articulation is differentiated from stress- or accent-induced articulations along several measures. Secondly, the vowel is effectively louder domain-initially, suggesting that the boundary effect is not strictly local to the initial consonant. Thirdly, some accentual effects can be seen in secondary-stressed syllables, suggesting that accentual influences spread beyond the primary-stressed syllable. Finally, unlike domain-initial effects, prominence effects are not cumulative. Thus we conclude that, at least for the kind of word-initial syllables tested here, different aspects of prosodic structure (domain boundary vs. prominence) are differentially encoded.

VOICESAUCE: A program for voice analysis.

VOICESAUCE is a new application, implemented in MATLAB, which provides automated voice measurements over time from audio recordings. The measures currently computed are F0, H1(*), H2(*), H4(*), H1(*)‐H2(*), H2(*)‐H4(*), H1(*)‐A1, H1(*)‐A2, H1(*)‐A3, energy, Cepstral Peak Prominence, F1–F4, and B1–B4, where (*) indicates that harmonic amplitudes are reported with and without corrections for formant frequencies and bandwidths [Iseli et al. (2006)]. Formant values are calculated using the Snack Sound Toolkit, while F0 is calculated using the STRAIGHT algorithm; harmonic spectra magnitudes are computed pitch‐synchronously. VOICESAUCE takes as input a folder of wav files, and for each input wav file produces a MATLAB file with values every millsecond for all measures. It can operate over the whole input file or over segments delimited by a PRAAT textgrid file. VOICESAUCE then takes these MATLAB outputs, optionally along with electroglottographic measurements obtained separately from PCQUIRERX, and provides con...

On the Relationship between Face Movements, Tongue Movements, and Speech Acoustics

This study examines relationships between external face movements, tongue movements, and speech acoustics for consonant-vowel (CV) syllables and sentences spoken by two male and two female talkers with different visual intelligibility ratings. The questions addressed are how relationships among measures vary by syllable, whether talkers who are more intelligible produce greater optical evidence of tongue movements, and how the results for CVs compared to those for sentences. Results show that the prediction of one data stream from another is better for C/a/ syllables than C/i/ and C/u/ syllables. Across the different places of articulation, lingual places result in better predictions of one data stream from another than do bilabial and glottal places. Results vary from talker to talker; interestingly, high rated intelligibility do not result in high predictions. In general, predictions for CV syllables are better than those for sentences.

Optical Phonetics and Visual Perception of Lexical and Phrasal Stress in English

In a study of optical cues to the visual perception of stress, three American English talkers spoke words that differed in lexical stress and sentences that differed in phrasal stress, while video and movements of the face were recorded. The production of stressed and unstressed syllables from these utterances was analyzed along many measures of facial movement, which were generally larger and faster in the stressed condition. In a visual perception experiment, 16 perceivers identified the location of stress in forced-choice judgments of video clips of these utterances (without audio). Phrasal stress was better perceived than lexical stress. The relation of the visual intelligibility of the prosody of these utterances to the optical characteristics of their production was analyzed to determine which cues are associated with successful visual perception. While most optical measures were correlated with perception performance, chin measures, especially Chin Opening Displacement, contributed the most to correct perception independently of the other measures. Thus, our results indicate that the information for visual stress perception is mainly associated with mouth opening movements.

CORONAL PLACES OF ARTICULATION

Publisher Summary This chapter explores a variety of possible coronal places of articulation. It focuses on a traditional place of articulation distinctions and some manner distinctions that are used to make fine place distinctions. The sublaminal retroflexes, attested most clearly for stops, would count as laminal in most feature systems. The other two types of retroflexes are apical, occurring with either domed or flat tongue shapes. Coronals can be defined as segments produced with the blade of the tongue. Among the most recognized coronal places of articulation are dental, alveolar, palate–alveolar, retroflex, and palatal. Coronal articulations extend from the upper lip to the hard palate. The chapter illustrates key divisions along the palate. Behind the upper teeth is the alveolar ridge, a source of some confusion in articulatory descriptions. For phonetic purposes, the alveolar ridge is the entire area from the upper teeth back to the prominence at which the palate starts angling upward toward the roof of the mouth.

A cross‐language study of range of voice onset time in the perception of initial stop voicing

A series of experiments was carried out to compare the extent of range effects in the phonetic categorization of voice onset time (VOT) by speakers of Polish and of English, two languages which contrast different VOT categories. Results indicate that Poles are more prone to range effects than are Americans. For acoustic continua with appreciable numbers of prevoiced stimuli, monolingual Polish speakers’ perceptual boundaries fall in the gap between their production categories. For ranges of VOT which include few prevoiced stimuli, their boundaries are substantially shifted. Americans show no shifts of this type, although they do show some small shifts. It was determined that the much smaller shifts shown by the American subjects were not due to expectations about the test. Results are interpreted in terms of the different VOT contrasts involved: their spacing along the VOT continuum, and their psychophysical basis.

Vowel Variation in Japanese

A language’s use of the phonetic vowel space depends not only on how many vowel phonemes the language has, but on how each phoneme varies allophonically across contexts. This study tests the hypothesis that Japanese vowel allophones, measured from a wide range of contexts, will not fill the vowel formant space. This was predicted because Japanese has few vowel phonemes, distributed unevenly in the vowel space, and has no obvious processes of vowel reduction. Formant frequencies of vowel tokens from word lists and from read texts were compared for 7 speakers. These data show that, in Japanese, vowel allophones in prose fill in the vowel formant space more than allophones in word lists do, mainly as a result of centralization of the prose tokens. The use of the total formant space is determined in part by the distribution of phonemes, and in part by allophone centralization.