Acoustic and Kinematic Correlates of Heterosyllabicity in Different Phonological Contexts

2022 ◽  
pp. 002383092110657
Author(s):  
Chiara Celata ◽  
Chiara Meluzzi ◽  
Chiara Bertini
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Structure Data ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Phonological Contrast ◽  
Consonant Gemination ◽  
Production Dynamics ◽  
Kinematic Properties

We investigate the temporal and kinematic properties of consonant gemination and heterosyllabic clusters as opposed to singletons and tautosyllabic clusters in Italian. The data show that the singleton versus geminate contrast is conveyed by specific kinematic properties in addition to systematic durational differences in both the consonantal and vocalic intervals; by contrast, tautosyllabic and heterosyllabic clusters differ significantly for the duration of the consonantal interval but do not vary systematically with respect to the vocalic interval and cannot be consistently differentiated at the kinematic level. We conclude that systematic variations in acoustic vowel duration and the kinematics of tongue tip gestures represent the phonetic correlates of the segmental phonological contrast between short and long consonants, rather than of syllable structure. Data are only partly consistent with the predictions of both moraic and gesture-based models of the syllable about the effects of syllable structure on speech production dynamics and call for a more gradient view of syllabification.

Interarticulator Coordination in Dysarthria

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 1247-1261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Weismer ◽  
Yana Yunusova ◽  
John R. Westbury
Keyword(s):  
Parkinson’S Disease ◽  
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Global Synchronization ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Acoustic Target ◽  
Temporal Location ◽  
Lateral Sclerosis

Articulatory discoordination is often said to be an important feature of the speech production disorder in dysarthria, but little experimental work has been done to identify and specify the coordination difficulties. The present study evaluated the coordination of labial and lingual gestures for /u/ production in persons with Parkinson's disease (PD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and in control participants. Both tongue backing/raising and reduction of the area enclosed by the lips can produce the characteristic low F2 of /u/. The timing of these articulatory gestures with respect to the acoustic target of a low F2 was inferred from X-ray microbeam data. Pellet motions of the tongue dorsum and lips revealed the timing of the lingual and labial gestures to be strongly linked together (synchronized), predictive of the temporal location of the lowest F2 within the vocalic nucleus, and scaled proportionately to the overall vowel duration in control participants. Somewhat surprisingly, essentially the same findings were obtained in the speakers with dysarthria. These relationships were noisier among the speakers with dysarthria, but the global synchronization patterns applied to all 3 groups. Further analyses revealed the synchronization to be less well defined and more variable across speakers with ALS, as compared to speakers with PD and the controls. Results are discussed relative to concepts of coordination in dysarthria.

Characteristics of Speech Production after Tracheoesophageal Puncture

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Robbins ◽  
John Christensen ◽  
Gail Kempster
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Voice Production ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Tracheoesophageal Puncture ◽  
Offset Time

Voice onset time (VOT) and vowel duration characteristics of speakers following the Singer-Blom technique of tracheoesophageal puncture (1980) were compared to those of traditional esophageal and laryngeal speakers. Fifteen subjects in each of the three speaker groups produced the words /pik/, /kup/, and /kup/ in a carrier phrase while audio recordings were obtained. Broadband spectrograms were made of the consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) utterances and vowel duration and VOT were measured. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures revealed that the tracheoesophageal speakers produced significantly shorter VOTs and longer vowel durations than the laryngeal speakers. However, the longer vowel durations for the traeheoesophageal speakers were not completely accounted for by the shorter VOTs found for that group. Spectrographic examination suggests that delayed voice offset time for the tracheoesophageal speakers also contributes to their longer vowel durations. Overall findings indicate that the physical characteristics and motor control properties of the neoglottis, even when driven by pulmonary air as in tracheoesophageal speakers, exert a major influence on alaryngeal voice production.

Duration of syllable nuclei in Spanish

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-280
Author(s):  
Alexander C. Aldrich ◽  
Miquel Simonet
Keyword(s):  
Research Question ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Consonant Cluster ◽  
Articulatory Phonology ◽  
Using Data

AbstractIn many languages, vowel duration is modulated by syllable structure — a phenomenon known asvowel compression— so that vowels are shorter in syllables with more segments than in syllables with fewer segments. Most instrumental evidence to date has reported an effect, in many languages, of the presence (and complexity) of a coda, and some studies have also documented effects of the presence (and complexity) of an onset. However, no prior studies on Spanish vowel duration have captured any effects of syllable structure. Using data from nine speakers and controlled speech materials, the present study addresses the following research question: Does syllable structure modulate vowel duration? The findings are as follows: (a) Relative to simplex onsets (those with a singleton consonant), complex onsets (those with a consonant cluster) trigger vowel compression; and (b) neither simplex nor complex codas consistently drive vowel compression — i.e. codas do not systematically affect vowel duration. Together with the facts for other languages, our findings support a view according to which syllable structure — in particular,onsetcomplexity — modulates acoustic vowel duration. The study discusses the theoretical implications of this finding, which are argued to be in line with some of the principles of the Articulatory Phonology framework or, alternatively, suggest that codas should not be considered part of the articulatory syllable.

scholarly journals Aspects of the Syntax of Behavior: Syllable Structure and Speech Rate

1974 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 642-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald G. Mackay
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Speech Errors ◽  
Maximal Rate ◽  
Serial Production ◽  
Poor Predictor ◽  
Syllable Duration ◽  
Rate Of Speech

This paper shows that maximal rate of speech varies as a function of syllable structure. For example, CCV syllables such as [sku] and CVC syllables such as [kus] are produced faster than VCC syllables such as [usk] when subjects repeat these syllables as fast as possible. Spectrographic analyses indicated that this difference in syllable duration was not confined to any one portion of the syllables: the vowel, the consonants and even the interval between syllable repetitions was longer for VCC syllables than for CVC and CCV syllables. These and other findings could not be explained in terms of word frequency, transition frequency of adjacent phonemes, or coarticulation between segments. Moreover, number of phonemes was a poor predictor of maximal rate for a wide variety of syllable structures, since VCC structures such as [ulk] were produced slower than phonemically longer CCCV structures such as [sklu], and V structures such as [a] were produced no faster than phonemically longer CV structures such as [ga]. These findings could not be explained by traditional models of speech production or articulatory difficulty but supported a complexity metric derived from a recently proposed theory of the serial production of syllables. This theory was also shown to be consistent with the special status of CV syllables suggested by Jakobson as well as certain aspects of speech errors, tongue-twisters and word games such as Double Dutch.

More on slips and syllable structure

Phonology ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Structural Properties ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Phonological Structure ◽  
Present Context ◽  
Slips Of The Tongue

Shattuck-Hufnagel (1986) (henceforth S-H), in discussing the significance of ‘slips of the tongue’ for a model of processing, is particularly concerned with attempting to establish to what extent some of the constructs posited by phonologists in their characterisations of phonological structure can be shown to have a role in the planning of speech production. On the basis of the ‘MIT corpus’ of errors (collected by Merrill Garrett and herself), particularly those involving vowels, she argues for a role in planning for aspects of syllable structure, placement of lexical stress, and distinctions and dimensions such as those commonly captured by feature notations. My concern here is with some further aspects of syllable structure: I shall suggest that her data provide support for even more detailed structural properties than are proposed by S-H herself; indeed, that one uncertainty in assessing the significance of the data can be resolved by an independently motivated analysis of subsyllabic structure. I shall not repeat here the details of the classification of errors on which S-H's discussion is based (1986: §1); what is significant in the present context is that errors of various types provide a motivation for particular subsyllabic units.

scholarly journals Opposing forces on acoustic duration

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Tucker ◽  
Michelle Sims ◽  
R. H. Baayen
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Discrimination Learning ◽  
American English ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Irregular Verbs ◽  
Lexical Density ◽  
Redundancy Hypothesis

The present paper investigates the influence of opposing lexical forces on speech production using the duration of the stem vowel of regular and irregular verbs as attested in the Buckeye corpus of conversational North-American English. We compared two sets of predictors, reflecting two different approaches to speechproduction, one based on competition between word forms, the other based on principles of discrimination learning. Classical measures in word form competition theories such as word frequency, lexical density, and gang size (types of vocalic alternation) were predictive of stem vowel duration. However, more precise predic-tions were obtained using measures derived from a two-layer network model trained on the Buckeye corpus. Measures representing strong bottom-up support predicted longer vowel durations. Conversely, measures reflecting uncertainty predicted shorter vowel durations, including a measure of the verb’s semantic density. The learning-based model also suggests that it is not a verb’s frequency as such that gives rise to shorter vowel duration, but rather a verb’s collocational diversity. Results are discussed with reference to the Smooth Signal Redundancy Hypothesis and the Paradigmatic Signal Enhancement Hypothesis.

Incomplete neutralization in African American English: The case of final consonant voicing

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Farrington
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
African American English ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Phonological Contrast ◽  
Glottal Stop ◽  
Conversational Interviews ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Consonant Voicing

AbstractIn many varieties of African American English (AAE), glottal stop replacement and deletion of word-final /t/ and /d/ results in consonant neutralization, while the underlying voicing distinction may be maintained by other cues, such as vowel duration. Here, I examine the relationship between vowel duration, final glottal stop replacement, and deletion of word-final /t, d/ to determine whether the phonological contrast of consonant voicing is maintained through duration of the preceding vowel. Data come from conversational interviews of AAE speakers in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington, DC. Results indicate that glottalization and deletion of word-final /t/ and /d/ are widespread across the speakers in the analysis. Additionally, the duration of vowels is significantly longer before underlying /d/ than /t/ for consonant neutralized contexts, thus showing that duration, normally a secondary cue to final voicing, may be becoming a primary cue in AAE.

Effects of syllable structure in aphasic errors: Implications for a new model of speech production

2011 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Romani ◽  
Claudia Galluzzi ◽  
Ivana Bureca ◽  
Andrew Olson
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
New Model

Learning the phonetic cues to the voiced-voiceless distinction: a comparison of child and adult speech perception

1980 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mel Greenlee
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Phonological Contrast ◽  
Control Set ◽  
Phonetic Cues

ABSTRACTThe present study explored children's perceptual capabilities with regard to the temporal acoustic cue of differential vowel duration, comparing children's perceptual identifications to those of adults. Three-year-old children, six-year-old children, and adults participated in two experiments, in which they were asked to identify (as voiced or voiceless) CVC words with uniformly voiceless final obstruents, but in which vowel duration was systematically varied. Children were also asked to identify a set of CONTROL stimuli, in which both closure voicing and vowel duration differences were present. Results indicate that both subject age and vowel duration of the TEST stimuli significantly affect identification responses. Adults and six-year olds evidence perceptual cross-over in their judgements for the TEST stimuli, while three-year-olds do not seem to change their identifications, regardless of variations in vowel duration. However, for both groups of children, the accuracy of identifications was greater for originally voiced stimuli on the CONTROL set of words, in which more than one potential cue to the voicing distinction was present. These results suggest that there is a complex and somewhat paradoxical relationship between developing production and perception which deserves further research. Children may consistently produce a phonetic difference (vowel duration) which they are unable to use as the SOLE perceptual cue for a phonological contrast.

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