Acoustic classification of coronal stops of Eastern Punjabi.

Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language which contrasts a rich set of coronal stops at dental and retroflex places of articulation across three laryngeal configurations. Moreover, all these stops occur contrastively in various positions (word-initially, -medially, and -finally). The goal of this study is to investigate how various coronal place and laryngeal contrasts are distinguished acoustically both within and across word positions. A number of temporal and spectral correlates were examined in data from 13 speakers of Eastern Punjabi: Voice Onset Time, release and closure durations, fundamental frequency, F1-F3 formants, spectral center of gravity and standard deviation, H1*-H2*, and cepstral peak prominence. The findings indicated that higher formants and spectral measures were most important for the classification of place contrasts across word positions, whereas laryngeal contrasts were reliably distinguished by durational and voice quality measures. Word-medially and -finally, F2 and F3 of the preceding vowels played a key role in distinguishing the dental and retroflex stops, while spectral noise measures were more important word-initially. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of factors involved in the maintenance of typologically rare and phonetically complex sets of place and laryngeal contrasts in the coronal stops of Indo-Aryan languages.

Articulatory settings and L2 English coronal consonants.

Background/aims: We explore the potential contribution of Articulatory Settings (AS) theory to L2 speech production research, testing the hypothesis that L2 segmental speech learning should involve a gradual, overall shift in both place and constriction degree, simultaneously affecting all consonants of a series as opposed to a set of parallel but unrelated changes in learners' production of individual sounds. Methods: We conducted an electropalatography study of four francophone learners' production of French and English word-initial and -medial /t d s z n l/ via carrier-sentence reading tasks. Results: L1-L2 differences in tongue shape are more common than those in constriction location, first and foremost for sonorants, and, thus, our results are not completely consistent with AS theory's claims. Conclusions: AS theory provides a potentially rich framework for exploring the L2 speech learning of consonantal phenomena including low-level L1-L2 differences in place of articulation. We propose that the observed lack of systematic between-language articulatory differences could be attributed to a number of factors to be explored in future research, such as the targeting of voicing and manner differences before the adjustment of small place differences as well as individual patterns of entrenchment of L1 articulatory routines.

Lowered F2 observed in uvular rhotics involves a tongue root gesture: Evidence from Upper Sorbian.

Upper Sorbian, an endangered West Slavic language spoken in Germany, is unusual among Slavic languages in having a uvular rhotic /ʀ/. This paper focuses on the gestural configuration and coarticulatory resistance of the uvular rhotic and explores the relation between the articulation and acoustics of this sound. Ultrasound tongue imaging data were collected from six native speakers of Upper Sorbian, who produced /ʀ/ in word-initial, intervocalic, and word-final positions next to the vowels /e a o/. Smoothing Spline ANOVAs were used to compare tongue contours within and across phonetic contexts. Differences in the tongue root and tongue body position were also calculated across environments and compared using a measure of coarticulatory resistance. The results revealed that the sound was produced with considerable tongue root retraction and a uvular-pharyngeal tongue body constriction. The tongue root had a high resistance to coarticulatory effects, while the tongue body did not. The results suggest that the tongue root retraction into the pharyngeal cavity results in observed high F1 and low F2 effects associated with unpalatalized rhotic consonants and may explain perceptual similarity between uvular and alveolar rhotics. Articulatory constraints on the tongue root also account for phonotactic distribution of the rhotics across languages.

An ultrasound and formant study of manner contrasts at four coronal places of articulation.

This study examines consonant manner of articulation at four coronal places of articulation, using ultrasound and formant analyses of the Australian language Arrernte. Stop, nasal, and lateral articulations are examined at the dental, alveolar, retroflex, and alveo-palatal places of articulation: /t̪ n̪ l̪ / vs /t n l/ vs /ʈɳɭ/ vs /c ɲ ʎ/. Ultrasound data clearly show a more retracted tongue root for the lateral, and a more advanced tongue root for the nasal, as compared to the stop. However, the magnitude of the differences is much greater for the stop∼lateral contrast than for the stop∼nasal contrast. Acoustic results show clear effects on F1 in the adjacent vowels, in particular the preceding vowel, with F1 lower adjacent to nasals and higher adjacent to laterals, as compared to stops. Correlations between the articulatory and acoustic data are particularly strong for this formant. However, the retroflex place of articulation shows effects according to manner for higher formants as well, suggesting that a better understanding of retroflex acoustics for different manners of articulation is required. The study also suggests that articulatory symmetry and gestural economy are affected by the size of the phonemic inventory.

Acoustics of Kalasha laterals.

Kalasha, a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language spoken in a remote mountainous region of Pakistan, is relatively unusual among languages of the region as it has lateral approximants contrasting in secondary articulation-velarization and palatalization (/ɫ/ vs /lʲ/). Given the paucity of previous phonetic work on the language and some discrepancies between descriptive accounts, the nature of the Kalasha lateral contrast remains poorly understood. This paper presents an analysis of fieldwork recordings with laterals produced by 14 Kalasha speakers in a variety of lexical items and phonetic contexts. Acoustic analysis of formants measured during the lateral closure revealed that the contrast was most clearly distinguished by F2 (as well as by F2-F1 difference), which was considerably higher for /lʲ/ than for /ɫ/. This confirms that the two laterals are primarily distinguished by secondary articulation and not by retroflexion, which is otherwise robustly represented in the language inventory. The laterals showed no positional differences but did show considerable fronting (higher F2) next to front vowels. Some inter-speaker variation was observed in the realization of /ɫ/, which was produced with little or no velarization by older speakers. This is indicative of a change in progress, resulting in an overall enhancement of an otherwise auditorily vulnerable contrast.

Manner and place differences in Kannada coronal consonants: Articulatory and acoustic results.

This study investigated articulatory differences in the realization of Kannada coronal consonants of the same place but different manner of articulation. This was done by examining tongue positions and acoustic formant transitions for dentals and retroflexes of three manners of articulation: stops, nasals, and laterals. Ultrasound imaging data collected from ten speakers of the language revealed that the tongue body/root was more forward for the nasal manner of articulation compared to stop and lateral consonants of the same place of articulation. The dental nasal and lateral were also produced with a higher front part of the tongue compared to the dental stop. As a result, the place contrast was greater in magnitude for the stops (being the prototypical dental vs retroflex) than for the nasals and laterals (being apparently alveolar vs retroflex). Acoustic formant transition differences were found to reflect some of the articulatory differences, while also providing evidence for the more dynamic articulation of nasal and lateral retroflexes. Overall, the results of the study shed light on factors underlying manner requirements (aerodynamic or physiological) and how the factors interact with principles of gestural economy/symmetry, providing an empirical baseline for further cross-language investigations and articulation-to-acoustics modeling.

Acoustic Realization and Inventory Size: Kannada and Malayalam Alveolar/Retroflex Laterals and /É»/.

This study examines formant and spectral moment data for the apical and retroflex lateral sounds /l É­/ of the Dravidian languages Kannada and Malayalam, together with the rhotic /É»/ of Malayalam. Data are presented for 10 male speakers of each language. We find that the first spectral moment is lower for retroflex laterals than for alveolar laterals, and lower for the rhotic /É»/ of Malayalam than for the retroflex lateral in the same language. Differences emerge when the retroflex lateral of Kannada is compared with the same sound in Malayalam. For both languages, F1 is higher and F3 and F4 are lower for the retroflex /É­/ than for the alveolar /l/. However, F2 is higher for the retroflex than for the alveolar sound in Kannada, but lower in Malayalam. This difference is also reflected in differences in the second spectral moment between the languages. It is suggested that since proximity of F2 and F3 is known to be a defining feature of the rhotic /É»/ in Malayalam, principles of phonetic dispersion apply to keep F2 from becoming too close to F3 for the retroflex lateral /É­/ of Malayalam, but not for the same sound in Kannada.

The difficulty of articulatory complexity.

In our commentary, we offer some support for the view that frequency rather than a language-independent definition of complexity is a main factor determining speech production in healthy adults. We further discuss the limits of defining articulatory complexity based on transcription data. If we want to gauge the impact of substantive constraints on speech production, context-specific production dynamics should be considered, as has been underscored by articulatory-acoustic work on speech errors.

Articulation and acoustics of Kannada affricates: A case of geminate /ʧ/.

Affricates have been observed to be problematic in phonological acquisition and disordered speech across languages, due to their relatively complex spatial and temporal articulatory patterns. Remediation of difficulties in the production of affricates requires understanding of how these sounds are typically produced. This study presents the first systematic articulatory and acoustic investigation of voiceless geminate affricate /ʧ/ in Kannada (a Dravidian language), compared to the palatal glide and the voiceless dental stop. Ultrasound data from 10 normal speakers from Mysore, India revealed that /ʧ/ is produced with the tongue shape intermediate between the palatal glide and the dental stop, and with the laminal constriction at the alveolar ridge. The observed articulatory differences are reflected in acoustic formant patterns of vowel transitions and stop/affricate bursts. Altogether, the results show that the Kannada consonant in question is an alveolopalatal affricate, supporting some of the previous descriptive phonetic accounts of the language and raising questions for further research on normal and disordered speech. The results and our survey of literature also suggest that affricates in South Asian languages tend to be phonetically variable and historically unstable compared to other consonant articulations.

Articulatory Insights into the L2 Acquisition of English-/l/ Allophony.

In many English varieties, /l/ is produced differently in onsets and codas. Compared with "light" syllable-initial realizations, "dark" syllable-final variants involve reduced tongue tip-alveolar ridge contact and a raised/retracted tongue dorsum. We investigate whether native French and Spanish speakers whose L1 lacks such positionally conditioned variation can acquire English-/l/ allophony, testing the hypotheses that (1) the allophonic pattern will be acquired by both groups but (2) learners will differ from native speakers in their phonetic implementation, particularly in codas; and (3) French-speaking learners will outperform their Spanish-speaking counterparts. The production of syllable-initial and -final /l/ (singletons and clusters) in words read in isolation and a carrier sentence by 4 French- and 3 Spanish-speaking learners as well as three native English speakers was analyzed via electropalatography and acoustic analysis. While some learners produced distinct onset and coda variants and all learners had moved away to some extent from their L1 production, they differed from the native speakers in certain ways. Moreover, between- and within-group variability was observed including greater target-like anterior and posterior contact reduction in codas in the L1 French versus L1 Spanish group and generally higher F2 values in both learner groups compared with their native speaker peers. A comparison of the learners' L1 and L2 production revealed L1-based patterns of positional reduction of the tongue tip and dorsum gestures. We conclude by addressing the contributions of EPG to our understanding of L2 speech and highlight avenues for future research including the study of both linguistic and speaker variables.

Perception of place and secondary articulation contrasts in different syllable positions: language-particular and language-independent asymmetries.

This study investigated the perception of place and secondary articulation contrasts in different syllable positions by Russian and Japanese listeners. The consonants involved in the study were the Russian plain (velarized) and palatalized labial and coronal voiceless stops in syllable-initial and syllable-final positions at word boundaries. The findings revealed substantial asymmetries in the perception of the contrasts by both groups of listeners: With respect to positions, consonants in syllable-final position were characterized by lower correct identification rates and (less consistently) longer reaction time than the same consonants in syllable-initial position. Positional syllable position differences were accompanied by differences in segment-specific contexts. With respect to individual consonants, the palatalized labial /p(j)/ and the plain coronal /t/ showed a lower correct identification rate and smaller perceptual distance than the plain labial /p/ and the palatalized coronal /t(j)/. The results also showed some differences between Russian and Japanese listeners in the perception of the contrast. These differences can be explained by phonotactic differences between the two languages, as well as by differences in the phonetic realizations of the consonants. The results of the study provide evidence for the role of both universal and language-particular factors in speech perception.

Testing licensing by cue: a case of Russian palatalized coronals.

The hypothesis 'licensing by cue' by Steriade holds that phonological contrasts are maintained in environments that provide better acoustic cues to the contrasts and are neutralized in environments that provide poorer acoustic cues or no cues. This paper tests the hypothesis by examining the distribution of a phonological contrast--the Russian plain/palatalized coronal stops /t/ and /tj/ in various syllable-final contexts. The results of a series of acoustic and perceptual experiments presented in this paper provide some support for the hypothesis: the relative salience of releases in different word boundary contexts (_#k > _#n, _#s) correlates strongly with the general patterns of neutralization of the contrast in similar word-internal contexts (_k > _n, _s) in Russian and other related languages. At the same time, the relative salience of VC transitions in different vowel contexts (a_ > u_ > i_) has apparently little to do with attested patterns of neutralization. The results suggest that some perceptual cues are phonologically more relevant than others, providing evidence for interactions between phonetics and phonology more complex than predicted by the hypothesis.