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Bilabial stops undergoing Surface Palatalization (SP) were analyzed in an EMMA/EPG study. Articulatorily, the point of maximal palatal contact and the labial opening movement were analyzed. The acoustic analysis pertained to stop related timing and the point of the highest F2-value. Results show (i) that SP yields a higher F2 at vowel onset and a lengthened opening gesture and (ii) that morphemeinduced palatalizations are distinguished from word initial ones and sandhi-palatalizations articulatorily and acoustically by a shorter delay of palatal target position with respect to stop production; (iii) no differences are found between ‘repalatalized’ and plain segments in case of sandhi palatalization.
The contribution of von Kempelen’s “Mechanism of Speech” to the ‘phonetic sciences‘ will be analyzed with respect to his theoretical reasoning on speech and speech production on the one hand and on the other in connection with his practical insights during his struggle in constructing a speaking machine. Whereas in his theoretical considerations von Kempelen’s view is focussed on the natural functioning of the speech organs – cf. his membraneous glottis model – in constructing his speaking machine he clearly orientates himself towards the auditory result – cf. the bag pipe model for the sound generator used for the speaking machine instead. Concerning vowel production his theoretical description remains questionable, but his practical insight that vowels and speech sounds in general are only perceived correctly in connection with their surrounding sounds – i.e. the discovery of coarticulation – is clearly a milestone in the development of the phonetic sciences: He therefore dispenses with the Kratzenstein tubes, although they might have been based on more thorough acoustic modelling. Finally, von Kempelen’s model of speech production will be discussed in relation to the discussion of the acoustic nature of vowels afterwards [Willis and Wheatstone as well as von Helmholtz and Hermann in the 19th century and Stumpf, Chiba & Kajiyama as well as Fant and Ungeheuer in the 20th century].
A model is proposed that interprets a variety of connected speech processes as resulting from prosodic modulations at different tiers of functional speech motor control along the hypo-hyper dimension [10]. The general background of the model is given by the trichotomy of A-, B- and C-prosodic phenomena [15] that together constitute the acoustic makeup of any speech utterance (with regard to their respective time domains at the uttarance/phrase level, the syllabic level and the segmental level).
In this paper the issue of the nature of the representations of the speech production task in the speaker's brain is addressed in a production-perception interaction framework. Since speech is produced to be perceived, it is hypothesized that its production is associated for the speaker with the generation of specific physical characteristics that are for the listeners the objects of speech perception. Hence, in the first part of the paper, four reference theories of speech perception are presented, in order to guide and to constrain the search for possible correlates of the speech production task in the physical space: the Acoustic Invariance Theory, the Adaptive Variability Theory, the Motor Theory and the Direct-Realist Theory. Possible interpretations of these theories in terms of representations of the speech production task are proposed and analyzed. In a second part, a few selected experimental studies are presented, which shed some light on this issue. In the conclusion, on the basis of the joint analysis of theoretical and experimental aspects presented in the paper, it is proposed that representations of the speech production task are multimodal, and that a hierarchy exists among the different modalities, the acoustic modality having the highest level of priority. It is also suggested that these representations are not associated with invariant characteristics, but with regions of the acoustic, orosensory and motor control spaces.
Many teachers of German as a second language make some statements regarding this language that mix concepts from three distinct fields: Orthography (letters), Phonetics (phones or speech sounds) and Phonology (phonemes). In this paper I attempt to shed some light on these concepts and fields. I also provide examples of such statements and make comments on them.
It has been hypothesized that sounds which are less perceptible are more likely to be altered than more salient sounds, the rationale being that the loss of information resulting from a change in a sound which is difficult to perceive is not as great as the loss resulting from a change in a more salient sound. Kohler (1990) suggested that the tendency to reduce articulatory movements is countered by perceptual and social constraints, finding that fricatives are relatively resistant to reduction in colloquial German. Kohler hypothesized that this is due to the perceptual salience of fricatives, a hypothesis which was supported by the results of a perception experiment by Hura, Lindblom, and Diehl (1992). These studies showed that the relative salience of speech sounds is relevant to explaining phonological behavior. An additional factor is the impact of different acoustic environments on the perceptibility of speech sounds. Steriade (1997) found that voicing contrasts are more common in positions where more cues to voicing are available. The P-map, proposed by Steriade (2001a, b), allows the representation of varying salience of segments in different contexts. Many researchers have posited a relationship between speech perception and phonology. The purpose of this paper is to provide experimental evidence for this relationship, drawing on the case of Turkish /h/ deletion.
Consonants exhibit more variation in their phonetic realization than is typically acknowledged, but that variation is linguistically constrained. Acoustic analysis of both read and spontaneous speech reveals that consonants are not necessarily realized with the manner of articulation they would have in careful citation form. Although the variation is wider than one would imagine, it is limited by the phoneme inventory. The phoneme inventory of the language restricts the range of variation to protect the system of phonemic contrast. That is, consonants may stray phonetically into unfilled areas of the language's sound space. Listeners are seldom consciously aware of the consonant variation, and perceive the consonants phonemically as in their citation forms. A better understanding of surface phonetic consonant variation can help make predictions in theoretical domains and advances in applied domains.