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The present study shows that though retroflex segments can be considered articulatorily marked, there are perceptual reasons why languages introduce this class into their phoneme inventory. This observation is illustrated with the diachronic developments of retroflexes in Norwegian (North- Germanic), Nyawaygi (Australian) and Minto-Nenana (Athapaskan). The developments in these three languages are modelled in a perceptually oriented phonological theory, since traditional articulatorily-based features cannot deal with such processes.
Temporal development of compensation strategies for perturbed palate shape in German /S/-production
(2006)
The palate shape of four speakers was changed by a prosthesis which either lowered the palate or retracted the alveoles. Subjects wore the prosthesis for two weeks and were recorded several times via EMA. Results of articulatory measurements show that speakers use different compensation methods at different stages of the adaptation. They lower the tongue immediately after the insertion of the prosthesis. Other compensation methods as for example lip protrusion are only acquired after longer practising periods. The results are interpreted as supporting the existence of different mappings between motor commands, vocal tract shape and auditory-acoustic target.
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.
This study investigates supralaryngeal mechanisms of the two way voicing contrast among German velar stops and the three way contrast among Korean velar stops, both in intervocalic position. Articulatory data won via electromagnetic articulography of three Korean speakers and acoustic recordings of three Korean and three German speakers are analysed. It was found that in both languages the voicing contrast is created by more than one mechanism. However, one can say that for Korean velar stops in intervocalic position stop closure duration is the most important parameter. For German it is closure voicing. The results support the phonological description proposed by Kohler (1984).
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.
Ausgehend von den Zielen des Ausspracheunterrichts wird dargestellt, dass das Verstehen und Verstandenwerden in der Fremdsprache Deutsch gut entwickelte Aussprachefertigkeiten voraussetzt. Analysen an Deutschlernenden haben gezeigt, wo die Hauptschwierigkeiten liegen, diese werden im Beitrag aufgelistet. Um den oft schwierigen Lernprozess zu unterstützen und Lernende zu motivieren und zu sensibilisieren, können im Unterricht spielerische Übungen zu verschiedenen phonetischen Themen eingesetzt werden. Im Beitrag werden die Besonderheiten spielerisch angelegter, d.h. mit Spielelementen versehener Übungen erläutert und Beispiele für solche Übungen gegeben.
Arguing against Bhat’s (1974) claim that retroflexion cannot be correlated with retraction, the present article illustrates that retroflexes are always retracted, though retraction is not claimed to be a sufficient criterion for retroflexion. The cooccurrence of retraction with retroflexion is shown to make two further implications; first, that non-velarized retroflexes do not exist, and second, that secondary palatalization of retroflexes is phonetically impossible. The process of palatalization is shown to trigger a change in the primary place of articulation to non-retroflex. Phonologically, retraction has to be represented by the feature specification [+back] for all retroflex segments.
Arguing against Bhat’s (1974) claim that retroflexion cannot be correlated with retraction, the present article illustrates that retroflexes are always retracted, though retraction is not claimed to be a sufficient criterion for retroflexion. The cooccurrence of retraction with retroflexion is shown to make two further implications; first, that non-velarized retroflexes do not exist, and second, that secondary palatalization of retroflexes is phonetically impossible. The process of palatalization is shown to trigger a change in the primary place of articulation to non-retroflex. Phonologically, retraction has to be represented by the feature specification [+back] for all retroflex segments.
Reduction in natural speech
(2009)
Natural (conversational) speech, compared to cannonical speech, is earmarked by the tremendous amount of variation that often leads to a massive change in pronunciation. Despite many attempts to explain and theorize the variability in conversational speech, its unique characteristics have not played a significant role in linguistic modeling. One of the reasons for variation in natural speech lies in a tendency of speakers to reduce speech, which may drastically alter the phonetic shape of words. Despite the massive loss of information due to reduction, listeners are often able to understand conversational speech even in the presence of background noise. This dissertation investigates two reduction processes, namely regressive place assimilation across word boundaries, and massive reduction and provides novel data from the analyses of speech corpora combined with experimental results from perception studies to reach a better understanding of how humans handle natural speech. The successes and failures of two models dealing with data from natural speech are presented: The FUL-model (Featurally Underspecified Lexicon, Lahiri & Reetz, 2002), and X-MOD (an episodic model, Johnson, 1997). Based on different assumptions, both models make different predictions for the two types of reduction processes under investigation. This dissertation explores the nature and dynamics of these processes in speech production and discusses its consequences for speech perception. More specifically, data from analyses of running speech are presented investigating the amount of reduction that occurs in naturally spoken German. Concerning production, the corpus analysis of regressive place assimilation reveals that it is not an obligatory process. At the same time, there emerges a clear asymmetry: With only very few exceptions, only [coronal] segments undergo assimilation, [labial] and [dorsal] segments usually do not. Furthermore, there seem to be cases of complete neutralization where the underlying Place of Articulation feature has undergone complete assimilation to the Place of Articulation feature of the upcoming segment. Phonetic analyses further underpin these findings. Concerning deletions and massive reductions, the results clearly indicate that phonological rules in the classical generative tradition are not able to explain the reduction patterns attested in conversational speech. Overall, the analyses of deletion and massive reduction in natural speech did not exhibit clear-cut patterns. For a more in-depth examination of reduction factors, the case of final /t/ deletion is examined by means of a new corpus constructed for this purpose. The analysis of this corpus indicates that although phonological context plays an important role on the deletion of segments (i.e. /t/), this arises in the form of tendencies, not absolute conditions. This is true for other deletion processes, too. Concerning speech perception, a crucial part for both models under investigation (X-MOD and FUL) is how listeners handle reduced speech. Five experiments investigate the way reduced speech is perceived by human listeners. Results from two experiments show that regressive place assimilations can be treated as instances of complete neutralizations by German listeners. Concerning massively reduced words, the outcome of transcription and priming experiments suggest that such words are not acceptable candidates of the intended lexical items for listeners in the absence of their proper phrasal context. Overall, the abstractionist FUL-model is found to be superior in explaining the data. While at first sight, X-MOD deals with the production data more readily, FUL provides a better fit for the perception results. Another important finding concerns the role of phonology and phonetics in general. The results presented in this dissertation make a strong case for models, such as FUL, where phonology and phonetics operate at different levels of the mental lexicon, rather than being integrated into one. The findings suggest that phonetic variation is not part of the representation in the mental lexicon.
The present study poses the question on what phonetic and phonological grounds postalveolar fricatives in Polish can be analyzed as retroflex and whether postalveolar fricatives in other Slavic languages are retroflex as well. Velarization and incompatibility with front vowels are introduced as articulatory criteria for retroflexion, based on crosslinguistic data. According to these criteria, Polish and Russian have retroflex fricatives, whereas Bulgarian and Czech do not. In a phonological representation of these Slavic retroflexes, the necessity of perceptual features is shown. Lastly, it is illustrated that palatalization of retroflex fricatives both in Slavic languages and more generally causes a phonetic and phonological change to a non-retroflex sound.
Das Wogeo ist eine austronesische Sprache, die von etwa 1500 Menschen auf den Inseln Vokeo […] und Koil […] gesprochen wird. Da es sich beim Wogeo um eine bislang größtenteils unbeschriebene Sprache handelt, sind zum Verständnis der Ausführungen im Hauptteil dieser Arbeit sowie zur allgemeinen Orientierung einige einleitende Erklärungen nötig. Diese sind von unterschiedlicher Art: Zunächst wird die natürliche Umgebung der beiden Inseln, auf denen die Sprache gesprochen wird, kurz dargestellt. Dann werden die für das Verständnis der soziolinguistischen Lage der Sprache relevanten Aspekte beleuchtet. Zur Orientierung folgt ein kurzer Abriß der Position des Wogeo innerhalb der austronesischen Sprachfamilie. Schließlich leitet eine Darstellung des bisherigen Forschungsstandes über das Wogeo zum Hauptteil der Arbeit über.
On the basis of perceptual experiments we show that alveolo-palatal fricatives and palatalized post-alveolars are two separate sounds which are distinguished not only by Polish native speakers but also by German ones. This claim is partly attested by centre of gravity measurements of the two sibilants. In this paper we revise the claim made by Halle & Stevens [1] and Maddieson & Ladefoged [2] that the Polish alveolo-palatal fricatives [˛, ¸] are palatalized postalveolars [SJ, ZJ]. On the basis of perceptual experiments we show that alveolo-palatal fricatives and palatalized post-alveolars are two separate sounds which are distinguished not only by Polish native speakers but also by German ones. This claim is partly attested by centre of gravity measurements of the two sibilants.
Data on lingual movement, dorsopalatal contact and F2 frequency presented in previous papers of ours (Recasens, 2002; Recasens and Pallarès, 2001; Recasens, Pallarès and Fontdevila, 1997) suggest that the degree of articulatory constraint (DAC) model accounts to a large extent for the extent and direction of tongue dorsum coarticulation in VCV and CC sequences. A goal of this investigation is to verify the predictions of this model with respect to jaw V-to-V effects in VCV sequences using articulatory movement data collected with electromagnetic articulometry (EMA).
Table of Contents:
T. A. Hall (Indiana University): English syllabification as the interaction of markedness constraints
Antony D. Green: Opacity in Tiberian Hebrew: Morphology, not phonology
Sabine Zerbian (ZAS Berlin): Phonological Phrases in Xhosa (Southern Bantu)
Laura J. Downing (ZAS Berlin): What African Languages Tell Us About Accent Typology
Marzena Zygis (ZAS Berlin): (Un)markedness of trills: the case of Slavic r-palatalisation
Laura J. Downing (ZAS Berlin), Al Mtenje (University of Malawi), Bernd Pompino-Marschall (Humboldt-Universitat Berlin): Prosody and Information Structure in Chichewa
T. A. Hall (Indiana University). Silke Hamann (ZAS Berlin), Marzena Zygis (ZAS Berlin): The phonetics of stop assibilation
Christian Geng (ZAS Berlin), Christine Mooshammer (Universitat Kiel): The Hungarian palatal stop: phonological considerations and phonetic data
This paper presents the results of Open Quotient measurements in EGG signals of young (18 to 30 year old) and elderly (59 to 82 year old) male and female speakers. The paper further presents quantitative results on the relation between the OQ and the perception of a speaker's age. Higgins & Saxman (1991) found a decreased OQEGG with increasing age for females, whereas the OQEGG in sustained vowel material increased for males as the speakers age increased. In Linville (2002), however, the spectral amplitudes in the region of F0 (obtained by LTAS-measurements of read speech material) increased with increasing age independent of gender; this could be interpreted indirectly as an increasing OQ. We measured the OQEGG not only for sustained vowels, but also in vowels taken from isolated words. In order to analyse the relation between breathiness in terms of an increased OQ and the mean perceived age per stimulus a perception test was carried out in which listeners were asked to estimate speaker's age based on sustained /a/-vowel stimuli varying in vocal effort (soft - normal - loud) during production. The results indicated the following: (i) The decreased OQ for elderly females originally found by Higgins & Saxman is not apparent in our data for sustained /a/-vowels. For our female speakers no significant difference between the OQ of young and old speakers was found; for elderly males, however, we also found an increasing OQ with increasing age.(ii) In addition, a statistically significant increased OQEGG occurs for the group of the elderly males for the vowels from the word material. (iii) Our results show a strong positive relation between perceived age and OQ in male voices. Regarding (i) and (ii), at least the male speaker's voice becomes more breathy as age increases. Considering (iii), increased breathiness may contribute to the listener’s perception of increased age.
A fundamental question in the study of speech is about the invariance of the ultimate percepts, or features. The present paper gives an overview of the noninvariance problem and offers some hints towards a solution. Examination of various data on place and voicing perception suggests the following points. Features correspond to natural boundaries between sounds, which are included in the infant's predispositions for speech perception. Adult percepts arise from couplings and contextual interactions between features. Both couplings and interactions contribute to invariance. But this is at the expense of profound qualitative changes in perceptual boundaries implying that features are neither independently nor invariantly perceived. The question then is to understand the principles which guide feature couplings and interactions during perceptual development. The answer might reside in the fact that: (1) adult boundaries converge to a single point of the perceptual space, suggesting a context-free central reference; (2) this point corresponds to the neutral vocoïd, suggesting the reference is related to production; (3) at this point perceptual boundaries correspond to the natural ones, suggesting the reference is anchored in predispositions for feature perception. In sum, perceptual invariance seems to be grounded on a radial representation of the vocal tract around a singular point at which boundaries are context-fee, natural and coincide with the neutral vocoïd.