Journal of Phonetics最新文献

{"title":"Sound change in Western Andalusian Spanish: Investigation into the actuation and propagation of post-aspiration","authors":"Nicholas Henriksen ,&nbsp;Amber Galvano ,&nbsp;Micha Fischer","doi":"10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101238","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study investigates the actuation and propagation of sound change in Western Andalusian Spanish (WAS) by examining the change from pre- to post-aspiration in intervocalic /s/ + voiceless stop sequences (i.e., /sp st sk/). We collected read-speech data from 30 WAS speakers and 30 comparison speakers of North-Central Peninsular Spanish (NCPS). The results show that the shift toward post-aspiration is most advanced in /st/-words, as compared to /sp/- and /sk/-words, which we take as evidence that actuation likely occurred in the coronal context. We additionally demonstrate how post-aspiration is integrating into the wider WAS sound system: (i) post-aspirated stops undergo closure voicing in a fashion akin to plain stops; and (ii) the post-aspirated pattern is now emerging in phonological environments that historically lacked coda-/s/, namely in the stop + /t/ context. An important contribution of this study concerns the likely role played by the coronal context (i.e., /st/-words) during both the actuation and propagation stages of the sound change. We situate the findings within frameworks suggesting that actuation and propagation are systematically connected phases of sound change rather than wholly independent processes.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51397,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Phonetics","volume":"98 ","pages":"Article 101238"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49754731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prominence and intonation in Singapore English","authors":"Adam J. Chong ,&nbsp;James S. German","doi":"10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101240","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Previous work on Singapore English prosody has focused largely on establishing the acoustic correlates of lexical stress and examining where the language falls within a rhythm-class typology. Little attention, however, has been paid to how lexical prominence, if present, interacts with phrasal prominence. In this study, we examine the extent to which f0 realizations vary across lexical items with differing stress patterns, while taking into account that prosodic phrasing requirements necessitate an f0 rise to the phrase-final syllable. We show that across target types of varying stress placement, syllable length, and constituency, f0 realizations are highly consistent, involving a rise from the start of the target word or phrase which culminates with a peak on the phrase-final syllable. The location of lexical prominence is the primary influence on the scaling of f0 across the entire target, with stress-initial targets having a higher mean f0. Exploratory analysis of duration and intensity measures further corroborates the prominence-lending nature of the phrase-final syllable, with some evidence for marking of prominence on non-final lexically stressed syllables. The findings support the primarily post-lexical role that f0 plays in marking phrase edges, instead of lexical heads, in Singapore English, in line with a previously proposed AM model of Singapore English intonation. The implications of these findings for the study of prosodic typology and sociolinguistic variation in Singapore English are also discussed.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51397,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Phonetics","volume":"98 ","pages":"Article 101240"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49754240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Phonetic differences between nouns and verbs in their typical syntactic positions in a tonal language: Evidence from disyllabic noun–verb ambiguous words in Standard Mandarin Chinese","authors":"Qibin Ran ,&nbsp;Kai Gao ,&nbsp;Yuzhu Liang ,&nbsp;Quansheng Xia ,&nbsp;Søren Wichmann","doi":"10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101241","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study investigates how word categories, namely noun and verb, influence acoustic realizations (duration, F0, intensity) in Standard Mandarin Chinese, a language having phonemically distinctive tones and a simple morphological system. Noun-verb ambiguous words were selected and presented in the final positions of typical syntactic contexts in order to avoid the interference of prosodic boundary, syntactic complexity, contextual predictability, tonal environment, F0 range and syllable properties (consonant, vowel, tone, syllable length). Linear mixed models were fitted to duration, and generative additive mixed models were fitted to F0 and intensity. The results showed that phonetic differences between nouns and verbs were still evident in duration, F0 and intensity after lexical frequency, speech rate and some other related factors were taken into consideration in the models. The second syllables of nouns were longer than those of verbs, and both syllables of nouns were higher in F0 and greater in intensity than those of verbs. Since the prosodic boundary, frequency and other factors were controlled for, the phonetic differences between nouns and verbs might be attributed to their differences in information load and number of syllables. This study provided evidence that phonetic differences between nouns and verbs might be driven by the grammatical classes themselves and is not an epiphenomenon of other processes.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51397,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Phonetics","volume":"98 ","pages":"Article 101241"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49754239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The change in breathy voice after tone split: A production study of Suzhou Wu Chinese","authors":"Chunyu Ge ,&nbsp;Wenwei Xu ,&nbsp;Wentao Gu ,&nbsp;Peggy Pik Ki Mok","doi":"10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101239","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In some languages, breathy voice plays a pivotal role in tone split. After tone split, breathy voice can undergo further changes. Suzhou Wu Chinese used to have a voicing contrast in initial obstruents, which has transphonologized to a tone contrast and resulted in a two-way tone split, with breathy voice in the low register tones. This study investigates the change in breathy voice after the tone split in Suzhou Wu with apparent-time data from speakers from three age groups. Simultaneous audio and electroglottographic recordings were collected. Principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis conducted on the acoustic measurements indicate that breathy voice is used less by younger speakers. Generalized Additive Mixed Models were conducted to reveal the changes in breathy voice during the time course of the vowel with regard to different low register tones. It is also found that T2 and T8 are undergoing a decrease in breathy voice with tone changes, but breathy voice is decreasing without tone change in T6. Younger female speakers are ahead of younger male speakers in the decrease in breathy voice. This paper provides a valuable investigation of the change in breathy voice after tone split and contributes to our understanding of the development of phonation types.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51397,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Phonetics","volume":"98 ","pages":"Article 101239"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49754734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Perceptions of laboratory animal veterinarians regarding institutional transparency.","authors":"Michael W Brunt, Daniel M Weary","doi":"10.1017/awf.2023.27","DOIUrl":"10.1017/awf.2023.27","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Institutions using animals for research typically have a veterinarian who is responsible for the veterinary care programme and compliance with regulatory obligations. These veterinarians operate at the interface between the institution's animal research programme and senior management. Veterinarians have strong public trust and are well positioned to share information about animals used for scientific purposes, but their perspectives on sharing information with the public are not well documented and their perceptions of transparency may influence how institutional policies are developed and applied. The objective of our study was to analyse the perceptions of institutional transparency among laboratory animal veterinarians working at different universities. Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were used to describe perceptions of 16 attending veterinarians relating to animal research transparency. Three themes were drawn from the interviews: (i) reflections on transparency; (ii) reflections on culture; and (iii) reflections on self. Veterinarians reflected on their personal priorities regarding transparency and when combined with barriers to change within the institutions, sometimes resulted in reported inaction. For example, sometimes veterinarians chose not to pursue available opportunities for change at seemingly willing universities, while others had their initiatives for change blocked by more senior administrators. The sharing of information regarding the animals used for scientific purposes varied in how it was conceptualised by attending veterinarians: (i) true transparency; communication of information for the sake of openness; (ii) strategic transparency; attempt to educate people about animal research because then they will support it; (iii) agenda-driven transparency; selective release of positive stories to direct public opinion; and (iv) fearful non-transparency; not communicating any information for fear of negative opposition to animal research. Transparency was not perceived as an institutional priority by many of the veterinarians and a cohesive action plan to increase transparency that involves multiple universities was identified as a promising avenue to overcome existing barriers.</p>","PeriodicalId":51397,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Phonetics","volume":"10 1","pages":"e32"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10936364/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77894212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Same vowels but different contrasts: Mandarin listeners’ perception of English /ei/-/iː/ in unfamiliar phonotactic contexts","authors":"Yizhou Wang ,&nbsp;Rikke L. Bundgaard-Nielsen ,&nbsp;Brett J. Baker ,&nbsp;Olga Maxwell","doi":"10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101221","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The study presented here examines how adult L2 listeners’ L1 phonotactics interferes with L2 vowel perception in different consonantal contexts. We examined Mandarin listeners’ perception of the English /ei/-/iː/ vowel contrast in three onset consonantal contexts, /p f w/, which represent different phonotactic scenarios with respect to the permissibility of Mandarin phonology. L1 Mandarin listeners (<em>N</em> = 42) completed a series of three tasks: a categorisation task, a vowel identification task, and an AXB discrimination task. The results show that English /ei/-/iː/ are perceived as highly contrastive in the /p/ context because both /pei/ and /piː/ constitute a licit sequence in Mandarin phonology. However, participants experience substantial /ei/-/iː/ category confusion in the /f/ and /w/ contexts, where Mandarin listeners repair perceptually by modifying the vowel quality in illicit (unattested) consonant–vowel sequences, i.e., */fiː/ → /fei/ and */wiː/ → /wei/. Further exploratory analyses indicate that L2 listeners’ vowel perception in unfamiliar phonotactic contexts is associated with their target language experience, typically indicated by their L2 vocabulary size. The findings thus suggest that the acquisition of novel phonotactic regularities is tied to increased experience with the L2 lexicon.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51397,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Phonetics","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101221"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49816842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The final lengthening of pre-boundary syllables turns into final shortening as boundary strength levels increase","authors":"Gerrit Kentner ,&nbsp;Isabelle Franz ,&nbsp;Christine A. Knoop ,&nbsp;Winfried Menninghaus","doi":"10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101225","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Phrase-final syllable duration and pauses are generally considered to be positively correlated: The stronger the boundary, the longer the duration of phrase-final syllables, and the more likely or longer a pause. Exploring a large sample of complex literary prose texts read aloud, we examined pause likelihood and duration, pre-boundary syllable duration, and the pitch excursion at prosodic boundaries. Comparing these features across six predicted levels of boundary strength (level 0: no break; 1: simple phrase break; 2: short comma phrase break; 3: long comma phrase break; 4: sentence boundary; 5: direct speech boundary), we find that they are not correlated in a simple monotonic fashion. Whereas pause duration monotonically increases with boundary strength, both pre-boundary syllable duration and the pitch excursion on the pre-boundary syllable are largest for level-2 breaks and decrease significantly through levels 3 to 5. Our analysis suggests that pre-boundary syllable duration is partly contingent on the tonal realization, which is subject to f0 declination as the utterance progresses. We also surmise that pre-boundary syllable duration reflects differences in planning complexity for the different prosodic and syntactic boundaries. Overall, this study shows that a simple monotonic correlation between pause duration and pre-boundary syllable duration is not valid.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51397,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Phonetics","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101225"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49816845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prosodic marking of information status in Italian","authors":"Simona Sbranna,&nbsp;Caterina Ventura,&nbsp;Aviad Albert,&nbsp;Martine Grice","doi":"10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101212","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Previous studies on the prosodic marking of information status argue that Italian tends to resist deaccentuation of given elements. In particular, Italian reportedly always accents post-focal given information within noun phrases (NPs), so that it is not possible to reliably reconstruct the information status of the items from the acoustic signal. However, descriptions have so far been concerned with categorical accent patterns, lacking crucial information about continuous phonetic parameters and their distribution in the utterance in ways that can contribute to prosodic marking. In this paper, we use a novel approach based on periodic-energy-related measures to explore how speakers of the Neapolitan variety of Italian modulate continuous prosodic parameters to differentiate information structure. We show that, contrary to previous findings, Italian speakers of the Neapolitan variety do mark information status prosodically within noun phrases. The discrepancy with previous work is explained by the fact that the prosodic marking of post-focal givenness is not achieved through the categorical presence or absence of a pitch accent on one specific syllable, but through the gradual modulation of phonetic parameters at various locations. Moreover, we find that these modulations occur early in the noun phrase. We also show that native speakers can make use of their knowledge of these modulations to reliably identify post-focal given elements in the absence of the pragmatic context, that is, directly from the acoustic signal.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51397,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Phonetics","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101212"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49864738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Flexibility and stability of speech sounds: The time course of lexically-driven recalibration","authors":"Yi Zheng ,&nbsp;Arthur G. Samuel","doi":"10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101222","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Perceptual stability is obviously advantageous, but being able to adjust to the prevailing environment is also adaptive. Previous research has identified ways in which the categorization of speech sounds shifts as a function of recently heard speech. Dozens of studies have examined “lexically driven recalibration”, an adjustment to categorization after listeners hear a number of words with a particular speech sound designed to be perceptually ambiguous. Despite the large number of these studies, little is known about how long the adjustment endures. Using two different stimulus sets, we assess the recovery time after lexically driven recalibration. In addition, we examine whether the size of the recalibration effect diminishes during the identification test used to measure it, and whether the recalibration effect is stronger for one side of a tested contrast or the other. The effect did in fact decline during its measurement, and one side of the contrast (/s/) produced stronger shifts than others (/ʃ/ or /θ/) under the conditions typically examined in recalibration studies. Recalibration was quite robust after 24 hours for both stimulus sets, and still measurable after one week for one of them. This time course is strikingly different than the recovery times reported in previous studies for two other adjustment processes – selective adaptation and audiovisually driven recalibration. The vastly different time courses pose a major challenge for models that ascribe these phenomena to the same adjustment function. Thus, such models will need to be substantially modified, or alternative models will need to be developed.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51397,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Phonetics","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101222"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49816843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Discriminative segmental cues to vowel height and consonantal place and voicing in whispered speech","authors":"Luis M.T. Jesus ,&nbsp;Sara Castilho ,&nbsp;Aníbal Ferreira ,&nbsp;Maria Conceição Costa","doi":"10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101223","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Purpose</h3><p>The acoustic signal attributes of whispered speech potentially carry sufficiently distinct information to define vowel spaces and to disambiguate consonant place and voicing, but what these attributes are and the underlying production mechanisms are not fully known. The purpose of this study was to define segmental cues to place and voicing of vowels and sibilant fricatives and to develop an articulatory interpretation of acoustic data.</p></div><div><h3>Method</h3><p>Seventeen speakers produced sustained sibilants and oral vowels, disyllabic words, sentences and read a phonetically balanced text. All the tasks were repeated in voiced and whispered speech, and the sound source and filter analysed using the following parameters: Fundamental frequency, spectral peak frequencies and levels, spectral slopes, sound pressure level and durations. Logistic linear mixed-effects models were developed to understand what acoustic signal attributes carry sufficiently distinct information to disambiguate /i, a/ and /s, ʃ/.</p></div><div><h3>Results</h3><p>Vowels were produced with significantly different spectral slope, sound pressure level, first and second formant frequencies in voiced and whispered speech. The low frequencies spectral slope of voiced sibilants was significantly different between whispered and voiced speech. The odds of choosing /a/ instead of /i/ were estimated to be lower for whispered speech when compared to voiced speech. Fricatives’ broad peak frequency was statistically significant when discriminating between /s/ and /ʃ/.</p></div><div><h3>Conclusions</h3><p>First formant frequency and relative duration of vowels are consistently used as height cues, and spectral slope and broad peak frequency are attributes associated with consonantal place of articulation. The relative duration of same-place voiceless fricatives was higher than voiced fricatives both in voiced and whispered speech. The evidence presented in this paper can be used to restore voiced speech signals, and to inform rehabilitation strategies that can safely explore the production mechanisms of whispering.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51397,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Phonetics","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101223"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49816846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}