Journal of Phonetics最新文献

This study investigates the phonetic realization of contrastive focus in short utterances in Seoul Korean, a so-called 'edge-prominence' language, which is assumed to express focus-induced prominence primarily through phrasing. The study explores how the distribution of phrase-level tones and their realization is influenced by focus in different positions of target words with different coda segmental makeups (/pam, pap/). Phrase-initially, focus displays a typical phrase-initial f0 rise for the L and H tones, with the L tone anchored to the focused monosyllabic word and the H tone to the following syllable, accompanied by a tonal expansion. This expansion results from an elevated f0 peak for the H while the L remains unchanged, showing tonal hyperarticulation only in the H tone. Phrase-medially, a similar f0 rise occurs under focus, but without robust tonal expansion. Crucially, the f0 rise is not accompanied by clear temporal or tonal evidence for the creation of a new phrase, demonstrating focus realization without phrasing. Phrase-finally, focus also shows no phrasing evidence. It results in an f0 fall, possibly due to tonal crowding of the L and H tones with the upcoming low boundary tone. However, this fall is distinct from a similar fall under no focus, suggesting a phonetic trace of the focal rise. Both initially and medially, the tonal realization of the f0 rise is affected by the segmental makeup (/pap/ vs. /pam/) only at the microprosodic level while maintaining the tonal targets, even in the face of physically adverse conditions for an f0 rise through the voiceless gap. The findings of the present study illuminate the intricate phonetic details of focus realization with a f0 rise in a language other than the well-studied West Germanic and Romance languages which employ word-level stress. The findings also shed new light on the relationship between focus and prosodic phrasing, implying that focus, previously argued to drive prosodic phrasing in Seoul Korean, is just one of several potentially competing structures that determine a sentence’s phrasing, thereby underscoring the multidimensional nature of prosodic structure.

Paradigms with conflicting data patterns can be difficult to learn, resulting in a type of language change called reanalysis. Existing models of morphophonology predict reanalysis to occur in a way that matches frequency distributions within the paradigm. Using evidence from Samoan, this paper argues that in addition, reanalysis may be constrained by phonotactics (global distributional regularities in the lexicon) and phonetic substance. More concretely, I find that reanalysis of Samoan thematic consonants generally matches distributional patterns within the paradigm. However, reanalysis is also modulated by a phonotactic dispreference against sequences of homorganic consonants, analyzed here in Optimality Theoretic terms by OCP-place. These results are supported by an iterated learning model that is based in MaxEnt (Goldwater and Johnson, 2003). In a study where phonetic similarity is measured as the spectral distance between two phones, I find that similarity of consonants is closely correlated with the strength of OCP-place effects in Samoan; this suggests that OCP-place is rooted in phonetic similarity avoidance, and more generally that in reanalysis, speakers preferentially utilize phonetically-motivated phonotactics.

Diphthong vowels exhibit a degree of inherent dynamic change, the extent of which can vary synchronically and diachronically, such that diphthong vowels can become monophthongs and vice versa. Modelling this type of change requires defining diphthongs in opposition to monophthongs. However, formulating an explicit definition has proven elusive in acoustics and articulation, as diphthongisation is often gradient in these domains. In this study, we consider whether diphthong vowels form a coherent phonetic category from the articulatory point of view. We present articulometry and acoustic data from six speakers of Northern Anglo-English producing a full set of phonologically long vowels. We analyse several measures of diphthongisation, all of which suggest that diphthongs are not categorically distinct from long monophthongs. We account for this observation with an Articulatory Phonology/Task Dynamic model in which diphthongs and long monophthongs have a common gestural representation, comprising two articulatory targets in each case, but they differ according to gestural constriction and location of the component gestures. We argue that a two-target representation for all long vowels is independently supported by phonological weight, as well as by the nature of historical diphthongisation and present-day dynamic vowel variation in British English.

With an aim to investigate the nature of Mandarin neutral tone through the lens of language variation and change, this study examines the pitch patterns of speech sequences containing neutral tone syllables, i.e. those that do not have any of the four canonical lexical tones and are often overlooked in prior studies of tones, in two Mandarin varieties: Standard Mandarin and Plastic Mandarin spoken in Changsha, China. Using Generalised Additive Mixed Models, the study shows (a) that f0 contours of a sequence of neutral tone syllables following various lexical tones converge in the end at a low pitch in both Mandarin varieties, and (b) that the low pitch target of neutral tone syllables tends to be the same across the two Mandarin varieties. The cross-dialectal comparison favours the phonological account that neutral tone is underlyingly underspecified and attracts the boundary tone. It suggests that the constant pitch target across two Mandarin varieties with distinct lexical tone contours may be attributed to the stable transfer of prosodic structure in the Standard-Plastic variation.

In this study, we explore individual variation and contrast in Swedish children’s voiceless fricatives. Thirty-one children between three and eight years of age participated in a picture-prompted word repetition task, wherein they repeated fricative-initial words in a variety of vowel contexts. The fricatives were transcribed and acoustically analysed, using spectral moments 1–4, spectral peak and spectral balance measures. Random forests were used to estimate the relative importance of each spectral feature in the classification of correct fricative productions, as well as to measure robustness of the late-emerging contrast between sibilants [s] and [ɕ] in individual children. Transcription analysis revealed that substitutions involving a more anterior place of articulation were common. Acoustic analysis showed individual differences in variability and contrast in the children’s fricative systems across and within age groups. Cue weighting of spectral characteristics in classification was similar in all age groups for correct productions, while the magnitude of the acoustic contrast between sibilants increased with age. This paper provides a description of individual variation in Swedish children’s acquisition of fricatives which can inform future large-scale speech-acquisition research.

This study explores pitch variability in language production and its implication for processing advantages of holistic units, with a specific focus on the relationship between disyllabic word production and their distributional properties in language use. Using a 185-million-word native corpus as a proxy for the statistical properties of native usage, the study examines how pitch variability of disyllabic words in a spontaneous speech corpus of Taiwan Mandarin is influenced by lexical frequency, predictive contingencies, and retrodictive contingencies. Building upon the duration-based pairwise variability index (PVI), this study introduces two variants of pitch-related PVI (f0PVI) to quantify pitch variability within speech segments. We assess their effectiveness through three phonetic analyses. The first analysis shows that disyllabic words exhibit significantly lower f0PVI values than their non-holistic part-word counterparts, indicating the metric’s capability to distinguish holistic linguistic units. The second analysis uncovers a significant inverse correlation between the pitch variability metrics of disyllabic words and their frequency values, highlighting a strong link between reduced prosodic prominence and the frequency-based processing advantages in lexical production. Finally, the third analysis demonstrates moderated effects of retrodictive lexical contingency on pitch variability, contingent on the word’s alignment with prosodic junctures. We discuss the implications of contextual predictability in lexical retrieval and its role in the dynamic planning process of speech production. Our findings underscore f0PVI as a robust prosodic measure for the automatized processing and entrenchment of linguistic units arising from repeated usage.