Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 2 Issue 2 - Gesture as language, gesture and language

Issue of Laboratory Phonology

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available October 13, 2011

Editors' introduction

Page range: 239-241

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Publicly Available October 13, 2011

On the phonetic status of syllabic consonants: Evidence from Slovak

Marianne Pouplier, Štefan Beňuš

Page range: 243-273

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Abstract

This paper investigates the phonetic correlates of syllable structure, focusing on syllabic consonants. Cross-linguistically, syllables containing consonantal nuclei are often subject to a number of restrictions compared to their vocalic counterparts. However, some languages, like Slovak, allow relatively freely distributed syllabic liquids. Phonetic studies of syllable structure have shown that the vowel provides the basis for the articulatory coordination relationships within a syllable, and consonant–vowel timing patterns have been identified as a primary phonetic correlate of syllable structure. However, how coordination relationships within a syllable are organized when a consonant occupies the nucleus is largely unknown. We investigate whether in Slovak, syllabic consonants change their consonantal kinematics to approach a more vowel-like articulation and whether vowel-less syllables differ in their articulatory timing characteristics from canonical syllables containing vowels. Our results show that a consonant does not change to be more like a vowel in its articulatory dynamics when occupying the nucleus position. However, we find consistent effects in articulatory timing in that consonantal syllables show less overlap on a variety of measures compared to vocalic syllables. We argue that the typological possibility for syllabic consonants may be related to the general consonant timing pattern of a language.

Publicly Available October 13, 2011

Schwa elements in Tashlhiyt word-initial clusters

Rachid Ridouane, Cécile Fougeron

Page range: 275-300

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Abstract

This paper deals with schwa elements that sometimes occur between consonants in Tashlhiyt Berber and seeks to determine where they come from. Based on acoustic data on word-initial C 1 C 2 clusters, we examine how laryngeal specifications, manner of articulation and ordering of the place of articulation of the consonants in the cluster may govern their distribution and their durational characteristics. Results show that their occurrence in the acoustics is only possible in specific consonantal contexts, and under certain conditions of gestural coordination. Specifically, two conditions should be met for these schwas to surface. First, at least one of the consonants in the sequence should be voiced, as they never occur in word initial voiceless clusters. Second, the vocal tract has to be sufficiently open during the transition from one consonant configuration to the other. They are therefore most frequent at the release of the first consonant of stop-stop clusters and in sequences with minimal overlap. In addition, schwas are found to have variable durations depending on speaker and cluster type, but the durations of clusters with or without them are essentially indistinguishable. Taken together, these results suggest that schwa elements in Tashlhiyt emerge as a consequence of factors linked to phonetic implementation.

Publicly Available October 13, 2011

Consonant lenition and phonological recategorization

José Ignacio Hualde, Miquel Simonet, Marianna Nadeu

Page range: 301-329

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Abstract

We examine the weakening of intervocalic voiceless stops in Spanish in order to gain insight on historical processes of intervocalic lenition. In our corpus, about a third of all tokens of intervocalic /ptk/ are fully or partially voiced in spontaneous speech. However, even when fully voiced, /ptk/ tend to show greater constriction than /bdg/, with the velars being less different than labials and coronals. Word-initial and word-internal intervocalic segments are equally affected. Based on our findings from acoustic measurements of correlates of lenition, we propose that common reductive sound changes, such as intervocalic consonant lenition, start as across-the-board conventionalized phonetic processes equally affecting all targets in the appropriate phonetic context. The common restriction of the sound change to word-internal contexts may be a consequence of phonological recategorization at a later stage in the sound change.

Publicly Available October 13, 2011

Realization of voiceless stops and vowels in conversational French and Spanish

Francisco Torreira, Mirjam Ernestus

Page range: 331-353

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Abstract

The present study compares the realization of intervocalic voiceless stops and vowels surrounded by voiceless stops in conversational Spanish and French. Our data reveal significant differences in how these segments are realized in each language. Spanish voiceless stops tend to have shorter stop closures, display incomplete closures more often, and exhibit more voicing than French voiceless stops. As for vowels, more cases of complete devoicing and greater degrees of partial devoicing were found in French than in Spanish. Moreover, all French vowel types exhibit significantly lower F1 values than their Spanish counterparts. These findings indicate that the extent of reduction that a segment type can undergo in conversational speech can vary significantly across languages. Language differences in coarticulatory strategies and “base-of-articulation” are discussed as possible causes of our observations.

Publicly Available October 13, 2011

‘Seeing tunes.’ The role of visual gestures in tune interpretation

Joan Borràs-Comes, Pilar Prieto

Page range: 355-380

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Abstract

One of the unresolved questions in audiovisual prosody is the relative contribution of acoustic and visual cues to the expression of prosodic meaning. Though the majority of studies on audiovisual prosody have found a complementary mode of processing whereby sight provides relatively weak and redundant information in comparison with strong auditory cues, other work has found that sight provides information more efficiently than hearing. In Catalan, a pitch range contrast in a rising-falling nuclear configuration conveys a difference between a contrastive focus statement and an echo question. The main goal of this study is to investigate the relative contribution of visual cues in conveying this distinction. Twenty native speakers of Central Catalan participated in two identification tasks in which they had to decide between a focus statement and a question interpretation. Experiment 1 used a pitch range auditory continuum combined with two congruent and incongruent videotapes showing the facial gestures that are characteristic of the two pragmatic meanings. Experiment 2 used the same auditory continuum in combination with another continuum for facial gestures produced using a digital image-morphing technique. The responses and reaction times obtained in both experiments revealed a consistent reliance on visual cues in the listener's decisions, but also a consistent effect of the auditory stimulus. We argue that although facial gestures are the most influential elements that Catalan listeners rely on to decide between contrastive focus and echo question interpretations, bimodal integration with the acoustic cues is necessary for perceptual processing to be accurate and fast. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results for models of audiovisual processing.

Publicly Available October 13, 2011

Correlates of social awareness in the visual prosody of growing children

Marc Swerts

Page range: 381-402

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Abstract

This article focuses on how growing children use prosody for communicative purposes. Prosody refers to the set of expressive features that do not so much determine what speakers say, but rather how they say it. It includes both auditory features, such as intonation and tempo, and visual features, such as facial expressions. Our central hypothesis is that children, as they grow older, become more socially aware — a process which is reflected in the way they express themselves in prosody. To this end, we present the results of three studies that focus on how children use such features (1) to mark their level of uncertainty, (2) to signal a positive or negative emotion, and (3) to show whether they are being truthful or not. All the studies use a game-based experimental paradigm that is especially suited for analyses of child behaviour. The approach combines controlled elicitations of spontaneous interactions with perception tests that explore how children's expressions are being interpreted. Results of such studies are relevant for pedagogical and diagnostic purposes, and will lead to improvements in child-directed communication systems.

Publicly Available October 13, 2011

ASL sign lowering as undershoot: A corpus study

Kevin Russell, Erin Wilkinson, Terry Janzen

Page range: 403-422

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Abstract

American Sign Language (ASL) signs that are located on the forehead in their canonical form are often articulated lower during natural signing. Previous studies have examined this phenomenon from a phonetic perspective, treating it as a form of undershoot, and from a variationist sociolinguistic perspective, treating it as a categorical process. This study sees if the findings and explanations of these studies can be extended to the lowering of signs formed in locations other than the forehead. In a corpus of natural conversational signing from six signers, we measure the vertical displacement of over 3000 tokens of signs canonically formed at the face, head, or neck. While there is some apparent evidence for a categorical lowering process in a minority of signs and considerable evidence for undershoot, neither alone can explain the full range of displacement patterns across all signs and locations. Undershoot must be carefully planned and controlled: no matter how sloppy the signing, signers systematically avoid contacting their eyes. The results can be explained if there is a somatosensory forward-modelling mechanism that can veto undesirable gestural scores and whose decisions are incorporated during learning into the phonological distributions representing the locations of signs.

Publicly Available October 13, 2011

Dynamical account of how /b, d, g/ differ from /p, t, k/ in Spanish: Evidence from labials

Benjamin Parrell

Page range: 423-449

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Abstract

This study examines articulatory lenition of intervocalic stops in Spanish and tests the theories that 1) /b, d, g/ have an intended target for closure equal to that of /p, t, k/ and 2) spirantization of /b, d, g/ is caused by undershoot due to their short duration phrase medially. Consistent with past acoustic studies, subjects produce /b/ with incomplete closure phrase medially and complete closure phrase initially. Additionally, /b/ is shorter than /p/ phrase medially though not initially. For /b/, though not for /p/, there is a correlation between constriction degree and duration, consistent with the theory of dynamical undershoot. The results from the study are accurately modeled with a virtual target for /b/ slightly beyond the point of articulator contact. Such a target results in full closure at long durations (such as found phrase initially) and incomplete closure at shorter durations. Based on this evidence, it is proposed that /b, d, g/ differ from /p, t, k/ in three ways: they are shorter, lack a devoicing gesture, and have a target closer to – but still beyond – the point of articulator contact.

Publicly Available October 13, 2011

Towards a gestural characterization of liquids: Evidence from Spanish and Russian

Michael Proctor

Page range: 451-485

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Abstract

The production of intervocalic liquid consonants by five speakers of Spanish and four speakers of Russian was examined using ultrasound. Liquids in both languages were found to be united by a lower susceptibility to vocalic coarticulation than coronal obstruents produced in the same environments. Tongue body articulation in the Spanish lateral resembled that of a mid-front vowel; dorsal posture in the Spanish trill resembled that of a mid-back vowel. Tongue body articulation in Russian non-palatalized laterals resembled that of a mid-back vowel, and Russian non-palatalized trills were produced with a dorsal posture resembling that of a mid-central vowel. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that coronal liquid consonants consist of a consonant-like coronal component and an intrinsic vowel-like dorsal component (Delattre and Freeman, Linguistics 44: 29– 68, 1968; Sproat and Fujimura, Journal of Phonetics 21: 291–311, 1993). Liquid segments are modeled as recurrent stable constellations in which a tongue-tip gesture is coordinated with a tongue-body gesture (Browman and Goldstein, Gestural syllable position effects in American English, AIP Press, 1995). Differences between ‘clear’ and ‘pharyngealized’ liquids are attributed to differences in dorsal target locations. Rhotic allophony is argued to result from the interaction of articulatory and aerodynamic factors. Spanish liquid vocalization is modeled as lenition of tongue tip gestures, and Slavic liquid metathesis as a change in intergestural coupling relationships.

Publicly Available October 13, 2011

Spanish nasal assimilation revisited: A cross-dialect electropalatographic study

Alexei Kochetov, Laura Colantoni

Page range: 487-523

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Abstract

This study employs electropalatography to investigate the implementation of nasal assimilation in two Spanish dialects (Argentinian and Cuban) that differ in the realization of word-final nasals as alveolar or velar. 5 speakers of Argentian and 3 speakers of Cuban Spanish were presented with various utterances containing nasals followed by labial, coronal, and dorsal stops and fricatives under two stress conditions. Results revealed that place assimilation of nasals was consistently accompanied by stricture assimilation. The process was generally categorical, that is, the final alveolar or velar nasal adopted the articulation of the following consonant. Nasal + fricative sequences, however, showed a somewhat different behavior: occasional blocking of nasal assimilation before non-coronals, consistent gradient nasal assimilation before coronals (Argentinian), or categorical/gradient strengthening of post-nasal obstruents (Cuban). Overall, the results are largely consistent with Honorof's (Articulatory gestures and Spanish nasal assimilation, Yale University Ph.D. dissertation, 1999) study of Peninsular Spanish and together provide evidence for dialect-specific grammars of assimilation, which nevertheless share certain general principles of gestural organization.

About this journal

De Gruyter Mouton published Laboratory Phonology from 2010 to 2015. Back issues are available on the journal home page.

Laboratory phonology represents the scientific study of the elements of spoken and signed language, their organization, their grammatical function, and their role in speech communication. Research in laboratory phonology uses laboratory or experimental methods and is grounded in quantitative analyses of empirical data from diverse languages. The laboratory phonology approach also extends naturally to the parallel investigation of manual signs as the encoding elements of signed languages. Laboratory phonology is at the leading edge of the general shift towards experimental and quantitative approaches to the study of language across the discipline of linguistics.

The Laboratory Phonology journal publishes research on phonology from a range of disciplinary perspectives including linguistics, psychology, speech & hearing science, communication science, computer science, electrical & computer engineering, and other related fields. The journal encourages submissions on any of the above areas for publication in regular issues and also publishes special issues of select papers from Laboratory Phonology conferences.