Showing papers in "Phonetica in 1994"
TL;DR: In this article, an auditory and instrumental investigation of glottal stops and boundary markers in German colloquial read speech of a North German non-dialect has been performed.
Abstract: This paper presents the results of an auditory and instrumental investigation into glottal stops and glottalization as boundary markers in German colloquial read speech of a North German non-dialect v
99 citations
TL;DR: The theory presented in this paper considers speech signals as the result of allowing conventional gestures to modulate a carrier signal that has the personal characteristics of the speaker, which implies that in general the conventional information can only be retrieved by demodulation.
Abstract: Speech signals contain various types of information that can be grouped under the headings phonetic, affective, personal and transmittal. Listeners are capable of distinguishing these. Previous theories of speech perception have not considered this fully. They have mainly been concerned with problems relating exclusively to phonetic quality. The theory presented in this paper considers speech signals as the result of allowing conventional gestures to modulate a carrier signal that has the personal characteristics of the speaker, which implies that in general the conventional information can only be retrieved by demodulation.
97 citations
TL;DR: The nature and origins of the earliest ambient language influences are reviewed, reflecting infant attention to prosody and to cues available in the visual as well as the auditory modality.
Abstract: Phonological structure may be seen as emerging in ontogeny from the combined effects of performance constraints rooted in the neuromotor and perceptual systems, individual lexical development and the influence of the particular ambient language. We review here the nature and origins of the earliest ambient language influences. Global effects within the first year of life include both (1) loss of early appearing phonetic gestures not supported by the ambient language and (2) positive effects, reflecting infant attention to prosody and to cues available in the visual as well as the auditory modality. In the course of early lexical development more specific effects become manifest as individual children pursue less common phonetic paths to which the ambient language provides 'sufficient exposure'.
57 citations
TL;DR: It is speculated that the brain optimally exploits the morphology of the vocal tract and the kinematic functions of the tongue muscles so that the mappings from the muscle activities to vocal-tract configurations and to the formant patterns are simple and robust.
Abstract: With a few exceptions, EMG data are interpreted with reference to the intended output, such as the phonetic description of utterances spoken by speakers For a more rigorous interpretation, the data should also be analysed in terms of the displacement of the articulators and the acoustic patterns In this paper, we describe our attempts to calculate the formant patterns from EMG activity patterns via an articulatory model The value of the model parameters, such as the tongue body position or tongue body shape, is derived from the EMG activities of the specific pairs of antagonistic tongue muscles The model-calculated F1-F2 patterns for 11 American English vowels correspond rather well with those measured from the acoustic signals What strikes us is the simplicity of the mappings from the muscle activities to vocal-tract configurations and to the formant patterns We speculate that the brain optimally exploits the morphology of the vocal tract and the kinematic functions of the tongue muscles so that the mappings from the muscle activities (production) to the acoustic patterns (perception) are simple and robust
52 citations
TL;DR: Comparisons of segments that occur in two languages but differ in their phonetic properties suggest that American and Swedish children at 30 months of age have acquired some language-specific phonetic aspects of /t/ phonemes.
Abstract: Our understanding of phonological acquisition has benefited immensely from cross-linguistic investigations which allow researchers to separate biological and learned factors. To date, most cross-lingu
45 citations
TL;DR: In this article, audio recordings of lively conversational speech produced by 3 Swedish, 4 Finnish and 3 Estonian speakers were analyzed for durational correlates of quantity distinctions, and the data suggest that durati
Abstract: Audio recordings of lively conversational speech produced by 3 Swedish, 4 Finnish and 3 Estonian speakers were analyzed for durational correlates of quantity distinctions. The data suggest that durati
41 citations
TL;DR: Both the lowering and raising movements in the VC sequence are affected by the voicing status of the consonant, and the second vowel in theVCV sequence showed reliable influences on tongue body movements for the first vowel and the consonants.
Abstract: This study examines vertical and horizontal tongue body movements in VCV sequences, where the consonant is a voiced or voiceless velar stop. The movement data were recorded using a magnetic transduction technique in two subjects. Consistent with studies of lip and jaw kinematics, the duration of the tongue body raising movement towards closure for the consonant was longer for the voiced stop. In contrast to lip and jaw movements, peak velocity and amplitude of the raising movements were consistently higher for the voiced stop. The larger displacement of the closing movement for the voiced stop was due to a lower starting position of the movement during the preceding vowel. Examination of the tongue body lowering movement for the vowel preceding the velar stop showed it to be longer when the following stop was voiced. Also this lowering movement had a higher peak velocity and amplitude in the voiced environment. These results thus suggest that both the lowering and raising movements in the VC sequence are affected by the voicing status of the consonant. In addition, the second vowel in the VCV sequence showed reliable influences on tongue body movements for the first vowel and the consonant.
32 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors extended the phonological realm of locus equations to include nasals, fricatives, approximants and unaspirated voiceless stops, and determined F2 onset and F2 vowel frequencies.
Abstract: The present study extends the phonological realm of locus equations to include nasals, fricatives, approximants and unas-pirated voiceless stops. The question of interest was to determine if locus equation slopes and y-intercepts could serve as phonetic descriptors for place of articulation across varied manner classes. Fourteen speakers, 7 male and 7 female, produced CVC tokens with 10 medial vowels and initial consonants varying across manner classes. F2 onset and F2 vowel frequencies were acoustically determined and plotted as locus equations. Fairly distinct clustering of slope and y-intercept coordinates were found for labial, dental/alveolar and velar places of articulation. Approximants (/w, j, r, l/) formed a unique cluster of points characterized by slope = 0 and contrasted solely by y-intercepts – correlates of steady-state onset frequencies of approximant productions. The consistent linearity observed in all locus equation plots across all consonant-vowel tokens is discussed according to the orderly-output constraint that hypothesizes that the robust linearity of the acoustic F2 transition onset-to-offset relationship exists to best serve neural encoding and perception of the speech signal.
32 citations
TL;DR: The present study is the first to demonstrate consonant coproduction in terms of oral pressure, and to report on coarticulatory effects involving four sequenced segments.
Abstract: Aerodynamic evidence indicates the existence of overlapped labial//velar sequences in Korean. Oral pressure readings for [ipku] show a brief rarefaction in oral pressure during the consonantal sequenc
31 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used an existing database of vowel sounds from focus words in spontaneous speech and in lexically the same text, read aloud by one male speaker, and compared the results with data on schwa diphones used in Dutch text-to-speech synthesis.
Abstract: Although the schwa sound is by far the most frequent vowel in Dutch, it has up to now been phonetically the most neglected. We used an existing database of vowel sounds from focus words in spontaneous speech and in lexically the same text, read aloud by one male speaker, to analyse durational and spectral characteristics of schwas, and we compared the results with data on schwa diphones used in Dutch text-to-speech synthesis. It turned out that, contrary to what is usually thought, lexical schwa sounds in natural continuous speech are considerably shorter than other short vowels, that there is no strong consonantal influence on schwa duration, that schwa sounds display a spectral spread larger than any other vowel, and that surrounding consonants seem to play a role with respect to the midpoint formant distribution of the schwa within the whole vowel system. In no way can the schwa be considered as the ‘bench-mark’ of a speaker’s vowel system.
31 citations
TL;DR: This article showed that the influence of context need not operate only via physical phonetic features, and that strict phonetic invariance of phonological units may not be necessary, suggesting that strong phonographic invariance may not always be necessary.
Abstract: When listeners’ identifications of speech sounds are influenced by adjacent sounds, is it only the quantitative phonetic characteristics of these neighboring sounds that matter, or could their qualitative linguistic identity play a role? We tested this by inducing subjects to ‘restore’ a noise-obliterated medial consonant in VCe utterances by first presenting them with several prior utterances where this medial consonant could be heard clearly and was consistently the same, either a /b/ or a /d/. Included as V were synthetic steady-state vowels from the /i-u/ continuum. More /u/’s were identified out of this continuum in the environment of physically present /d/’s than /b/’s. Restored /d/’s had the same effect, thus indicating that the influence of context need not operate only via physical phonetic features. These results suggest that strict phonetic invariance of phonological units may not be necessary.
TL;DR: The findings suggest that voiced sibilants are disfavored in part for perceptual reasons and voicing differentially lowers the amplitude of frication noise for sibils and non-sibiliants so that amplitude differences between the two classes are reduced.
Abstract: Across and within languages voiced sibilants tend to be disfavored relative to voiceless ones. This paper explores the claim that voicing more adversely affects the distinctive acoustic properties of sibilants than those of nonsibilants. One prediction associated with this claim is that voicing differentially lowers the amplitude of frication noise for sibilants and non-sibiliants so that amplitude differences between the two classes are reduced. Acoustic measurements confirm this prediction. A second prediction is that voicing has a greater negative effect on the identification of sibilants than nonsibilants. Perceptual results from this and previous studies are somewhat variable, but averaged data support this prediction. The findings suggest that voiced sibilants are disfavored in part for perceptual reasons.
TL;DR: Data suggested that the interarytenoid glottal opening could vary without systematically affecting SPL or voice quality, indicating that the principles of production-related economy of effort and physiological, acoustic and perceptual constraints may apply to voice production.
Abstract: Measures of inferred subglottal air pressure, glottal airflow waveform characteristics, sound pressure level (SPL) and the acoustic spectral slope were studied for individual speakers with normal voices. Combinations of different levels of sub-glottal air pressure and varying glottal configurations could result in the same SPL. Relatively high air pressure levels were associated with a steep spectral slope, reflecting a more sinusoidal glottal waveform and a relatively abducted membranous glottis, which would result in damping of F1. Data suggested that the interarytenoid glottal opening could vary without systematically affecting SPL or voice quality. The results indicate that the principles of production-related economy of effort and physiological, acoustic and perceptual constraints may apply to voice production.
TL;DR: The observed pattern of results suggests that speech perception is accomplished by a fast, obligatory, and thus automatic perceptual mechanism.
Abstract: Three experiments used sine-wave replicas of speech sounds to explore some differences between speech perception and general auditory perception. The experiments compared patterns of behavior in categ
TL;DR: The results reported demonstrate that, at least for one professional newsreader, rate of articulation in interpause intervals is conditioned by context and that deviations from the intended rate are easily noticeable and affect perceived naturalness negatively.
Abstract: This paper reports some production and perception experiments challenging the idea that the rate of articulation of interpause intervals of speech is solely conditioned by internal phonological factors. The results reported demonstrate that, at least for one professional newsreader, rate of articulation in interpause intervals is conditioned by context and that deviations from the intended rate are easily noticeable and affect perceived naturalness negatively. It is also demonstrated that a context-conditioned rate of articulation does not affect interpause intervals uniformly but is unevenly distributed. These results are interpreted in terms of speaker adaptation to the listener’s running access to signal-independent information.
TL;DR: Results suggest that while the fundamental manifestation of the acoustic property is the same across languages, its instantiation may be influenced by the functional role that its associated feature plays in the language.
Abstract: This study explored the extent to which the acoustic manifestation of a phonetic feature is influenced by the linguistic role that the feature plays in the sound inventory of the particular language. To this end, we investigated the acoustic property associated with the feature [strident] in the production of bilabial and labiodental fricatives in Ewe, and labiodental and alveolar fricatives in English, and explored whether the acoustic manifestation of the feature [strident] varied in the instantiation of [f] in Ewe and English. In Ewe, the feature [strident] plays a contrastive role distinguishing labiodental from bilabial fricatives, whereas in English the feature [strident] does not play a contrastive role. Results showed that a measure of turbulence noise was able to distinguish bilabial and labiodental fricatives in Ewe and labiodental and alveolar fricatives in English. Moreover, the range of values associated with defining the amplitude characteristics for [f] was similar in the two languages. Nevertheless, differences emerged in the acoustic fine structure of the noise amplitude for [f v] in the two languages, with the frequency distribution for the labiodental fricative in Ewe being skewed towards the high amplitude range relative to English. These results suggest that while the fundamental manifestation of the acoustic property is the same across languages, its instantiation may be influenced by the functional role that its associated feature plays in the language.
TL;DR: The authors presented a first attempt to test the assumption that in this type of singing memorized instrumental or vocal themes, we tend to invent nonsense texts, e.g. duda duda Duda dudaa.
Abstract: When informally singing memorized instrumental or vocal themes, we tend to invent nonsense texts, e.g. duda duda dudaa. This article presents a first attempt to test the assumption that in this type o
TL;DR: In this article, a deductive approach to the study of vocal tract characteristics, vowel, vowel-to-vowel and vowel-consonant-Vowel productions is presented.
Abstract: In this paper, a deductive approach to the study of vocal tract characteristics, vowel, vowel-to-vowel and vowel-consonant-vowel productions is presented. The distinctive region model, deduced from acoustic theory, is used to develop this approach. The model is characterized by simplicity and efficiency in its handling of the articulatory-acoustic relation. Vowel systems can be explained by means of this approach. A tentative study on the predictability of vowel-to-vowel characteristics is also presented. The obtained results suggest that the human communication system is driven by physical laws of the real world.
TL;DR: It is proposed that the pattern of open/close alternation of the mandible underlying the syllable which first appears in infants at the babbling stage is the missing link in the evolution of speech from ancestral primate vocal signals.
Abstract: Although it would seem fundamental to the understanding of human beings, there has been virtually no attempt, in modern science, to develop a theory regarding the sound pattern of the first language. As a step towards such a theory, I suggest that ontogeny may recapitulate phylogeny. I propose that the pattern of open/close alternation of the mandible underlying the syllable which first appears in infants at the babbling stage is the missing link in the evolution of speech from ancestral primate vocal signals. In addition, I suggest that the conjoint set of sounds and sound patterns favored in babbling and early words, and in the world's languages, constitutes, in effect, the fossil record of true speech, and I provide a tentative enumeration of this set.