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Showing papers on "Voice published in 2003"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Evidence is provided that VOT varies systematically from talker to talker and may be one phonetically-relevant acoustic property underlying listeners' capacity to benefit fromtalker-specific experience.
Abstract: Individual talkers differ in the acoustic properties of their speech, and at least some of these differences are in acoustic properties relevant for phonetic perception. Recent findings from studies of speech perception have shown that listeners can exploit such differences to facilitate both the recognition of talkers' voices and the recognition of words spoken by familiar talkers. These findings motivate the current study, whose aim is to examine individual talker variation in a particular phonetically-relevant acoustic property, voice-onset-time (VOT). VOT is a temporal property that robustly specifies voicing in stop consonants. From the broad literature involving VOT, it appears that individual talkers differ from one another in their VOT productions. The current study confirmed this finding for eight talkers producing monosyllabic words beginning with voiceless stop consonants. Moreover, when differences in VOT due to variability in speaking rate across the talkers were factored out using hierarchical linear modeling, individual talkers still differed from one another in VOT, though these differences were attenuated. These findings provide evidence that VOT varies systematically from talker to talker and may therefore be one phonetically-relevant acoustic property underlying listeners' capacity to benefit from talker-specific experience.

202 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: English nonsense consonant-vowel-consonant syllables were presented at four different signal-to-noise ratios for recognition, indicating a bias toward front vowels over back vowels and parts of phonetic explanations for synchronic and diachronic phonological patterns.
Abstract: English nonsense consonant-vowel-consonant syllables were presented at four different signal-to-noise ratios for recognition. Information theory methods are used to analyze the response data according to segment type and phonological feature, and are consistent with previous studies showing that the consonantal contrast of voicing is more robust than place of articulation, word-initial consonants are more robust than word-final consonants, and that vowel height is more robust than vowel backing. Asymmetrical confusions are also analyzed, indicating a bias toward front vowels over back vowels. The results are interpreted as parts of phonetic explanations for synchronic and diachronic phonological patterns.

103 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The pitch-limiting voice treatment (PLVT) as discussed by the authors limits an increase in vocal pitch and prevents a strained or pressed voicing, but it does not reduce the amount of laryngeal muscle tension.
Abstract: Speech therapy in PD patients, focusing on an increase of phonatory-respiratory effort, has adverse effects because it raises vocal pitch and laryngeal muscle tension. The authors' approach, the Pitch Limiting Voice Treatment (PLVT), increases loudness but at the same time sets vocal pitch at a better level. In this study, the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment ("think loud, think shout") and PLVT ("speak loud and low") are compared. Both treatments produce the same increase in loudness, but PLVT limits an increase in vocal pitch and prevents a strained or pressed voicing.

80 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Overall, the acoustic waveform provided the most accurate estimate of voicing onset; measurements made from the amplitude waveform were also the least variable of the five measures.
Abstract: Five commonly used methods for determining the onset of voicing of syllable-initial stop consonants were compared. The speech and glottal activity of 16 native speakers of Cantonese with normal voice quality were investigated during the production of consonant vowel (CV) syllables in Cantonese. Syllables consisted of the initial consonants /ph/, /th/, /kh/, /p/, /t/, and /k/ followed by the vowel /a/. All syllables had a high level tone, and were all real words in Cantonese. Measurements of voicing onset were made based on the onset of periodicity in the acoustic waveform, and on spectrographic measures of the onset of a voicing bar (f0), the onset of the first formant (F1), second formant (F2), and third formant (F3). These measurements were then compared against the onset of glottal opening as determined by electroglottography. Both accuracy and variability of each measure were calculated. Results suggest that the presence of aspiration in a syllable decreased the accuracy and increased the variability of spectrogram-based measurements, but did not strongly affect measurements made from the acoustic waveform. Overall, the acoustic waveform provided the most accurate estimate of voicing onset; measurements made from the amplitude waveform were also the least variable of the five measures. These results can be explained as a consequence of differences in spectral tilt of the voicing source in breathy versus modal phonation.

77 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A database of English words was “mined” for further data on the correlates of every phonemic contrast in English, in an attempt to discover local and long-distance effects.

61 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper found that passive voicing and inherent aspiration have been phonetic and phonological characteristics of the Germanic languages since the break-up of Indo-European, with laryngeally unmarked stops repeatedly enhanced by the gesture of [spread glottis].
Abstract: This paper builds on growing evidence that aspirated or fortis obstruents in languages like English and German are laryngeally marked, but that phonetic voicing in the (unmarked) unaspirated or lenis series is contextually determined. Employing the laryngeal feature set proposed by Halle & Stevens (1971), as incorporated into the ‘ dimensional theory ’ of laryngeal representation (Avery & Idsardi 2001, forthcoming), we develop an explicit account of this phonetic enhancement of phonological contrasts, which is widely known as ‘ passive voicing ’. We find that both passive voicing and inherent aspiration have been phonetic and phonological characteristics of the Germanic languages since the break-up of Indo-European, with laryngeally unmarked stops repeatedly enhanced by the gesture of [spread glottis]. A key implication of this view is that Verner’s Law was not an innovation specifically of early Germanic, but rather is an automatic (ultimately phonologised) reflex of passive voicing, itself a ‘ persistent change’ rising out of the enduring ‘ base of articulation ’ that came to characterise Germanic.

59 citations


01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: An artificial language learning experiment is used to test whether an alternation that meets a phonotactic target is easier to learn than one that does not, and the initial results suggest that phonolinguistic knowledge does aid in the acquisition of alternations.
Abstract: Phonological alternations often serve to modify forms so that they respect a phonotactic restriction that applies across the language. For example, the voicing alternation in the English plural produces word-final sequences that respect the general ban against a voiceless obstruent followed by a voiced one. Since Chomsky and Halle [1], it has been assumed that an adequate theory of phonology should capture the connection between phonotactics and alternations by deriving them using a shared mechanism. There is, however, no psycholinguistic evidence that speakers actually do use a single mechanism to encode phonotactics and alternations. In this study, we used an artificial language learning experiment to test whether an alternation that meets a phonotactic target is easier to learn than one that does not. The initial results suggest that phonotactic knowledge does aid in the acquisition of alternations.

34 citations


Proceedings Article
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: Three different voicing features are studied as additional acoustic features for continuous speech recognition: the harmonic product spectrum based feature is extracted in frequency domain while the autocorrelation and the average magnitude difference based methods work in time domain.
Abstract: In this paper, three different voicing features are studied as additional acoustic features for continuous speech recognition. The harmonic product spectrum based feature is extracted in frequency domain while the autocorrelation and the average magnitude difference based methods work in time domain. The algorithms produce a measure of voicing for each time frame. The voicing measure was combined with the standard Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) using linear discriminant analysis to choose the most relevant features. Experiments have been performed on small and large vocabulary tasks. The three different voicing measures combined with MFCCs resulted in similar improvements in word error rate: improvements of up to 14% on the smallvocabulary task and improvements of up to 6% on the largevocabulary task relative to using MFCC alone with the same overall number of parameters in the system.

30 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A two pass strategy for recognition with a hidden Markov model based first pass followed by a second pass that performs an alternative analysis using class-specific features that provides superior separability to the traditional spectral features is developed.

29 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results revealed that mean peak opening and closing velocities for /b/ were significantly greater than those for /p/ during whispered speech, which supported the suggestion that whispered speech and voiced speech rely on distinct motor control processes.
Abstract: In the absence of voicing, the discrimination of ‘voiced’ and ‘voiceless’ stop consonants in whispered speech relies on such acoustic cues as burst duration and amplitude, and formant transition chara

26 citations


Book
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: The Phonological Spectrum as discussed by the authors provides a comprehensive overview of current developments in phonological theory, by providing a number of papers in different areas of current theorizing which reflect on particular problems from different angles.
Abstract: The two volumes of the Phonological Spectrum aim at giving a comprehensive overview of current developments in phonological theory, by providing a number of papers in different areas of current theorizing which reflect on particular problems from different anglesVolume I is concerned with segmental structure, and focuses on nasality, voicing and other laryngeal features, as well as segmental timing With respect to nasality, questions such as the phonetic underpinning of a distinctive feature [nasal] and the treatment of nasal harmony are treated As for voicing, the behaviour of voicing assimilation in Dutch is covered while its application in German is examined with an eye to its implications for the stratification of the German lexicon In the final section of volume I, the structure of diphthongs is examined, as well as the treatment of lenition and the relation between phonetic and phonological specification in sign language Volume II deals with phonological structure above the segmental level, in particular with syllable structure, metrical structure and sentence-level prosodic structure Different syllable structure theories, as well as possible relations between segment structure and syllabic structure, and evidence from language acquisition and aphasia are examined in section 1 Metrical structure is examined in papers on foot structure, and, experimentally, on word stress in Indonesian Finally in this volume, there are three laboratory-phonological reports on the intonation of Dutch

01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: This paper analyzed the effect of phrasal accent in a corpus of read radio news speech from a single speaker of American English and found that VOT, Closure Duration and F0 are significant cues to stop voicing for stops in this corpus.
Abstract: Data from three acoustic cues to stop voicing is analyzed for the effect of phrasal accent in a corpus of read radio news speech from a single speaker of American English. The results show that VOT, Closure Duration and F0 are significant cues to voicing for stops in this corpus, though the acoustic patterns vary by place of articulation. There is a significant effect of phrasal accent on each cue, with increased values for both voiced and voiceless stops, described here as a pattern of syntagmatic strengthening. Patterns of paradigmatic strengthening, with enhanced voicing contrast under accent, are observed only in sporadic cases. The results indicate that accent effects in radio news speech are similar to those reported for “laboratory speech” from prior phonetics studies.

01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the contextual conditions of devoicing of phonologically voiced stops and found that voiceless stops are more frequently devoiced when the voiced stop was followed by a low or mid vowel.
Abstract: The aim of the current study is to investigate the contextual conditions of devoicing of phonologically voiced stops. Therefore articulatory and acoustical data of four male speakers were recorded by means of EMMA and EPG. Devoicing was observed more frequently for the velar stops than for the bilabials. The highest occurrence of devoicing was observed when the voiced stop was followed by a low or mid vowel. To test whether articulatory positions are affected by the identity of the following vowel ANOVAs were computed. All subjects showed significant effects on positional data varying with place of articulation of the stop. Percentage of devoicing was significantly correlated with vertical and horizontal tongue positions for the velar and with the vertical jaw position for both stops. Stepwise regression models were computed to achieve an objective measure for the relevance of the measured parameters. We assume that in German movement economy, i.e. coarticulation, is more important than the maintenance of voicing during the closure, which is in agreement with the view that the voicing distinction in German is primarily produced by a longer VOT for the voiceless stops.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results suggest that the locus of the speech production deficit of anterior aphasics is not at the higher stages of phoneme selection or planning but rather in articulatory implementation, one related to laryngeal control.

01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored regressive voice assimilation in French, a surface variation in which the voicing of a consonant is modified by the voice of the following consonant, and found that voiceless stops assimilated more strongly than voiced stops.
Abstract: Past research has shown that the speech processing system is, under certain circumstances, relatively tolerant to surface variations in connected speech. The goal of this study is to explore regressive voice assimilation in French, a surface variation in which the voicing of a consonant is modified by the voicing of the following consonant. French subjects pronounced sentences containing words with plosive codas inserted in either assimilatory or nonassimilatory contexts. We carried out acoustic analyses and defined an index for voice assimilation. We observed that regressive voice assimilation in French is a graded rather than an all-or-none phonological phenomenon. The strength of assimilation did not depend on the following context (stops or fricatives). There was a significant effect of the underlying voicing: voiceless stops assimilated more strongly than voiced stops. Such acoustic trends should be taken into account when studying the perceptual consequences of voice assimilation.


Book Chapter
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, the kinematics of the tongue tip and jaw as well as the tongue-palate contact patterns were investigated for four German subjects to study the involvement of supralaryngeal move-ments in the production of the voicing contrast.
Abstract: Except for cavity enlargement strategies there is not much consensus about the involvement of supralaryngeal move-ments in the production of the voicing contrast. In order to study supralaryngeal stop production mechanisms we in-vestigated the kinematics of tongue tip and jaw as well as tongue-palate contact patterns for four German subjects. We took alveolar stops in word medial (Cm) and word final position (Cf) into account. Results from Cm provide evidence that even though acoustic results exhibited consistently a longer closure duration for the voiceless stops, speaker-dependent articulatory mechanisms were involved. In word final position the rule of final devoicing applies in German, i.e. voiced stops are neutralised to voiceless. Results from acoustics and EPG generally showed complete neutralisation, but some differences, par-ticularly in jaw position at the consonantal target and in tongue-jaw coordination, are still maintained.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article exploited the McGurk effect to examine whether visual information for place of articulation also shifts the best-exemplar range for voiceless stop consonants, following Green and Kuhl's (1989) demonstration of effects of visual place-of- articulation on the location of voicing boundaries.
Abstract: Previous work has demonstrated that the graded internal structure of phonetic categories is sensitive to a variety of contextual factors. One such factor is place of articulation: The best exemplars of voiceless stop consonants along auditory bilabial and velar voice onset time (VOT) continua occur over different ranges of VOTs (Volaitis & Miller, 1992). In the present study, we exploited theMcGurk effect to examine whether visual information for place of articulation also shifts the best-exemplar range for voiceless consonants, following Green and Kuhl’s (1989) demonstration of effects of visual place of articulation on the location of voicing boundaries. In Experiment 1, we established that /p/ and /t/ have different best-exemplar ranges along auditory bilabial and alveolar VOT continua. We then found, in Experiment 2, a similar shift in the best-exemplar range for /t/ relative to that for /p/ when there was a change in visual place of articulation, with auditory place of articulation held constant. These findings indicate that the perceptual mechanisms that determine internal phonetic category structure are sensitive to visual, as well as to auditory, information.

01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: The laryngeal features of Old English fricatives, while fully predictable, nonetheless behave contrastively in the phonology as discussed by the authors, and this would appear to be a paradox.
Abstract: The laryngeal features of Old English fricatives, while fully predictable, nonetheless behave contrastively in the phonology. According to traditional notions of contrastiveness, this would appear to be a paradox. The paradox is resolved using the contrastive hierarchy (Dresher 1998): in the OE hierarchy, the voicing feature takes scope over all obstruents. Segments traditionally assumed as surface variants will be analyzed as "deep allophones," a characterization that explains their behaviour in OE and their subsequent historical development.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the West Germanic languages, the voicing of the Germanic fricatives /, 0, χ and Indo-European s (henceforth Gmc. s) is attested at various times for the different members of the series and different word positions as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the West Germanic languages, the voicing of the Germanic fricatives /, 0, χ and Indo-European s (henceforth Gmc. s) is attested at various times for the different members of the series and different word positions. Medial voicing in a voiced environment is attested in or generally posited for Old English, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian, Old Saxon, and Old High German. Initial voicing is attested in or posited for Middle English, Middle Dutch, and Old High German. Although there are exceptions, voicing is generally reflected in orthography for/ but not for s. The picture is further complicated by the individual developments of the various fricatives. Gmc. θ became a stop in Dutch and High and Low German but remained in English; Gmc. χ became an aspirate initially and intervocalically. Loss also occurred in both cases. For Gmc. s there is the further complication in High German of the development of a new sibilant through the second consonant shift. Also influencing the distribution of fricatives is the positional occlusion of the voiced Germanic fricatives , <3, y, which varied for each member of the series and geographically. Orthographie considerations play a role in the attestation. Despite these complications and further developments in the later stages of West Germanic, it seems the voiceless fricatives generally underwent a common development in the early stages of West Germanic. In this paper I will review the conditions in the various West Germanic languages, arguing that the voicing is an old, rather than a younger, development. I will also try to tie the development of fricatives to the history of stops in West Germanic.

Proceedings Article
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: A low value of the ratio of the duration of a vowel to the closure duration of the following plosive is a reliable indicator of gemination in Hindi stop consonants in continuous speech.
Abstract: A study of the durational characteristics of Hindi stop consonants in spoken sentences was carried out. An annotated and time-aligned Hindi speech database was used in the experiment. The influences of aspiration, voicing and gemination on the durations of closure and post-release segments of plosives as well as the duration of the preceding vowel were studied. It was observed that the post-release duration of a plosive changes systematically with manner of articulation. However, due to its large variation in continuous speech, the post-release duration alone is not sufficient to identify the manner of articulation of Hindi stops as hypothesised in earlier studies. A low value of the ratio of the duration of a vowel to the closure duration of the following plosive is a reliable indicator of gemination in Hindi stop consonants in continuous speech.

01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this article, a chronology of phonetic changes in Middle Chinese has been presented, and it is shown that the intransitive N prefix correspond to intransive nasal prefixes in various Tibeto-Burman languages.
Abstract: The author argues that in addition to the three series of stops commonly reconstructed (voiceless unaspirated; voiceless aspirated; voiced), Old Chinese possessed three prenasalized series, in which the prenasal element was a prefix N-. This prefix changed transitive verbs to intransitives, voicing a voiceless unaspirated obstruent root initial in the process. Prenasalization later disappeared, leaving behind the well-known Middle Chinese alternation between transitive verbs with voiceless obstruent initials and intransitive verbs with voiced obstruent initials. Voicing, however, occurred only if the root initial was a voiceless unaspirated obstruent: prenasalized voiceless aspirated initials were not affected: they evolved to Middle Chinese aspirated stops. A chronology of phonetic changes is proposed. Evidence from early Chinese loans to Miao-Yao is discussed. The intransitive Nprefix is shown to correspond to intransitive nasal prefixes in various TibetoBurman languages; while the connection to Written Tibetan a-ch’ung, also a nasal prefix, is regarded as spurious on functional grounds. It is proposed that the intransitive nasal prefixes in Sino-Tibetan languages go back to a proto-Sino-Tibetan intransitive m- prefix. The formal and functional similarity between intransitive voicing in Middle Chinese and the alternation known as “alternation of root initial” in Tibeto-Burman languages, which likewises contrasts transitive verbs with voiceless initials and intransitive verbs with voiced initials, raises the issue of the origin of this alternation in the Tibeto-Burman languages: considering that the Chinese alternation has turned out to have its origin in a nasal prefix, is the same also true of the Tibeto-Burman alternation? The question is for the moment left open.

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: The authors set up a catalogue of parameters which are involved in the distinction of Korean velar stops in intervocalic position and found that the distinction is only partly built on laryngeal parameters.
Abstract: The Korean stop system exhibits a three-way distinction in velar stops among /g/, /k’/ and /k h /. If the differentiation is regarded as being based on voicing, such a system is rather unusual because even a two-way distinction between a voiced and a voicless unaspirated velar stop gets easily lost in the languages of the world especially in the case of velar stops. One possibility for maintainig this distinction is that supralaryngeal characteristics like articulators’ velocity, duration of surrounding vowels or stop closure duration are involved. The aim of the present study is to set up a catalogue of parameters which are involved in the distinction of Korean velar stops in intervocalic position. Two Korean speakers have been recorded via Electromagnetic Articulography. The word material consisted of VCV-sequences where V is one of the three vowels /a/, /i/ or /u/ and C one of the Korean velars /g/, /k’/ or /k h /. Articulatory and acoustic signals have been analysed. It turned out that the distinction is only partly built on laryngeal parameters and that supralaryngeal characteristics differ for the three stops. Another result is that the voicing contrast is not a matter of one parameter, but there is always a set of parameters involved. Furthermore, speakers seem to have a certain freedom in the choice of these parameters.

Journal ArticleDOI
20 Mar 2003
TL;DR: In dyslexic children, voicing similarity improved Rank 2 target detection and improved Rank 1 consonant detection, suggesting impaired phonetic organisation of phoneme detectors.
Abstract: Previous studies have shown that adult skilled readers are sensitive to voicing similarity of printed prime-target or target-mask pairs (Bedoin, 1998). In the present consonant detection task, phonetic priming and masking effects were assessed within one briefly presented CVCV printed stimulus. The consonant target (Rank 1 or 2) was either similar or different in voicing to the other consonant. In adult skilled readers and third graders with average reading level, voicing similarity impaired Rank 2 consonant detection and improved Rank 1 consonant detection, replicating effects found with stimuli pairs in previous experiments. These results argue for the involvement of phoneme detectors organised by inhibitory relations based on shared phonetic properties. In dyslexic children, voicing similarity improved Rank 2 target detection, suggesting impaired phonetic organisation of phoneme detectors. After audio-visual training about voicing, this pattern of results was modified in dyslexic children, and became quite similar to skilled readers’ data.

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 2003-WORD
TL;DR: The primary contrast between obstruents in English has been described in alternative ways: either /p, t, t∫, k, f, θ, s, ∫/ or /b, d, d3, g, v, ð, z, 3/ voiced.
Abstract: The primary contrast between obstruents in English has been described in alternative ways: either /p, t, t∫, k, f, θ, s, ∫/ are voiceless and /b, d, d3, g, v, ð, z, 3/ voiced, or the former set is ...

01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied the duration and devoicing of Portuguese fricatives using a set of corpora that include nonsense words following Portuguese phonological rules, and real words; these were recorded by four subjects (2 male, 2 female).
Abstract: Duration and devoicing of Portuguese fricatives have been studied using a set of corpora that include nonsense words following Portuguese phonological rules, and real words; these were recorded by four subjects (2 male, 2 female). Results show that fricative duration varies most with voicing (voiceless are longer), and also significantly by speaker, place, and position within word. Devoicing occurs most often word-finally, and varies significantly by place; devoicing occurs more often than in English.

01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: A study of half-rhymes (HR's) in Romanian poetry reveals that poets systematically prefer HR's corresponding to certain common phonological processes: final devoicing, postnasal voicing, nasalplace neutralization, stressless vowel reduction, coda cluster simplification, nasalized vowel centralization, liquid metathesis.
Abstract: A study of half-rhymes (HR's) in Romanian poetry reveals that poets systematically prefer HR's corresponding to certain common phonological processes: final devoicing, post-nasal voicing, nasalplace neutralization, stressless vowel reduction, coda cluster simplification, nasalized vowel centralization, liquid metathesis. The striking observation is that none of these processes operates in Romanian phonology at a categorical level. But at least some have an identifiable phonetic basis: thus ˆ) and u) which are involved in a large number of HR's, are

Claudia Kuzla1
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: Results from acoustic analysis show that the realization of stop-fricative sequences across prosodic boundaries in German is gradient rather than categorical, and sensitive to prosodic structure, showing a larger extent of assimilation across smaller boundaries.
Abstract: This study investigates the realization of stop-fricative sequences across prosodic boundaries in German. According to phonological descriptions of German, voiced fricatives following voiceless obstruents undergo assimilatory devoicing. Results from acoustic analysis show that this process is gradient rather than categorical, and sensitive to prosodic structure, showing a larger extent of assimilation across smaller boundaries. In addition, also in the temporal patterns of these sequences, evidence of prosodic structure was found, with both the domain-final stop and the domain-initial fricatives being longer at larger boundaries.

Martin Krämer1
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: The authors examined the distribution of voiced and voiceless coronal fricatives in a variety of Veneto Italian, in particular the local variety that is spoken in Padua, and found that all the corricatives which are voiced due to intervocalic s-voicing in Lombardian are voiced as well in Veneto.
Abstract: Since Nespor & Vogel (1986), the coronal fricative in Northern Italian has been subject to a long debate on what exactly intervocalic s-voicing in Italian can tell us about grammar and the organisation of words (Bertinetto 1999, Kenstowicz 1996, Loporcaro 1999, Peperkamp 1995, 1997, van Oostendorp 1999, Kramer 2001a, in press). In this paper, I examine the distribution of voiced and voiceless coronal fricatives in a variety of Veneto Italian, in particular the local variety that is spoken in Padua. Veneto (or Paduan) has no geminate consonants, i.e., all consonants which are long in other varieties are short. Coronal fricatives which have geminate correlates in other varieties are short and voiceless in Veneto. Voiced affricates surface as voiced fricatives word-initially. Altogether this creates a surface contrast between voiced and voiceless fricatives in word-initial position (1a,b), word-internally (1c,d) and prefix-finally (2a versus d,e). This becomes interesting when we compare Veneto with varieties which display intervocalic voicing, such as Lombardian, because all coronal fricatives which are voiced due to intervocalic voicing in Lombardian are voiced as well in Veneto.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results show that each acoustic cue contributed to the perception of initial voicing in Hebrew, and when the stimulus was constructed from voiced and voiceless cues, intermediate VOT values were needed for the voicing distinction.
Abstract: Very few studies investigated systematically the acoustic cues for the perception of voicing stops in Hebrew. Voicing is characterized by several parameters of which the voice onset time (VOT) was found to be the primary cue for its perception. There are, however, other known acoustic cues to voicing such as transition to the first formant (F1) and the initial burst. The purpose of the present study was to measure the relative weighting of these various acoustic cues in the perception of Hebrew voicing, using the conflicting cues paradigm. Thirteen adults with normal hearing participated in this study. Stimuli consisted of one pair of meaningful words that differ in the voicing of the initial stop. Four different continua were constructed from the pair of natural stimuli. The first two consisted of the voiced burst combined with the vowel that was truncated from the consonant-vowel combination (where the consonant was voiced or voiceless). The remaining two continua consisted of the voiceless burst combined with the same truncated vowels. For each stimulus, a VOT continuum was created varying from -40 to +40 ms in 10 ms segments. Subjects were tested using a two alternative forced choice labeling procedure. The percent of responses to each stimulus of each VOT continuum (/b-p/) was calculated for each individual and combination. The results show that each acoustic cue contributed to the perception of initial voicing in Hebrew: (1) When the stimulus was constructed from the voiced cues, positive VOT values were needed for the voice/voiceless distinction; (2) when the stimulus was constructed from the voiceless cues, negative VOT values were needed for the voicing distinction; and (3) when the stimulus was constructed from voiced and voiceless cues, intermediate VOT values were needed for the voicing distinction. These results provide initial information regarding the relative effect of the acoustic cues in the perception of Hebrew stop voicing.