Showing papers on "Voice published in 2019"

The phonetics of voice 1

Abstract: The aim of this chapter is to outline a theory of the voice that relates specific vocal fold articulations to acoustic parameters that are perceptible to listeners. The “voice” here is defined narrowly as sound generated by different articulatory configurations of the vocal folds. However, even when so narrowly defined, voice production and voice quality perception are inherently multidimensional. Phonological analyses of the voice provide one way of constraining its multidimensionality, because the voice plays an essential, though restricted, role in phonology. The sounds of the world’s languages can be characterized by their voicing – the presence or absence of vocal fold vibration – and the absence of voicing can be achieved through vocal fold spreading or constriction. When voicing is present, it can have different rates of vibration, which alter the pitch of the voice; the vocal folds can also exhibit different manners of voicing, which result in changes in voice quality. These main articulations of the vocal folds are modeled in terms of their acoustic characteristics, using measures that can link voice articulation and voice quality perception.

Distributional learning for speech reflects cumulative exposure to a talker’s phonetic distributions

Abstract: Efficient speech perception requires listeners to maintain an exquisite tension between stability of the language architecture and flexibility to accommodate variation in the input, such as that associated with individual talker differences in speech production. Achieving this tension can be guided by top-down learning mechanisms, wherein lexical information constrains interpretation of speech input, and by bottom-up learning mechanisms, in which distributional information in the speech signal is used to optimize the mapping to speech sound categories. An open question for theories of perceptual learning concerns the nature of the representations that are built for individual talkers: do these representations reflect long-term, global exposure to a talker or rather only short-term, local exposure? Recent research suggests that when lexical knowledge is used to resolve a talker's ambiguous productions, listeners disregard previous experience with a talker and instead rely on only recent experience, a finding that is contrary to predictions of Bayesian belief-updating accounts of perceptual adaptation. Here we use a distributional learning paradigm in which lexical information is not explicitly required to resolve ambiguous input to provide an additional test of global versus local exposure accounts. Listeners completed two blocks of phonetic categorization for stimuli that differed in voice-onset-time, a probabilistic cue to the voicing contrast in English stop consonants. In each block, two distributions were presented, one specifying /g/ and one specifying /k/. Across the two blocks, variance of the distributions was manipulated to be either narrow or wide. The critical manipulation was order of the two blocks; half of the listeners were first exposed to the narrow distributions followed by the wide distributions, with the order reversed for the other half of the listeners. The results showed that for earlier trials, the identification slope was steeper for the narrow-wide group compared to the wide-narrow group, but this difference was attenuated for later trials. The between-group convergence was driven by an asymmetry in learning between the two orders such that only those in the narrow-wide group showed slope movement during exposure, a pattern that was mirrored by computational simulations in which the distributional statistics of the present talker were integrated with prior experience with English. This pattern of results suggests that listeners did not disregard all prior experience with the talker, and instead used cumulative exposure to guide phonetic decisions, which raises the possibility that accommodating a talker's phonetic signature entails maintaining representations that reflect global experience.

Orangutans show active voicing through a membranophone.

Abstract: Active voicing – voluntary control over vocal fold oscillation – is essential for speech. Nonhuman great apes can learn new consonant- and vowel-like calls, but active voicing by our closest relatives has historically been the hardest evidence to concede to. To resolve this controversy, a diagnostic test for active voicing is reached here through the use of a membranophone: a musical instrument where a player’s voice flares a membrane’s vibration through oscillating air pressure. We gave the opportunity to use a membranophone to six orangutans (with no effective training), three of whom produced a priori novel (species-atypical) individual-specific vocalizations. After 11 and 34 min, two subjects were successful by producing their novel vocalizations into the instrument, hence, confirming active voicing. Beyond expectation, however, within <1 hour, both subjects found opposite strategies to significantly alter their voice duration and frequency to better activate the membranophone, further demonstrating plastic voice control as a result of experience with the instrument. Results highlight how individual differences in vocal proficiency between great apes may affect performance in experimental tests. Failing to adjust a test’s difficulty level to individuals’ vocal skill may lead to false negatives, which may have largely been the case in past studies now used as “textbook fact” for great ape “missing” vocal capacities. Results qualitatively differ from small changes that can be caused in innate monkey calls by intensive months-long conditional training. Our findings verify that active voicing beyond the typical range of the species’ repertoire, which in our species underpins the acquisition of new voiced speech sounds, is not uniquely human among great apes.

The phonetics and phonology of lenition: A Campidanese Sardinian case study

Abstract: This paper gives a detailed description of the consonant system of Campidanese Sardinian and makes methodological and theoretical contributions to the study of lenition. The data are drawn from a corpus of field recordings, including roughly 400 utterances produced by 15 speakers from the Trexenta and Western Campidanese areas. Campidanese has a complex lenition system that interacts with length, voicing, and manner contrasts. We show that the semi-automated lenition analysis presented in this journal by Ennever, Meakins, and Round can be fruitfully extended to our corpus, despite its much more heterogeneous set of materials in a genetically distant language. Intensity measurements from this method do not differ qualitatively from more traditional ones in their ability to detect lenition-fortition patterns, but do differ in interactions with stress. Lenition-fortition patterns reveal at least three levels of prosodic constituent in Campidanese, each of which is associated with medial lenition and initial fortition. Lenition affects all consonants and V-V transitions. It reduces duration, increases intensity, and probabilistically affects qualitative manner and voicing features in obstruents. Mediation analysis using regression modeling suggests that some intensity and most qualitative reflexes of lenition are explained by changes in duration, but not vice versa.

Covariation of stop voice onset time across languages: Evidence for a universal constraint on phonetic realization.

Abstract: Stop consonant voice onset time (VOT) was examined in a typological survey of over 100 languages. Within broadly defined laryngeal categories (long-lag, short-lag, and lead voicing), VOT means were found to vary extensively. Importantly, the means for members of the same laryngeal series did not vary independently but instead were highly correlated across languages. The strong linear relations identified here cannot be reduced to previously reported ordinal relations, and provide evidence for a uniformity constraint on phonetic realization: within a language, each laryngeal specification must be realized in approximately the same way across stops of different places of articulation.

The Application of English Theories to Sorani Phonology

Abstract: This thesis investigates phonological processes in Sorani Kurdish within the framework of Element Theory. It studies two main varieties of Sorani spoken in Iraq which are Slemani and Hawler. Since the phonology of SK is one of the least studied areas in Kurdish linguistics and the available studies provide different accounts of its segments, I start by introducing the segmental system of the SK dialect group. I present a list of consonants and vowels and discuss the variation between Hawler and Slemani. I then present an Element Theory analysis of the segmental system of SK which reflects the phonological behaviour of each segment and how it patterns with other sounds. For example, s and ž are post-alveolar articulatorily while they behave like palatals in phonological processes and hence have a headed |I| element. I then study processes of place assimilation in SK. The process of palatalization is one area that sets Hawler and Slemani varieties apart. In SK, velar stops, k g, are palatalized before front vocoids. However, in Hawler, the output of velar palatalization is an affricate consonant while in Slemani, palatalization is secondary and adds a secondary articulation to the velar stops. Similarly, both varieties have a set of emphatic consonants which have caused considerable debate in the literature as there is no agreement on their distribution in SK. In this study, I present the first detailed account of the emphatic consonants in SK and argue that their triggers differ between Slemani and Hawler and I also argue that they differ phonologically from emphatics in Arabic. Another place assimilation process that is discussed briefly is nasal place assimilation. Other processes discussed in the thesis relate to laryngeal contrasts in SK. The data show that word-initial obstruents have a typologically uncommon laryngeal contrast that utilizes the extreme points on the VOT continuum. That is, SK has a pre-voiced set of obstruents that contrasts with an aspirated set in word-initial position. In word-final position, however, the pre-voiced set is devoiced, and the contrast is between an aspirated set and a neutral set. I also discuss the process of voicing assimilation that occurs in both Hawler and Slemani. The study also accounts for such processes as metathesis and deletion and presents data to show variations between Hawler and Slemani. The study ends with an evaluation of the main findings and asserts the importance of this thesis and how it can be used as a basis for future work.

Age-Related Changes in Temporal and Spectral Cue Weights in Speech.

Abstract: Listeners weight acoustic cues in speech according to their reliability, but few studies have examined how cue weights change across the lifespan. Previous work has suggested that older adults have deficits in auditory temporal discrimination, which could affect the reliability of temporal phonetic cues, such as voice onset time (VOT), and in turn, impact speech perception in real-world listening environments. We addressed this by examining younger and older adults' use of VOT and onset F0 (a secondary phonetic cue) for voicing judgments (e.g., /b/ vs. /p/), using both synthetic and naturally produced speech. We found age-related differences in listeners' use of the two voicing cues, such that older adults relied more heavily on onset F0 than younger adults, even though this cue is less reliable in American English. These results suggest that phonetic cue weights continue to change across the lifespan.

Voicing the Ancestors: Readings for the Present from Anthropology's Past

Abstract: “Voicing the Ancestors” was conceived in 2014 as a new genre for sharing interest in the history of anthropology. Richard Handler and I were then planning a conference session in memory of the influential historian of anthropology George Stocking, who had been our teacher. One side of Stocking’s persona was the rigorous scholar whose books and essays exemplify high standards of polish, layered construction, reflexivity, and erudition. But he also had a searching and playful side, wrote haikus, knitted symbolrich Christmas stockings, and was interested in creative experiments (Bashkow 2016; Manganaro 1999, 312; Stocking 2001; 2010, 208). Indeed, Stocking’s last book was a genre-bending “self-deconstruction” that reflected upon his own scholarship in the context of his family history, youthful Communist Party membership, FBI file, episodes of depression and writer’s block, careerism, and experience of mental and physical degeneration with advanced age (Stocking 2010). To honor this experimental side, we asked session participants to choose a text from the past that they find intellectually, ethically, or politically important, explain its significance, and read a selection from it aloud—thereby giving voice to a chosen ancestor. The session proved fun and interesting: a forum in which anthropologists shared inspiration by conjuring predecessors whose voices were heard afresh and found to resonate in new ways. The session had the welcome effect of enlarging the intellectual genealogies of all of us who were present. The novel format caught on. Additional sessions devoted to “voicing the ancestors” were held during the 2015, 2016, and 2017 annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (Bashkow et al. 2019; Handler et al. 2016, 2017). This forum brings together presentations given in 2017.

Partial devoicing of voiced geminate stops in Tokyo Japanese.

Abstract: Tokyo Japanese has a constraint against voiced geminate stops in its native lexicon. The present study investigates whether recently introduced word-medial voiced geminate stops [C1V1C(C)2V2] are differentiated from voiceless geminates and voiced singletons in terms of duration, voicing during closure, and spectral moments of stop release bursts. The findings suggest that the voiceless and voiced singleton stops were clearly differentiated by C2 duration. In contrast, C2 duration of the voiceless and voiced geminate stops was not significantly different. The devoicing of the word-medial stops was not only observed in voiced geminates, but voiced singletons also showed devoicing. The duration of the preceding vowel (V1) distinguished the voicing contrast in both singleton and geminate stops. The first four spectral moments of C2 stop release bursts did not distinguish the length and voicing contrasts in stops. These results indicate that, although word-medial voiced geminate stops are fully or partially devoiced, the Tokyo Japanese speakers lengthen the preceding vowels (V1) to maintain a voicing contrast. Production patterns of the voiced geminates are considered in relation to marginal or intermediate phonological contrast.

“Not only hard to make but also hard to take:” Team leaders’ reactions to voice

Abstract: Voicing concerns and suggestions is a central aspect of effective team communication. Engaging in voice has been shown to be an important factor for improving team performance and preventing errors. But voice can only make a beneficial contribution, if it does not fall on deaf ears. Little is known about the interplay of sending and receiving voice in teams. This is problematic because the recipient of voice bears much of the responsibility for the voice message’s outcome and will contribute to the decision if voice is implemented. This study investigates the team leaders’ reactions (i. e., implementation vs. rejection) to three different voice verbalizations (i. e., respectful, explicit, and oblique). We hypothesized that team leaders will implement respectful and explicit voice more likely than oblique voice. Building on the concept of rudeness, we also hypothesized that explicit voice will be perceived as ruder than respectful voice. We tested the hypotheses in 39 teams performing a tower building task. Our results indicate that, compared with oblique voice, both respectful and explicit voice increased the likelihood of voice implementation. Further, explicit voice was perceived as ruder than oblique and marginally ruder than respectful voice. In an exploratory analysis, we also considered the content of voice (i. e., promotive vs. prohibitive). Results revealed that the implementation of voice was related to an interplay between the type of voice verbalization and voice content. Our findings suggest an important link between voice verbalization and voice implementation and contribute to a better understanding of the complex dynamics of team communication.

Consonant and Vowel Confusions in Well-Performing Children and Adolescents With Cochlear Implants, Measured by a Nonsense Syllable Repetition Test.

Abstract: Although the majority of early implanted, profoundly deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs), will develop correct pronunciation if they receive adequate oral language stimulation, many of them have difficulties with perceiving minute details of speech. The main aim of this study is to measure the confusion of consonants and vowels in well-performing children and adolescents with CIs. The study also aims to investigate how age at onset of severe to profound deafness influences perception. The participants are 36 children and adolescents with CIs (18 girls), with a mean (SD) age of 11.6 (3.0) years (range: 5.9-16.0 years). Twenty-nine of them are prelingually deaf and seven are postlingually deaf. Two reference groups of normal-hearing (NH) 6- and 13-year-olds are included. Consonant and vowel perception is measured by repetition of 16 bisyllabic vowel-consonant-vowel nonsense words and nine monosyllabic consonant-vowel-consonant nonsense words in an open-set design. For the participants with CIs, consonants were mostly confused with consonants with the same voicing and manner, and the mean (SD) voiced consonant repetition score, 63.9 (10.6)%, was considerably lower than the mean (SD) unvoiced consonant score, 76.9 (9.3)%. There was a devoicing bias for the stops; unvoiced stops were confused with other unvoiced stops and not with voiced stops, and voiced stops were confused with both unvoiced stops and other voiced stops. The mean (SD) vowel repetition score was 85.2 (10.6)% and there was a bias in the confusions of [i:] and [y:]; [y:] was perceived as [i:] twice as often as [y:] was repeated correctly. Subgroup analyses showed no statistically significant differences between the consonant scores for pre- and postlingually deaf participants. For the NH participants, the consonant repetition scores were substantially higher and the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonant repetition scores considerably lower than for the participants with CIs. The participants with CIs obtained scores close to ceiling on vowels and real-word monosyllables, but their perception was substantially lower for voiced consonants. This may partly be related to limitations in the CI technology for the transmission of low-frequency sounds, such as insertion depth of the electrode and ability to convey temporal information.

Improving Fundamental Frequency Generation in EMG-to-Speech Conversion Using a Quantization Approach

Abstract: We present a novel approach to generating fundamental frequency (intonation and voicing) trajectories in an EMG-to-Speech conversion Silent Speech Interface, based on quantizing the EMG-to-F 0 mappings target values and thus turning a regression problem into a recognition problem. We present this method and evaluate its performance with regard to the accuracy of the voicing information obtained as well as the performance in generating plausible intonation trajectories within voiced sections of the signal. To this end, we also present a new measure for overall F 0 trajectory plausibility, the trajectory-label accuracy (TLAcc), and compare it with human evaluations. Our new F 0 generation method achieves a significantly better performance than a baseline approach in terms of voicing accuracy, correlation of voiced sections, trajectory-label accuracy and, most importantly, human evaluations.

Gran Canarian Spanish Non-Continuant Voicing: Gradiency, Sex Differences and Perception.

Abstract: BACKGROUND/AIMS This paper examines the process of postvocalic voicing in the Spanish of Gran Canaria from the point of view of language change. A perception-production study was designed to measure the extent of variation in speaker productions, explore the degree to which production is affected by perception and identify variables that can be considered markers of sound change in progress. METHODS 20 native speakers of the dialect were asked to repeat auditory input data containing voiceless non-continuants with and without voicing. RESULTS Input voicing has no effect on output pronunciations, but voicing is highly variable, with both phonetic and social factors involved. Most importantly, a clear lenition pattern was identified based on such indicators as consonant duration, intensity ratio, absence of burst and presence of formants, with the velar /k/ as the most affected segment. Furthermore, strong social implications were identified: voicing degrees and rates depend both on the level of education and on the gender of the speaker. CONCLUSION The results of the study suggest that the interplay of external and internal factors must be investigated more thoroughly to better address the question of phonetic variation and phonologisation of contrasts in the context of language change.

Energy distribution in formant bands for arabic vowels

Abstract: The acoustic cues play a major role in speech segmentation phase; the extraction of these indexes facilitates the characterization of the speech signal. In this work, we aim to study Arabic vowels (/a/, /a:/, /i/, /i:/, /u/ and /u:/), especially the long ones. We are interested in characterizing this type of vowels in terms of time, frequency and energy. The cues extracted and analyzed in this work are: segment length, voicing degree and formants values.

An exploratory study of voicing-related differences in vowel duration as compensatory temporal adjustment in Italian and Polish

Abstract: Over a century of phonetic research has established the cross-linguistic existence of the so called “voicing effect”, by which vowels tend to be shorter when followed by voiceless stops and longer when the following stop is voiced. However, no agreement is found among scholars regarding the source of this effect, and several causal accounts have been advanced. A notable one is the compensatory temporal adjustment account, according to which the duration of the vowel is inversely correlated with the stop closure duration (voiceless stops having longer closure durations than voiced stops). The compensatory account has been criticised due to lack of empirical support and its vagueness regarding the temporal interval within which compensation is implemented. The results from an exploratory study of Italian and Polish suggest that the duration of the interval between two consecutive stop releases in CVCV words in these languages is not affected by the voicing of the second stop. The durational difference of the first vowel and the stop closure would then follow from differences in timing of the VC boundary within this interval. While other aspects, like production mechanisms related to laryngeal features effects and perceptual biases cannot be ruled out, the data discussed here are compatible with a production account based on compensatory mechanisms.

Individual differences in distributional learning for speech: What's ideal for ideal observers?

Abstract: Research demonstrates that efficient speech perception is supported by listeners’ ability to dynamically modify the mapping to speech sounds to reflect cumulative experience with talkers’ input distributions. Here we test the hypothesis that higher-level receptive language ability is linked to adaptation to low-level distributional cues in speech input. Listeners completed two blocks of phonetic categorization for stimuli that differed in voice-onset-time (VOT), a probabilistic cue to the voicing contrast in English stop consonants. In each block, two distributions were presented, one specifying /g/ and one specifying /k/. Across the two blocks, variance of the input distributions was manipulated to be either narrow or wide, reflecting distributions that were relatively more to relatively less consistent, respectively, in terms of how VOT cued the voicing contrast. As predicted by ideal observer computational frameworks, the participants in the aggregate showed steeper identification slopes for consistent compared to inconsistent input distributions. However, the magnitude of learning showed wide individual variability, which was predicted by receptive language ability as measured using standardized assessments. Individuals with poorer receptive language scores showed diminished distributional learning due to a failure to capitalize on consistent input distributions; instead, their perceptual decisions showed instability even the face of acoustic-phonetic certainty.

Bias in Phonotactic Learning: Experimental Studies of Phonotactic Implicationals

Abstract: Author(s): Glewwe, Eleanor | Advisor(s): Zuraw, Kie | Abstract: An ongoing debate in phonology concerns the extent to which the phonological typology is shaped by synchronic learning biases. The two best-studied types of synchronic bias are complexity bias, a bias against formally complex patterns, and substantive bias, a bias against phonetically unnatural patterns. While most previous work has focused on bias in the learning of phonological alternations, this dissertation tests for substantive bias and complexity bias in phonotactic learning. Four artificial grammar learning (AGL) experiments tested whether learners reproduce phonetically-motivated phonotactic implicationals from the typology. The implicationals concern the distribution of place of articulation and voicing contrasts in stops across positions. If a language has place or voicing contrasts in stops word-finally, it also has those contrasts word-initially, but if a language has such contrasts word-initially, it does not necessarily have them word-finally. These implicationals are phonetically motivated: stop place of articulation and voicing are less perceptible word-finally than word-initially. If place or voicing contrasts exist in a position where they are hard to perceive, they should also exist in positions where they are easier to perceive. My experiments exposed participants to place or voicing contrasts in word-initial or word-final position and then tested whether they extended the contrast(s) to the other word-edge position. Perception-based substantive bias predicts greater extension from word-final to word-initial position than vice versa. This prediction was not borne out in the place experiments but was borne out in one voicing experiment. The voicing experiments thus provide partial support for substantive bias. Due to the phonemic inventories of the artificial languages, the voicing experiments could also test for complexity bias. Effects of complexity bias emerged in both experiments. A fifth AGL experiment tested the relative learnability of final voicing alternations. The experiment failed to find support for articulation-based substantive bias: final devoicing, which increases articulatory ease, was not learned better than final voicing. The results did provide additional support for complexity bias. Based on the results of this dissertation’s experiments and a review of the literature, I argue for distinguishing between perceptually-rooted and articulatorily-rooted substantive bias and claim that only perceptual naturalness biases phonological learning.

Hypo-Articulation of the Four-Way Voicing Contrast in Nepali Infant-Directed Speech.

Abstract: Hyper-articulation of vowel and consonant contrasts is often reported in infant-directed speech (IDS), but is not universal cross-linguistically, and may be a side-effect of speaking rate. ...

A Cross‐linguistic Examination of Toddlers’ Interpretation of Vowel Duration

Abstract: Languages differ in their phonological use of vowel duration. For the child, learning how duration contributes to lexical contrast is complicated because segmental duration is implicated in many different linguistic distinctions. Using a language-guided looking task, we measured English and Dutch 21-month-olds' recognition of familiar words with normal or manipulated vowel durations. Dutch but not English learners were affected by duration changes, even though distributions of short and long vowels in both languages are similar, and English uses vowel duration as a cue to (for example) consonant coda voicing. Additionally, we found that word recognition in Dutch toddlers was affected by shortening but not lengthening of vowels, matching an asymmetry also found in Dutch adults. Considering the subtlety of the crosslinguistic difference in the input, and the complexity of duration as a phonetic feature, our results suggest a strong capacity for phonetic analysis in children before their second birthday.

Temporal Aspects of Word Initial Single Consonants and Consonants in Clusters in Spanish.

Abstract: We examined gestural coordination in C1C2 (C1 stop, C2 lateral or tap) word initial clusters using articulatory (electromagnetic articulometry) and acoustic data from six speakers of Standard Peninsular Spanish. We report on patterns of voice onset time (VOT), gestural plateau duration of C1, C2, and their overlap. For VOT, as expected, place of articulation is a major factor, with velars exhibiting longer VOTs than labials. Regarding C1 plateau duration, voice and place effects were found such that voiced consonants are significantly shorter than voiceless consonants, and velars show longer duration than labials. For C2 plateau duration, lateral duration was found to vary as a function of onset complexity (C vs. CC). As for overlap, unlike in French, where articulatory data for clusters have also been examined, clusters where both C1 and C2 are voiced show more overlap than where voicing differs. Further, overlap was affected by the C2 such that clusters where C2 is a tap show less overlap than clusters where C2 is a lateral. We discuss these results in the context of work aiming to uncover phonetic (e.g., articulatory or perceptual) and phonological forces (e.g., syllabic organization) on timing.

Perception-Production Links in Children's Speech.

Abstract: Purpose Child phonologists have long been interested in how tightly speech input constrains the speech production capacities of young children, and the question acquires clinical significance when children with hearing loss are considered. Children with sensorineural hearing loss often show differences in the spectral and temporal structures of their speech production, compared to children with normal hearing. The current study was designed to investigate the extent to which this problem can be explained by signal degradation. Method Ten 5-year-olds with normal hearing were recorded imitating 120 three-syllable nonwords presented in unprocessed form and as noise-vocoded signals. Target segments consisted of fricatives, stops, and vowels. Several measures were made: 2 duration measures (voice onset time and fricative length) and 4 spectral measures involving 2 segments (1st and 3rd moments of fricatives and 1st and 2nd formant frequencies for the point vowels). Results All spectral measures were affected by signal degradation, with vowel production showing the largest effects. Although a change in voice onset time was observed with vocoded signals for /d/, voicing category was not affected. Fricative duration remained constant. Conclusions Results support the hypothesis that quality of the input signal constrains the speech production capacities of young children. Consequently, it can be concluded that the production problems of children with hearing loss-including those with cochlear implants-can be explained to some extent by the degradation in the signal they hear. However, experience with both speech perception and production likely plays a role as well.

Vowel duration and the voicing effect across English dialects

Abstract: The ‘voicing effect’ – the durational difference in vowels preceding voiced and voiceless consonants – is a well-documented phenomenon in English, where it plays a key role in the production and perception of the English final voicing contrast. Despite this supposed importance, little is known as to how robust this effect is in spontaneous connected speech, which is itself subject to a range of linguistic factors. Similarly, little attention has focused on variability in the voicing effect across dialects of English, bar analysis of specific varieties. Our findings show that the voicing of the following consonant exhibits a weaker-than-expected effect in spontaneous speech, interacting with manner, vowel height, speech rate, and word frequency. English dialects appear to demonstrate a continuum of potential voicing effect sizes, where varieties with dialect-specific phonological rules exhibit the most extreme values. The results suggest that the voicing effect in English is both substantially weaker than previously assumed in spontaneous connected speech, and subject to a wide range of dialectal variability.

The social perception of intervocalic /k/ voicing in Chilean Spanish

Abstract: In this study, we investigate what social meaning is attributed to a nascent change in progress in Chilean Spanish, examining whether intervocalic voicing of the phonologically voiceless stop /k/ affects listener judgments along several perceptual scales. Eight brief excerpts of spontaneous speech were digitally manipulated to vary only in voicing in tokens of /k/, and thirty listeners responded via an online experiment. We find that listeners are not sensitive to voicing along three of the measured scales and are not sensitive to voicing at all in female speech. We also determined that listeners are only sensitive to intervocalic voicing when assigning values of Chilean identity to male speakers, and that this effect is mitigated by headphone use. Some of listeners’ insensitivity matches previous production data in this dialect, while we expected some sensitivity along other measures but found none. We posit that this mismatch is due to the salience of the variable: because listeners may be unfamiliar with intervocalic voicing of /k/, they have not yet indexed voicing of intervocalic /k/ with particular speaker features, aligning with Campbell-Kibler (2009).

Voicing Aspirations to be Heard

Abstract: Quality of maternal healthcare is one of the many pervasive public health challenges facing India. Maternal healthcare is defined as a fundamental human right and a crucial development issue by the UN, with direct links to the progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, especially reducing poverty (SDG1), ensuring healthy lives (SDG3) and achieving gender equality (SDG5). Whereas healthcare provision has traditionally been governed by a needs-based assessment approach founded on health resource utilisation data, social accountability is increasingly recognised and adopted by healthcare service providers as an approach that centres the perceptions and priorities of the recipient. There are many studies on the social accountability approach to maternal healthcare, but there is little current research on the link between aspirations and accountability in the context of low-resource maternal healthcare provision. Through the insights offered by social theorists including Bourdieu, Sen and Appadurai, this thesis examines a case study of the Hamara Swasthya Hamari Awaz campaign and the communications process it used to strengthen poor, rural Indian women’s voices and enable aspirations for better maternal healthcare. One semistructured, in-depth interview and two secondary source interviews with campaign organisers, as well as 15 media texts and 121 social posts provided data about the campaign. The analysis revealed that the campaign used a social accountability approach, complemented by an operationalisation of the capacity to aspire approach, to: create a dialogue and information exchange with poor, rural Indian women; to amplify their voices about their priorities; and to support them to develop a capacity to aspire for, and realise that aspiration for, better maternal healthcare. By demonstrating the connection between the present and the future for these women, HSHA helped to form a platform for dialogue with traditional power-holders, leading to a sustainable aspiration-building framework for women’s empowerment on maternal health issues at the local, national and international levels.