Article

/sP/ consonant clusters in Swedish : Acoustic measurements of phonological development

January 2005

January 2005

Authors:

Umeå University

Umeå University

This paper presents a cross-sectional and longitudinal investigation into the development of a contrast in voicing production in simple and complex consonant clusters for 21 children. The results showed that, although the group results indicated a progression that may have been caused either by development in articulatory proficiency or by an growing underlying representation, individual children develop in a manner that is not consistent with a developmental model postulating only articulatory development.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.

Article

The Locus Line: Does Aspiration Affect Its Steepness?

July 1997

It has been argued that the relationship between "F 2 locus" and "F 2 target", expressed in terms of the so-called locus equation, provides a context-independent measure of place of articulation in stop consonants. In this experiment, however, data from three Swedish speakers suggest that a variable other than place of articulation, namely aspiration (quantified in terms if voice onset time, ... [Show full abstract] VOT), can affect locus equation parameters substantially. This is accounted for in terms of aerodynamic constraints on the production of aspirated stop releases. The result of this experiment complicates the definition of an invariant measure of place of articulation and suggests that an acoustic separation of stop categories can only be achieved by introducing additional dimensions, e.g., VOT.

Article

Voice Assimilation in Swedish Fricatives

In the literature in generative phonology there has been considerable interest in the question of what features are involved in laryngeal contrasts and what types of assimilation occur in the languages of the world. With very few exceptions, discussions have been based on impressionistic transcriptions or on accounts that do not give clear indication of what the phonetic facts are. Often, when ... [Show full abstract] careful acoustic and phonological studies are done, it turns out that the facts are different from what has been repeatedly analyzed in the phonological literature. We suggest that before we can truly understand the range of possible laryngeal contrasts that occur in the world's languages, careful phonetic and phonological analysis is necessary. Consider the case of German. In the phonological literature, Cho (1994) and Lombardi (1999), among others, claim that German word internal clusters may contain stops that disagree in voice (with the second stop being voiced). Yet careful acoustic analysis (Jessen & Ringen 2002) shows clearly that all such clusters are voiceless (either with or without aspiration) in German. In this paper we address the case of Swedish, and in particular whether (regressive) devoicing of stops occurs before /s/ and /t/, but we present data on regressive devoicing of stops in clusters of stops as well. (We do not consider progressive devoicing of stops that occurs in clusters and which is well-documented e.g. Ringen & Helgason 2004). Various conflicting claims about regressive assimilation to voicelessness are found in the literature, including those by Anderson (1975), Cho (1994), and Lombardi (1999). In fact, all of these works are based on different interpretations of claims made by Hellberg (l974) and Lyttkens &Wulff 1885). Lombardi (1999), for example, claims that the genitive suffix /s/ causes the devoicing

Article

The acquisition of voicing assimilation by advanced Hungarian learners of Spanish

August 2018 · Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics

Zsuzsanna Bárkányi

This study examines the effect of explicit phonological instruction on the acquisition of variable /s/ voicing in Spanish by advanced Hungarian learners. Hungarian and Spanish have very similar, yet not identical, voicing assimilation (VA) systems; the most important difference lies in the pre-sonorant context as sonorant consonants trigger voicing assimilation in Spanish but not in Hungarian. ... [Show full abstract] Data were collected in acoustic experiments from 7 native speakers of Northern Peninsular Spanish and 12 Hungarian university students who were advanced learners of Spanish. The latter group was tested twice: before and after a three-month Spanish phonetics and phonology course. Our data reveal that this amount of instruction is not enough for L2 speakers to overcome their first language VA system, which might be attributed, in part, to the variable allophonic nature of the process and the similarity between the two languages’ VA systems.

Article

Full-text available

Phonological representations of consonant sequences: the case of affricates vs. ‘true’ clusters

January 2009

In this paper we investigate the behavior of Greek affricates as opposed to all other Greek cluster types. The phonotactics of the language as well as the data of an off-line experimental task support a preference for the preservation of affricates over stop+/s/ over /s/+stop clusters and all other clusters. A strong tendency of the participants in the experiment was to break up clusters by ... [Show full abstract] inserting a vowel while they retained almost all affricates intact. This linguistic behavior is attributed, first, to the identity of place of articulation of the consonants being members of the clusters and, second, to the (degree of) satisfaction of the scale of consonantal strength. Affricates tend to exhibit a limited degree of decomposition; stop+/s/ clusters exhibit a relative degree of decomposition, /s/+stop clusters undergo and even higher degree of decomposition while other cluster types are decomposed massively. Our assumption is that different degrees of decomposition are the result of (a) different phonological representations, (b) the co-occurrence of clusters with other clusters in the word and (c) their position in the word.

Article

Text Clustering Exploration Swedish Text Representation and Clustering Results Unraveled

Magnus Rosell

Conference Paper

Phonetics and Phonology: Laryngeal features in Tyrolean

October 2014

In the recent literature acoustic analyses are presented to support the claim that [spread glottis] is the relevant laryngeal feature involved in contrasting stops in Modern Standard German and many of its dialects. Our acoustic study of laryngeal stops in Tyrolean, a Southern Bavarian variety, shows that [spread glottis] is not the relevant feature of laryngeal contrast in all German varieties. ... [Show full abstract] Tyrolean implements laryngeal contrast via the feature [voice] word-medially in intersonorant position and, to some degree, also word-initially. Contrasts are neutralised word-finally, in word-medial consonant clusters and often also word-initially.

Article

Full-text available

Voicing contrast in consonant clusters: Evidence against sonorant transparency to voice assimilation...

December 2013 · Phonology

Vladimir Kulikov

Obstruents in Russian have been claimed to assimilate in voicing in clusters when a sonorant consonant intervenes, e. g. ot mgly [dmg] 'from the haze'. This phenomenon ('sonorant transparency to voice assimilation') is controversial: it is claimed to be a phonological rule of fast speech by some linguists, while its existence is denied by others. Previous studies have shown that voicing in ... [Show full abstract] presonorant obstruents (C1) in Russian is consistent with that of prevocalic obstruents in slow speech; however, no research has examined whether voicing in presonorant obstruents changes either as a function of the voicing of the rightmost (C2) obstruent in a cluster or in faster speech. This paper presents experimental results supporting the claim that the voicing of C2 obstruents does not affect voicing in presonorant C1 obstruents in slow or fast speech. The results suggest that obstruents do not assimilate through a sonorant in obstruent-sonorant-obstruent clusters in Russian.

Article

JUUKSED, NAISE UHKUSE KROON. KRUNN

January 2015 · The Yearbook of the Estonian Mother Tongue Society

Meeli Sedrik

The article addresses the origin of the word krunn 'hair bun' and its synonyms in Estonian dialects. Previously, an Estonian-Swedish loan etymology has been suggested for krunn, > krún, which implies that an irregular phonological change took place in the borrowing. This explanation was suspect due to the meaning correspondence between the source language and the target language. In the past, ... [Show full abstract] hair buns were typically covered by headwear, so it is not likely that there would have been reason to give them a name motivated by the comparison to a crown. In order to find a possible single basis for the naming of this hair style, I identified the synonyms of krunn in Estonian dialects. Among the synonyms analyzed, two groups stand out, wherein the primary meaning (in addition to denoting the hair style) was 1) something small and round or 2) a bunch/bundle of flax, hemp, or similar. Loan etymologies are presented for the synonyms nukk, null, nuul (Finnish-Swedish loans), nuut (from Swedish and German) and tutt (a Baltic German loan). Krunn could be an Estonian-Swedish loan, the source being the stem runn, meaning 'round' (of objects). The word-initial consonant cluster has emerged as a result of hypercorrection.

Article

Full-text available

Consonant duration and VOT as a function of syllable complexity and voicing in a sub-set of Spanish...

September 2015

A series of hypotheses are addressed vis-à-vis the effects of syllable complexity and voicing on consonant duration and VOT (voice onset time) in a subset of Spanish clusters. Electropalatographic (EPG) and acoustic signals were obtained for native-speakers of Standard Peninsular Spanish producing clusters within and across word boundaries. The results show that VOT patterns for singleton onsets ... [Show full abstract] also hold for clusters, VOT in word-final devoiced stops and voiceless stops exhibit a short lag/long lag paradigm similar to German and English onset clusters, C1 duration in clusters is a function of voicing and place but not of syllable complexity, and the duration of /l/ in complex onsets is conditioned by the phonological specifications of the preceding consonant, but linguo-palatal contact is not. Combined results suggest an intimate relationship between the temporal parameters of gestures in onset clusters, but not across word boundaries, and that the temporal and spatial parameters of gestures in onsets, even though related, operate relatively independently from one another.

Article

Full-text available

Temporal compensation between vowel and consonant in Swedish & Arabic in sequences of CV:C & CVC: an...

January 2003

Zeki Majeed Hassan

Acoustic measurements in ms of vowel and consonant durations in sequences of CV:C and CVC: as well as the word overall durations have been made for both Swedish & Arabic. They show a clear indication of a compensatory process between vowel and following consonant durations for the Swedish data. For the Arabic data, however, although there is an inverse relationship of V and C durations, the data ... [Show full abstract] show no clear indication of significant compensation. As for the word overall durations, no evidence of a significant temporal status of the word as a phonological unit has been found.

Article

Physiological effects on stop consonant voicing

May 1983 · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Patricia Keating

Voiced and voiceless stops in initial position are known to differ in Voice Onset Time; they may also differ in closure duration and the duration of closure voicing. Besides the voicing distinction, such factors as the position of the stop in a word or utterance, the stop's place of articulation, and the stress of adjacent syllables will also affect these measures. Data from the literature have ... [Show full abstract] been extended with new acoustic measurements for English, Swedish, and other languages. While there is some variation across languages, general patterns, which might be attributable to vocal tractphysiology, can be identified. In an attempt to account for these patterns, an electrical analog of vocal tractaerodynamics can be used to study the probable effects of place of articulation and syllable stress on closure voicing offset. The model allows variation of subglottal pressure, glottal area, supralaryngeal cavity volume, wall mechanics, and oral constriction geometry. The extent to which these variables determine universal, presumably inherent, patterns of variation will be considered.

Article

Interactions between Speaking Rate and Temporal Implementation of Voicing Contrast: A Pilot Acoustic...

January 2017

Mayuki Matsui

The current study examined how speaking rate affects phonetic implementation of phonological voicing contrast in word-initial stops, focusing on temporal properties such as voice-onset time (VOT), closure duration and vowel duration. A pilot study of a Russian speaker showed that, the effect of speaking rate on VOT of voiced stops (negative VOT) is greater than that of voiceless stops (positive ... [Show full abstract] short-lag VOT), replicating previous studies. The results further revealed that (i) regardless of voicing specification, closure and vowel duration symmetrically decreases as speaking rate increases; (ii) the VOT/ vowel ratio and VOT/ closure ratio are roughly stable across speaking rates; (iii) rate-dependent change in negative VOT is predictable from the systematic change in closure duration