Cue weight in the perception of Trique glottal consonants

Abstract

This paper examines the perceptual weight of cues to the coda glottal consonant contrast in Trique (Oto-Manguean) with native listeners. The language contrasts words with no coda (/Vː/) from words with a coda glottal stop (/VɁ/) or breathy coda (/Vɦ/). The results from a speeded AX (same-different) lexical discrimination task show high accuracy in lexical identification for the /Vː/-/Vɦ/ contrast, but lower accuracy for the other contrasts. The second experiment consists of a labeling task where the three acoustic dimensions that distinguished the glottal consonant codas in production [duration, the amplitude difference between the first two harmonics (H1-H2), and F0] were modified orthogonally using step-wise resynthesis. This task determines the relative weight of each dimension in phonological categorization. The results show that duration was the strongest cue. Listeners were only sensitive to changes in H1-H2 for the /Vː/-/Vɦ/ and /Vː/-/VɁ/ contrasts when duration was ambiguous. Listeners were only sensitive to changes in F0 for the /Vː/-/Vɦ/ contrast when both duration and H1-H2 were ambiguous. The perceptual cue weighting for each contrast closely matches existing production data [DiCanio (2012 a). J. Phon. 40, 162-176] Cue weight differences in speech perception are explained by differences in step-interval size and the notion of adaptive plasticity [Francis et al. (2008). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 124, 1234-1251; Holt and Lotto (2006). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 3059-3071].

Perception of glottalization and phrase-final creak

“…Nonetheless, there are differences in the spectral characteristics of vowels in creak vs vowels adjacent to glottalization, including a decrease in mid-frequency spectral tilt in creak but not in glottalization. Previous work has shown that there are many acoustic correlates of, and consequently multiple potential cues to, creaky voice (Klatt and Klatt, 1990;Gerratt and Kreiman, 2001;Gordon and Ladefoged, 2001;Hanson et al, 2001;Garellek et al, 2013;Brunelle, 2012;DiCanio, 2014). It is thus possible that some measures (e.g., lower H1*-H2* with higher rms energy) are used by English listeners to perceive glottalization, whereas others (lower spectral tilt across a wide frequency range, from H1*-H2* to H1*-A3*) are used to perceive phrase-final creak.…”

“…The experimental paradigm in Hillenbrand and Houde (1996) was later extended to Coatzospan Mixtec (Gerfen and Baker, 2005), whose listeners also use F0 and amplitude dips to perceive contrastive creaky voice in the language. Furthermore, vowel duration often varies as a function of both creaky voice and a following glottal stop (Gordon and Ladefoged, 2001;DiCanio, 2014), and speakers of different languages are known to use duration as a cue to both glottal stops and creaky voice DiCanio, 2014).…”

The cross‐linguistic patterns of phonation types

“…The most common spectral balance measure—the difference between the amplitude of the first and second harmonics (H1–H2)—reflects the open quotient, that is, the proportion of the glottal cycle during which the glottis is open (Holmberg, Hillman, Perkell, Guiod, & Goldman, 1995). H1–H2 has been used to successfully measure phonation types in a wide variety of languages such as !Xóõ (Bickley, 1982; Garellek, 2019a, 2019b), Coatzospan Mixtec (Gerfen & Baker, 2005), Jalapa Mazatec (Blankenship, 2002; Garellek & Keating, 2011; Kirk et al, 1993), Chanthaburi Khmer (Wayland & Jongman, 2003), Phnom Penh Khmer (Kirby, 2014), Green Mong (Andruski & Ratliff, 2000), White Hmong (Esposito, 2012), Marathi (Berkson, 2019), Gujarati (Khan, 2012), Mon (Abramson et al, 2015), Takhian Thong Chong (DiCanio, 2009), SAV Zapotec (Esposito, 2010b), Sgaw Karen (Brunelle & Finkeldey, 2011), Yi (Kuang, 2011), Trique (DiCanio, 2012, 2014), and so forth. Other studies have relied on spectral tilt measures, quantifying the amplitude between the first harmonic (H1) and the harmonics exciting higher formants (e.g., H1–A1, H1–A2, H1–A3); these are reported to correlate with the abruptness of vocal fold closure (Stevens, 1977).…”

“…The earliest studies utilized speakers of Gujarati, a language well‐suited for this task because it contrasts phonation, but not tone; results showed that phonation types where the spectrum was dominated by the first harmonic (H1) were consistently judged to be breathy, regardless of whether the stimulus was naturally produced (Fischer‐Jørgensen, 1967) or synthesized (Bickley, 1982). More recently, the question of the perceptual salience of acoustic cues has resurfaced, finding that H1–H2 (or a correlated EGG measure, such as CQ) cued phonation type differences in Green Mong (Andruski, 2006), Yi (Kuang, 2011) and Itunyoso Trique (DiCanio, 2014), but, in this last case, only when durational cues were ambiguous. In White Hmong (Garellek, Keating, Esposito, & Kreiman, 2013) listeners relied on both H2–H4 and H1–H2, to distinguish breathy from modal phonation; it is not surprising that listeners relied on multiple acoustic cues, as phonation employs a multi‐dimensional acoustic space.…”

Weighting of Acoustic Cues to a Manner Distinction by Children With and Without Hearing Loss

“…Although not consciously employed, these strategies vary across languages, such that the specific acoustic properties attended to (or weighted ) depend on which properties define phonemic segments in the language being examined (e.g., Beddor & Strange, 1982; Crowther & Mann, 1992; DiCanio, 2014; Flege & Port, 1981; Llanos, Dmitrieva, Shultz, & Francis, 2013; Miyawaki et al, 1975; Pape & Jesus, 2014). Precisely because the way acoustic structure in the speech signal gets weighted is language specific, there must surely be some perceptual learning involved and several investigators have described that learning process (e.g., Francis, Kaganovich, & Driscoll-Huber, 2008; Holt & Lotto, 2006).…”