Electropalatographic specification of Croatian fricatives /s/ and /z/

Abstract

Electropalatographic specification of alveolar fricatives in Croatian is aimed at providing speech therapists with normative data about the range of acceptable productions of /s/ and /z/ in adult speakers of Croatian. Four variables were analysed: place of articulation, total contact, groove width and hold phase duration. Intra- and inter-speaker variability for each variable was analysed. Lingual palatal cues for voicing difference were also quantified and discussed. Results show that Croatian /s/ and /z/ are alveolar and not dental as previously reported. The comparison between the voiced and the voiceless fricative shows that durational measures provide the best differentiation. The voiceless counterpart is significantly longer. The difference between voiced and voiceless is also found in the total contact, with /z/ having more contact in the anterior four rows of electrodes, while /s/ has more contact in the posterior four rows of electrodes. This difference is also reflected in the anterior and the posterior groove widths. Possibilities of using these results as normative data for the diagnosis and treatment of atypical articulation of /s/ and /z/ are discussed.

Place of articulation of anterior nasal versus oral stops in Croatian

“…Speech material used in this study was extracted from the simultaneous EPG and acoustic corpus of Croatian speech (CROELCO). A detailed description of the CROELCO corpus was presented in Liker (2009) and Liker, Horga & Mildner (2012).…”

“…A detailed description of the CROELCO corpus was presented in Liker (2009) andLiker, Horga andMildner (2012).…”

Tongue-Palate Contact Timing during /s/ and /z/ in English

“…Voiced consonants are often described as less resistant to coarticulation than their voiceless counterparts, which is explained by lower tongue-to-palate contact in voiced tokens (Recasens, 1999). However, many EPG studies showed that voiced fricatives had increased tongue-to-palate contact and a smaller groove than voiceless fricatives (Dagenais et al, 1994;Dixit and Hoffman, 2004;Liker and Gibbon, 2011;Liker et al, 2012), although this issue can be related to the position in the syllable . The finding that voiceless fricatives showed lower tongue-to-palate contact and a wider groove than their voiced counterparts was mostly explained by aerodynamic factors, whereby the air pressure during voiceless fricatives was so high that it pushed out the lateral edges of the tongue, thus creating a wider groove and less tongue-to-palate contact in the voiceless than in the voiced fricative.…”

“…Acoustic and articulatory characteristics of voicing differ from one language to another (Browman and Goldstein, 1986;Dagenais et al, 1994;Docherty, 1992;Fuchs, 2005;Fuchs et al, 2007;Gordeeva and Scobbie, 2007;Liker et al, 2012;Pinho et al, 2012). For example, in languages like English or German it is common for phonologically voiced obstruents to be partially or completely voiceless phonetically, while in languages like Czech or Croatian this process is much less common (Bakran, 1996;Skarnitzl et al, 2013).…”

“…Several studies have shown that supraglottal strategies for signalling voicing difference in fricatives are quite complex, and ample evidence currently exists detailing various articulatory aspects of this difference (Dagenais et al, 1994;Dixit and Hoffman, 2004;Fuchs et al, 2007;Koenig et al, 2008;Liker and Gibbon, 2011;Liker et al, 2012;Narayanan et al, 1995;Proctor et al, 2010;Recasens and Espinosa, 2007;Scully, 1971;Skarnitzl et al, 2013;Tabain, 2000;Yoshioka, 2008). Available data have suggested that important clues for understanding the difference between voiced and voiceless fricatives can be found in the temporal characteristics of fricative articulation (e.g., Fuchs et al, 2007;Koenig et al, 2008), but the issue is still relatively underinvestigated, and there is no agreement among authors about the precise characteristics of articulatory timing in voiced as opposed to voiceless fricatives (e.g., compare Fuchs et al, 2007;Scully, 1971).…”