<i>The origin of vowel-length neutralisation in vocoid sequences: evidence from Finnish speakers</i>

Myers, Scott; Hansen, Benjamin B.

doi:10.1017/s0952675705000643

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 28 publications

(44 reference statements)

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“…The next experiment was designed to specifically test the effect of such variation in formant duration on the perception of length in glides. Myers & Hansen (2005) presented Finnish-speaking listeners with stimuli including a glidevowel sequence in which the vowel formant steady state and the glide-vowel formant transition varied in duration. Subjects had the task of identifying the vowel as short or long.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The consonant length contrast in Persian: Production and perception

Hansen¹,

Myers²

2016

Journal of the International Phonetic Association

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Across languages, there is a tendency to avoid length contrasts in the most vowel-like consonant classes, such as glides or laryngeals. Such gaps could arise from the difficulty of determining where the boundary between vowel and consonant lies when the transition between them is gradual. This claim is tested in Persian (Farsi), which has length contrasts in all classes of consonants, including glides and laryngeals. Persian geminates were compared to singletons in three different speaking rates and seven different consonant classes. Geminates were found to have longer constriction intervals than singletons, and this length effect interacted with both speaking rate and manner of articulation. In one of two perception experiments, Persian speakers identified consonants as geminate or singleton in stimuli in which the constriction duration was systematically varied. The perceptual boundary between geminates and singletons was most sharply defined for obstruents and least so for laryngeals, as reflected by the breadth of the changeover region in the identification curve. In the other perception experiment, subjects identified the length class of glides differing in constriction duration and formant transition duration. Longer formant transitions led to more geminate responses and to a broader changeover interval.Persian (Farsi) has a contrast in consonant length, as illustrated by the minimal pair baenɑ 'building' -baennɑ 'builder'. This contrast extends to all the consonant classes in the language, listed in Table 1 (Samareh 1977(Samareh , 1985Mahootian 1997;Majidi & Ternes 1999;Deyhime 2000;Bijankhan & Nourbakhsh 2009;Hansen 2004Hansen , 2012. Samareh (1977) does not include geminate [ʒʒ] or [ɢɢ] in his inventory of Persian clusters, and we know of no instances of these geminates in Persian words. Yet we find that Persian speakers freely produce them in reading nonsense words with the relevant consonants marked with the length mark. This suggests that these are accidental gaps, and that these two consonants are not systematically avoided.With that caveat, the consonants in Table 1 all occur as singletons or as geminates, where the geminate differs from the corresponding singleton in having a longer constriction interval. The geminate has the same feature specification as the corresponding singleton, but

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Myers & Hansen (2005) found that long vowels have longer formant transitions than short vowels in Finnish, and it would be reasonable to expect a similar difference between long and short consonants.…”

Section: Effects Of Consonant Lengthmentioning

confidence: 91%

The consonant length contrast in Persian: Production and perception

Hansen¹,

Myers²

2016

Journal of the International Phonetic Association

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“…What is the phonetic basis of vowel length neutralization (2b)? Context sensitive neutralizations are associated with multiple phonetic factors: lengthening due to long transitions in pre-vocoid position; shortening in closed syllables; and shortening via devoicing word-finally (Myers & Hansen 2005. Context free mergers are harder to pin down.…”

Section: Banoni Vowel Length Mergermentioning

confidence: 99%

Inhibited sound change

Blevins

Wedel

2009

DIA

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The study of regular sound change reveals numerous types of exceptionality. The type studied here has the profile of regular sound change, but appears to be inhibited where homophony would result. The most widely cited cases of this phenomenon are reviewed and new cases presented. If sound change can be inhibited by impending homophony, how is this to be represented and understood? Here we offer a model of variation-based sound change where category evolution incorporates lexical competition. Lexical Character Displacement predicts accentuation of differences among similar words when syntagmatic disambiguation is limited. In the cases under discussion, this accentuation inhibits merger. However, as we show, the same principle can inhibit sound change altogether, or give rise to extreme phonological contrasts under similar conditions.

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“…The logic goes as follows: sonorants have blurry transitions into and out of flanking vowels, because sonorants are spectrally continuous with surrounding vowels. It is thus hard to pin down where sonorants begin and where they end (Myers & Hansen, 2005;Turk et al, 2006). As a result, their constriction durations are hard to perceive.…”

Section: The Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[iyyi]), it is conceivable that the first part of the geminate can be confused as a part of a preceding (long) vowel (cf. Myers & Hansen 2005). Also concerning rhotic geminates, it would be impossible to prolong the duration of a tap or a flap, and they would instead have to turn into a trill, in order to become a geminate while keeping its rhoticity.…”

Section: Some Caveatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectral continuity, amplitude changes, and perception of length contrasts

Kawahara¹,

Pangilinan²

2017

Oxford Scholarship Online

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Japanese deploys a singleton-geminate contrast in obstruents and nasals, but not in glides.Even though Japanese allows lexical nasal geminates, patterns of emphatic gemination show that Japanese avoids creating nasal geminates. Japanese therefore disfavors sonorant geminates in general, and glide geminates in particular. These phonological patterns of geminates are actually found in other languages as well, such as Ilokano (Hayes, 1989). This paper tests hypotheses about why speakers of these languages show these preferences. Concerning the distinction between obstruent geminates and sonorant geminates, Podesva (2002) hypothesizes that the phonological dispreference against sonorant geminates exists because these geminates are easily confused with corresponding singletons. This confusability problem arises because sonorants are spectrally continuous with flanking vowels, and consequently their constriction durations are difficult to perceive. Two non-speech perception experiments, Experiments I and II, confirm this hypothesis by showing that length distinctions of consonant intervals that are spectrally continuous with surrounding segments are difficult to perceive. Concerning the difference between nasal geminates and glide geminates, this paper builds on the finding by Kato et al. (1997) that given streams of sounds, listeners use amplitude changes to demarcate segmental boundaries. Experiments III and IV show that amplitude changes facilitate categorization and discrimination of short/long contrasts of consonantal intervals. These results are compatible with the fact that several languages disfavor glide geminates more than nasal geminates. Overall, the results of the four perception experiments reported here accord well with the cross-linguistic phonological patterning of geminates. We close this paper by discussing what the current results imply about how the phonetics-phonology works.

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The origin of vowel-length neutralisation in vocoid sequences: evidence from Finnish speakers

Cited by 17 publications

References 28 publications

The consonant length contrast in Persian: Production and perception

The consonant length contrast in Persian: Production and perception

Inhibited sound change

Spectral continuity, amplitude changes, and perception of length contrasts

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