Invariants, specifiers, cues: An investigation of locus equations as information for place of articulation

Fowler, Carol A.

doi:10.3758/bf03211675

Cited by 92 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The consonant release burst can cue both place (Lahiri et al 1984;Stevens and Blumstein 1978) and manner information (Stevens and Keyser 1989). The formant transitions into a following vowel also carry information about both place (Martínez-Celdrán and Villalba 1995;Eek and Meister 1995;Fowler 1994;Fruchter and Sussman 1997;Kewley-Port 1983;Kewley-Port et al 1983;Nearey and Shammas 1987;Stevens and Blumstein 1978;Sussman et al 1991;etc. ) and manner (Diehl and Walsh 1989;Walsh and Diehl 1991).…”

Section: Constraintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequency biases in phonological variation

Coetzee

Kawahara

2012

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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Abstract. In the past two decades, variation has received a lot of attention in mainstream generative phonology, and several different models have been developed to account for variable phonological phenomena. However, all existing generative models of phonological variation account for the overall rate at which some process applies in a corpus, and therefore implicitly assume that all words are affected equally by a variable process. In this paper, we show that this is not the case. Many variable phenomena are more likely to apply to frequent than infrequent words. A model that accounts perfectly for the overall rate of application of some variable process therefore does not necessarily account very well for the actual application of the process to individual words. We illustrate this with two examples, English t/d-deletion and Japanese geminate devoicing. We then augment one existing generative model (noisy Harmonic Grammar) to incorporate the contribution of usage frequency to the application of variable processes. In this model, the influence of frequency is incorporated by scaling the weights of faithfulness constraints up or down for words of different frequencies. This augmented model accounts significantly better for variation than existing generative models.

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Section: Constraintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequency biases in phonological variation

Coetzee

Kawahara

2012

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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“…Locus equation slopes are assumed to reflect the degree of coarticulatory overlap between a consonant and following vowel (Fowler, 1994;Krull, 1989;Sussman et aI., 1991). An increase in F2yowel is associated with an increase in F2 0ns because ofanticipatory coarticulation of the vowel during consonant production.…”

Section: Purpose Ofthe Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If a consonant is highly resistant to vowel influences (when production of the consonant gesture requires movement of articulators that are used in producing the vowel gesture), F2 0ns will vary little over vowel context (Recasens, 1985). Fowler (1994) has argued that locus equation slope is correlated with place of articulation (because consonants having different places of articulation differ in degree of coarticulation resistance) but is not a property of consonant place. This would suggest that any conditions that should increase or decrease a consonant's coarticulation resistance might change the slope of its locus equation.…”

Section: Purpose Ofthe Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The tokens produced by the speakers were ofthe form ev or Vev. The consonants used were Ibl, Idl, and Ig/, and the final vowels were /iY/, III,lest,lad,lal,1/\1,IJ/,and lui; these were the vowels used by Fowler (1994). Initial Vs were the central vowel 1/\1 in one condition and were the same as the postvocalic vowel in another condition.…”

Section: Relevance Of Locus Equations 27mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another is to assume that perception is of invariant articulatory gestures, which are specified in the acoustic signal, and that either there is invariant information in the signal that has not yet been discovered, or the specification of the gesture in a signal differs in different contexts, but specifies nonetheless (Fowler, 1994). A third approach is to look for invariance not in the acoustic signals of individual utterances, but rather as a higher order property found when appropriate context-sensitive acoustic signals are related to one another (Sussman, 1989;Sussman, McCaffrey, & Matthews, 1991).…”

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confidence: 99%

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On the relevance of locus equations for production and perception of stop consonants

Brancazio

Fowler

1998

Perception & Psychophysics

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Weexamined the possible relevance of locus equations to human production and perception of stop consonants. The orderly output constraint (OOC) of Sussman, Fruchter, and Cable (1995) claims that humans have evolved to produce speech such that F2 at consonant release and F2 at vowel midpoint are linearly related for consonants so that developing perceptual systems can form representations in an F2 0 ns -by-F2vowel space. The theory claims that this relationship described by locus equations can distinguish consonants, and that the linearity oflocus equations is captured in neural representations and is thus perceptually relevant. Weinvestigated these claims by testing how closely locus equations reflect the production and perception of stop consonants. In Experiment 1, we induced speakers to change their locus equation slope and intercept parameters systematically, but found that consonants remained distinctive in slope-by-intercept space. In Experiment 2, we presented stop-consonant syllables with their bursts removed to listeners, and compared their classification error matrices with the predictions of a model using locus equation prototypes and with those of an exemplar-based model that uses F2 0 ns and F2vowelJ but not locus equations. Both models failed to account for a large proportion of the variance in listeners' responses; the locus equation model was no better in its predictions than the exemplar model. These findings are discussed in the context of the OOC.It is well known among speech scientists that formant transitions provide listeners with important information for identifying the stop consonants Ib/, Id/, and 191 in syllable-initial position. However, it is a matter of debate how such transition information is used. In particular, the importance of these highly context-sensitive transitions to perceivers provides a challenge for theorists who claim that listeners use invariant information to identify stops (e.g., Fowler, 1986;Stevens & Blumstein, 1981). One early hypothesized invariant was a locus to which all second-formant transitions of a given consonant pointed back in time by extrapolation (Delattre, Liberman, & Cooper, 1955). Locus points were found for Ibl and Id/, but 191 required two loci; and even the loci for Ibl and Idl proved controversial. For example, Ohman (1966) found that the locus points were not invariant, and that they changed, depending on the identity ofa preceding vowel. Later, Kewley-Port (1982) made extensive acoustic measurements of formant transitions for the stop consonants in various vocalic contexts and concluded against any invariant in the transition. Transitions, therefore, appear to be inherently context sensitive. As a result, theories assuming both the importance of invariance for perception and a role for formant transitions have taken different directions. One is to assume, as motor theorists have, that This research was supported by NICHD Grant HD-OI994 to Haskins Laboratories. We would like to thank Harvey Sussman, Bjorn Lindblom, Doug Whalen, and an anonym...

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Speech Production and Perception

Fowler

2003

Handbook of Psychology

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One way to investigate speech motor learning is to create artificial adaptation situations by perturbing speakers' auditory feedback in real time. Formant perturbations were introduced by Houde and Jordan (1998), providing the first evidence that speakers adapt their pronunciation to compensate for these perturbations. Twenty years later, this chapter provides an overview of the general impact of Houde and Jordan's work in speech research and beyond, as well as a more detailed review of studies that involve formant perturbations. The impact of Houde and Jordan's work appears to be cross-disciplinary. Although mainly related to speech production and perception, it has also been cited in the limb movement and even animal research, mainly as evidence of adaptive sensorimotor control. Formant perturbations research has expanded rapidly since 2006, spreading across the world and many research teams. We identified 77 experimental studies focused on formant perturbations which we then analyzed with regard to technical and theoretical issues. This analysis showed that various apparatuses and procedures were used to address important topics of speech research. A primary interest has been in feedback and feedforward control mechanisms in speech. These mechanisms were addressed in different populations, including adults and children with typical vs. atypical development, with behavioral or neurophysiological approaches, or both. Some formant perturbations studies more specifically focused on the integration of auditory and somatosensory feedback in speech production, while others explored the interaction between speech production and perception of phonemic contrasts. Some research questioned the processes and the nature of speech representations by investigating generalization of adaptation to formant perturbations. Finally, a few studies were interested in the effect of extraneous variables such as surface effects or speakers' general cognitive abilities. Altogether, these studies provide insights into speech motor control in general and into the understanding of sensorimotor interactions in particular. The field has developed recently and may still expand in the future, as it allows us to address fundamental topics in speech research such as perception-production links or abstract vs. exemplar representations. Future Caudrelier and Rochet-Capellan research with formant perturbations may also further connect sensorimotor adaptation to linguistic and cognitive factors and in particular to working and long-term memory.

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Invariants, specifiers, cues: An investigation of locus equations as information for place of articulation

Cited by 92 publications

References 42 publications

Frequency biases in phonological variation

Frequency biases in phonological variation

On the relevance of locus equations for production and perception of stop consonants

Speech Production and Perception

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