On the Complex Regulating the Voiced-Voiceless Distinction I

Slis, I.H.; Cohen, A.

doi:10.1177/002383096901200202

Cited by 75 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Vocal fold vibration has been established as another major cue to the fortis-lenis distinction in fricatives (e.g., Fischer-J0rgensen 1963 for German; Slis & Cohen 1969a, 1969bvan den Berg & Slis 1985, Kissine et al 2003 for Dutch, but see Jessen 1998 for a description of [voice] as a feature different from fortis/lenis). In general, /v, z/ are produced with vocal fold vibration, whereas /f, s/ are not.…”

Section: Phonetic Correlates O F the Fortis-lenis Contrastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosodic strengthening of German fricatives in duration and assimilatory devoicing

Kuzla

Cho

Ernestus

2007

Journal of Phonetics

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This study addressed prosodic effects on the duration of and amount of glottal vibration in German word-initial fricatives /f, v, z/ in assimilatory and non-assimilatory devoicing contexts. Fricatives following /a/ (non-assimilation context) were longer and were produced with less glottal vibration after higher prosodic boundaries, reflecting domain initial prosodic strengthening. After /t/ (assimilation context), lenis fricatives (/v, z/) were produced with less glottal vibration than after /a/, due to assimilatory devoicing. This devoicing was especially strong across lower prosodic boundaries, showing the influence of prosodic structure on sandhi processes. Reduction in glottal vibration made lenis fricatives more fortis-like (/f, z/). Importantly, fricative duration, another major cue to the fortis-lenis distinction, was affected by initial lengthening, but not by assimilation. Hence, at smaller boundaries, fricatives were more devoiced (more fortis-like), but shorter (more lenis-like). As a consequence, the fortis and lenis fricatives remained acoustically distinct in all prosodic and segmental contexts. Overall, /z/ was devoiced to a greater extent than /v/. Since /z/ does not have a fortis counterpart in word-initial position, these findings suggest that phonotactic restrictions constrain phonetic processes. The present study illuminates a complex interaction of prosody, sandhi processes, and phonotactics, yielding systematic phonetic cues to prosodic structure and phonological distinctions.

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Section: Phonetic Correlates O F the Fortis-lenis Contrastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosodic strengthening of German fricatives in duration and assimilatory devoicing

Kuzla

Cho

Ernestus

2007

Journal of Phonetics

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“…As early as the 1970s it has been shown that the same phonetic phenomenon can be related to several different acoustic features (Repp, 1981;Slis & Cohen, 1969). Also, the information carried by some features, such as pitch or formants, is encoded in dynamical changes over time, rather than as fixed-length sequences of scalars that reflect the feature value at crucial points, such as the beginning and the end of a segment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Functional Data Analysis for investigating multidimensional dynamic phonetic contrasts

Gubian

Torreira

Boves

2015

Journal of Phonetics

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A B S T R A C TThe study of phonetic contrasts and related phenomena, e.g. inter-and intra-speaker variability, often requires to analyse data in the form of measured time series, like f 0 contours and formant trajectories. As a consequence, the investigator has to find suitable ways to reduce the raw and abundant numerical information contained in a bundle of time series into a small but sufficient set of numerical descriptors of their shape. This approach requires one to decide in advance which dynamic traits to include in the analysis and which not. For example, a rising pitch gesture may be represented by its duration and slope, hence reducing it to a straight segment, or by a richer coding specifying also whether (and how much) the rising contour is concave or convex, the latter being irrelevant in some context but crucial in others. Decisions become even more complex when a phenomenon is described by a multidimensional time series, e.g. by the first two formants.In this paper we introduce a methodology based on Functional Data Analysis (FDA) that allows the investigator to delegate most of the decisions involved in the quantitative description of multidimensional time series to the data themselves. FDA produces a data-driven parametrisation of the main shape traits present in the data that is visually interpretable, in the same way as slopes or peak heights are. These output parameters are numbers that are amenable to ordinary statistical analysis, e.g. linear (mixed effects) models. FDA is also able to capture correlations among different dimensions of a time series, e.g. between formants F 1 and F 2 . We present FDA by means of an extended case study on diphthong -hiatus distinction in Spanish, a contrast that involves duration, formant trajectories and pitch contours.

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“…Other significant cues were the duration and power of the burst. For intervocalic obstruents, presence or absence of vocal-fold vibration ͑Slis and Cohen, 1969b; Slis and Van Heugten, 1989͒, closure duration for stops ͑Kuijpers, 1996; Slis and Cohen, 1969a͒, and frication duration for fricatives ͑Slis and Van Heugten, 1989͒ have been shown to influence the perception of voicing. For intervocalic two-obstruent sequences, presence or absence of vocal-fold vibration during the closure of the two obstruents is the most important cue ͑Van den Berg, 1989͒.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception of familiar contrasts in unfamiliar positions

Broersma

2005

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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This paper investigates the perception of non-native phoneme contrasts which exist in the native language, but not in the position tested. Like English, Dutch contrasts voiced and voiceless obstruents. Unlike English, Dutch allows only voiceless obstruents in word-final position. Dutch and English listeners' accuracy on English final voicing contrasts and their use of preceding vowel duration as a voicing cue were tested. The phonetic structure of Dutch should provide the necessary experience for a native-like use of this cue. Experiment 1 showed that Dutch listeners categorized English final /6/-/2/, /3/-/)/, /"/-/!/, and /$/-/#/ contrasts in nonwords as accurately as initial contrasts, and as accurately as English listeners did, even when release bursts were removed. In experiment 2, English listeners used vowel duration as a cue for one final contrast, although it was uninformative and sometimes mismatched other voicing characteristics, whereas Dutch listeners did not. Although it should be relatively easy for them, Dutch listeners did not use vowel duration. Nevertheless, they attained native-like accuracy, and sometimes even outperformed the native listeners who were liable to be misled by uninformative vowel duration information. Thus, native-like use of cues for non-native but familiar contrasts in unfamiliar positions may hardly ever be attained.

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On the Complex Regulating the Voiced-Voiceless Distinction I

Cited by 75 publications

References 23 publications

Prosodic strengthening of German fricatives in duration and assimilatory devoicing

Prosodic strengthening of German fricatives in duration and assimilatory devoicing

Using Functional Data Analysis for investigating multidimensional dynamic phonetic contrasts

Perception of familiar contrasts in unfamiliar positions

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