Prosodic conditioning of phonetic detail in German plosives

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis study investigates the prosodic conditioning of phonetic details which are candidate cues to phonological contrasts. German /b, d, g, p, t, k/ were examined in three prosodic positions. Lenis plosives /b, d, g/ were produced with less glottal vibration at larger prosodic boundaries, whereas their VOT showed no effect of prosody. VOT of fortis plosives /p, t, k/ decreased at larger boundaries, as did their burst intensity maximum. Vowels (when measured from consonantal release) following fortis plosives and lenis velars were shorter after larger boundaries. Closure duration, which did not contribute to the fortis/lenis contrast, was heavily affected by prosody. These results support neither of the hitherto proposed accounts of prosodic strengthening (Uniform Strengthening and Feature Enhancement). We propose a different account, stating that the phonological identity of speech sounds remains stable not only within, but also across prosodic positions (contrast-over-prosody hypothesis). Domain-initial strengthening hardly diminishes the contrast between prosodically weak fortis and strong lenis plosives.

Lexical stress and stop bursts in Pitjantjatjara: Feature enhancement of neutralized apicals and the coronal/velar contrast

“…To summarize, the palatal and the velar show strong lengthening effects on stop burst duration under lexical stress, a result which is in line with previous results for many Germanic languages (see Kuzla & Ernestus, 2011 for a review). By contrast, the bilabial shows a smaller lengthening effect, and most importantly, the neutralized but stressed apical /T/ does not show any lengthening effect at all in comparison to Word-medial unstressed /t/ and /ʈ/ bursts.…”

“…Fougeron & Keating, 1997;Tabain, 2003b;Cho, 2006-see Cho, 2011 for further references), although some work has looked at the acoustic, and subsequently perceptual, consequences of these segmental prosodic effects (e.g. Cho, McQueen, & Cox, 2007;Kuzla & Ernestus, 2011;Tabain, 2003a). A particular focus has been on the differences between effects caused by lexical stress, effects caused by contrastive focus, and effects caused by place in the prosodic hierarchy (i.e.…”

Stress Effects on Stop Bursts in Five Languages

“…Much work has focused on the articulatory consequences of prosodic structure, both on consonants and on vowels (e.g., Beckman & Edwards, 1994;Cho, 2005;Cho & Keating, 2009;de Jong, 1995;Fougeron & Keating, 1997;Tabain, 2003b;see Cho, 2011, for further references), although some work has looked at the acoustic, and subsequently perceptual, consequences of these segmental prosodic effects (e.g., Cho et al, 2007;Georgeton & Fougeron, 2014;Kuzla & Ernestus, 2011;Tabain, 2003a;Tabain & Perrier, 2005. These prosodic effects have also been studied in a variety of languages, including English, French, Korean, and Taiwanese (in addition to the papers already cited, see Keating et al, 2003).…”

Mimological Reveries? Disconfirming the Hypothesis of Phono-Emotional Iconicity in Poetry

“…A related study drawing on corpora of German, Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian poems showed that, for each language, the poem with the highest frequency of the plosives /p/, /b/, /t/, and /d/ was rated by native participants as joyful and high in activation whereas, again for each of these languages, the poem with the highest frequency of nasals (/m/, /n/) was evaluated as sad and low in activation (Auracher et al, 2010). These three studies suffer, however, from substantial limitations: they neither included the entire group of plosives (/p, b, t, d, k, g/, see, e.g., Wiese, 1996; Kohler, 1999; Kuzla and Ernestus, 2011) nor the entire class of nasals of the German language (/m, n, ŋ/; see, e.g., Wiese, 1996; Kohler, 1999). Specifically, they did not consider /k/ and /g/ in their analyses of the class of plosives, while /ŋ/ was disregarded regarding the class of nasals.…”