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2019, Proceedings of NELS 49
This study addresses a puzzle in Croatian regarding the fate of the underlying palatal glide in intervocalic position. Approaching the puzzle from the perspective of Cognitive Phonetics (CP), we advance two claims: First, output phonological representations consisting of features are not directly interpretable by the articulatory system; rather, the interface between the phonology and the articulatory system is mediated by a universal transduction system. Second, the main units of speech production are transduced phonological features, and not segments, syllables, or articulatory gestures.
Lingua, 2008
We argue that the glides [j,w] are not just non-nuclear versions of vowels, but also bear a subsegmental difference, which we propose is due to a feature [AEvocalic]. This representational difference is integrated into an explanation of why glides may be skipped in vowel harmony, even when other consonants do participate in harmony. In addition, we propose that the glides [j,w] have two Designated Articulators: [j] is both [Dorsal] and [Coronal], and [w] is both [Dorsal] and [Labial]. These representational proposals shed light on a number of phenomena, such as why the glide [j] becomes [k] in some languages, but [ ] in others, as well as why the glide [w] can sometimes become [m]. In short, glides are mentally represented as neither vowels nor consonants, have their own constriction degree, and have two Designated Articulators. The interaction of the logic of abstract binary featural representations together with representational notions such as constrastivity and representational simplification yields this typology of variable patterning. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Biolinguistics, 2017
We propose that the interface between phonology and phonetics is mediated by a transduction process that converts elementary units of phonological computation, features, into temporally coordinated neuromuscular patterns, called ‘True Phonetic Representations’, which are directly interpretable by the motor system of speech production. Our view of the interface is constrained by substance-free generative phonological assumptions and by insights gained from psycholinguistic and phonetic models of speech production. To distinguish transduction of abstract phonological units into planned neuromuscular patterns from the biomechanics of speech production usually associated with physiological phonetics, we have termed this interface theory ‘Cognitive Phonetics’ (CP). The inner workings of CP are described in terms of Marr’s (1982/2010) tri-level approach, which we used to construct a linking hypothesis relating formal phonology to neurobiological activity. Potential neurobiological correlates supporting various parts of CP are presented. We also argue that CP augments the study of certain phonetic phenomena, most notably coarticulation, and suggest that some phenomena usually considered phonological (e.g., naturalness and gradience) receive better explanations within CP.
submitted to The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces , 2025
Building on the theory of Substance-free Logical Phonology, which adopts the competence–performance dichotomy, strict internalism and modularity, we argue that phonology (phonological competence) and phonetics (the sensorimotor system in charge of speech production and perception) are distinct and non-overlapping domains in the complex process of the externalization of language through speech. These two domains are connected via the phonology-phonetics interface (PPI): a bidirectional transduction system that converts between feature-based surface phonological representations and the temporally coordinated motor programs that we call phonetic representations. This transduction is captured by a theory of the PPI called Cognitive Phonetics, whose workings are presented in this chapter. We apply this theory in the analysis of some notorious sound patterns, arguing that there is no need to assume the existence of language-specific phonetics.
2003
Serbian contains two classes of contrastive palatal affricates exemplified in c" ar (tUº ar) 'gain' vs. car (t5ar) 'magic'. In the phonological process of iotization, (t) patterns with (tUº ), and (k) patterns with (t5). Articulatorily, c" (tUº ) is laminal, more front with compressed lips, while c� (t5) is apical, more back with protruded lips. Acoustically, two resonance frequency
20th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences, 2023
Tonal contrasts in many languages are restricted to syllables with overall greater sonority (i.e. syllables containing long vowels or sonorant codas). However, studies to date have tended to focus on languages with relatively restricted syllable structures. In this study we focus on Croatian (Split variety), where both falling and rising lexical pitch accents are possible on all syllable types (unlike many Western South Slavic varieties that restrict tonal contrasts to long vowels), including those containing short vowels and those with an obstruent coda. We examine the timing of pitch peaks and troughs in recordings from 13 speakers who read a list of words varying in lexical pitch accent (rising or falling), vowel duration (long or short) and syllable type (Open, Closed-by-anObstruent or Closed-by-a-Sonorant). We find that although relative timing of pitch events varies according to lexical pitch accent, it is remarkably stable across syllable type for a given accent.
We present and analyse a set of interface phenomena showing important correlations between syntactic and semantic aspects on the one hand and phonological effects on the other. Serbo-Croatian deadjectival nominalizations exhibit two different prosodic patterns: 1) prosody faithful to the base (the prosody of the lexical adjective), 2 a rising span over a long closed penultimate syllable and the syllable following it. We formulate a generalization where, all things being equal, nominalised predicational structures correspond to (1) (also when the base has postcyclic prosody), while nominalised stems correspond to (2). The paper provides a formal model of the syntactic and semantic as well as the phonological reality of these nominalizations, and an attempt at explaining these facts.
This paper presents an analysis of Polish velar and coronal palatalization processes within the Onset Prominence representational environment (OP). OP builds on recent insights into the structural nature of segmental representation to provide a novel perspective on phonological constituency. Palatalization is seen here as a phonotactic phenomenon, sparked by the fusion of consonantal and vocalic structures, and motivated by the need to avoid melodic ambiguities that may arise during this fusion process. The multiple reflexes of the palatalization processes fall out naturally from the hierarchical nature of the representations, in which we may observe phonetically motivated interaction between frication noise and palatal articulations. Unlike earlier works, the OP approach includes the "2 nd Velar Palatalization" (/k/~/ts/) within a restrictive and parallel synchronic framework that unifies the diverse insights of previous scholarship.
This paper presents an analysis of Polish velar and coronal palatalization processes within the Onset Prominence representational environment (OP). OP builds on recent insights into the structural nature of segmental representation to provide a novel perspective on phonological constituency. In the OP environment, palatalization is a phonotactic phenomenon, sparked by the fusion of consonantal and vocalic structures, and motivated by the need to avoid melodic ambiguities that may arise during this fusion process. In particular, we will note the inherent ambiguity of velar consonants, whose acoustic and perceptual properties reflect the context dependence of sounds articulated with the body of the tongue. The realization of the palatal element {I} among the various levels of the OP hierarchy allows us to unify representational and phonetically-oriented explanations of palatalization.
2004
Hiermit erkläre ich, Ma lgorzata EwaĆavar, dass ich die folgende Arbeit vollkomen selbstständig und ohne Hilfe Anderer verfasst habe. Alle verwendeten Hilfsmittel und Quellen sind aufgeführt und entsprechend gekennzeichnet.
Journal of Phonetics, 2006
[h] (lateral) may exhibit two places of articulation, i.e., alveolopalatal and palatal proper, depending not only on vowel context but on position and speaker as well. In this Catalan dialect, [E] and [h] have phonological status while [c] is an allophone of /k/ and is articulated at a fronter location than front /k/ in languages such as English. Several consonant-dependent differences appear to be of universal validity, i.e., a trend for [E] and [h] to exhibit a more anterior closure location than [c] (perhaps due to manner requirements) or else for [c] and [E] to share a similar place of articulation (presumably for the sake of articulatory economy), and more stability for closures formed at the alveolopalatal zone than at the mediopalate. The three palatal consonants exhibit more overall contact, fronting and duration but also more coarticulation utterance initially than utterance finally (and even intervocalically) thus suggesting that they may blend with the adjacent vowel rather than resisting its influence in the former position while failing to undergo substantial articulatory reduction in the latter. r
Slovo a slovesnost, 2015
This paper deals with the perceptual salience and intelligibility of reduced segments, both vowels and consonants, in casual Czech. It focuses on a specific type of reduction in which two neighboring sounds (e.g. a VC sequence) are pronounced simultaneously, thereby giving rise to an alternative segment which does not occur in standard Czech phonology, e.g. a nasalized vowel. These segments constitute a category of parallel articulation as phonetic features of both of the segments are realized at the same time. We hypothesize that parallel-articulated segments, despite having originated as a consequence of purely phonetic processes, do in fact act distinctively in the context of casual speech. For this purpose, an experiment was designed in which the target segments were used in sentence pairs differing only in the parallel-articulated item, and the capability of listeners to identify the intended meaning of each sentence was tested. It showed that listeners do in fact treat the target segments as distinctive which suggests that these sounds might function as phonologically autonomous segments in the everyday communication of Czech speakers. In addition, an important role in the segment identification is also to be assigned to non-phonetic factors, such as the frequency and expectability of a particular word.
Language and Speech, 2012
This paper reports the results of an experiment that elicits contextual effects on Rising and Falling accents in Standard Serbian, with the goal of determining their acoustic correlates and their phonological representation. Materials systematically vary the distance between pitch accents, inducing “tone crowding,” in order to identify the phonetic dimensions that consistently distinguish the two pitch accent types, to examine the association between accents and the segmental string, as well as the timing relationship between accent minima and maxima, and to investigate the interaction between lexical accents and boundary tones. On the basis of the phonetic findings, a unified analysis of the phonological distribution and phonetic realization of Falling and Rising accents in Standard Serbian is proposed. It is proposed that both Rising and Falling accents consist of a single lexical High (H). The restricted distribution of the two accents emerges from the interaction of stress and t...
Linguistica, 2017
It is widely accepted that invariant and discrete phonological units at the linguistic level are transformed into variable and continuous movements of speech organs, which in turn results in equally continuous acoustical results. The variability of phonemic units depends on neighbouring phonetic units, but also on the various linguistic, communicational and pragmatic contexts of a particular speech act. The influence of phonetic units upon each other results in adaptations, coarticulations and assimilations. By means of assimilation at least one distinctive feature of a phoneme is changed, so the observed phoneme becomes similar to its neighbouring sound – the assimilation operator. This paper is aimed at analysing the influence of speech rate on assimilation processes in the voiced fricative /z/, when it is preceded by sounds /s, z, ʃ, ʒ / in four different types of articulatory joint: sentence, clausal, lexemic and proclitical. The articulatory joint refers to the production of tw...
2019
Standard Croatian is a normatively described highprestige dialect, which most Croatians in public life attempt to acquire, and which is taught in schools. It has four pitch accents, long/short rising/falling. We present acoustic and perceptual analyses of data from a wide range of speakers from different dialect backgrounds, showing that even for those with closely related native dialects with four accents, the established descriptions do not match productions – for example, rising tones do not rise, and the moraic tonal structure does not agree. There is a wide range of accentuation from a tonal system with four pitchaccents to a stress/dynamic system with one accent wich is a short stressed.
Phonetica, 2010
This study investigates the perceptual role of several acoustic characteristics to glide generation processes affecting the consonants [ɫ], [β] and [ɲ], i.e., the vocalization of syllable-final [ɫ] and syllable-initial [β] into [w], and the insertion of [j] before syllable-final [ɲ]. Results from identification tests with synthetic speech stimuli performed on Catalan-speaking informants reveal that both the formant frequency characteristics (at the consonant steady-state period for [ɫ] and [β], and at the endpoint of the vowel transitions for [ɲ]), and the onset or onset/offset time of the vowel transitions may play an active role in vocalization and glide insertion. Mostly for the changes [ɫ] > [w] and [ɲ]> [jɲ], glide identification was triggered by formant frequency variations rather than by variations in the temporal implementation of the vowel transitions. The implications of the perception results for the interpretation of the sound changes of interest are evaluated.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1995
In a direct-realist theory of speech perception, listeners are in immediate (in the sense of unmediated) contact with the phonological units of their language when they use structure in acoustic speech signals as information for its causal source-phonological gestures of the vocal tract. In the theory, phonological categories include, minimally, the sets of motor-equivalent articulatory movements producible by a synergy of the vocal-tract, each set, thereby, counting as a token of the same phonological gesture for producer/ perceivers of speech. Maximally, categories include a set of similar gestures that members of a language community do not distinguish. Categories, thus, are defined gesturally, not acoustically, as for example, research on prototypes in speech have been interpreted as suggesting. Striking behaviors of listeners that index their extraction of information about phonetic gestures from the acoustic speech signal is their parsing of acoustic signals. A literature review suggests that listeners do not hear such unitary acoustic dimensions as fundamental frequency or duration as unitary. Rather, they parse each dimension into its distinct, converging gestural cause. Complementarily, listeners use as information for a phonological unit the constellation of diverse acoustic consequences of the units gestural realization. [Work supported by NICHD.]
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