Learning the phonetic cues to the voiced-voiceless distinction: a comparison of child and adult speech perception

1980 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mel Greenlee
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Phonological Contrast ◽  
Control Set ◽  
Phonetic Cues

ABSTRACTThe present study explored children's perceptual capabilities with regard to the temporal acoustic cue of differential vowel duration, comparing children's perceptual identifications to those of adults. Three-year-old children, six-year-old children, and adults participated in two experiments, in which they were asked to identify (as voiced or voiceless) CVC words with uniformly voiceless final obstruents, but in which vowel duration was systematically varied. Children were also asked to identify a set of CONTROL stimuli, in which both closure voicing and vowel duration differences were present. Results indicate that both subject age and vowel duration of the TEST stimuli significantly affect identification responses. Adults and six-year olds evidence perceptual cross-over in their judgements for the TEST stimuli, while three-year-olds do not seem to change their identifications, regardless of variations in vowel duration. However, for both groups of children, the accuracy of identifications was greater for originally voiced stimuli on the CONTROL set of words, in which more than one potential cue to the voicing distinction was present. These results suggest that there is a complex and somewhat paradoxical relationship between developing production and perception which deserves further research. Children may consistently produce a phonetic difference (vowel duration) which they are unable to use as the SOLE perceptual cue for a phonological contrast.

Acoustic and Kinematic Correlates of Heterosyllabicity in Different Phonological Contexts

2022 ◽  
pp. 002383092110657
Author(s):  
Chiara Celata ◽  
Chiara Meluzzi ◽  
Chiara Bertini
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Structure Data ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Phonological Contrast ◽  
Consonant Gemination ◽  
Production Dynamics ◽  
Kinematic Properties

We investigate the temporal and kinematic properties of consonant gemination and heterosyllabic clusters as opposed to singletons and tautosyllabic clusters in Italian. The data show that the singleton versus geminate contrast is conveyed by specific kinematic properties in addition to systematic durational differences in both the consonantal and vocalic intervals; by contrast, tautosyllabic and heterosyllabic clusters differ significantly for the duration of the consonantal interval but do not vary systematically with respect to the vocalic interval and cannot be consistently differentiated at the kinematic level. We conclude that systematic variations in acoustic vowel duration and the kinematics of tongue tip gestures represent the phonetic correlates of the segmental phonological contrast between short and long consonants, rather than of syllable structure. Data are only partly consistent with the predictions of both moraic and gesture-based models of the syllable about the effects of syllable structure on speech production dynamics and call for a more gradient view of syllabification.

Liu vs. Liu vs. Luke? Name influence on voice recall

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 1117-1146 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRIANNE SENIOR ◽  
JOBIE HUI ◽  
MOLLY BABEL
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
Potential Mechanism ◽  
Familiarity Effect ◽  
Linguistic Processing ◽  
Basic Premise ◽  
Language Familiarity ◽  
Phonetic Cues ◽  
Accented English

ABSTRACTListeners are better at remembering voices speaking in familiar languages and accents, and this finding is often dubbed the language-familiarity effect (LFE). A potential mechanism behind the LFE relates to a combination of listeners’ implicit knowledge about lower level phonetic cues and higher level linguistic processes. While previous work has established that listeners’ social expectations influence various aspects of linguistic processing and speech perception, it remains unknown how such expectations might affect talker recognition. To this end, Mandarin-accented English voices and locally accented English voices were used in a talker recognition paradigm in conditions which paired voices with stereotypically congruent names (Mandarin-accented English voice as Chen and locally accented English voice as Connor) and stereotypically incongruent names (vice versa). Across two experiments, listeners showed greater recall for the familiar, local voices than the Mandarin-accented ones, confirming the basic premise of the LFE. Further, incongruent accent/name pairings negatively affected listeners’ performance, although listeners with experience speaking Mandarin were less influenced by the incongruent accent/name pairings. These results indicate that the LFE, while relying largely on listeners’ ability to parse linguistic information, is also affected by nonlinguistic information about a talker’s social identity.

Incomplete neutralization in African American English: The case of final consonant voicing

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Farrington
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
African American English ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Phonological Contrast ◽  
Glottal Stop ◽  
Conversational Interviews ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Consonant Voicing

AbstractIn many varieties of African American English (AAE), glottal stop replacement and deletion of word-final /t/ and /d/ results in consonant neutralization, while the underlying voicing distinction may be maintained by other cues, such as vowel duration. Here, I examine the relationship between vowel duration, final glottal stop replacement, and deletion of word-final /t, d/ to determine whether the phonological contrast of consonant voicing is maintained through duration of the preceding vowel. Data come from conversational interviews of AAE speakers in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington, DC. Results indicate that glottalization and deletion of word-final /t/ and /d/ are widespread across the speakers in the analysis. Additionally, the duration of vowels is significantly longer before underlying /d/ than /t/ for consonant neutralized contexts, thus showing that duration, normally a secondary cue to final voicing, may be becoming a primary cue in AAE.

Dialect Effects in Speech Perception: The Role of Vowel Duration in Parisian French and Swiss French

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne L. Miller ◽  
Michèle Mondini ◽  
François Grosjean ◽  
Jean-Yves Dommergues
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Vowel Duration

Effects of duration and phonological length of the preceding/following segments on perception of the length contrast in Japanese

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hajime Takeyasu ◽  
Mikio Giriko
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Production Experiment ◽  
Phonological Length

This chapter assesses the influence of preceding vowel duration on the perception of singleton/geminate stops in Japanese. Through a perception experiment, it is shown that the identification of consonant length (singleton/geminate) is affected by both the physical duration and the phonological length of the preceding vowel, the former being an ‘assimilative’ effect and the latter being a ‘contrastive’ effect. The physical duration and the phonological length of the following consonant affect the identification of vowel length (short/long), but the former effect is not observable when the following consonant is perceived as geminate. Results of a production experiment also demonstrate that the effects of preceding vowel duration in speech perception are parallel to the contextual variations in preceding vowel duration in speech production.

scholarly journals Questioning the role of lexical contrastiveness in phonological development: Converging evidence from perception and production studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 580-608
Author(s):  
Yvan Rose ◽  
Sarah Blackmore
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Phonological Development ◽  
Lexical Development ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
Phonological Contrast ◽  
Relative Independence ◽  
Infant Speech Perception ◽  
Perceptual Abilities ◽  
Phonological Contrasts

AbstractIn this article, we address relations between lexical and phonological development, with an emphasis on the notion of phonological contrast. We begin with an overview of the literature on word learning and on infant speech perception. Among other results, we report on studies showing that toddlers’ perceptual abilities do not correlate with the development of phonological contrasts within their lexicons. We then engage in a systematic comparison between the lexical development of two child learners of English and their acquisition of consonants in syllable onsets. We establish a developmental timeline for each child's onset consonant system, which we compare to the types of phonological contrasts that are present in their expressive vocabularies at each relevant milestone. Like the earlier studies, ours also fails to return tangible parallels between the two areas of development. The data instead suggest that patterns of phonological development are best described in terms of the segmental categories they involve, in relative independence from measures of contrastiveness within the learners’ lexicons.

A cross-modal account for synchronic and diachronic patterns of /f/ and /θ/ in English

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant McGuire ◽  
Molly Babel
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Visual Saliency ◽  
Perceptual Similarity ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Phonetic Cues ◽  
Phonological Change ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractWhile the role of auditory saliency is well accepted as providing insight into the shaping of phonological systems, the influence of visual saliency on such systems has been neglected. This paper provides evidence for the importance of visual information in historical phonological change and synchronic variation through a series of audio-visual experiments with the /f/∼/θ/ contrast. /θ/ is typologically rare, an atypical target in sound change, acquired comparatively late, and synchronically variable in language inventories. Previous explanations for these patterns have focused on either the articulatory difficulty of an interdental tongue gesture or the perceptual similarity /θ/ shares with labiodental fricatives. We hypothesize that the bias is due to an asymmetry in audio-visual phonetic cues and cue variability within and across talkers. Support for this hypothesis comes from a speech perception study that explored the weighting of audio and visual cues for /f/ and /θ/ identification in CV, VC, and VCV syllabic environments in /i/, /a/, or /u/ vowel contexts in Audio, Visual, and Audio-Visual experimental conditions using stimuli from ten different talkers. The results indicate that /θ/ is more variable than /f/, both in Audio and Visual conditions. We propose that it is this variability which contributes to the unstable nature of /θ/ across time and offers an improved explanation for the observed synchronic and diachronic asymmetries in its patterning.

The Use of Tactile Supplements in Lipreading Swedish and English

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Plant ◽  
Johan Gnosspelius ◽  
Harry Levitt
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Similar Pattern ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Tactile Cues ◽  
Manner Of Articulation ◽  
Nonsense Syllables ◽  
Speech Tracking ◽  
Consonant Voicing

The speech perception skills of GS, a Swedish adult deaf man who has used a "natural" tactile supplement to lipreading for over 45 years, were tested in two languages: Swedish and English. Two different tactile supplements to lipreading were investigated. In the first, "Tactiling," GS detected the vibrations accompanying speech by placing his thumb directly on the speaker’s throat. In the second, a simple tactile aid consisting of a throat microphone, amplifier, and a hand-held bone vibrator was used. Both supplements led to improved lipreading of materials ranging in complexity from consonants in [aCa] nonsense syllables to Speech Tracking. Analysis of GS’s results indicated that the tactile signal assisted him in identifying vowel duration, consonant voicing, and some manner of articulation categories. GS’s tracking rate in Swedish was around 40 words per minute when the materials were presented via lipreading alone. When the lipreading signal was supplemented by tactile cues, his tracking rates were in the range of 60–65 words per minute. Although GS’s tracking rates for English materials were around half those achieved in Swedish, his performance showed a similar pattern in that the use of tactile cues led to improvements of around 40% over lipreading alone.

Long and short vowels in Swiss French: Their production and perception

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANÇOIS GROSJEAN ◽  
SÉVERINE CARRARD ◽  
CORALIE GODIO ◽  
LYSIANE GROSJEAN ◽  
JEAN-YVES DOMMERGUES
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Recognition Problem ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Short Vowels ◽  
Production Study

Contrary to what is stated in much of the literature which is based in large part on Parisian French, many dialects of French still have long and short vowels (e.g. in Switzerland and Belgium). This study had two aims. The first was to show that Swiss French speakers, as opposed to Parisian French speakers, produce long vowels with durations that are markedly different from those of short vowels. The second aim was to show that, for these two groups, vowel duration has a different impact on word recognition. A production study showed that Swiss French speakers make a clear duration difference between short and long vowels (the latter are more than twice the length of the former on average) whereas the Parisian French do not. In an identification study which used stimuli pronounced in Swiss French, it was shown that words articulated with long vowels created no recognition problem for Swiss French listeners whereas they did so for Parisian French listeners. These results are discussed in terms of models of speech perception and word recognition.

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