Vowel duration as a perceptual cue to postvocalic consonant voicing in young children and adults

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.

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Recovery from categorical boundary shifts for the vowel duration cue to consonant voicing

Journal of Phonetics ◽

10.1016/s0095-4470(19)30906-4 ◽

1982 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 105-111

Author(s):

Donald J. Sharf ◽

Ralph N. Ohde

Keyword(s):

Vowel Duration ◽

Consonant Voicing

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Developmental Use of Vowel Duration as a Cue to Postvocalic Stop Consonant Voicing

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jshr.2503.388 ◽

1982 ◽

Vol 25 (3) ◽

pp. 388-393 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Sue Ellen Krause

Keyword(s):

Significant Interaction ◽

Stop Consonant ◽

Developmental Study ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Production Experiment ◽

Normal Language ◽

Vowel Lengthening ◽

Consonant Voicing

This developmental study investigated vowel duration as a cue to postvocalic consonant voicing. Ten trials of six test words, spoken by 10 3-year-olds, 10 6-year-olds, and 10 adults, all with normal language and articulation and hearing, were analyzed. A significant interaction between the speaker's age and the voicing feature of the postvocalic consonant was found on measures of total vowel duration. The duration of vowels preceding voiceless stops was similar across ages, but vowel duration preceding voiced stops decreased sharply with age. In addition, decreased variability of vowel duration was observed with increasing age. Consideration is given to processes of exaggerated vowel lengthening and vowel shortening to describe children's acquisition of this voicing cue. The same subjects and stimulus words used in the production experiment were used in a previous perception experiment. Qualitative comparisons between the production and perception data revealed parallel refinement in the use of vowel duration as a function of age.

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Conflicting and Cooperating Cues

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jshr.3202.307 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 32 (2) ◽

pp. 307-316 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Rebecca Eilers ◽

D. K. Oller ◽

Richard Urbano ◽

Debra Moroff

Keyword(s):

Stop Consonant ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Extended Duration ◽

Infant Perception ◽

Relative Salience ◽

Consonant Voicing

Three experiments were conducted to ascertain the relative salience of two cues for final consonant voicing in infants and adults. Experiment 1 was designed to investigate infant perception of periodicity of burst, vowel duration, and the two cues combined in a cooperating pattern. Experiment 2 was designed to examine infant perception of these same cues but in a conflicting pattern, that is, with extended duration associated with the voiceless final plosive. Experiment 3 examined perception of the stimuli from Experiments 1 and 2 with adult subjects. Results indicate that in both adults and infants combined cues facilitate discrimination of the phonemic contrast regardless of whether the cues cooperate or conflict. The three experiments taken together do not support a phonetic interpretation of conflicting/cooperating cues for the perception of final stop consonant voicing. Potential psychoacoustic explanations are discussed.

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Effects of Syllable Affiliation and Consonant Voicing on Temporal Adjustment in a Repetitive Speech-Production Task

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/1092-4388(2001/065) ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 44 (4) ◽

pp. 826-840 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Kenneth J. de Jong

Keyword(s):

Speech Production ◽

Repetition Rate ◽

Temporal Patterns ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Timing Constraints ◽

Temporal Consistency ◽

Production Task ◽

Production Experiment ◽

Consonant Voicing

This paper presents the results of an acoustic speech-production experiment in which speakers repeated simple syllabic forms varying in consonantal voicing in time to a metronome that controlled repetition rate. Speakers exhibited very different patterns of tempo control for syllables with onsets than for syllables with codas. Syllables with codas exhibited internal temporal consistency, leaving junctures between the repeated syllables to take up most of the tempo variation. Open syllables with onsets, by contrast, often exhibited nearly proportional scaling of all of the acoustic portions of the signal. Results also suggest that phonemic use of vowel duration as a cue to voicing acted to constrain temporal patterns with some speakers. These results are discussed with respect to possible models of local temporal adjustment within a context of global timing constraints.

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Perception/Production Relationships in the Development of the Vowel Duration Cue to Final Consonant Voicing

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jshr.3204.803 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 803-815 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Mark E. Lehman ◽

Donald J. Sharf

Keyword(s):

Age Groups ◽

Category Boundary ◽

Pairwise Comparisons ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Synthesized Speech ◽

Boundary Width ◽

Response Consistency ◽

Correct Discrimination ◽

Percentage Correct ◽

Consonant Voicing

The purposes of this study were to assess: (a) the development of identification and discrimination in children for the vowel duration cue to final consonant voicing and (b) the perception/production relationships in children for the vowel duration cue to final consonant voicing. Subjects were 30 children divided equally into three age groups, and 10 adults. Productions consisted of 15 repetitions of two target syllables (beet, bead) analyzed acoustically for vowel duration. From these were calculated category boundary, category separation, and variability in production for each subject. Perceptual data were collected using a synthesized speech continuum that varied vowel duration. Identification responses were used to calculate category boundary, category separation (slope/boundary width) and variability (response consistency) for each subject. Mean percentage correct discrimination was derived by using two-step and three-step two-pair same-different paradigms. The results were as follows: (a) category boundary and category separation in production were adult-like by 8 years of age, (b) variability in production was not adult-like by 10 years of age, (c) perception categorization (category boundary and category separation) was adult-like at 5 years of age, (d) perceptual consistency was not adult-like until 10 years of age, (e) percentage correct discrimination was not adult-like by 10 years of age, (f) correlations between comparable perception and production measures were nonsignificant, and (g) a pairwise comparisons analysis indicated that perception was consistently more advanced than production.

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