scholarly journals Place of articulation shifts in sound change: A gradual road to the unmarked

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eirini Apostolopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Sound Change ◽  
Property Theory ◽  
Place Of Articulation

AbstractThis paper investigates place of articulation shifts involving heterosyllabic C[non-coronal]C[coronal] clusters. Such phenomena are found, among other languages, in the diachrony of Italiot Greek, where three typologically different historical stages are observed: (a) no shifts; (b) dorsal > labial shift; (c) dorsal, labial > coronal shift. Drawing on Rice's (1994) model of the Place node and the markedness hierarchy dorsal ≺ labial ≺ coronal (with “≺” denoting ‘more marked than’) (de Lacy 2002), I maintain that these shifts reduce the markedness of codas. The gradual typological changes are accounted for in terms of Property Theory (Alber & Prince 2015).

Velar and dental stop consonant softening in Romance

Diachronica ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Recasens
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Stop Consonant ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
Production Strategies

Experimental and descriptive evidence from the Romance languages suggests that velar and dental stop consonant softening, i.e., the process by which stops of these places of articulation turn mostly into palatoalveolar or alveolar affricates or fricatives, has proceeded gradually through intermediate (alveolo)palatal stop realizations. Several arguments are adduced in support of this interpretation: the presence of (alveolo)palatal stops and of (alveolo)palatal consonants of other manners of articulation in Romance languages and dialects, whether through gestural blending, gestural strengthening or other production strategies; alternations between (alveolo)palatal stops and affricates in several dialectal areas; variability in closure location for (alveolo)palatal stops in general, which accounts for their confusion with dental or velar stops; experimental evidence from speech production and perception studies. Moreover, there appears to be a plausible relationship between (alveolo)palatal stop realizations differing in closure fronting, and differences in fronting in the affricate and fricative outcomes of original Latin dental and velar stops. Historically, those differences depend mainly on place of articulation and voicing for the original stop as well as on the contextual and position conditions in which the stop occurred. The present investigation reveals that fine articulatory detail needs to be taken into consideration in the formulation of phonetic explanations of sound change.

Fricative vowels as an intermediate stage of vowel apicalization

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Fang Hu ◽  
Feng Ling
Keyword(s):  
Spectral Characteristics ◽  
Intermediate Stage ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
Acoustic Study ◽  
Redundant Feature ◽  
Chinese Dialects ◽  
High Vowels

Abstract Diphthongization and apicalization are two commonly detected phonetic and/or phonological processes for the development of high vowels, with the process of apicalization being of particular importance to the phonology of Chinese dialects. This paper describes acoustics and articulation of fricative vowels in the Suzhou dialect of Wu Chinese. Acquiring frication initiates the sound change. The production of fricative vowels in Suzhou is characterized by visible turbulent frication from the spectrograms, and a significant lower Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio vis-à-vis the plain counterparts. The acoustic study suggests that spectral characteristics of fricative vowels play a more important role in defining the vowel contrasts. The fricative high front vowels have comparatively greater F1 and smaller F2 and F3 values than their plain counterparts, and in the acoustic F1/F2 plane, the fricative vowels are located in an intermediate position between their plain and apical counterparts. The articulatory study revealed that that not only tongue dorsum but also tongue blade are involved in the production of fricative high front vowels in Suzhou. Phonologically, plain high front vowels, fricative high front vowels, and apical vowels distinguish in active place of articulation, namely being anterodorsal, laminal, and apical respectively; and frication becomes a concomitant and redundant feature in the production of fricative or apical vowels. It is concluded that the fine-grained phonetic details suggest that the fricative high front vowels in Suzhou is at an intermediate stage of vowel apicalization in terms of both acoustics and articulation.

Consonant strengthening: A crosslinguistic survey and articulatory proposal

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-302
Author(s):  
Joan Bybee ◽  
Shelece Easterday
Keyword(s):  
Sound Change ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
Input And Output ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
The Common

AbstractGiven the common intuition that consonant lenition occurs more often than fortition, we formulate this as a hypothesis, defining these sound change types in terms of decrease or increase in oral constriction. We then test the hypothesis on allophonic processes in a diverse sample of 81 languages. With the hypothesis confirmed, we examine the input and output of such sound changes in terms of manner and place of articulation and find that while decrease in oral constriction (weakening) affects most consonant types, increase in oral constriction (strengthening) is largely restricted to palatal and labial glides. We conclude that strengthening does not appear to be the simple inverse of weakening. In conclusion we suggest some possible avenues for explaining how glide strengthening may result from articulatory production pressures and speculate that strengthening and weakening can be encompassed under a single theory of sound change resulting from the automatization of production.

Place Variation in the Consonant System: The Rhenish Velarization Revisited

1992 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl J. Kuepper
Keyword(s):  
Sound Change ◽  
Acoustic Feature ◽  
Place Of Articulation

The motivations of sound change are almost exclusively treated as articulatory phenomena, even when the source and the target sounds are generated by very different articulatory mechanisms and no transitional stages can be found. What will be argued here is that seemingly regular place shifts in the articulation of consonants, such as the ones known under the term of “Rhenish Velarization” or “Rhenish Gutturalization” are actually manifestations of acoustically induced variants, very similar to those known as “slips of the ear”, which differ from one another only by the presence or absence of a single acoustic feature. The data assembled from a larger Rhenish corpus show that the operative process entails variations between labial, dental and velar place of articulation and involves stops, fricatives and nasals; its directionality is basically undetermined. Data from other sources and languages suggest that such place variations may be much more general than previously thought.

Effects of Aging on the Subcortical Encoding of Stop Consonants

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-403
Author(s):  
Dania Rishiq ◽  
Ashley Harkrider ◽  
Cary Springer ◽  
Mark Hedrick
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Mixed Model ◽  
Auditory Brainstem ◽  
Auditory Brainstem Responses ◽  
Aging Effects ◽  
Formant Frequency ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
Second Formant ◽  
Effects Of Aging

Purpose The main purpose of this study was to evaluate aging effects on the predominantly subcortical (brainstem) encoding of the second-formant frequency transition, an essential acoustic cue for perceiving place of articulation. Method Synthetic consonant–vowel syllables varying in second-formant onset frequency (i.e., /ba/, /da/, and /ga/ stimuli) were used to elicit speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses (speech-ABRs) in 16 young adults ( M age = 21 years) and 11 older adults ( M age = 59 years). Repeated-measures mixed-model analyses of variance were performed on the latencies and amplitudes of the speech-ABR peaks. Fixed factors were phoneme (repeated measures on three levels: /b/ vs. /d/ vs. /g/) and age (two levels: young vs. older). Results Speech-ABR differences were observed between the two groups (young vs. older adults). Specifically, older listeners showed generalized amplitude reductions for onset and major peaks. Significant Phoneme × Group interactions were not observed. Conclusions Results showed aging effects in speech-ABR amplitudes that may reflect diminished subcortical encoding of consonants in older listeners. These aging effects were not phoneme dependent as observed using the statistical methods of this study.

Stimulus Ratio Effects on Speech Discrimination by Children and Adults

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 671-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan E. Sussman
Keyword(s):  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Response Pattern ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Speech Discrimination ◽  
Adult Group ◽  
Discrimination Accuracy ◽  
Formant Frequency ◽  
Response Strategies ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
Adults And Children

This investigation examined the response strategies and discrimination accuracy of adults and children aged 5–10 as the ratio of same to different trials was varied across three conditions of a “change/no-change” discrimination task. The conditions varied as follows: (a) a ratio of one-third same to two-thirds different trials (33% same), (b) an equal ratio of same to different trials (50% same), and (c) a ratio of two-thirds same to one-third different trials (67% same). Stimuli were synthetic consonant-vowel syllables that changed along a place of articulation dimension by formant frequency transition. Results showed that all subjects changed their response strategies depending on the ratio of same-to-different trials. The most lax response pattern was observed for the 50% same condition, and the most conservative pattern was observed for the 67% same condition. Adult response patterns were most conservative across condition. Differences in discrimination accuracy as measured by P(C) were found, with the largest difference in the 5- to 6-year-old group and the smallest change in the adult group. These findings suggest that children’s response strategies, like those of adults, can be manipulated by changing the ratio of same-to-different trials. Furthermore, interpretation of sensitivity measures must be referenced to task variables such as the ratio of same-to-different trials.

Phonetic iconicity in the evaluative morphology of a sample of Indo-European, Niger-Congo and Austronesian languages

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renáta Gregová ◽  
Lívia Körtvélyessy ◽  
Július Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Sound Symbolism ◽  
Three Dimensional Model ◽  
Austronesian Languages ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Phonetic Symbolism ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Core Vocabulary

Universals Archive (Universal #1926) indicates a universal tendency for sound symbolism in reference to the expression of diminutives and augmentatives. The research ( Štekauer et al. 2009 ) carried out on European languages has not proved the tendency at all. Therefore, our research was extended to cover three language families – Indo-European, Niger-Congo and Austronesian. A three-step analysis examining different aspects of phonetic symbolism was carried out on a core vocabulary of 35 lexical items. A research sample was selected out of 60 languages. The evaluative markers were analyzed according to both phonetic classification of vowels and consonants and Ultan's and Niewenhuis' conclusions on the dominance of palatal and post-alveolar consonants in diminutive markers. Finally, the data obtained in our sample languages was evaluated by means of a three-dimensional model illustrating the place of articulation of the individual segments.

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