The perception of voicing contrast in assimilation contexts in minimal pairs: evidence from Hungarian

It has been long acknowledged that the perception and production of speech is affected by the presence or absence of higher levels of linguistic information, too. The recoverability of meaning heavily relies on semantic context, similarly, the precision of articulation is inversely proportional to the presence of semantic information. The present study explores the recoverability of the voice feature of word-final alveolar fricatives in minimal pairs in Hungarian in phonetic contexts that trigger regressive voicing assimilation. Specifically, it aims to clarify whether the acoustic differences found in earlier studies are perceptually salient enough to distinguish underlying voicing in minimal pairs in semantically ambiguous contexts. For this reason, a perception study with the synthesised minimal pair mész–méz ‘whitewash–honey’ was carried out where the amount of voicing in the fricative, and the duration of the fricative and vowel were manipulated. The target words appeared in the following three phonetic contexts: before /p/, before /b/ and before the vowel /a/. Our results suggest that the observed acoustic differences in most of the cases remain below the perceptual threshold which means that phonological contrast is indeed neutralised before obstruents in Hungarian, and this may cause semantic ambiguity.

Why phonetically-motivated constraints do not lead to phonetic determinism: The relevance of aspiration in cueing NC sequences in Tumbuka

This paper examines the role of phonetic cues to postnasal laryngeal contrasts, language-specific differences in the use of these cues, and the phonetic naturalness of the different cues. While many studies have shown that long stop closure duration is a well-established cue to voicelessness in the postnasal context (see, e.g., Cohn & Riehl 2012, who claim this to be a universal property), the present study focusses on the role of aspiration noise in maintaining a voicing contrast in the postnasal environment. It provides experimental data from the Bantu language Tumbuka to illustrate that aspiration noise can preserve a postnasal laryngeal contrast even when stop closure duration is short. Though typologically less common, we show that the use of aspiration as a cue is also phonetically motivated. Furthermore, we show that such phonetic motivation should not be directly incorporated into phonology (e.g., as markedness constraints in OT). Instead, we employ the BiPhon model (Boersma 2007), which allows for a strict distinction between the modules of phonetics and phonology, and which formalizes the mapping of phonetic cues onto phonological representations via cue constraints, avoiding the problem of phonetic determinism.

The phonology and noun morphology of Yi Kitʊlɛ, an Adamawa language of East-Central Nigeria

The paper describes the phonology and nominal morphology of KItʊlε, an Adamawa language of the Tula-Waja group, spoken in East-Central Nigeria. KItʊlε has a restricted consonant inventory, marked by a loss of voicing contrast in most consonants. It has a system of ATR vowel harmony, which has begun to erode in many lexical items. There are three level tones plus rising and falling glides. The underlying system of nominal number marking is suffix alternation as with the other languages in the group, but this has undergone numerous alterations, in part due to the addition of prefix alterations, and fossilised suffixes which have been incorporated into the stem. Some of these then appear as infixes, although this is not the underlying system. A note on demonstratives is appended, which shows that these are not directly concordial, but which have a broad semantic logic.

The production of the English stop voicing contrast by Arab L2 speakers of English

The English voiceless stop /p/ and voiced stop /ɡ/ are absent in the consonant inventory of Arabic. This difference provides a fertile ground for empirical research in L2 speech learning among Arab L2 speakers of English. The current study, therefore, aims to explore the English stop voicing contrast as produced by Arab native speakers. Focusing on Voice Onset Time (VOT) as an acoustic parameter, the study seeks to examine the extent to which (1) Arab L2 speakers of English maintain the English stop voicing contrast for /p-b/ and /k-ɡ/, and (2) the L2 VOT continuum by Arab L2 speakers follows or deviates from the L1 VOT continuum in English. The acoustic phonetic experiment involved elicited materials of /p-b/ and /k-ɡ/ from four male native speakers of Arabic. The tokens were recorded in isolation (utterance-initial position) and in a carrier sentence (utterance-medial position). The data were then acoustically analysed following standard segmentation, annotation and measurement criteria. Results reveal that the Arab L2 speakers can, to a large extent, maintain the English stop voicing contrast across all places of articulation, with voiced stops usually being produced with “normal” negative VOT (prevoicing) and voiceless stops usually being produced with “normal” positive VOT and also accompanied with aspiration in the long-lag region. There are also exceptional cases of “abnormal” negative VOT (prevoicing) for voiceless stops and “abnormal” positive VOT (devoicing) for voiced stops, with an extremely larger number of devoiced tokens for voiced stops in comparison to prevoiced tokens for voiceless stops. The results accord well with the Speech Learning Model’s prediction that phonetically “new” sounds are relatively easier to learn than phonetically “similar” sounds. The conclusion is drawn that languages sharing the same sound contrast may exhibit different phonetic implementations in marking a phonological contrast.

A comparative approach to the consonant inventory of the Transeurasian languages

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the consonant inventories of the Transeurasian languages from a comparative perspective. The chapter begins with a discussion of the reconstruction of the consonant inventory of Proto-Transeurasian, the hypothetical proto-language from which the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic languages are descended. Two competing reconstructions for the Proto-Transeurasian consonant system are evaluated, namely one that posits a two-way voicing contrast in the series of stops and affricates and one that posits a three-way contrast. Thereafter, the individual branches are considered in turn. The chapter ends with a discussion of root-structure patterning in Proto-Transeurasian.

The inconspicuous substratum

Descriptions of Australian Aboriginal English list the neutralisation of the Standard English contrast between so-called voiced and voiceless stops as one characteristic feature. This paper reports on the results of an acoustic analysis of data collected in a production task by monolingual speakers of Standard Australian English in Sydney, of Aboriginal English on Croker Island, Northern Territory, and bilingual speakers of Iwaidja/Aboriginal English and Kunwinjku/Aboriginal English on Croker Island. The results show that average values for Voice Onset Time, the main correlate of the “stop voicing contrast” in English, and Closure Duration collected from Aboriginal speakers of English do not significantly differ from that of speakers of Standard Australian English, irrespective of language background. This result proves that the stop contrast is not neutralised by these Aboriginal speakers of English. However, it can be shown that phonetic voicing manifesting itself in Voice Termination Time is a prevalent and characteristic feature of Aboriginal English on Croker Island. This feature aligns Aboriginal English on Croker Island with local Aboriginal languages and differentiates it from Standard Australian English.

CIRI-CIRI AKUSTIK KONTRAS PENYUARAAN BUNYI FRIKATIF ARAB BERASASKAN PARAMETER TEMPOH FRIKASI

Latar Belakang dan Tujuan: Makalah ini bertujuan menyerlahkan perbezaan penyuaraan bunyi frikatif Arab bersuara dan tak bersuara yang dihasilkan oleh penutur Melayu. Kajian lepas membuktikan bahawa penutur Melayu sering melakukan kesalahan pertuturan faringealisasi Arab. Metodologi: Analisis ciri-ciri akustik bunyi frikatif Melayu dan Arab di awal kata menggunakan parameter tempoh frikasi, justeru, dilaksanakan bagi menyerlahkan persamaan dan perbezaan bunyi konsonan berkenaan. Kaedah analisis spektrograf menerusi perisian Praat dimanfaatkan bagi membolehkan pengkaji memindahkan data rakaman ujaran dalam bentuk spektrogram dan melakukan penelitian akustik. Hasil dapatan analisis akustik dimanipulasikan menerusi SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Data spektogram sebanyak 2960 diperoleh daripada rakaman ujaran subjek kajian seramai 24 orang pelajar ijazah Sarjana Muda Pengajian Bahasa Arab dan Tamadun Islam Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Proses rakaman terlebih dahulu dijalankan di studio rakaman Fakulti Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan, UKM menggunakan alat perakam TASCAM MP3/WAV. Senarai perkataan mengandungi bunyi frikatif di awal kata bagi kedua-dua bahasa dibaca oleh subjek kajian dengan keadaan tahap pertuturan yang selesa, iaitu tidak terlalu perlahan dan tidak terlalu laju. Subjek diminta mengulangi perkataan tersebut sebanyak lima kali. Dapatan Kajian: Hasil kajian ini mendapati bahawa bunyi frikatif tak bersuara /s/ adalah lebih panjang berbanding bunyi bersuara /z/. Dapatan kajian juga menunjukkan bahawa tiada hubungan signifikan antara bunyi /س/ dan /sˤ/ dan /ز/ dan /zˤ/. Secara khususnya, kajian ini mengesahkan bahawa tidak semua bunyi faringealisasi Arab dipengaruhi bahasa ibunda. Bunyi ini mampu juga dikuasai oleh bukan penutur natif Arab. Implikasi: Kajian ini memberi implikasi signifikan terhadap pembelajaran bahasa Arab sebagai bahasa kedua di Malaysia serta perkembangan ilmu fonetik akustik di Malaysia khususnya bagi menambah baik sebutan frikatif Arab dalam kalangan penutur natif Melayu. Kata kunci: Akustik, bahasa Arab, gangguan bahasa, pemindahan bahasa, tempoh frikasi. Abstract Background and Purpose: This paper aims to highlight the voicing contrast of Arabic and Malay fricatives produced by Malay native speakers. Previous studies show that Malay speakers often make mistakes on Arabic pharyngealisation. Methodology: This study, thus, analysed the frication duration characteristics of Malay and Arabic fricatives in initial word position and highlight their similarities and differences. The spectrographic analysis method via Praat software was utilized to enable the researcher to transfer speech recording data into a spectrogram and analysed acoustically. A total of 2960 spectrograms was obtained from the recording of 24 subjects’ utterences. The subjects are undergraduate students of Arabic Studies and Islamic Civilization of the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The recording process was performed in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, UKM recording studio using TASCAM MP3 / WAV recorder. A word list that contains the fricative sound at the beginning of each word in both languages was ​​read by subjects with comfortable speech level, i.e. neither slow nor too fast. Subjects were asked to repeat the word five times. Findings: The result of the acoustic analysis was manipulated using Statistical Package for Social Sciences. This study found that the fricative sound / s / is longer than the sound / z / for both languages. The findings also show that there is no significant relationship between sound / س / and / sˤ / and / ز / and / zˤ /. In particular, this study confirms that not all Arabic pharyngealisation are influenced by their native language. It can be mastered also by non-native speakers of Arabic. Contributions: This study provides significant implications for learning Arabic as a second language in Malaysia as well as the development of acoustic phonetics, particularly, in improving the fricative pronunciation of Arabic among native speakers of Malay. Keywords: Acoustic, Arabic, frication duration, language interference, language transfer. Cite as: Shahidi A. H., Radzi, M. P., Aman, R., CheLaeh, M., & Anwar, O. D. (2020). Ciri-ciri akustik kontras penyuaraan bunyi frikatif Arab berasaskan parameter tempoh frikasi [The acoustic properties of Arabic fricative voicing contrast based on the frication duration parameter]. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 5(1), 143-168. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol5iss1pp143-168