Effect of Age and Gender on Voice Onset Time: Data from Sinhalese

Objective: To documenting the voice onset time in voiced and unvoiced stop consonants in Sinhala and to investigating the effects of age and gender on voice onset time values in Sinhalese speakers. Methods: Three groups of participants were employed. Group 1 included 20 children, Group 2 included 20 adults and Group 3 consisted of 20 elderly subjects. All the subjects spoke the dialect of central province of Sri Lanka. Words consisting of three Sinhala short vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ in were recorded. Voice onset time values from two voiced and voiceless stop consonants were extracted. Results: Voiced stop consonants had significantly longer voice onset time values compared to voiceless stop consonants. Significant effect of age as well as gender on voice onset time values were also observed. Conclusion: Supplementary investigations on the normative aspects of voice onset time among the Sinhala population would provide additional insights and validated tools for indexing the articulatory and acoustic characteristics of stop consonants in Sinhalese. Keywords: Voice Onset Time, Sinhalese, Elderly, Sinhala, Acoustic analysis

Spelling in Finnish: the case of the double consonant

Because of its regularity, it is relatively easy to learn to read and spell in Finnish. However, a specific hurdle in spelling acquisition seems to be the doubling of consonant letters. In this study on consonant letter doubling spelling in Finnish children (91 Grade 1 and 191 Grade 2 children), we asked two questions. First, are items with double consonant letters (e.g., “kissa” [ˈkisːɑ] ‘cat’) indeed harder to spell than single consonant items (e.g., “kisa” [ˈkisɑ] ‘contest’)? Second, is consonant doubling harder for stop consonants (e.g., “takki” [ˈtɑkːi] ‘coat’) than for continuant consonants (e.g., “kissa” [ˈkisːɑ] ‘cat’)? We found that Finnish children made more errors on items with double consonant letters than on items with single consonant letters and that this effect was larger for stop than for continuant consonant letters. Exploratory analyses showed that these effects were stronger for younger and poorer spellers. Post hoc analyses of the errors made on double consonant items showed that the children predominantly made nonlexical errors (> 90%). When they did make a lexical error, these errors typically did not map on the type of errors that would be expected from a corpus analysis of the higher-frequency orthographic neighbors. Overall, lexical influences on spelling of Finnish children seem to be minimal and unpredictable. We discuss two potential reasons why it is more difficult to spell items with double consonant letters than with single consonant letters and suggest how these could be investigated in future research.

The Effect of Malocclusion on Kurdish Young Children’s Production of Dental, Labio-Dental and Alveolar Sounds: A Case study

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of malocclusion on the production of dental, labio-dental, and alveolar fricative and stop consonants. To achieve this purpose, Fifteen Kurdish young children ranging in age from 8-12 years old were selected to participate in the current study. They were distributed over three groups according to their bite-block occlusions. The participants were asked to pronounce isolate fricative and stop sounds and words which include target sounds, and their voices were recorded. Later, the patricians’ audio-recordings were analyzed via a software praat analysis (wave form and sound spectrograph). The main conclusion of the study was that the children with malocclusions had difficulties in producing the inter-dental, labiodental, and alveolar sounds properly. In addition, distocclusion, open-bite and extra orally deep-bite malocclusions were more significant than other types of malocclusions in affecting target sounds production

Calibration of Consonant Perception to Room Reverberation

Purpose We examined how consonant perception is affected by a preceding speech carrier simulated in the same or a different room, for different classes of consonants. Carrier room, carrier length, and carrier length/target room uncertainty were manipulated. A phonetic feature analysis tested which phonetic categories are influenced by the manipulations in the acoustic context of the carrier. Method Two experiments were performed, each with nine participants. Targets consisted of 10 or 16 vowel–consonant (VC) syllables presented in one of two strongly reverberant rooms, preceded by a multiple-VC carrier presented in either the same room, a different reverberant room, or an anechoic room. In Experiment 1, the carrier length and the target room randomly varied from trial to trial, whereas in Experiment 2, they were fixed within a block of trials. Results Overall, a consistent carrier provided an advantage for consonant perception compared to inconsistent carriers, whether in anechoic or differently reverberant rooms. Phonetic analysis showed that carrier inconsistency significantly degraded identification of the manner of articulation, especially for stop consonants and, in one of the rooms, also of voicing. Carrier length and carrier/target uncertainty did not affect adaptation to reverberation for individual phonetic features. The detrimental effects of anechoic and different reverberant carriers on target perception were similar. Conclusions The strength of calibration varies across different phonetic features, as well as across rooms with different levels of reverberation. Even though place of articulation is the feature that is affected by reverberation the most, it is the manner of articulation and, partially, voicing for which room adaptation is observed.

Phonetic feature size in second language acquisition: Examining VOT in voiceless and voiced stops

Featural approaches to second language phonetic acquisition posit that the development of new phonetic norms relies on sub-phonemic features, expressed through a constellation of articulatory gestures and their corresponding acoustic cues, which may be shared across multiple phonemes. Within featural approaches, largely supported by research in speech perception, debate remains as to the fundamental scope or ‘size’ of featural units. The current study examines potential featural relationships between voiceless and voiced stop consonants, as expressed through the voice onset time cue. Native English-speaking learners of Spanish received targeted training on Spanish voiceless stop consonant production through a visual feedback paradigm. Analysis focused on the change in voice onset time, for both voiceless (i.e. trained) and voiced (i.e. non-trained) phonemes, across the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest. The results demonstrated a significant improvement (i.e. reduction) in voice onset time for voiceless stops, which were subject to the training paradigm. In contrast, there was no significant change in the non-trained voiced stop consonants. These results suggest a limited featural relationship, with independent voice onset time (VOT) cues for voiceless and voices phonemes. Possible underlying mechanisms that limit feature generalization in second language (L2) phonetic production, including gestural considerations and acoustic similarity, are discussed.

The sounds of prehistoric speech

Evidence is reviewed for widespread phonological and phonetic tendencies in contemporary languages. The evidence is based largely on the frequency of sound types in word lists and in phoneme inventories across the world's languages. The data reviewed point to likely tendencies in the languages of the Upper Palaeolithic. These tendencies include the reliance on specific nasal and voiceless stop consonants, the relative dispreference for posterior voiced consonants and the use of peripheral vowels. More tenuous hypotheses related to prehistoric languages are also reviewed. These include the propositions that such languages lacked labiodental consonants and relied more heavily on vowels, when contrasted to many contemporary languages. Such hypotheses suggest speech has adapted to subtle pressures that may in some cases vary across populations. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.