Sarah Bakst, UC Berkeley Phonetics and Phonology in Europe University of Cambridge June 29, 2015

Retroflexes and Dentals 210 ms -1 kHz- -2 kHz- -3 kHz- -4 kHz- -5 kHz- a ɖ a a d ̪ a 210 ms

Burst spectra retroflex dental

Different distributions HindiTamil word-initial ɖ ar ‘fear’ *word-initial (except borrowings) word-final pe ʈ ‘stomach’; pe ɽ ‘tree’ word-final (resonants) p ɔɳ ‘girl’ word-medial lə ɖː u ‘ladoo’ (type of sweet) word-medial a ːɖɨ ‘sheep’

Hypothesis  Perceptual effect ~ phonological pattern?  a. Tamil speakers will be less sensitive to burst cues than Hindi speakers.  b. Tamil speakers will be more sensitive to vowel transitions that Hindi speakers.  Effect not predicted by motor theory (Liberman 1985) and some versions of direct realism (e.g. Fowler 1986).

Stimuli  Recordings of Hindi and Tamil speakers  Isolation of a ɖ a and ad ̪ a sequences  Cross-language and speaker comparison Retroflex Dental

Synthesis  Synthesis of a ɖ a and ad ̪ a using the Klatt synthesizer  Equalized pitch  Interpolated seven step continuum between the two stops.  Five continua with altered cues

Synthesized Stimuli  Vowel cues only (VC), no burst.  Burst cues only (CV), no initial vowel.  Ambiguous burst: VC + step 4 burst.  Ambiguous vowel: step 4 vowel transition + CV  Mismatch: step 1 vowel + step 7 burst -> step 7 vowel + step 1 burst

Procedure  Two-alternative forced-choice identification task in Open Sesame in sound-attenuating booth  All stimuli combined and randomized  Ten repetitions of all stimuli (420 trials total)  Break given just over halfway through  Experiment lasted about twenty minutes

Procedure

Participants  Mostly UC Berkeley students, some members of the community  Native speakers of Hindi (16) or Tamil (17)  $5 or extra credit in intro linguistics class

Modeling  Mixed-effects logistic model in R to predict probability of “retroflex” response.  One model for each continuum: response ~ step*language + 1|sub

Results  p-level: after Bonferroni corrections  Trending overall language effect:  CV (p =.017)  Interaction on particular steps:  baseline (p =.04, marginal)  VC (p =.017)  ambiguous consonant (p =.0001)  mismatch condition (p <.0001)

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Interpretation  Tamil speakers slightly more sensitive to burst cues  Hindi speakers slightly more sensitive to vowel cues  Opposite of specific prediction

Discussion  Differences in number and type of phonotactic systems  Frequency of contrast and functional load

Conclusion  Small effect of language experience on sensitivity to different acoustic cues  Phonetic knowledge is learned rather than innate.  Intended gesture unlikely to be the object of perception

Acknowledgments Many thanks to  Prof. Keith Johnson for supervising the project  Prof. Beth Hume  Emily Cibelli, Clara Cohen, Andréa Davis, and other members of the UC Berkeley Phonology Lab  Undergraduate assistants Shannon Foster and Akshayraj Aitha for running subjects and the Linguistics Research Apprenticeship Program for funding the project

Selected References  Best C. T. (1995). A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception, in Speech Percep- tion and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research, ed Strange W., editor. (Timonium, MD: York Press; ), 171–204.  Fowler, C.A. (2006) Compensation for coarticulation reflects gesture perception, not spectral  contrast. Percept. & Psychophys. 68(2), 161–177.  Gerrits, E., and M. E. H. Schouten Categorical perception depends on the discrimination task. Perception & Psychophysics 66:363–376.  Holt, Lori L., and Andrew J. Lotto Cue weighting in auditory categorization: Implica- tions for first and second language acquisition. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 119:3059–3071.  Klatt, Dennis H Software for a cascade/parallel formant synthesizer. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 67:971–995.  Liberman, Alvin M., and Ignatius G. Mattingly The motor theory of speech perception revised. Cognition 1–36.  Lisker, Leigh “Voicing” in English: A catalogue of acoustic features signaling /b/ versus /p/ in trochees. Language and Speech 29:3–11.  Mathoˆt, S., D. Schreij, and J. Theeuwes OpenSesame: An open-source, graphical exper- iment builder for the social sciences. Behavior Research Methods 44:314–324.  Morrison, Geoffrey Stewart, and Maria V. Kondaurova Analysis of categorical response data: Use logistic regression rather than endpoint-difference scores or discriminant analysis (L). Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 126:2159–2162.  Steriade, Donca Directional asymmetries in place assimilation: a perceptual account. In Perception in phonology, ed. E. Hume and K. Johnson. Academic Press.  Stevens, Kenneth N., and Sheila E. Blumstein Quantal aspects of consonant production and perception: a study of retroflex stop consonants. Journal of Phonetics 3:215–233.

Palatography Tamil Hindi Tamil