VOT + Suprasegmentals April 8, 2010

Announcements Next Tuesday--Silke and Jon will be presenting. Any order preferences? I may have a few things to say afterwards. Next Thursday: Rhonda, Steph, Sue. I am planning on putting together a final exam over the weekend… You will have a week to complete it. Final project reports will be due on Friday, April 30th, at 5 pm.

English Stop Contrasts The phonetic implementation of “voicing” contrasts may also vary by syllabic context. 1.For example, in English, In onset position: /p/ is voiceless aspirated /b/ is voiceless unaspirated 2.In medial position (between voiced segments): /p/ is voiceless unaspirated /b/ is voiced 3.After /s/, in the same syllable: only voiceless unaspirated stops (no contrast)

English Stop Contrasts 4. In syllable-final position: vowels preceding /p/ are short vowels preceding /b/ are longer /p/ closure tends to be longer than /b/ closure Moral of the story: Phonological voiced vs. voiceless contrast in English is abstract It has different phonetic manifestations in different contexts. Lisker & Abramson suggested describing the contrast as “fortis” vs. “lenis”, rather than “voiced” vs. “voiceless”.

Monolingual VOT Caramazza et al. (1973) looked at VOT in productions by (Canadian) French and English monolingual and bilingual speakers… VOT tends to be higher for backer places of articulation. Any ideas why?

Bilingual VOT Bilinguals speaking French showed similar VOT to monolingual French speakers. In English, bilingual VOT was skewed somewhat more to pre-voicing…

Bilingual VOT Perception Bilingual listener identifications of a VOT continuum were midway between the monolingual listener groups.  Knowledge of different languages is easier to separate in production than in perception…

By the way… There is no a priori reason why stops can’t be pre- aspirated. In fact, Icelandic does this all the time:

More Icelandica Lots of languages devoice obstruents in final position… Icelandic devoices sonorants, too.

Another Complication Fricatives and affricates may also be aspirated In these cases, VOT must be calculated beginning from the offset of sibilance.

The Four-Way Another problem with the VOT analysis is that it cannot straightforwardly account for the four-way voicing distinctions found in languages like Hindi. These languages distinguish between (breathy) voiced aspirated and voiceless aspirated stops and affricates.

[p h al]

Hindi Bengali [d h ol] voiced + breathy aspirated voiced + aspirated

Zhu|hoasi Stop Contrasts Zhu|hoasi is spoken in northern Namibia.

Suprasegmentals Suprasegmentals are phonetic features of speech which are “above the segment” …although, in a very real (phonetic) sense, they actually provide the underlying foundation for segmental articulations. 1.Quantity 2.Tone 3.Stress 4.Accent Suprasegmental features are always defined in a relative manner.

Length Distinctions Suprasegmental feature #1: quantity. Note: Quantity = Linguistic Length = Perceptual Duration = Acoustic Quantity distinctions are relative. depend on speaker depend on speaking rate Normal speaking rate (in English) = 4-6 syllables / second Also note: phrase-final lengthening

Danish Vowels

= 150 milliseconds = 275 milliseconds Differences in quantity between segments translates to relative differences in duration.

Estonian Estonian is unique in that it contrasts between short, long, and extra-long segments.

An Interesting Fact Some vowels are inherently longer than others. Data from Swedish (Elert, 1964): longshort high[i y u]140 msec95 mid low Why?

Tone Tone: suprasegmental feature #2 = the linguistic use of fundamental frequency to signal important differences in meaning. Note: Acoustic=Fundamental Frequency Perceptual=Pitch Linguistic=Tone English is a tone language… Sort of. For one pair of words only.

A Typology F0 generally varies in three different ways in language: 1. Tone languages (Chinese, Navajo, Igbo) Lexically determined tone on every syllable or word 2. Accent languages (Japanese, Swedish) The location of an accent in a particular word is lexically marked. 3. Stress languages (English, Russian) It’s complicated. A general complication: F0 tends to drift downwards over the course of an utterance.

Mandarin Tone ma1: mother ma2: hemp ma3: horse ma4: to scold Mandarin (Chinese) is a classic example of a tone language.

Mandarin Sentences ma1-ma0 ma4 ma3. “Mother scolds the horse.” ma3 ma4 ma1-ma0. “The horse scolds mother.”

Tones are usually defined by the pattern they make through a speaker’s frequency range. In Mandarin, tones span a frequency range of 1-5 Each tone is denoted by its (numerical) path through the frequency range Tone

Relativity, in Reality The same tones may be denoted by completely different frequencies, depending on the speaker.  Tone is an abstract linguistic unit. female speaker male speaker ma, tone 1 (55)

Even More Tones level tones contour tones

Modal vs. Tense Voice The language of Mpi contrasts modal voice vowels with tense voice vowels. Mpi is spoken in northern Thailand.

Even More Relativity The fundamental frequency of [i] is often slightly higher than that of [a], for the same tones

“Intrinsic” Pitch It’s been observed that F0 is usually higher for high vowels than for low vowels Data from Lehiste & Peterson (1961), for American English [i]183 Hz [e]169 [æ]162 [a]163 [o]170 [u]182 Why?

The “Tongue Pull” Hypothesis (Honda, 2004): Raising the tongue for front vowels also raises the larynx The cricoid cartilage rises up and around the spine… Thus stretching the vocal folds and increasing longitudinal tension.

Accent Languages In accent languages, there is only one pitch accent associated with each word. The pitch accent is realized on only one syllable in the word. The other syllables in the word can have no accent. Accent is lexically determined, so there can be minimal pairs. Japanese is a pitch accent language… for some, but not all, words for some, but not all, dialects

Japanese Japanese words have one High accent it attaches to one mora in the word The first mora, if not accented, has a Low F0. Morae following the accent have Low F0. asa‘morning’H-Lasa‘hemp’L-H It’s actually slightly more complicated than this; for more info, see:

“chopsticks”H-L-L “bridge”L-H-L “edge”L-H-H

Back to Stress Stress is a suprasegmental property that applies to whole syllables. Stressed syllables are higher in pitch (usually) Stressed syllables are longer (usually) Stressed syllables are louder (usually) Stressed syllables reflect more phonetic effort. Ex. 1: Voiceless stops are more aspirated at the onset of stressed syllables in English Ex. 2: Vowels are often reduced to in unstressed syllables in English. The combination of these factors give stressed syllables more prominence than unstressed syllables.

Intensity Intensity is usually measured in decibels (dB). Decibels = a(nother) relative measure based on a sound’s power. Power is just the square of a waveform’s amplitude. P = A 2 The intensity of a sound is its power relative to the power of some reference sound. For decibels, the reference sound = the quietest sound human ears can hear.

Some Numbers The intensity of a sound x can be measured in bels, where a bel is defined as: = log 10 (x 2 / r 2 ) r 2 is the power of the reference sound x 2 is the power of sound x. A decibel is a tenth of a bel. Some typical decibel values: 30 dB Quiet library, soft whispers 60 dB Normal conversation 90 dB Subway, motorcycle, lawn mower 130 dB Pain threshold

Another Interesting Fact Some vowels are louder than others dB of different vowels relative to (Fonagy, 1966): :0.0 [e] : -3.6 [o] : -7.2 [i] : -9.7 [u] : Why?

An Intrinsic Summary High VowelsLow Vowels IntensityLessMore DurationShorterLonger F0HigherLower A word of caution: All of these factors (intensity, duration, F0) factor into perceived prominence and stress.

Stress: Intensity (N) (V) Perception of stress is highly correlated with the area under the intensity curve

Sonority low vowels high vowels glides liquids nasals voiced fricatives voiceless fricatives voiced stops voiceless stops high sonority low sonority “The sonority of a sound is its loudness relative to that of other sounds with the same length, stress and pitch.”

Swedish Swedish overlays pitch accents on top of stress distinctions. (The two are independent) Source: The first syllable is stressed in both pairs.

The Next Level English distinguishes between primary and secondary stress. In some accounts, primary stress = stress with an accent. Example: “exploitation” vowelXXXX full vowelXXX stressXX tonic accentX

Intonation Languages superimpose pitch contours on top of word- based stress or tone distinctions. This is called intonation. It turns out that English: has word-based stress and phrase-based pitch accents (intonation) The pitch accents are pragmatically specified, rather than lexically specified They change according to discourse context. In English, pitch accents align with stressed syllables.

Pitch Accent Types In English, pitch accents can be either high or low H* or L* Examples:High (H*)Low (L*) Yes.Yes? H* L* Magnification.Magnification? As with tones in tone languages, “high” and “low” pitch accents are defined relative to a speaker’s pitch range. My pitch range: H* = 155 HzL* = 100 Hz Mary Beckman: H* = 260 HzL* = 130 Hz

Whole Utterances The same pitch pattern can apply to an entire sentence: H* H*:Manny came with Anna. L* L*:Manny came with Anna? H* H*:Marianna made the marmalade. L* L*:Marianna made the marmalade?