Fricatives, part 2 November 14, 2008

Who’s Next Today: some leftover notes on vowels Then: more fricatives Monday: fricative spectrogram matching

Swedish

Five-Vowel Spaces Many languages have only three or five vowels, separated evenly in the vowel space in a triangle Here’s a popular vowel space option: iuiu eoeo a

Five-Vowel Spaces

A “Bad” Vowel Space Five vowels in a vowel system are rarely, if ever, distributed thusly: [i] [e] [æ] Why?

Adaptive Dispersion Theory Developed by Bjorn Lindblom and Johan Liljencrants (Swedish speakers) Idea: languages tend to maximize the distance between vowels in acoustic space… this helps listeners perceive contrasts between vowels A phonological phenomenon: “chain shifts” If one vowel moves… The rest follow suit, to maintain distinctions.

The Great Lakes Shift One chain shift is currently taking place in the northern United States. Prevalent in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and many places in between (but not in Toronto or Windsor) GeneralGreat Lakes

fronting

[æ] raising

backing “ahead”

Female Talkers

New Zealand Vowel Shift

Back to Fricatives Remember: the most common fricatives are alveolars and post-alveolars. VoicelessVoicedVoiced/Voiceless [s]266[z] [f]135[v] [x]

Some More Typology # of Fricatives# of languages% of total % % % % % % % % % > %

Fricative Fun Facts Of the 21 languages without any fricatives, 15 are Australian languages Hawaiian is another example Australian languages also tend to lack affricates But remember: many Australian languages have five or more place contrasts for stops. Kabardian has the most fricatives: 22 Kabardian also has 2 (count ‘em) vowels Languages with one fricative: [s] Languages with two fricatives: [s], or [s], [f] Languages with three fricatives: [s],, [f]

Sibilants [s] and are known as sibilant fricatives Sibilants have more acoustic energy at higher frequencies than other fricatives Two reasons why: they are obstacle fricatives = the back of the upper teeth  louder than other fricatives small, short resonating filter = between constriction and the lips  higher frequencies resonate

[s] vs. [f] “sigh”“fie” Note: acoustic energy for [f] is weaker, and spread more evenly across all frequencies

vs. “shy”“thigh”

vs. “sigh” “shy” [s]

Acoustic Enhancement Note: is post-alveolar and [s] is alveolar  more space in vocal tract in front of including a “sub-lingual cavity” This “filter” of resonates at lower frequencies In English, this acoustic distinction is enhanced through lip rounding for this extends the vocal tract further lowers the resonant frequencies of another form of “adaptive dispersion”

The Sub-lingual Cavity Let’s check the videotape...

Behind the Constriction [s] Let’s check the ultrasound…

Other Examples Susie and David say “speech”: Also: Where the shtreets have no name Note: there are no word-initial /sr/ sequences in English. “shriek”*“sreek”

Whistling Fricatives Shona (spoken in Zimbabwe) has “whistling fricatives” = retroflex fricatives produced with lip-rounding “exp.”“arrive” “owl”“these” “to provoke”“to blame” “to become full” “to give birth”

The Politics of Frication Denture-wearers often produce whistling fricatives, too. Barack Obama John McCain Excited speakers of English can even produce pharyngeal fricatives… like Keith Olbermann:

Polish Note: lip-rounding can be used to enhance other fricative contrasts In Polish, it enhances the contrast between (post-)alveolar and dental fricatives the (post-)alveolars have the rounding

Polish, continued Polish also has what are known as alveolo-palatal fricatives. = constriction in the post-alveolar region + raised tongue in the palatal region (behind the fricative)

Polish Sibilants

vs.

Palatography [kasa]

Palatography

Polish Clusters Just for kicks...

Four Fricatives

Chinese Sibilants Mandarin Chinese also has dental, post-alveolar and alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives. The post-alveolars are sometimes retroflex

Chinese

Affricates Affricates are transcribed as stop-fricative sequences Acoustically, amplitude rises faster in affricates than in plain fricatives “rise time” Phonologically, affricates are [-continuant]

Affricate Typology More numbers from the UPSID database: 522 affricates in 316 languages 141 [ts]95 80 [dz] affricates have sibilant fricatives Other affricate types are rarer: [pf] (German)[tx] (Navajo)

Fricative vs. Affricate “shy” “chime”

Polish, Again Polish contrasts affricates with stop + fricative sequences

Stop + Fricative vs. Affricate

Fricative Acoustics Summary Turbulence provides the source of fricative noise Voiced fricatives also have a sound source at the glottis Obstacle turbulence tends to be louder than channel turbulence Sibilants are particulary high in intensity The filter of fricative turbulence noise changes depending on the place of articulation sibilants: very short filter, emphasizing high frequencies labials: essentially no filter (flat spectrum) back fricatives: longer, more vowel-like filter Affricates: stop-fricative sequences with shorter rise time

Some Typology Languages with the following number of fricatives From the UPSID database (total of 316 languages) VoicelessVoicedVoiced/Voiceless [ç]