Fricatives November 20, 2015

The Road Ahead Formant plotting + vowel production exercises are due at 5 pm today! Monday and Wednesday of next week: fricatives, affricates and voice onset time. On Friday of next week: fricatives + voice onset time transcription exercise.

Glottal Fricatives The sound “source” of whispering is the turbulence that airflow creates as it passes through the vocal folds. “Glottal fricatives” The IPA lists two sounds as “glottal fricatives” voiceless: [h] voiced: The “filter” of both sounds is the same vocal tract shapes that we find in vowels.  In a sense, [h] is a “voiceless vowel”

[h] in different vowel contexts “heed”“had”

[h] in different vowel contexts

“Voiced” /h/ In English, /h/ often surfaces as breathy voiced when it appears between two vowels. “ahead” “head”

Turbulence Acoustics The “source” of fricative sounds is aerodynamic turbulence aperiodic random Aperiodic sounds are noisy Their pressure values vary randomly over time waveform snippet of aperiodic “white noise”:

White Noise Spectrum Recall: white light is what you get when you combine all visible frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum White noise is so called because it has an unlimited range of frequency components

White Noise Spectrogram

Fricative Filtering The sound source of fricatives resembles white noise. …but this aperiodic noise may be filtered by the vocal tract in the same way that voiced vowels are. Ex: [h] tends to take on the spectral characteristics of its surrounding vowels  [h] just replaces the voicing source with an aperiodic sound source. = coarticulation

Fricative Place of Articulation A fricative’s place of articulation is where, in the vocal tract, its turbulence noise is made. Fricatives may be produced at essentially any place of articulation. At different places of articulation, fricatives will have: Different filters based on the area and shape of the vocal tract in front of the obstruction of the airflow Different sound sources based on the flow of air through the obstruction

Glottals, Epiglottals, and Pharyngeals Glottal fricatives: [h] Epiglottal fricatives: Pharyngeal fricatives: Note: try not to confuse the symbols for the: voiced epiglottal fricative voiceless epiglottal stop And also not the symbols for the: voiced pharyngeal fricative glottal stop

Agul Glottals, epiglottals and pharyngeals contrast in the Caucasian language Agul.

Uvular Fricatives

Uvular Fricative Symbols Peter says: Uvular fricatives contrast with pharyngeals and glottals in one dialect of Hebrew.

Palatals and Velars

Palatal and Velar Symbols <-- Peter says Possible confusion #1: voiceless palatal fricative[ç] voiceless palatal stop[c] Possible confusion #2: voiced palatal fricative voiced palatal stop Possible confusion #3:

Greek

Coronal Fricatives Peter says: The coronal fricative landscape is very complex. Next time we’ll look in detail at how coronal fricatives are produced in: English Chinese Polish

Toda Toda is spoken in southern India.

Toda Mid-Sagittal Diagrams

Bilabial Fricatives Bilabial fricatives exist allophonically in some languages (e.g., Spanish) They were not recognized as a potentially contrastive sound until relatively recently (‘70s or ‘80s) it was discovered that they contrasted with labio- dental fricatives in Ewe, a language spoken in Ghana.

Ewe

Turbulence Sources For fricatives, turbulence is generated by forcing a stream of air at high velocity through either a narrow channel in the vocal tract or against an obstacle in the vocal tract. Channel turbulence produced when airflow escapes from a narrow channel and hits inert outside air Obstacle turbulence produced when airflow hits an obstacle in its path

Obstacles, Channels, Walls General rule of thumb: obstacle turbulence is much noisier than channel turbulence [f] vs. Also: obstacle turbulence is louder, the more perpendicular the obstacle is to the airflow [s] vs. [x] [x] is a “wall fricative” Rule of thumb: voiced fricatives are hard to make. In fact, fricatives are kind of hard to make in general.

Fricatives = difficult Fricatives require great articulatory precision. it’s necessary to create a narrow channel through which air can flow. (and hold it) ballistic vs. controlled articulations Some data for [s]: (Subtelny et al., 1972) alveolar constriction  1 mm incisor constriction  2-3 mm Larger constriction sizes result in -like sounds Also: voiced fricatives are even more difficult Why?

Some Typology Languages with the following number of fricatives From the UPSID database (total of 316 languages) VoicelessVoicedVoiced/Voiceless [s]266[z] [f]135[v] [x]

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

vs. [s] [z]

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

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 And: Tina Fey Note: there are no word-initial /sr/ sequences in English. “shriek”*“sreek”

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