Speech variation

This study examines the relationship between patterns of variation and speech perception using two English prefixes: 'in-'/'im-' and 'un-'. In natural speech, 'in-' varies due to an underlying process of phonological assimilation, while 'un-' shows a pattern of surface variation, assimilating before labial stems. In a go/no-go lexical decision experiment, subjects were presented a set of 'mispronounced' stimuli in which the prefix nasal was altered (replacing [n] with [m], or vice versa), in addition to real words with unaltered prefixes. No significant differences between prefixes were found in responses to unaltered words. In mispronounced items, responses to 'un-' forms were faster and more accurate than to 'in-' forms, although a significant interaction mitigated this effect in labial contexts. These results suggest the regularity of variation patterns has consequences for the lexical specification of words, and argues against radical underspecification accounts which argue for a maximally sparse lexicon.

Italian has a length contrast in its series of voiced and voiceless obstruents while also presenting phonetic differences across regional varieties. Northern varieties of the language, including Veneto Italian (VI), are described as maintaining the voicing contrast but, in some cases, not the length contrast. In central and southern varieties, the opposite trend may occur. For instance, Roman Italian (RI) is reported to optionally pre-voice intervocalic voiceless singleton obstruents whilst also maintaining the length contrast for this consonant class. This study looks at the acoustic realization of selected obstruents in VI and RI and investigates (a) prevoicing patterns and (b) the effects and interactions of regional variety, gemination, and (phonological and phonetic) voicing on consonant (C) and preceding-vowel (V) durations, as well as the ratio between the two (C/V), with a focus on that particular measure. An acoustic phonetic analysis is conducted on 3703 tokens from six speakersfromeachvariety,producingeightrepetitionsof40realCV ́C(C)VandCVC(C)V ́CVwords embedded in carrier sentences, with /p, pp, t, tt, k, kk, b, bb, d, dd, g, gg, f, ff, v, vv, tʃ, ttʃ, dʒ, ddʒ/ as the target intervocalic consonants. The results show that both VI and RI speakers produce geminates, yielding high C/V ratios in both varieties, although there are cross-regional differences in the realization of singletons. On the one hand, RI speakers tend to pre-voice voiceless singletons and produce overall shorter C durations and lower C/V ratios for these consonants. On the other hand, VI speakers produce longer C durations and higher C/V ratios for all voiceless singletons, triggering some overlap between the C length categories, which results in partial degemination through singleton lengthening, although only for voiceless obstruents. The implications of a trading relationship between phonetic voicing and duration of obstruents in Italian gemination are discussed.

In this paper we analyse the accommodation (convergence) or divergence of young immigrants born in Buenos Aires, Argentina but living in Malaga, Spain (n = 22). For analysing this community, we took advantage of previous studies on dialects in contact such as Auer et. al. (2000), Hinskens et. al. (2016), Kerswill & Williams (2000), or Trudgill (1986), among others. We have focused our attention on a very salient feature of the variety of Buenos Aires: the realization patterns of the voiced palatal fricative /ʝ/ (n = 1176) by young immigrant speakers. In such an immigration context, different realizations of /ʝ/ are observable, from open [j] to voiceless fricative realizations [ʃ]. An acoustic analysis based on standardised zero crossings rate, relative intensity, and other complementary measurements allows us to set the acoustic parameters underlying palatal /ʝ/ allophones, and to reveal a clear recession in the use of the native closed – and even voiceless – allophones by the Bueno...

In a story titled ‘Śubhā’ written in 1893, Tagore used the metaphors of ‘translating’ and ‘constructing words when he said: “The feelings we express in words we construct ourselves, almost like a translation. The approximation is not always exact; mistakes do occur. But eyes don’t have to translate. The mind immediately casts its shadow over them; feelings ebb and flow at ease." This prompts me to ask this question: Does ‘Translation’ lead us to an Unknown Global World? Way back in 1913, in Sādhanā, Tagore had already argued the following: “Man’s history is the history of his journey to the unknown in quest of the realization of his immortal self—his soul.” Here I discuss some issues faced by translators in making it new, when the original is brought to life in another language.

The paper presents a large-scale investigation of attitudes towards standard and dialectal speech varieties in Lithuania. It aimed at, firstly, obtaining comparable data on assessments of speech variation under two methodologically different conditions: ‘unaware condition’ (the participants being unaware of the linguistic goals of the research) and ‘aware condition’. Secondly, it aimed at testing whether the two layers of consciousness yield two different systems of social values and how the evaluations accord with changes in language usage. The theory was developed by Danish scholars whose numerous experimental studies proved the driving force role of subconscious attitudes. The investigation closely followed the Danish methodology and was carried out in 23 secondary schools in 7 regions and the capital city of Lithuania, covering almost 1.5 thousand pupils in total. The regularity of the findings, i.e. the overall tendency to overtly valorise local dialects but subconsciously to d...

Wearing an oxygen mask changes the speech production of speakers. It indeed modifies the vocal apparatus and perturbs the articulatory movements of the speaker. This paper studies the impact of the oxygen mask of military aircraft pilots on formant trajectories, both dynamically (variations of the formants at a utterance level) and globally (mean value at the utterance level) for 12 speakers. A comparative analysis of speech collected with and without an oxygen mask shows that the mask has a significant impact on the formant trajectories, both on the mean values and on the formant variations at the utterance level. This impact is strongly dependent on the speaker and also on the mask model. These observations suggest that the articulatory movements of the speaker are modified by the presence of the mask. These observations are validated via a preliminary ASR experiment that uses a data augmentation technique based on articulatory perturbations that are driven by our experimental observations.

The paper presents a large-scale investigation of attitudes towards standard and dialectal speech varieties in Lithuania. It aimed at, firstly, obtaining comparable data on assessments of speech variation under two methodologically different conditions: 'unaware condition' (the participants being unaware of the linguistic goals of the research) and 'aware condition'. Secondly, it aimed at testing whether the two layers of consciousness yield two different systems of social values and how the evaluations accord with changes in language usage. The theory was developed by Danish scholars whose numerous experimental studies proved the driving force role of subconscious attitudes. The investigation closely followed the Danish methodology and was carried out in 23 secondary schools in 7 regions and the capital city of Lithuania, covering almost 1.5 thousand pupils in total. The regularity of the findings, i.e. the overall tendency to overtly valorise local dialects but subconsciously to downgrade dialect accented voices, confirmed that language awareness affects assignment of values to language and must be regarded as an important explanatory factor for the scenarios of language change.