Korean spiral stop production: a VOT analysis

This study provides an acoustic analysis of voice onset time (VOT) of voiceless stops /ptk/ in Spanish, produced by heritage speakers (HSs) of Ukrainian and of Polish who are English-dominant and beginner or intermediate learners of Spanish as a third language (L3). Given that both Ukrainian and Polish, like Spanish and unlike English, are characterized by short-lag VOT, data were collected from six Ukrainian HSs and 11 Polish HSs in their heritage language (HL), in English, and in Spanish to compare potential effects of the HL on L3 VOT production. VOT was analyzed in three task types. The goals were: 1) to determine whether VOT values produced in Spanish by Ukrainian and Polish HSs are more reflective of VOTs in the HL or in English, and 2) to determine the effect of task type on VOT. Data show that Ukrainian and Polish HSs’ VOTs in Spanish are shorter than those of L2 Spanish learners whose L1 is English, indicating a HL rather than dominant language influence on L3 VOT. Results suggest that the most crucial factors in L3 phonological acquisition are: 1) structural similarity between HL and L3, and 2) L3 proficiency (not language dominance). VOT was also affected by task type: like L1 Spanish speakers, VOT of Ukrainian HSs increases as task formality increases. This paper fills research gaps in HL and L3 phonetics/phonology as to the effects of a HL on the acquisition of subsequent sound systems in adulthood.

The Georgian stop system has a three-way opposition: voiced, voiceless aspirated, and voiceless ejective. This paper reports on results from an analysis of voice onset time (VOT) in word-initial stop consonants preceding /a/. Two native speakers of Georgian (one male, one female) were recorded reading two randomized token lists: one containing nonsense syllables (e.g., ‘‘ba’’) and one containing actual Georgian words (e.g., ‘‘balaxi’’ ‘‘grass’’). Tokens were repeated twice. VOT values were measured using spectrograms and waveforms. Results show that VOT clearly distinguishes two categories in Georgian: voiced and voiceless. Initial voiced stops had short positive VOTs, while the initial voiceless stops had relatively long positive VOT values. Within the voiceless category, however, mean VOT values for ejectives and aspirates overlapped. Articulatory and acoustic characteristics of ejectives and aspirates are discussed in relation to other possible cues for distinguishing between the two types of stops. In addition to stop categories, the results show a trend toward another distinction: place of articulation. Labials had the lowest VOT values, followed by coronals, and then velars. The results from these analyses are compared to studies of voice onset time in other languages.

This paper presents an acoustic analysis of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in oral stop consonants in Blackfoot, an Algonquian language without contrastive voicing. We focus on VOT as one of the key temporal acoustic correlates of voicing and investigate VOT variation in relation to (i) place of articulation (labial vs. alveolar vs. velar); (ii) length (long vs. short), quality (/a/ vs. /o/), and accent pattern (accented vs. unaccented) of the following vowel; (iii) word position (initial vs. medial); (iv) gender; and (v) age. We analyzed 2096 stop consonant tokens produced by 13 participants, who completed two different tasks: an English-to-Blackfoot translation task and a picture naming task. The key findings are as follows: (i) Blackfoot stop consonants fall into the short-lag range that overlaps with the English voiced category, with mean VOT values ranging from 11.6–32.7 ms; (ii) VOT values become progressively longer as the place of articulation moves to more posterior positions; (iii) VOT values are longer before high vowels than before low vowels; (iv) VOT values are longer before long vowels than before short vowels; (v) no statistically significant effect was found for the linguistic factors word position and accent pattern; (vi) no statistically significant effect was found for the socio-indexical factors age and gender; and (vii) no statistically significant effect was found for the experimental factor task type. The implications of our findings for the Blackfoot writing system and ongoing work on language documentation and revitalization are briefly discussed.

Why are Korean tense stops acquired so early?: The role of acoustic properties

Alzheimer’s (AD) and Parkinson’s diseases (PD) are tw of the most common neurological diseases in the world. Several studies have been conducted on the identification of these diseases using speech and laryngeal disorders. Those symptoms can appear even at the early stages of AD and PD, but not in very specific and prominent ways. Voice Onset Time (VOT) is an acoustic specification of the stopping consonant that is commonly discussed in studies of phonetic perception. In this study, the VOT_Mean feature was explored to identify AD and PD early using /pa/, /ka/, and /ta/ syllables for the diadochokinetic task (DDK). VOT_Mean was calculated as the average of the first and the second VOT values (VOT_1 and VOT_2), corresponding to the second and the penultimate VOT measurement cycles. Experimental tests were performed on Tunisian Arabic and Spanish databases for the early detection of AD and PD respectively. The results showed a very high significance of VOT_Mean on the early detection of AD and PD. Moreover, the best results were achieved using the XGBoost (XGBT) algorithm as a classifier on the VOT_Mean feature.

Objective: To documenting the voice onset time in voiced and unvoiced stop consonants in Sinhala and to investigating the effects of age and gender on voice onset time values in Sinhalese speakers. Methods: Three groups of participants were employed. Group 1 included 20 children, Group 2 included 20 adults and Group 3 consisted of 20 elderly subjects. All the subjects spoke the dialect of central province of Sri Lanka. Words consisting of three Sinhala short vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ in were recorded. Voice onset time values from two voiced and voiceless stop consonants were extracted. Results: Voiced stop consonants had significantly longer voice onset time values compared to voiceless stop consonants. Significant effect of age as well as gender on voice onset time values were also observed. Conclusion: Supplementary investigations on the normative aspects of voice onset time among the Sinhala population would provide additional insights and validated tools for indexing the articulatory and acoustic characteristics of stop consonants in Sinhalese. Keywords: Voice Onset Time, Sinhalese, Elderly, Sinhala, Acoustic analysis

Voice onset time (VOT) provides an important auditory cue for recognizing spoken consonant-vowel syllables. Although changes in the neuromagnetic response to consonant-vowel syllables with different VOT have been examined, such experiments have only manipulated VOT with respect to voicing. We utilized the characteristics of a previously developed asymmetric VOT continuum [Liederman, J., Frye, R. E., McGraw Fisher, J., Greenwood, K., & Alexander, R. A temporally dynamic contextual effect that disrupts voice onset time discrimination of rapidly successive stimuli. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 12, 380-386, 2005] to determine if changes in the prominent M100 neuromagnetic response were linearly modulated by VOT. Eight right-handed, English-speaking, normally developing participants performed a VOT discrimination task during a whole-head neuromagnetic recording. The M100 was identified in the gradiometers overlying the right and left temporal cortices and single dipoles were fit to each M100 waveform. A repeated measures analysis of variance with post hoc contrast test for linear trend was used to determine whether characteristics of the M100 were linearly modulated by VOT. The morphology of the M100 gradiometer waveform and the peak latency of the dipole waveform were linearly modulated by VOT. This modulation was much greater in the left, as compared to the right, hemisphere. The M100 dipole moved in a linear fashion as VOT increased in both hemispheres, but along different axes in each hemisphere. This study suggests that VOT may linearly modulate characteristics of the M100, predominately in the left hemisphere, and suggests that the VOT of consonant-vowel syllables, instead of, or in addition to, voicing, should be examined in future experiments.

The aim of this paper is to determine the efficacy of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in distinguishing a series of word initial homorganic stop consonants in Shengologa, a dialect of Shekgalagarhi, a South-eastern Bantu language of the Western Sotho-Tswana group. Issues pertinent to VOT are also addressed: namely VOT as a function of place of articulation; and the effect of phonetic context on VOT; specifically the influence of the following vowel. Compared with other stops, ejectives have often manifested long VOT values in some languages with VOT values of around 80+ ms in duration being not uncommon. The argument is that in Shengologa, the voiceless unaspirated stops are pulmonic stops rather than glottalic. Voiceless aspirated stops in general manifest long duration of aspiration. LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research Vol.3 () 2006: pp.169-185

Preliminary results from eight participants in a cross-linguistic investigation of phonetic accommodation in speech production and perception are presented. The finding that synchronous actions are more stable than asynchronous ones has been reported in studies of general [Kelso (1981)] and speech-specific [Browman and Goldstein (1992), Byrd et al. (2009)] motor control. With reference to glottal-oral timing, near-zero VOTs (voice onset times) are representative of near-synchronous timing, whereas long-lag VOTs are representative of asynchronous timing [Sawashima and Hirose (1980), Dixit (1984), Lofqvist and Yoshioka (1989), Fuchs (2005)]. These observations served as a basis for the prediction that native speakers of Korean, with its long-lag aspirated stops (~120 ms), would more readily accommodate to typical English voiceless stop VOT (~70 ms) than native speakers of Spanish, with its short-lag voiceless stops (~20 ms). Spanish-English and Korean-English bilinguals were recorded reading voiceless stop-initial English words, before and during a task in which participants shadowed recorded productions of a native speaker of American English. Preliminary analysis of the production data provides some support for these hypotheses. The results contribute to our understanding of the conditions that promote phonetic accommodation.

This study investigates three aspirated voiceless stop consonants and their unaspirated counterparts produced in Taiwan’s Southern Min dialect by 10 laryngeal speakers (LA), 10 speakers with pneumatic artificial larynxes (PA), and 10 oesophageal speakers (ES). Listeners’ perceptions of the accuracy of the three groups in producing these six stop consonants were also examined. Each of the voiceless stop consonants /p, pʰ, t, tʰ, k, kʰ/, followed by the vowel /a/, was represented by a Southern Min character and appeared three times on a list in random order. Each character had a consonant-vowel syllable structure, and all were read with Tone 1 (high and level). Voice onset time (VOT) was measured for each stop consonant. A separate group of 20 listeners was then asked to identify the consonants produced by the LA, PA, and ES speakers. The VOT values of aspirated voiceless stop consonants from PA and ES were shorter than those from LA. Although PA and ES had aspiration contrast in their VOT values, perceived accuracy was low for PA (/pʰ/: 16.3%; /tʰ/: 13.5%; /kʰ/: 22.8%) and ES (/pʰ/: 33.7%; /tʰ/: 25.9%; /kʰ/: 31.9%). The mean percentages of correctly identified /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ produced by PA were at chance level. In terms of VOT values, it is recommended that, when producing aspirated voiceless stop consonants, PA and ES elongate the duration between the release of the oral constriction and the onset of their vibratory sound source. Moreover, it is also recommended that further investigation into other phonetic properties that support stop contrast is needed.

Aims and objectives: This study examines how cognate status and elicitation tasks affect Voice Onset Time (VOT) production in advanced Japanese-English bilinguals. It investigates whether bilinguals exhibit phonetic cross-linguistic influence in both their first (L1) and second (L2) languages and compares their L2 productions to a native English baseline to assess phonetic attainment. Design/methodology/approach: VOT data for word-initial /k/ were collected from 28 advanced Japanese-English bilinguals and a control group of 6 native English speakers. Participants produced cognate and non-cognate words in both Japanese (bilinguals only) and English using two tasks: picture naming and sentence reading. Data and analysis: A total of 2016 tokens from the bilinguals and 216 from the native speakers were acoustically analyzed. Mean VOT values were submitted to a mixed-design ANOVA to compare the groups’ English productions and a repeated-measures ANOVA to analyze the bilinguals’ productions across both languages. Findings/conclusions: A significant three-way interaction between Language, Word Status, and Task Type was found for the bilinguals, indicating that the phonetic cognate effect is modulated by both the language context and task demands. Critically, bilinguals exhibited a significant cognate effect in their English productions (shorter VOTs for cognates), a pattern not found to be statistically significant in the native speaker group. Bilinguals’ English VOTs were also significantly shorter overall than those of the native speakers. Originality: This study is the first to investigate phonetic cognate effects in a language pair with differing orthographies (Japanese-English) while also comparing different production tasks and including a native-speaker baseline. Significance/implications: The results provide robust evidence for the continuous co-activation of a bilingual’s two languages during speech production. The findings are discussed within an exemplar-based model of bilingual phonology, highlighting the intricate interplay of lexical and phonetic factors in shaping bilingual speech.

Lisker and Abramson [Word 20, 384-422 (1964)] showed that voice onset time (VOT) for word-initial stops labeled as voiced and voiceless differ across languages, thus demonstrating that VOT is learned. Over the years, several studies have examined the developmental course of acquiring VOT for several languages, but questions remain regarding the time course of this development. Earlier studies of VOT acquisition have demonstrated that English learning infants initially produce stops with short-lag VOTs only, then go through a stage of ambiguous VOTs, finally developing two mature categories of voiced and voiceless. This study analyzed mean VOT and variability in word-initial stops produced in spontaneous samples by three infants, taped at approximately 2-month intervals between the ages of 12 months and 30 months. As predicted, these infants produced primarily voiced stops (VOT<40 ms) with moderate variability until approximately 21 months. Then longer lag stops began to appear and variability increased. Outliers (both voiced stops with extreme prevoicing and very long lag voiceless stops) were found. By the last recording session, all three infants showed mean voiced and voiceless VOTs approaching adult values, but still exhibited greater variability. [Work supported by NIDCD Grant No. DC-00633.]

Acoustic correlates of speech can present empirical distributions that create issues for the linear models we often use to analyze them. In some such cases, we have reason to believe that there are multiple distributions responsible for producing the data. One example is the distribution of voice onset time (VOT) in the phonologically voiced stop series /b,d,g/ in North American English. While more often produced as a short lag stop with a VOT near zero, it can also be produced with prevoicing. This leads to a bimodal distribution of VOT values for these segments. The first study of VOT by Lisker and Abramson (1964) wisely decided to report descriptive statistics for each of these pronunciation variants separately, recognizing that listing a single mean and range would have been a poor characterization of the data and potentially misleading to readers. This tutorial introduces Bayesian finite mixture models, which can model a dependent variable using a combination of two or more distributions. This is useful in situations like the one described above for English VOT, as having two distributions allows us to model both short-lag and prevoiced VOT values together in the same model. The tutorial begins with a brief conceptual explanation of these models, followed by a walkthrough of an analysis of simulated English VOT data using the package “brms” (Bürkner, 2017). An emphasis is placed on setting priors, especially setting informative priors for the intercepts of the two distributions.

The proposal that phonological contrast is enhanced through greater approximation of phonetic targets was investigated by comparing clear speech to conversational and citation-form speech produced by Korean speakers. The stop system of Korean is undergoing a sound change in which younger speakers produce the aspirated-lenis stop contrast differently from previous generations. Older speakers differentiate this contrast primarily with the acoustic correlate of voice onset time (VOT) and secondarily with F0. Younger speakers are merging VOT values for this contrast. As a result, the primary acoustic correlate is now F0 for younger speakers. These production differences likely indicate that younger speakers have developed different phonetic targets for stop production. These different phonetic targets were predicted to result in different enhancement patterns in clear speech: Younger speakers were predicted to enhance F0 differences, whereas older speakers were predicted to enhance VOT differences in clear speech. Results indicated that the older group solely used VOT to enhance the contrast in clear speech, whereas the younger group primarily used F0 but also demonstrated small VOT enhancement. These results indicate that clear speech enhancement strategies reflect phonetic targets. Older and younger speakers have different F0 and VOT targets and these different targets conditioned different enhancement strategies.

This study investigates learners’ implicit knowledge of Voice Onset Time (VOT), a non-distinctive phonetic difference between German and French. Previous studies on VOT in speech produced by English native speakers learning Spanish (Flege & Hammond 1982) and L1 Spanish-speaking learners of English (Mora et al. 2014) suggest that learners modify their native VOT patterns when attempting to imitate a foreign accent. This was taken as evidence for the development of tacit awareness of cross-language VOT difference between L1 and L2 voiceless stops. In order to determine if similar modifications occur in the productions of German speaking learners of French as a foreign language, we assessed learners’ speech through VOT duration measures in word-initial /p,t,k/. Data was collected through a reading-aloud elicitation task. Results provide support for the hypothesis that German native speakers are able to modify VOT duration when mimicking a French accent. Given these findings, we believe that accent imitation tasks could be used in L2 phonology instruction to raise learners’ awareness of non-distinctive phonetic differences.