Maria-Josep Solé

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

mariajosep.sole@uab.es

Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia 2005

The stability of phonological features within and across segments

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how the articulatory-acoustic stability of features may be endangered by their combination with other features within and across segments.

INTRODUCTION

WITHIN

feature co-occurrence restrictions (Ohala, 1983)

phonological universals (preferred combinations)

system gaps (disfavoured combinations)

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ACROSS SEGMENTS

sequential constraints (Kawasaki, 1982)

assimilation

sound change

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HYPOTHESIS: the stability of features may not only be affected by

concurrent features, but also by features in adjacent segments

which may coincide in time due to coarticulatory overlap.

features that do not combine well within a segment,

are not likely to combine in adjacent segments.

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• co-occurring & coarticulatory velopharyngeal opening

for nasality on the stability of segments requiring a high

pressure build-up in the oral cavity, such as fricatives.

4

Background: Stevens’ (1972, 1989) Quantal Theory

• gradual variation, may have a categorical acoustic-auditory result

• the range of allowable variation will define the stability of the correlation

• however, stable range will vary with co-occurring features in same segment and, we suggest, in adjacent segments.

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Background: Production constraints of fricatives

• tight aerodynamic and articulatory constraints (DAC:4)(Recasens et al. 1997, Solé 2002)

Critical cross-sectional area of constriction

• Turbulence for fricatives

Sufficient pressure drop (P) across the lingual constriction

– sufficient rate of flow

– sufficient time

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• H: aerodynamic conditions for frication/trilling impaired by concurrent (whithin same segment)

or coarticulatory (across segments) nasalization.

an open velopharyngeal port for nasality would allow the air to escape through the nose

venting the Po, and reducing or eliminating the required P across the oral constriction for frication or trilling.

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1. Results on co-occurring nasality

2. Experiment on coarticulatory nasality

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CO-OCCURRING FEATURES

Frication and trilling cannot combine with [+nasal]

- no nasal fricatives- no nasal trills

‘The rarity of such segments [nasalized liquids, glides and fricatives] can be attributed to an antagonistic constraint NAS/CONT: A nasal must not be continuant' (Pulleyblank 1997: 76)

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Ohala, Solé & Ying 1998

• Varied oropharyngeal pressure with catheters of varying cross-sectional areas, simulating the effects of varying degrees of velopharyngeal opening, i.e., nasalization.

• Amount of nasal leakage is determined by the impedance or resistance to exiting air.

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Ohala, Solé & Ying 1998

• Venting fricatives with catheters

7-10mm2 (a higher impedance than that at VT) frication unaffected

18mm2 (similar impedance) fricatives adversely affected

> 31,7mm2 (lower impedance) extinguished frication

 

• Q: Would fricatives (or adjacent Vs) sound nasalized with the small VP openings (<18mm2) which do not impair frication?

• A: At least 36-40mm2 of velopharyngeal opening needed to obtain a stable percept of nasalization in Vs (Whalen & Beddor, 1989; Maeda, 1993)

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Ohala, Solé & Ying 1998• Frication & nasalization as physical phenomena are not binary

• But there is a range within this continuum where a reliable id. of frication (or nasalization) can be obtained

 

• The two ranges do not overlap. Hence, lack of nasal fricatives.

0

20

40

60

80

100

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

velo-pharyngeal opening in mm2

% id

fricative nasalized

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FEATURES IN CONTIGUOUS SEGMENTS

Question: Can the weakening/loss of fricatives before

nasals be explained by the same principles?

 

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DATA(1) Historical change & dialectal variation

Lat. mesnata ‘kid’ > Catalan mainadaLat. rosmarinus ‘rosemary’ > Spanish romero, Cat.romaníO.Fr. ae(s)mer, Stand.Cat. esma > Bal. Cat. ejma, English aimStand.Cat. quaresma > Bal. Cat. [ko’rm]Burmese *sna > [na]

 

(2) Phonological alternations

Lat. dec(i)mare, dec(i)mu > Cat.. deumar,'reduce',deume 'tribute'

BUT desèé 'tenth‘

IE *gras-men > Latin gramen 'fodder', English gramineous

BUT IE *gras-ter>Greek gaster,English gastric14

(3) Stylistic variation

isn't [et], [t]; doesn’t [d (Gimson, 1962)

somethinglike thembusiness [bb

Spanish ovni ‘UFO’ [oni] ~ [omni]

(4) Acquisition data

snake [nnek], snow [nno] (Smith 1979)

 

 

Weakening: - independent articulators, e.g./zm/

& same articulator, e.g./zn/

- mostly voiced fricatives (less airflow due to glottal impedance).

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• Conflicting requirements of contiguous fricatives and nasals

Transitional frequency: fricative + N < fricative + C

CELEX Lemma database for English, Dutch and German.

 

 

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C1 C2

Table I. Number of combinations of sounds in the rows (C1) followed by sounds in the columns (C2) in word-medial position calculated in the CELEX ‘Lemma database’ for English, German and Dutch.

Table II. No. of combinations of sounds in the rows followed by sounds in the columns in word medial position calculated in the CELEX ‘Lemma database’ for English, German and Dutch. In parenthesis rare sequences showing no voicing agreement. Shadowed cells indicate the cases where fricative +N sequences have a significantly lower frequency of occurrence than fricative +oral sequences, as expected.

–

 ENGLISH

  n t d l r

s 330 2653 34 617 47

z 15 17 38 46 14

88 8 9 78 12

0 0 0 0 0

19 6 3 42 113

1 1 4 4 1

f 16 209 14 247 193

v 110* 14 13 222 28

  m b p

s 146 72 679

z 122 40 18

32 10 13

0 0 0

9 10 7

9 0 2

f 9 17 18

v 24 19 17

fricative + C sequences > fricative + N sequences

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–

 

DUTCH

C1 C2 C1 C2

C1 C2

  m b p

s 1521 3360 10

z 0 0 1537

11 4 9

0 0 0

x 16 107 1

191 0 259

f 123 162 0

v 0 0 322

  n t d l r

s 568 3400 0 1770 570

z 0 0 976 1 0

1 0 4 3 6

0 0 0 0 0

x 181 2799 2 131 1232

185 0 529 388 1474

f 43 797 1 898 698

v 1 0 507 459 401

fricative + C sequences > fricative + N sequences

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–

 

GERMAN

  n t d l r

s 55 2635 80 379 175

z 0 0 0 2 4

134 1826 3 445 235

0 0 0 0 0

x 169 1193 41 139 50

f 78 478 24 489 515

v 0 0 0 0 8

C1 C2

  m b p

s 495 370 395

z 0 0 0

114 621 30

0 0 0

x 64 20 118

f 49 47 113

v 0 0 0

fricative + C sequences > fricative + N sequences

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EXPERIMENT:CONTIGUOUS FEATURES

HYPOTHESIS : anticipatory velopharyngeal opening for the N diminishes the oropharyngeal pressure required to achieve the P for frication.

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Method

• Oropharyngeal pressure, oral flow & nasal airflow. PCquirer.

• fricative+nasal (e.g., Fresno, Mesmer; Dessna, Missmer).

• 3 speakers x 4 tokens x 5 repetitions x 2 speaking rates.

• slow and fast speaking rates:

increased articulatory overlap and changes in the timing of oral and velic Gs on the pressure build-up for fricatives.

Results: anticipatory velum lowering

Fig.3. (1) Audio signal, (2) filtered oropharyngeal pressure (Po), (3) unfiltered Po, (4) oral airflow, (5) nasal airflow and 0-5KHz spectrogram of ‘Say Mesmer again’.

[ s e m e z m r g e n]

onset oral closure

onset velum lowering

Drop in A0 of friction

1

2

3

4

5

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C1

velum

C2

C2

synchronous,nasal flow at 0

bleeding Po, oral & nasal flow before 0

epenthetic stop, no nasal & no oral flow +15 ms

epenthetic V, oral & nasalflow after 0

s n

0

patterns of velic coordination

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patterns of velic coordination

= onset oral closure for N - = velum opening lead + = velum lowering lag

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Speaker DM

-60 -45 -30 -15 0 15 30 45 60

SL

OW

FA

ST

time

Velum may lower during the acoustic duration of the fricative, bleeding required P across the fricative constriction.

Drop in A0 of high frequency noise when velum starts to lower.

perceptual loss of the fricative

Comparable degree of anticipatory velum lowering in fast speech

a larger percentage change due shorter duration of segments at fast rates

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Prediction:

• If nasal leakage due to anticipatory velopharyngeal opening extinguishes/attenuates frication

for a few ms

fricatives preceding Ns should be phonetically shorter than preceding non-nasals.

• Fricative duration measured on spectrogram for test & control tokens.

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Results: fricative duration

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

__n __m __D __l __d ___r

voiced

voiceless

0

20

40

6080

100

120

140

__n __m __D __l __d __r

time

in m

s.

speaker DM speaker JO

Fig.4. Duration of voiced and voiceless fricatives preceding nasal [n, m], and non-nasal [, l, d, r] consonants.

• fricatives are shorter preceding nasal vs non-nasal Cs (p<0.0001) for the 2 speakers.

• voiced fricatives are shorter than voiceless fricatives

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CONCLUSIONS

• [+nasal] does not combine with frication, due to VPO venting the oropharyngeal pressure necessary for the generation of turbulence for fricatives

within segments

across segments

• Relating constraints on the combination of features within and across segments illustrates the generality that can be achieved by a physically based explanation.

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CONCLUSIONS (…)

The unstability of frication when combined with nasalization:

feature co-occurrence restrictions (e.g., lack of nasal trills and nasal fricatives)

phonological change

morphological alternations

transitional probabilities (lower lexical frequency of fricatives followed by nasals) and constraints on the sequencing of segments.

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Gimson, A.C. 1962. An intro. to the pronunciation of English. London: Arnold.Maeda, S. 1993. Acoustics of vowel nasalization and articulatory shifts in

French nasal vowels. In M.K. Huffman & R.A. Krakow (eds), Nasals, nasalization and the velum.San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 147-167).

Ohala, J.J.& Ohala, M. 1993. The phonetics of nasal phonology: theorems and data. In M.K. Huffman & R.A. Krakow (eds.), Nasals, nasalization and the velum. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 225-249.

Ohala, J.J. & Kawasaki, H. (1984) Phonetics and prosodic phonology, Phonology Yearbook,1, 113- 127.

Ohala, J.J., Solé, M.J. & Ying, G. (1998) The controversy of nasalized fricatives, Proceedings of the 135th Meeting of the ICA/ASA. Seattle, Washington, 2921-2922.

Solé, M.J. , Ohala, J.J. & Ying, G. (1998) Aerodynamic characteristics of trills, Proceedings of the 135th Meeting of the ICA/ASA, Seattle, Washington, 2923-2924.

Stevens, K.N.1972. The quantal nature of speech: Evidence from articuatory-acoustic data. In P.B. Denes and E.E. David Jr. (eds), Human Communication, A Unified View (51-66). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Stevens, K.N. 1989. On the quantal nature of speech. Journal of Phonetics 17. 3-46.

Recasens, D. 2002. Weakening and strengthening in Romance revisited. Italian Journal of Linguistics, 14(2), 327-373.

Smith,N.V. 1973. The acquisition of phonology: A case study.Cambridge:CUPStraka, G. 1964. Remarques sur la ‘desarticulation’ et l’amuïssement de l’s

implosive. Mélanges de lingüistique Romane et de philologie médiévale offerts à Maurice Delbouille 1: 607-628, Glemboux.