School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemNasal aerodynamics and coarticulation in Bininj Kunwok: Smoothing Spline Analysis of Variance(ASSTA, 2016-12-06)Nasal phonemes are well represented within the lexicon of BininjKunwok.1 Thisstudyexaminesintervocalic,wordmedial nasals and reports patterns of coarticulation using a Smooth- ing Spline Analysis of Variance (SSANOVA). This allows for detailed comparisons of peak nasal airflow across six female speakers of the language. Results show that in a VNV sequence there is very little anticipatory vowel nasalisation and greater carryover into a following vowel. The maximum peak nasal flow is delayed for coronals when compared to the onset of oral closure in the nasal, indicating a delayed velum opening gesture. The velar place of articulation is the exception to this pattern with some limited anticipatory nasalisation. The SSANOVA has shown to be an appropriate technique for quantifying these patterns and dynamic speech data in general.
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ItemProsodically Conditioned Consonant Duration in Djambarrpuyŋu.(SAGE Publications, 2019-03-01)Cross-linguistically, segments typically lengthen because of proximity to prosodic events such as intonational phrase or phonological phrase boundaries, a phrasal accent, or due to lexical stress. Australian Indigenous languages have been claimed to operate somewhat differently in terms of prosodically conditioned consonant lengthening and strengthening. Consonants have been found to lengthen after a vowel bearing a phrasal pitch accent. It is further claimed that this post-tonic position is a position of prosodic strength in Australian languages. In this study, we investigate the effects of proximity to a phrasal pitch accent and prosodic constituent boundaries on the duration of stop and nasal consonants in words of varying lengths in Djambarrpuyŋu, an Australian Indigenous language spoken in northeast Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. Our results suggest that the post-tonic consonant position does not condition longer consonant duration compared with other word-medial consonants, with one exception: Intervocalic post-tonic consonants in disyllabic words are significantly longer than word-medial consonants elsewhere. Therefore, it appears that polysyllabic shortening has a strong effect on segment duration in these data. Word-initial position did not condition longer consonant duration than word-medial position. Further, initial consonants in higher-level prosodic domains had shorter consonant duration compared with domain-medial word-initial consonants. By contrast, domain-final lengthening was observed in our data, with word-final nasals preceding a pause found to be significantly longer than all other consonants. Taken together, these findings for Djambarrpuyŋu suggest that, unlike other Australian languages, post-tonic lengthening is not a cue to prosodic prominence, whereas prosodic domain-initial and -final duration patterns of consonants are like those that have been observed in other languages of the world.
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ItemNasal coarticulation in Bininj Kunwok: An aerodynamic analysis(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2020-12-01)Bininj Kunwok (BKw), a language spoken in Northern Australia, restricts the degree of anticipatory nasalization, as suggested by previous aerodynamic and acoustic analyses (Butcher 1999). The current study uses aerodynamic measurements of speech to investigate patterns of nasalization and nasal articulation in Bininj Kunwok to compare with Australian languages more generally. The role of nasal coarticulation in ensuring language compre-hensibility a key question in phonetics research today is explored. Nasal aerodynamics is measured in intervocalic, word-medial nasals in the speech of five female speakers of BKw and data are analyzed using Smoothing Spline Analysis of Variance (SSANOVA) and Functional Data Analysis averaging techniques. Results show that in a VNV sequence there is very little anticipatory vowel nasalization with no restriction on carryover nasalization for a following vowel. The maximum peak nasal flow is delayed until the oral release of a nasal for coronal articulations, indicating a delayed velum opening gesture. Patterns of anticipatory nasalization appears similar to nasal airflow in French non-nasalized vowels in oral vowel plus nasal environments (Delvaux et al. 2008). Findings show that Bininj Kunwok speakers use language specific strategies in order to limit anticipatory nasalization, enhancing place of articulation cues at a site of intonational prominence which also is also the location of the majority of place of articulation contrasts within the language. Patterns of airflow suggest enhancement and coarticulatory resistance in prosodically prominent VN and VNC sequences which we interpret as evidence of speakers maintaining a phonological contrast to enhance place of articulation cues.
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ItemThe alignment of F0 tonal targets under changes in speech rate in Drehu(Nature Research, 2020-04-01)This study investigates fundamental frequency alignment to segmental landmarks in Drehu, an Oceanic language. The authors present a production experiment that aimed to evaluate the marking of prosodic prominence, and in particular, the tonal marking of prominence, within the autosegmental-metrical phonology, since stress and prominence system of the language has not been phonetically investigated. A rate manipulation paradigm was chosen to test the segmental anchoring hypothesis, namely, to see whether prominence lending tonal movements exhibit a constant slope due to rate manipulation and whether tonal targets can be associated to segmental anchoring points in the speech stream. The authors find that a rising tonal movement, between a word initial low (L), and a word final high (H) tone, is the most frequent tonal pattern. The word initial L tone seeks to align with the left edge whereas the H tone, at the right edge, seeks to anchor to the last full syllable. In fast speech, tonal targets are produced closer together but the slope remains constant in both speech rates. High tones seek to anchor to the word-final syllable, yet not to any specific segment which suggests a weak version of the segmental anchoring hypothesis applies.
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ItemPhonetic evidence for phonotactic change in Nafsan (South Efate)(Pacini Editore SpA, 2020)Nafsan, an Oceanic language of central Vanuatu, is notable for the complex phonotactic structures it exhibits compared to languages spoken further to the north, and compared to the general preference for CV syllables among Oceanic languages. Various types of heterorganic consonant clusters are found in syllable onsets, and are thought to have arisen from the loss of selected medial vowels. Medial vowel deletion is suggested to be a process of change which has been underway for some time in the language, but the details of how this process operates have not been fully clear. Unresolved questions relating to the status of length in the vowel system and the location of lexical prominence have posed a challenge to arriving at a detailed description of vowel deletion and its consequences. Drawing together recent phonetic analyses and previous work, this paper provides an overview of phonotactic structures in contemporary Nafsan and outlines the main factors which lead to the deletion of medial vowels and result in the complex syllable onsets observed today.
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ItemJapanese Vowel Devoicing Modulates Perceptual Epenthesis(Australian Speech Science and Technology Association, 2018)
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ItemPhrasing and constituent boundaries in Lifou French(Australasian Speech Science and Technology Australia (ASSTA), 2019)
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ItemAcoustic evidence for right-edge prominence in Nafsan(AIP Publishing LLC, 2020)Oceanic languages are often described as preferring primary stress on penultimate syllables, but detailed surveys show that many different types of prominence patterns have been reported across and within Oceanic language families. In some cases, these interact with segmental and phonotactic factors, such as syllable weight. The range of Oceanic prominence patterns is exemplified across Vanuatu, a linguistically diverse archipelago with over 130 languages. However, both impressionistic and instrumentally-based descriptions of prosodic patterns and their correlates are limited for languages of this region. This paper investigates prominence in Nafsan, an Oceanic language of Vanuatu for which previous observations of prominence differ. Acoustic and durational results for disyllabic and trisyllabic Nafsan words show a clear pattern of higher fundamental frequency values in final syllables, regardless of vowel length, pointing towards a preference for prominence at the right edge of words. Short vowels also show centralisation in penultimate syllables, providing supporting evidence for right-edge prominence and informing the understanding of vowel deletion processes in Nafsan.
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ItemPredictability, Word Frequency and Japanese Perceptual Epenthesis(Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc., 2019)Speakers typically invest less effort in the articulation of sounds and words that are highly predictable from their contexts. Recent research reveals a perceptual corollary to this behaviour, showing that listeners pay less attention to acoustic signal in predictable contexts. The present paper expands on this finding by testing the acceptability and discriminability of sequences of speech with varying levels of predictability. Stimuli are contrast pairs and are either phonotactically attested or else contain an illicit nonhomorganic consonant cluster. Such clusters violate Japanese phonotactics and have been found to elicit perceptual epenthesis in Japanese listeners. The results show that unattested consonant clusters are perceived as more acceptable in high-frequency sequences than in low-frequency sequences.
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ItemAcoustic correlates of lexical stress in Wubuy(Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc., 2019)We examined the acoustic correlates of lexical stress in the non-Pama-Nyungan language Wubuy (Northern Territory, Australia). We tested two hypotheses about stress: that stress is determined by (1) a combination of syllable position in prosodic word and quantity sensitivity, or (2) by position alone. To test these hypotheses, we elicited trisyllabic noun roots differing in position of heavy syllables in frame-final environments from 3 speakers. We found that both position and predicted stress based on prior phonological descriptions could account for many correlates (segment and syllable duration, f0, intensity, vowel formants) although overall syllable position appeared to account for more of the variance.
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