Search Results (57)

Investigating how facial movements can be used to characterize and quantify speech is important, in particular, to aid those suffering from motor control speech disorders. Here, we sought to investigate how facial action units (AUs), previously used to classify human expressions and emotion, could be used to quantify and understand unimpaired human speech. Fourteen (14) adult participants (30.1 ± 7.9 years old), fluent in English, with no speech impairments, were examined. Within each data collection session, 6 video trials per participant per phoneme were acquired (i.e., 102 trials total/phoneme). The participants were asked to vocalize the vowels /æ/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /ɒ/, and /ʊ/; the consonants /b/, /n/, /m/, /p/, /h/, /w/, and /d/; and the diphthongs /eI/, /ʌɪ/, /i/, /a:/, and /u:/. Through the use of Python Py-Feat, our analysis displayed the AU contributions for each phoneme. The important implication of our methodological findings is that AUs could be used to quantify speech in populations with no speech disability; this has the potential to be broadened toward providing feedback and characterization of speech changes and improvements in impaired populations. This would be of interest to persons with speech disorders, speech language pathologists, engineers, and physicians. Full article

For heritage speakers (HSs), expectations of influence from the community’s dominant language are pervasive. An alternative account for heritage language variability is that HSs are demonstrating sociolinguistic competence: HSs may either initiate or carry forward a pattern of variation from the homeland variety. We illustrate the importance of this consideration, querying whether /u/-fronting in Heritage Korean is best interpreted as influence from Toronto English, where /u/-fronting also occurs, or a continuation of an ongoing vowel shift in Homeland (Seoul) Korean that also involves /ɨ/-fronting and /o/-fronting. How can patterns of social embedding untangle this question that is central to better understanding sociolinguistic competence in HSs? For Korean vowels produced in sociolinguistic interviews by Heritage (8 adult immigrants, 8 adult children of immigrants) and 10 Homeland adults, F1 and F2 were measured (13,232 tokens of /o/, 6810 tokens of /u/, and 20,637 tokens of /ɨ/), normalized and subjected to linear regression. Models predict effects of gender, age, orientation toward Korean language and culture, the speaker’s average F2 for the other shifting vowels, and duration. These models highlight HS’s sociolinguistic competence: Heritage speakers share linguistic and social patterns with Homeland Korean speakers that are absent in English. Additionally, heritage speakers lack the effects of factors attested in the English change. Full article

This study investigates consonant devoicing in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), in order to assess whether an ongoing sound change is taking place. We examine plural forms consisting of a stop consonant followed by a word-final sibilant, such as in redes [hedz] ~ [heds] ~ [hets] and sedes [sɛdz] ~ [sɛds] ~ [sɛts], focusing on the emergence of voiceless sibilants before word-initial vowels (e.g., redes amarelas, ‘yellow hammocks’). If sibilants remain voiceless despite a following vowel, this challenges the expected regressive voicing assimilation in BP and raises the question of the conditions under which this devoicing occurs. Data were collected through recordings of oral production from twenty Brazilian speakers, using reading and picture naming tasks. Sibilant voicing was quantified using harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR). A linear mixed-effects model—including random intercepts and slopes for both speakers and words—reveals that sibilants are significantly more voiced before a vowel than before a pause, but this voicing is substantially reduced when the sibilant is preceded by voiceless consonants. These findings indicate an ongoing devoicing process at pre-vocalic word boundaries in BP, affecting clusters [pz, tz, kz] and [bz, dz, gz] alike. Spectrographic analyses indicate that not only the sibilants but also their preceding stop may exhibit devoicing. Moreover, minimal-pair considerations suggest that speakers potentially maintain sibilant voicing in certain lexical items to preserve intelligibility (e.g., gra[dz] ‘grades’ and se[dz] ‘headquarters’ vs. grá[ts] ‘free’ and se[ts] ‘sets’). Drawing on Exemplar Theory, we propose a competition between the influence of the phonological environment and word-final devoicing: sibilants are sometimes voiced due to a following vowel (e.g., botes argentinos [bɔtz ah.ʒẽ.’tʃi.nus] ‘Argentine boats’), but they often emerge as voiceless due to consonantal devoicing (e.g., [bɔts ah.ʒẽ.’tʃi.nus]), resulting in both expected and unexpected forms. We suggest that fine phonetic detail, whether associated with allophonic or emergent sound patterns, contributes to the construction of phonological representations. Full article

An important set of sound changes affected the South Bantu languages through the impact of front vowels on following consonants, most notably under the form of the class 5 nominal prefix *i-. These consonant changes are well known, but their extent has been underestimated, as the substantial data in this paper show. There is not even a standard name for these changes, which are here called “Preceding-I effects”. This paper offers a detailed study of the relevant conditioning factor, calling attention to the understudied category of hiatus resolution in the history of Bantu languages. Although the reflexes in individual languages vary and levelling often reduced the number of surviving examples, indications of systematic PI-effects in all the subgroups of the South Bantu branch contrast with other Bantu branches and suggest a common conditioning factor was present in Proto-South-Bantu. Full article

The main purpose of this study is to test a method for the analysis of phonetic variation in natural speech. The method takes into account the continuous nature of the speech flow and allows for the investigation of the systematic variation phenomena that occur in the speech net of the cross-word coarticulation phenomena that are expected in connected speech. We will describe some of the most frequent phonetic variation patterns that may be observed in the speech chain seen as a sequence of syllables, in relation to internal syllabic structure and lexical stress. The present study concerns speech data from the Italian section of the NOCANDO corpus. The data consist of about 1000 syllables extracted from monological speech from different speakers. In two different analysis layers, we attempted to align the “phonological” expected form and observed realisation. The results of this attempt led to the definition of syllabic deletion, substitution, or insertion when the alignment fails. The proposed method provides insight into the phonetic variation processes that can systematically occur in natural speech with relation to specific linguistic structures; in particular, unstressed syllables are most likely to undergo variation phenomena, and systematic differences concern the syllabic position of the segmental change, in that the presence of lexical stress prevents vowel deletion or centralization, but allows for onset changes (such as consonant cluster simplification or lenition). Full article

Acoustic analysis of voice enables objective assessment of voice to diagnose changes in voice characteristics, and track the progress of therapy. In contrast to subjective assessment, objective measurements provide mathematical results referring to specific parameters and can be analyzed statistically. Changes in the voice of patients with partial deafness (PD) were not widely described in the literature, and recent studies referred to the voice parameters measured in this group of patients only using the multi-dimensional voice program (MDVP) by Kay Pentax. This paper describes the results of acoustic analysis of voice in patients with PD using VOXplot, and compares the results with those achieved with MDVP. Background/Objectives: The purpose of this study was a VOXplot objective analysis of voice in individuals with PD and to assess consistency with results obtained using MDVP and with perceptual assessment. Methods: Voice samples from 22 post-lingual PD individuals were recorded. They included continuous speech (cs) and sustained vowels (sv). The control group consisted of 22 healthy individuals with no history of voice or hearing dysfunction. The samples were analyzed with MDVP followed by VOXplot version 2.0.0 Beta. Statistical analysis was performed using a t-test paired with two samples for means. All individuals were also subjected to a perceptual voice assessment using the GRBAS by Hirano. Results: Differences were observed in 13 VOXplot parameters measured in voice samples of adults with PD compared with those in the control group. Both multiparametric indices, AVQI and ABI, showed a statistical increase. When it comes to MDVP parameters correlating with breathiness, all of them (shim dB, APQ, NHR, SPI, and NSH) increased in patients with partial deafness, reflecting a breathy voice. Only one increase in the SPI was not statistically significant. Seven MDVP parameters correlating with hoarseness were elevated, and five (Jitt%, vF0, Shim dB, APQ, and NHR) showed a statistically significant increase. Correlations were found of VOXplot and MDVP parameters with perceptual voice assessment. Conclusions: Both programs for objective assessment showed voice abnormalities in patients with PD compared with the control groups. There was a poor to moderate level of consistency in the results achieved using both systems. Correlations were also found with GRBAS assessment results. Full article

This study investigates the development of Greek vowel reduction across different prosodic positions (stressed, pre-stressed, post-stressed), examining normative data from 72 participants aged 3 years to adulthood and balanced for gender. Participants performed a delayed repetition task, producing real trisyllabic words with the vowels [i, ε, ɐ, o, u] examined in the second syllable. Measurements included relative vowel duration, normalized acoustic vowel space areas, and Euclidean distances of vowels from the centroid of the acoustic space. Our findings show that changes in speech motor control, system stiffness, and stress marking with age, along with children’s prosody sensitivity, contributed to several developmental milestones: the completion of the developmental trajectory of relative vowel duration and temporal vowel reduction at early adolescence; the attainment of adult-like spatial vowel characteristics and their reduction at preschool age; and the early acquisition of the prosodic strength of the stress conditions, leading to vowel reduction from the stressed to pre-stressed to post-stressed conditions. The correlation strength between temporal and spatial vowel reduction across ages revealed age-related differences in spatiotemporal speech organization, with significant gender-related differences observed only in vowel space areas, where females exhibited larger areas possibly related to sociophonetic factors. Intrinsic vowel duration appeared from age 3. Full article

In this study, we report on results of a preliminary acoustic–phonetic analysis of the Hidatsa vowel system. We conducted acoustic measurements of Hidatsa vowels in terms of averaged temporal and spectral properties of these phones. Our durational analysis provides strong evidence that Hidatsa has a ten-vowel system with phonemically long and short vowels, in addition to two diphthongs. Our spectral measurements consisted of averages and time-evolution dynamic properties of the first three formants (F1, F2 and F3) at 30 equally spaced time points along the central portion of each vowel. The centers and distributions of the F1 and F2 formants, as well as their time-averaged trajectories, provide strong evidence for separate vowel qualities for both the short and long vowels. These measurements also show that all Hidatsa vowels have some degree of time-dependent spectral change, with the back vowels generally displaying a longer time-evolution track. Lastly, our results also indicate that in Hidatsa mid-short vowels do not appear with the same frequency as the other vowels, and that the short [é] has no unstressed counterpart. Full article

(1) Background: Australian Aboriginal English (AAE) is a variety known to differ in various ways from the mainstream, but to date very little phonetic analysis has been carried out. This study is a description of L1 Aboriginal English in southern Australia, aiming to comprehensively describe the acoustics of vowels, focusing in particular on vowels known to be undergoing change in Mainstream Australian English. Previous work has focused on static measures of F1/F2, and here we expand on this by adding duration analyses, as well as dynamic F1/F2 measures. (2) Methods: This paper uses acoustic-phonetic analyses to describe the vowels produced by speakers of Aboriginal Australian English from two communities in southern Australia (Mildura and Warrnambool). The focus is vowels undergoing change in the mainstream variety–the short vowels in KIT, DRESS, TRAP, STRUT, LOT, and the long vowel GOOSE; focusing on duration, and static and dynamic F1/F2. As part of this description, we analyse the data using the sociophonetic variables gender, region, and age, and also compare the Aboriginal Australian English vowels to those of Mainstream Australian English. (3) Results: On the whole, for duration, few sociophonetic differences were observed. For static F1/F2, we saw that L1 Aboriginal English vowel spaces tend to be similar to Mainstream Australian English but can be analysed as more conservative (having undergone less change) as has also been observed for L2 Aboriginal English, in particular for KIT, DRESS, and TRAP. The Aboriginal English speakers had a less peripheral vowel space than Mainstream Australian English speakers. Dynamic analyses also highlighted dialectal differences between Aboriginal and Mainstream Australian English speakers, with greater F1/F2 movement in the trajectories of vowels overall for AAE speakers, which was more evident for some vowels (TRAP, STRUT, LOT, and GOOSE). Regional differences in vowel quality between the two locations were minimal, and more evident in the dynamic analyses. (4) Conclusions: This paper further highlights how Aboriginal Australian English is uniquely different from Mainstream Australian English with respect to certain vowel differences, and it also highlights some ways in which the varieties align. The differences, i.e., a more compressed vowel space, and greater F1/F2 movement in the trajectories of short vowels for AAE speakers, are specific ways that Aboriginal Australian English and Mainstream Australian English accents are different in these communities in the southern Australian state of Victoria. Full article

This study investigates how the unique circumstances of heritage language acquisition impact prosody, an understudied aspect of heritage speech. I examine the perception and production of lexical pitch accent by two generations of heritage Lithuanian speakers in Chicago (n = 13), with a qualitative comparison to one normative native speaker also living in Chicago. The speakers participated in the following: (1) a perception task requiring them to identify meaning distinctions between pairs of words that differ only by accent; and (2) a production task in which they produced sentences containing nine nominal declensions, where pitch accent plays a morphological role. In task (1), speakers across the board were not able to identify meaning distinctions in accent-based minimal pairs, irrespective of their frequency, and were more accurate at perceiving pairs that differed on the basis of segmental phonological features. However, HSs with more education perceived more accent-based distinctions, as did HSs who were more engaged in the Chicago community. Older HSs maintained more distinctions than either the NS or the younger HSs, which suggests a change in progress in the language or the Chicago Lithuanian community. In task (2), none of the speakers consistently used pitch to signal word-level prominence. Instead, all speakers relied on changes in duration and vowel quality to signal word-level prominence, suggesting that, for these speakers, there has been a shift to a stress-accent system. The older HSs also patterned more like the NS in their retention of the expected stress in the nominal declensions. Dialect was also determined to play a role in the retention of standard accent patterns in both perception and production. Full article

While variation in the southern Peninsular Spanish affricate /tʃ/ has been considered in the context of deaffrication to [ʃ], this study examines an emergent variant [ts] in the context of sociolinguistic identity and style in political speech. Based on a corpus of public speech from Madrid and Andalusia, Spain, this study examines the phonetic and sociolinguistic characteristics of the affricate, finding variation in the quality of the frication portion of the segment through an analysis of segment duration (ms), the center of gravity (Hz), and a categorical identification of realization type. The results suggest that both linguistic variables, like phonetic environment, stress, lexical frequency, and following vowel formant height, as well as extralinguistic variables, like speaker city, gender, political affiliation, and speech context, condition use. Based on these findings, it appears that production of the alveolar affricate [ts] is an incipient sociolinguistic marker in the process of acquiring social meaning. It is particularly associated with female speech and prestige norms that transcend regional identification. This alveolar variant serves as an additional sociolinguistic resource accessible for identity development among politicians and offers insight into ongoing change in the affricate inventory of southern and northern-central Peninsular Spanish. Full article

This study focuses on accent shift or stylization to American English features in Anglophone pop-rock music and examines linguistic constraints alongside music-related considerations, as well as the effect of changes in musical genre on variable accent shift. The case study is the British band Mumford and Sons and their variable production of non-prevocalic rhotics as either present or absent. Mumford and Sons is of interest because they have displayed a change in their musical style throughout their career from Americana to alt-rock. The band’s four studio albums were auditorily analyzed and coded for rhotic vs. non-rhotic with aid from spectrograms. The linguistic factors considered were word class, preceding vowel according to the word’s lexical set, complexity of the preceding vowel, syllable complexity, stress, and location within the word and phrase. In addition, the effect of singing-related factors of syllable elongation and rhyming, and of the specific album, were also explored. Results show that rhoticity is favored in content words, stressed contexts, complex syllables, and NURSE words. This pattern is explained as stemming from the perceptual prominence of those contexts based on their acoustic and phonological characteristics. Results further show that syllable elongation leads to more rhoticity and that rhyming words tend to agree in their (non-)rhoticity. Finally, the degree of rhoticity decreases as the band departs from Americana in their later albums, highlighting the relevance of music genre for accent stylization. Full article

Most analyses of monophthong change have historically relied on static acoustic measures. It is unclear the extent to which dynamic measures can shed greater light on monophthong change than can already be captured using such static approaches. In this study, we conducted a real-time trend analysis of vowels in corpora collected from female Mainstream Australian English (MAusE) speakers under 30 years of age across three time periods: the 1960s, 1990s, and 2010s. Using three different methods for characterising the first and second formants (the target-based approach, discrete cosine transform (DCT), and generalised additive mixed model (GAMM)), we statistically examined differences for each of 10 monophthongs to outline change over the fifty-year period. Results show that all three methods complement each other in capturing the changing vowel system, with the DCT and GAMM analyses superior in their ability to provide greater nuanced detail that would be overlooked without consideration of dynamicity. However, if consideration of the vowel system as a whole is of interest (i.e., the relationships between the vowels), visualising the vowel space can facilitate interpretation, and this may require reference to static measures. We also acknowledge that locating the source of vowel dynamic differences in sound change involves reference to surrounding phonetic context. Full article

Post-thyroidectomy syndrome (PTS), characterized by voice issues after thyroidectomy without recurrent laryngeal nerve injury, was investigated in this study. The Voice Fatigue Index (VFI) and cepstral analysis were employed for subjective and objective voice evaluation. Retrospective analysis involved 96 patients (37 males, 59 females) who underwent thyroidectomy without nerve injury from April 2018 to June 2022. Assessments pre- and post-thyroidectomy included the Voice Handicap Index (VHI) and VFI, along with auditory perceptual, acoustic (including cepstral), aerodynamic, and glottal vibration analyses. In females, although the GRBAS scale showed no significant change, both VHI and VFI increased post-thyroidectomy. Significant correlations were observed between the VHI and VFI in females. Acoustic analysis indicated a decrease in the cepstral peak prominence (CPP) of vowels (/a/) and sentences in females, with significant correlations between changes in the CPP/a/ and VHI/VFI. The maximum fundamental frequency (F₀max) exhibited a significant decrease, correlating with the VHI and VFI changes. The VFI demonstrated effectiveness in subjective PTS voice evaluation, comparable to the VHI. The present study highlights the potential of cepstral analysis as an index reflecting subjective voice discomfort, suggesting its promise for a comprehensive PTS voice evaluation. Full article

This paper provides a methodology to better understand the relationships between different aspects of vocal fold motion, which are used as features in machine learning-based approaches for detecting respiratory infections from voice recordings. The relationships are derived through a joint multivariate analysis of the vocal fold oscillations of speakers. Specifically, the multivariate setting explores the displacements and velocities of the left and right vocal folds derived from recordings of five extended vowel sounds for each speaker (/aa/, /iy/, /ey/, /uw/, and /ow/). In this multivariate setting, the differences between the bivariate and conditional interactions are analyzed by information-theoretic quantities based on transfer entropy. Incorporation of the conditional quantities reveals information regarding the confounding factors that can influence the statistical interactions among other pairs of variables. This is demonstrated on a vector autoregressive process where the analytical derivations can be carried out. As a proof of concept, the methodology is applied on a clinically curated dataset of COVID-19. The findings suggest that the interaction between the vocal fold oscillations can change according to individuals and presence of any respiratory infection, such as COVID-19. The results are important in the sense that the proposed approach can be utilized to determine the selection of appropriate features as a supplementary or early detection tool in voice-based diagnostics in future studies. Full article