Volume 29, Issue 4

This paper deals with supra-glottal (Psupra) and sub-glottal (Psub) air pressures in the production of stops in Sindhi. Sindhi has the fullest stop system of any Indo-Aryan languages. Besides a contrast between voicing and unvoicing, aspiration and un-aspiration, there is a contrast between compression and rarefaction too. This paper studies the physiological events with reference to both the time factor and the aerodynamics of the breath stream. Pneumotachography and laryngoscopy with fiber-optics bundle are some of the techniques employed to obtain quantitative data. Experimental data given here reveal various complex mechanisms of articulatory timing and co-ordination of the oral, pharyngeal, velopharyngeal, laryngeal and respiratory structures.

This study answers the question whether listeners could identify the presence of an emphatic class of consonants (m, ð, s, t, k), even when tape-splicing removed, from the word, the consonant in question. The speech materials consisted of 14 pairs of meaningful Arabic words contrasted in a single consonant; these consonants were removed from both members of each word pair with their CV- or VC-transitions. The resulting truncated word stems along with a carrier phrase were spliced at random onto a tape for presentation to listeners to predict whether the missing consonants were emphatic or nonem-phatic. Results indicate that the presence of emphatic consonants can be detected; and that emphaticness coarticulated in a left-to-right fashion was detectable, as in right-to-left direction.

After a short critical presentation of the position of phonetics as a scientific discipline, it is shown how to develop the concept of ‘disclosure of phonetic information’ (phonetische Informationserschlieβung). One can see that it is possible to understand the ‘signal phonetics’ (Signalphonetik) as a process of disclosure of phonetic information along the fields of manifestation of phonetic information (Manifestationsbereiche) within the chain: speaker, transmission medium, and hearer.

Previous reports have not indicated whether inter-speaker variation in the production of fricative consonants is great enough so that turbulence can serve as a cue in speaker identification. In this experiment 12 listeners were exposed to isolated turbulence portions of fricatives, as produced by 8 male speakers, and asked to judge speaker identity. Results indicate that speakers can be identified from such stimuli, that the addition of a laryngeal source results in higher identification levels, and that performance tends to improve as place of articulation moves posteriorly.