Volume 50, Issue 4

A quantitative speech production model has been computer-implemented based on specifications of gestures as its input. Articulatory gestures serve the central role of phonological/phonetic units in speech organization. The present model is not based on task dynamics, but it still assumes a critically damped linear second-order system. The capability of this model is partially demonstrated by its application to reduction phenomena in conversational speech in German. Explanations in terms of timing and magnitude alterations of gestures in different articulators use only a few general principles for a variety of apparent segmental alterations. Some salient examples have been synthesized based on the current model, which also contributed to the evaluation of the parameter values involved in sample gestures.

The Athabaskan and Eskimo approximants, particularly [j], [w], and [l], behave phonologically like obstruents. In both language families, [j], which alternates with a sibilant, is phonologically [+coronal], although its coronality has been questioned on phonetic grounds. These approximants best illustrate Sapir’s [1925] notion of ‘a true point in pattern’ which must be defined ‘over and above its natural [phonetic] classification on organic and acoustic grounds’. The fact that approximants are classified phonologically as sonorants or obstruents in different languages is incompatible with the universality of distinctive features and their phonetic properties. This problem is resolved by placing a phonological boundary for [+/––sonorant] somewhat differently in the continuum of the sonority hierarchy, depending on how approximants behave in individual languages.

The present study examines the patterns of interference between a first (here, Amoy) and second language (here, Mandarin) by comparing the production of a Mandarin phone [f] (a ‘new’ phone) with another Mandarin phone [x] (which is ‘similar’ to an Amoy phone [h]) by three groups of native Amoy subjects differentiated by proficiency in Mandarin. Their Mandarin production was also compared to that of Mandarin monolinguals. The spectrum of each consonant was analyzed to show the frequency range and energy of the fricative. In general, native Amoy speakers interpreted Mandarin /f/ and /x/ in terms of their first language phones [h^w] and [h], but showed different patterns of interference for different proficiency levels. The least proficient simply substituted the Amoy phones for the Mandarin. More proficient speakers could approximate the Mandarin monolingual phonetic norm for the ‘new’ phone [f] more accurately than for the ‘similar’ phone [x]. The most proficient showed little Amoy-to-Mandarin interference on even the ‘similar’ phone [x]. On the other hand, the most proficient showed some interference from Mandarin /x/ on their Amoy production.

This article examined the clarification of surface structure ambiguity via prosody in Mandarin. An acoustical analysis and a perceptual study were carried out for this purpose: the acoustical analysis was aimed at identifying the prosodic cues for disambiguation, and the perceptual study explored how syntactical structure was recovered via prosody. The acoustical analysis of syntactically ambiguous pairs resulting from different bracketings revealed that prosodic disambiguation consisted of pause insertion, F₀ lowering, intensity reduction, and preboundary lengthening. Moreover, laryngealization frequently was observed at syntactic breaks. The perceptual study of ambiguous pairs of edited speech tokens indicated that (1) pause was a more powerful cue than preboundary lengthening in syntactical recovery, and (2) only a large amount of preboundary lengthening led to successful parsing of ambiguous sentences.