Catégorie d'événements : SRPP

Artificial language learning paradigms can be used to examine learning biases and their relation with linguistic typology. Focusing on phonology I will present two case studies, one on vowel harmony and the other on syllable reduplication.

Length contrasts, primarily manifested through duration, have been widely analyzed in many phonological theories. Approaches to length contrasts can generally be classified into two main perspectives: internal and external accounts. Internal accounts consider length an inherent property of a segment, such as the presence of a [long] feature in feature theory. In contrast, external accounts interpret length as a difference in segmental organization. For example, in prosodic phonology, a short vowel results from a vowel associating with a single timing slot/mora, whereas a long vowel results from the same vowel associating with two timing slots/moras.
In this project, we investigate the articulatory characteristics of vowel length, with the primary goal of testing the predictions of internal and external approaches to vowel length contrast. Thai is chosen as a case study, as vowel length is contrastive for all monophthongs. Previous research has demonstrated acoustically and perceptually that duration serves as the primary cue for the length contrast.
We collected articulatory data from 19 native Thai speakers using Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA). Participants were instructed to produce mVm and mVn words containing short and long /i, ɯ, u, a/ vowels with different speaking rates: fast, normal, slow. Tongue body, tongue dorsum, and jaw movements during vowel production, along with lip aperture during the production of onset and coda /m/ and tongue tip movement during coda /n/ production, were tracked and analyzed for their kinematic and timing properties.
The findings reveal that long vowels inherently have a longer plateau duration, a more extreme maximum movement position, and a larger amplitude than short vowels. The differences in all internal properties remain stable across speaking rates. Furthermore, vowel length also affects the coda consonants: codas following long vowels exhibit a shorter lag from consonant closure to release compared to those following short vowels. The vowel-to-coda lag also differs between short and long vowels, with long vowels having a longer VC lag than short vowels. Similarly, the differences in external properties remain stable across speaking rates.
The results suggest that vowel length cannot be captured by either internal or external accounts alone. The articulatory characteristics reveal that vowel length involves both an internal specification of the vowel and a difference in external organization.

Speaking involves the translation of abstract thought into movements of the lips, face, and tongue to produce sound. A large body of research in both psycholinguistics and phonetics has attempted to answer how these movements are planned, essentially probing the relationship between linguistic thought and speech motor production. In many dominant models of speech and word production, the link between these two systems is thought to be the syllable, which serves as both the output of the language planning system and the input of the speech motor control system. Here, I will present a series of experiments using a novel assessment tool—sensorimotor adaptation to altered auditory feedback—that question this consensus. By examining 1) how sensorimotor adaptation of a trained word or syllable transfers to other words and syllables and 2) how different linguistic structures enable speakers to learn opposing auditory perturbations applied to the same vowel in different contexts, the results from these studies suggest a rich link between the linguistic and speech motor systems, including not only syllables but also segments, words, and abstract prosodic structure.

Although most psycholinguistic models consider phonological and phonetic planning as distinct utterance planning processes, the distinction between phonological and phonetic encoding is still debated along with the planning units and size at play in utterance encoding processes. I will first review the empirical evidence from psycholinguistic, neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies in favour and against the phonological-phonetic distinction along with some issues about the size of phonological and/or phonetic plans. I will then discuss and illustrate the dynamics of phonological and phonetic planning relative to planning at other linguistic levels and argue that phonological-phonetic planning represents the main utterance encoding processes in terms of time and costs.

References
Laganaro, M. (2014). Phonological errors in conduction aphasia and the HSFC model: a comment to Hickok 2013. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29(1), 28-29.
Laganaro, M. (2019). Phonetic encoding in utterance production: a review of open issues from 1989 to 2018. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34(9), 1193-1201.
Laganaro, M. (2023). Time-course of phonetic (motor speech) encoding in utterance production. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 40(5-6), 287-297.

This talk will focus on ejectives and implosives in Human Beatboxing. Human Beatboxing is a musical style in which artists produce instrumental and electronic rhythms with the vocal tract articulators. Ejectives and implosives are phonologically rare (about 19% of the languages of the PHOIBLE 2.0 database). However, ejectives can be phonetically found in spontaneous speech (McCarthy & Stuart-Smith, 2013; Simpson, 2014) and they are quite common in Human Beatboxing (Blaylock, 2022). While ejectives and implosives are well-documented, they are poorly understood since little direct evidence have been given on upward (ejectives) and downward (implosives) movement of the larynx and its relation to intraoral pressure. Based on aerodynamic, laryngoscopic and MRI data of 4 professional beatboxers, we investigated beatboxing ejectives and implosives. The results showed pressure ranged between -90hPa to +100hPa and that pressure variation depends on pharyngeal gestures rather than laryngeal height. We do not know whether the same mechanism is used in the world’s languages. Nevertheless, it seems very unlikely that one mechanism would be use to speak and a different one to beatbox. Our findings have substantial implications for the categorization and sound change of ejectives and implosives.

Motor impairment is frequently cited as a core characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), yet its relationship with speech motor control remains underexplored. This study examined whether higher rates of speech sound errors in children with ASD stem from a single underlying motor impairment. Ten children with ASD and ten typically developing (TD) peers (ages 6-12) were assessed on nonverbal IQ, language ability, and gross and fine motor control. Speech motor control was measured using Diadochokinesis (DDK) tasks, recorded and analysed by ultrasound tongue imaging and acoustic analysis. Results revealed no significant differences between ASD and TD groups in DDK accuracy, rate, or consistency. However, TD children exhibited greater tongue shape variability in complex sequences, while ASD children showed reduced variability, suggesting rigidity in motor plans rather than impairment. Despite significant fine and gross motor deficits in the ASD group, these did not correlate with speech motor performance. Findings indicate that speech attunement difficulties, rather than speech motor deficits, may contribute to speech sound development challenges in ASD.

Maliêng (Vietnamese: Mã Liềng), a Vietic language, has intriguing patterns of interaction between lexical tone, phonation types and vowel qualities. Alexis Michaud will present fresh fieldwork results obtained in 2024 by Albert Badosa Roldós (Ph. D. student at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) with a vibrant team of young Vietnamese phoneticians/phonologists (Tạ Thành Tấn, Trần Quang Minh, and Nguyễn Thị Minh Châu). A leading thread in the presentation will be that a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach, encompassing immersion fieldwork and diachronic phonology alongside experimental phonetics and phonological modelling, is of the essence to steer clear of various pitfalls: from the acoustic analysis of audio data to the interpretation of the tonal system as a whole.