This workshop is dedicated to studies at the phonetics/phonology interface in any language, inspired by approaches to Romance.
Its goal is to highlight the contribution of research on the phonetics and phonology of Romance languages to the broader empirical and theoretical development of the field, extended typologically beyond the Romance family. In particular, presentations and discussions during the workshop should showcase the contributions of research on speech and sound structure in the Romance languages to the advancement of the laboratory phonology program.
Location
17 rue de la Sorbonne 75005 Paris
Amphithéâtre Louis Liard
The workshop is free, but registration is required. Please follow the instructions under the ‘Registration’ tab on the conference website.
Speakers
- Margaret E. L. Renwick – University of Georgia: « Impacts of structure, usage and phonetics on Italian mid vowels »
- Marc Brunelle – University of Ottawa: « An ultrasound study of cavity expansion during Canadian French voiced obstruents »
- Ander Egurtzegi – CNRS, IKER UMR 5478: « An « impossible » opposition: /h/ vs. /h̃/ in North-Eastern Basque »
- Juliette Blevins, Michela Cresci – CUNY Graduate Center ; Liceo « Camillo Golgi »: « Variant patterns of sibilant debuccalization in Camuno: Phonetic and phonological implications of *s > h in Valcamonica »
Local committee
Ioana Chitoran
Cécile Fougeron
Anne Hermes
By most definitions, vowels are produced by vocal tract configurations which do not produce supralaryngeal frication noise when they are voiced. This definition has persisted even though high vowels with apparent aperiodic noise generated upstream of the vocal folds are attested. Beyond those cases occurring intermittently and incidentally due to coarticulation with consonants, vowels which are produced with strong frication, and seemingly articulated to enhance this frication, are also attested (e.g. “apical vowels”, Shao & Ridouane 2023; “fricative vowels”, Connell 2007). In short, some vocoids appear to have targets for production of frication. In this talk, we present data from two Bantoid languages of Cameroon, Kom and Mundabli, which exhibit vowel quality contrasts which seem to be based in part on aperiodic noise. These are the first acoustic-phonetic studies of either language, focusing on the implementation of contrasts between canonical high vowels such as /i ɨ u/ and the phonemically contrastive fricated vowels, which range from more vowel-like /i̝ u̝ / as in Mundabli or more fricative-like /z̩(ɨ) v̩(ɨ)/ as in Kom. We use zero-crossing rate (ZCR) to characterize the frication, in addition to providing formant frequency and bandwidth data. Results show that each language’s contrasts involve both formant- and frication-related distinctions, with substantial between-language differences in the degree and timing of frication production, and formant frequencies seemingly unreliable in some cases. We take this data as further evidence for vocoids with inherent targets for frication, and that languages may exhibit a range of different frication targets on vocoids, not too different from other fine-grained subphonemic differences observed across vowel systems (Disner 1983).
Much of the research investigating the impact of prosody on the perception of a speaker’s attitudes and characteristics has relied on attempting to elicit prosodic features in read speech, or artificial manipulation of recorded audio. Our novel method of implicitly controlling prosody in synthesized spontaneous speech provides a powerful tool for studying speech perception and can provide better insight into the interacting effects of prosodic features on perception while also paving the way for conversational systems which are more effectively able to engage in and respond to social behaviors. I will discuss the work presented at Interspeech 2022, which examined the combined impact of filled pause location, speech rate and f0 on the perception of speaker confidence. I will also discuss some more recent work on the perceptual impact of disfluencies, and goals and ideas for future work.
Focus and its effects on sentence prosody have been the subject of numerous studies in different languages. Persian prosodic focus was previously dealt with in some experimental studies. These studies, however, investigated the influence of only one focus condition, namely contrastive focus, on the production of an utterance. In addition, the methods used to elicit this focus condition are mostly based on read speech and may not mirror the processes involved in spoken interaction. To fill this gap, the current research scrutinizes the prosodic cues in different focus types in Persian, namely, broad, narrow, and contrastive focus (accented), in relation to the background situation (unaccented). We address this issue in a detailed analysis concentrating on both laryngeal (intonational f0 movements) and supralaryngeal articulations (lingual and labial articulation of consonants and vowels). In this colloquium, the initial results from the acoustic part of the project will be presented and discussed in light of the existing literature. This endeavor as a collaborative study is part of SFB 1252 Prominence in Language.
Cette thèse propose une analyse de l’adaptation de la parole à l’interlocuteur·trice à travers les prismes de l’hyper-hypoarticulation et de l’accommodation. Nous analysons 140 436 occurrences de voyelles produites par 20 locuteurs et locutrices du français québécois dans le but d’observer leur positionnement en termes de réduction phonétique en fonction de la tâche demandée et de l’interlocuteur·trice avec qui elle est réalisée. Chacune de ces 20 personnes a dû lire des mots en isolation et dans des phrases porteuses, et réaliser une tâche d’identification de différences entre images seul·e, avec son ou sa conjoint·e, avec un enquêteur inconnu québécois et avec une enquêtrice inconnue française. L’analyse des voyelles à travers quatre mesures spectrales et une mesure temporelle montre globalement les patterns suivants (du plus au moins hypoarticulé) : Interaction < Seul·e < Lecture, et Couple < Inconnu Local≤ Inconnue Française. La prise en compte de quatre types de mesures rythmiques montre également que la parole est plus lente lorsque la distance sociale entre les interlocuteur·trice·s est plus forte et dans les tâches les moins interactives. L’hypoarticulation paraît donc être un moyen possible pour véhiculer des informations concernant la distance sociale, par une adaptation au type d’interlocuteur·trice avec qui se déroulent les interactions.
—
This thesis proposes an analysis of speech adaptation to the interlocutor through the prisms of hyper-hypoarticulation and accommodation. We analyze 140,436 tokens of vowels produced by 20 speakers of Quebec French in order to observe their positions in terms of phonetic reduction according to the task performed and the interlocutor with whom it is performed. Each of these 20 speakers had to read words in isolation and in carrier sentences, and perform a task of difference identification between images alone, with his or her spouse, with an unknown interviewer from Quebec, and with an unknown French interviewer. Vowel analysis by the mean of four spectral measures and one temporal measure shows overall the following patterns (from most to least hypoarticulated) : Interaction < Alone < Reading, and Couple < Local Stranger ≤ French Stranger. The analysis of four rhythmic measures also shows that speech rate is slower when the social distance between interlocutors is strong and in the less interactive situations. Hypoarticulation therefore seems to be a possible mean of conveying information concerning social distance, by adapting to the type of interlocutor with whom the interactions take place.
One central property of natural languages is the arbitrariness of the sign: the sounds of words do not generally inform about their meaning. Still, systematic sound symbolic exceptions to this principle, found in a wide range of languages’ lexicons, have always intrigued scientists and non-scientists. The so-called “bouba-kiki effect” is the textbook case for sensitivity to iconic sound symbolism. When presented with a sound–shape matching task, perceivers almost systematically associate auditory pseudowords such as “bouba” with round or smooth shapes, and others, such as “kiki”, with spiky or angular shapes. Since its first report, the bouba-kiki effect has been robustly replicated across languages, cultures and stimuli, suggesting that it relies on universal cues.
Yet, two intriguing problems remain. First, the stimuli parameters involved in this effect are still unclear. I will first show in a series of experimental studies in adults that both consonants and vowels appear to play a role in the bouba-kiki effect, though consonants to a larger extent. Then, by combining a meta-analysis of independent findings with computational modeling, I will show that this effect mostly relies on two independent non-speech acoustic parameters.
The second issue deals with the underlying mechanisms that could explain such audiovisual associations and whether the bouba-kiki effect is innate or can be learned through exposure to audiovisual regularities in the environment. Indeed, in spite of being very robust in adults and shared by most language and cultures, I will present a series of cross-modal experiments and a second meta-analysis on infants suggesting that this effect is learned. Then, I will present a mathematical demonstration combined with a series of intuitive physics experiments in adults, evidencing the physical principles creating universal audiovisual regularities in the environment and underlying the bouba-kiki effect. Finally, I discuss how this causal mechanistic account provides a complete and coherent resolution of the bouba-kiki effect enigma. I will conclude by raising some new perspectives on how language and human multimodal perception of natural scenes are intrinsically linked.
In this talk, I am discussing results from two studies that look at how learners acquire perceptually similar sibilant fricatives. When language learners acquire a new language, they are also charged with the task of learning novel segments. In cases where the novel segment is perceptually similar to an L1 segment, acquisition is often slowed or even blocked (Flege, 1995; Best & Tyler, 2007). My goal for this research project is to better understand the L2 acquisition processes and examine how the link between perception and articulation plays a role in second language acquisition.
In the first study, I examined the acquisition of the three-way sibilant contrast, /s, ʂ, ɕ/, by L2 Lower Sorbian learners. In this context, there are no remaining L1 speakers who are teachers, the L1 population is also extremely small, and L2 learners often have no access to L1 speakers. In the second study, I examined L2 acquisition of the three-way sibilant contrast, /s, ʂ, ɕ/, by L2 Polish learners. In this context, regular pronunciation training has taken place to attempt to correct speech errors. The results will be discussed in context of L2 models of acquisition and foreign language acquisition contexts.
Phonetic imitation is fundamental to language acquisition and change, and there has been considerable interest in examining predictors of individual variability in this domain. However, it is unclear whether individual differences are stable across different tasks and across different phonetic features, making generalization and cross-study comparison difficult. This work examines the systematicity of these individual differences through a set of experiments targeting imitation of several phonetic features (stop aspiration, stop voicing, and vowel quality) in explicit imitation and implicit shadowing tasks. We examine whether individual tendencies are consistent across different features (e.g. do individuals who show greater-than-average imitation of stops also show greater-than-average imitation of vowels?), and whether this holds for both explicit and implicit tasks. We find that individual variability in explicit imitation tasks is relatively stable across disparate features, but that this relationship does not hold in implicit, albeit still highly controlled, imitation tasks. These findings underscore the problem of using imitation of a single feature as a metric of an individual’s overall tendency to imitate. At the same time, performance on the implicit tasks is not completely random: individuals are consistent in their extent of imitation of closely related differences (e.g. fronting of two different vowels), inviting further study into whether and why individuals might differ systematically in imitation of different types of features.
Human Beatboxing (HBB) is a musical technique produced by vocal tract movements. Contrary to speech, in HBB, gestures and patterns are not restricted by linguistic constraints. Thus, new articulatory patterns of different level of complexity emerge. This talk will focus on the physiology of phonatory behaviors in Beatboxing. Even though production goals and sound patterning differ between speaking and beatboxing, physiological principles do not. This work is the first to propose an analysis of beatboxing voice by exploring the musical repertoire of electronic bass imitation by 5 beatboxers using laryngoscopic, aerodynamic and acoustic data. First, a description of the source and filter characteristics is given. Then a pilot study using Kreiman et al. (2014) model of voice production was carried on 5 phonatory behaviors : modal voice, the “Chest Bass” (egressive (ary)epiglotto-pharyngeal voice), the “Inward Bass” (ingressive aryepiglottic voice with open glottis), the “Throat Bass” (egressive ventricular voice) and a “Vibration Bass” (egressive breathy aryepiglottic voice). Results show a large panel of phonatory behaviors based on the production of periodic and aperiodic components at the source. Resonances shows configurations similar to posterior vowels of linguistic systems. Kreiman’s model of voice allowed to distinguish phonatory behaviors. The study of beatboxing voice revealed an extensive use of laryngeal articulators associated with a fine phonetic control of voice production.
