The speech-to-song illusion has attracted interest as a probe of the perceptual interface between language and music. One might anticipate differential speech-to-song effects in tonal vs. non-tonal languages, since these language classes differ importantly in the linguistic value they assign to tones. Here we addressed this issue for the first time in a cohort of 20 healthy younger adults whose native language was either tonal (Thai, Mandarin) or non-tonal (German, Italian) and all of whom were also fluent in English. All participants were assessed using a protocol designed to induce the speech-to-song illusion on speech excerpts presented in each of the five study languages. Over the combined participant group, there was evidence of a speech-to-song illusion effect for all language stimuli and the extent to which individual participants rated stimuli as “song-like” at baseline was significantly positively correlated with the strength of the speech-to-song effect. However, tonal and non-tonal language stimuli elicited comparable speech-to-song effects and no acoustic language parameter was found to predict the effect. Examining the effect of the listener's native language, tonal language native speakers experienced significantly weaker speech-to-song effects than non-tonal native speakers across languages. Both non-tonal native language and inability to understand the stimulus language significantly predicted the speech-to-song illusion. These findings together suggest that relative propensity to perceive prosodic structures as inherently linguistic vs. musical may modulate the speech-to-song illusion.

In this study, the criteria that underlie the processes for establishing the status of phonetic, phonological, and base forms of phonic linguistic data are presented in an explicit and systematized manner by means of a series of ordered steps-an algorithm. The steps of the algorithm are: (a) determining the phonetic status of sounds of articulatory origin; (b) distinguishing between segments and sequences; (c) grouping of suspect phones; (d) determining groups of allophones and distributions; (e) determining the base form of the phoneme; and (f) other processes of phonetic-phonological interpretation. All theoretical-methodological discussions are supported with current examples and/or real cases of Chilean Spanish that are difficult to resolve, thus demonstrating the reliability of the theoretical options that undergird each step of the algorithm. Finally, the algorithm's function is summarized and schematized by means of a flow chart.

Until recently, the consensus was that labiodental realizations of Spanish /b/ did not exist, and that consequently this variation in place of articulation could be safely disregarded. However, new evidence emerged showing that labiodental variants of /b/ do exist in relatively high numbers, at least in some dialects such as in Chilean Spanish. This study set out to determine whether Chilean Spanish listeners are able to perceive the differences between bilabial and labiodental approximant variants of Spanish /b/ (i.e., [β̞] versus [ʋ]). In order to test this, natural and synthetic stimuli were presented to 31 native listeners in identification and discrimination tasks. Results showed that, while the identification task with natural stimuli provided mixed evidence of sensitivity to the contrast, the identification and discrimination tasks with synthetic stimuli provided no evidence of listeners perceiving the phonetic contrast categorically. In sum, listeners do no seem able to perceive the acoustic differences between the two segments, and thus it is unlikely that this phonetic contrast could be employed to encode sociolinguistic information.

Evidencia del contraste interdental/alveolar en el mapudungun hablado en la costa: un estudio acústico-estadístico 1 Evidence for the interdental/alveolar contrast in the Mapudungun spoken on the coast: an acoustic and statistical study

This study presents the results of an acoustic and statistical analysis of labiodental and interdental fricative consonants, voiced and voiceless, from a variety of Mapudungun spoken in Alto Biobío. The present study aims to determine whether spectral, durational and amplitude parameters are able to differentiate these sounds by place of articulation and voicing. Results showed that spectral moments, duration, absolute amplitude and normalized amplitude were able to distinguish between voiced and voiceless fricatives, whilst variance, duration and normalized amplitude were able to separate labiodental from interdental consonants. However, the capability that variance and duration absolute had at distinguishing between voiced and voiceless consonants is restricted to labiodental consonants when the interaction between voicing, place of articulation and participant’s sex was considered. These results are discussed in the light of literature on the usefulness of these acoustic measurements at capturing contrasts of manner of articulation, place and voicing, and in view of previous studies on the properties of the phonetic and phonemic systems in this variety of Mapudungun.