Over a century of phonetic research has established the cross-linguistic existence of the so called "voicing effect", by which vowels tend to be shorter when followed by voiceless stops and longer when the following stop is voiced. However, no agreement is found among scholars regarding the source of this effect, and several causal accounts have been advanced. A notable one is the compensatory temporal adjustment account, according to which the duration of the vowel is inversely correlated with the stop closure duration (voiceless stops having longer closure durations than voiced stops). The compensatory account has been criticised due to lack of empirical support and its vagueness regarding the temporal interval within which compensation is implemented. The results from an exploratory study of Italian and Polish suggest that the duration of the interval between two consecutive stop releases in CVCV words in these languages is not affected by the voicing of the second stop. The durational difference of the first vowel and the stop closure would then follow from differences in timing of the VC boundary within this interval. While other aspects, like production mechanisms related to laryngeal features effects and perceptual biases cannot be ruled out, the data discussed here are compatible with a production account based on compensatory mechanisms.
Many Western industrialized nations have high levels of ethnic diversity but to date there are very few studies which investigate prelinguistic and early language development in infants from ethnic minority backgrounds. This study tracked the development of infant communicative gestures from 10 to 12 months (n = 59) in three culturally distinct groups in the United Kingdom and measured their relationship, along with maternal utterance frequency and responsiveness, to vocabulary development at 12 and 18 months. No significant differences were found in infant gesture development and maternal responsiveness across the groups, but relationships were identified between gesture, maternal responsiveness, and vocabulary development. The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/L008955/1) is gratefully acknowledged. The authors also thank the families who kindly participated in this study. Thanks also go to Saki Chowdhury, Hamida Begum, Naomi Rose, Ziyun Zhang and Sage Juliusburger for all their help. This article is in memory of Dr Sylvia Sham.
While electrogloography is a pracঞcal and safe technique for obtaining arঞculatory data on voicing, staঞsঞcal analysis of the signal it returns poses a few challenges given the highly dimensional nature of the signal. The wavegram has been proposed as a visualisaঞon method which overcomes the limitaঞons of reducing the complex electrogloographic signal to a single measure like the contact quoঞent. This paper introduces a method for modelling dynamic electrogloographic data based on the wavegram using generalised addiঞve models (GAMs). Results from a pilot study which assesses the reliability of this method by comparing sustained modal and breathy phonaঞon are presented. The applicability of wavegram GAMs is exemplified with the discussion of an exploratory study on the dynamical properঞes of voicing in vowels followed by voiceless and voiced stops in Italian and Polish. Increasing average gloal opening can be observed in the second half of vowels, although the ঞming and magnitude of the increase differs depending on the voicing of the following stop and on the language. Insights on the diachronic development of pre-aspiraঞon based on these results are also discussed.
Velum movement signals generated from real-time magnetic resonance imaging videos of thirty-five German speakers were used to investigate the physiological conditions that might promote sound change involving the development of contrastive vowel nasality. The results suggest that, in comparison to when a nasal consonant precedes a voiced obstruent, the velum gesture associated with a nasal consonant preceding a voiceless obstruent undergoes gestural rescaling and temporal rephasing. This further suggests that the diachronic development of contrastive vowel nasality comprises two stages: the first stage involves gestural shortening and realignment, while the second stage involves a trading relationship between source and effect.*
Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis which can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time. Even greater flexibility is to be expected in fields in which the primary data lend themselves to a variety of possible operationalizations. The multidimensional, temporally extended nature of speech constitutes an ideal testing ground for assessing the variability in analytic approaches, which derives not only from aspects of statistical modeling, but also from decisions regarding the quantification of the measured behavior. In the present study, we gave the same speech production data set to 46 teams of researchers and asked them to answer the same research question, resulting in substantial variability in reported effect sizes and their interpretation. Using Bayesian meta-analytic tools, we further find little to no evidence that the observed variability can be explained by analysts' prior beliefs, expertise or the perceived quality of their analyses. In light of this idiosyncratic variability, we recommend that researchers more transparently share details of their analysis, strengthen the link between theoretical construct and quantitative system and calibrate their (un)certainty in their conclusions.
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