More on the “instability” of interdental fricatives: Gothicþliuhan‘flee’ and Old Englishflēon‘flee’ revisited

Sink positive: Linguistic experience with th substitutions influences nonnative word recognition

“…This general tendency to confuse /f/ and /θ/ could be due to the small phonetic distance between /f/ and /θ/, concerning mainly higher frequencies that are perceptually less salient (Jones, 2002). In addition, both fricatives share articulatory properties, being produced by forming a narrow constriction at the upper teeth (either with the lower lip, for /f/, or with the tongue, for /θ/).…”

A cross-modal account for synchronic and diachronic patterns of /f/ and /θ/ in English

“…In fact, Miller and Nicely (1955: 347) note that the "distinction between |f | and |θ| and between |v| and |edh| are among the most difficult for listeners to hear and it seems likely that in most natural situations the differentiation depends more on verbal context and on visual observation of the talker's lips than it does on the acoustic difference (sic)." Such a view is also advanced by Jones (2002), who notes that there may be a functional load difference in the phonemes. Jongman, Wang, and Kim (2003) explored these possibilities in two speech perception studies.…”

“…The perceptual weakness account exploits the fact that /f/ and /θ/ are indeed highly confusable perceptually (e.g., Miller and Nicely 1955), due primarily to their spectral similarity (Tabain 1998). It has, therefore, been suggested that the perceptual weakness argument has much more credibility (Jones 2002).…”

“…To explain this variation and lack of stability, scholars have blamed either a rticulatory difficulty (Wells 1982;Kjellmer 1995) or perceptual weakness (Labov et al 1968;Jones 2002). Articulatory difficulty is an unlikely reason; coronals are generally considered easier articulatorily due to the high degree of flexibility and precision inherent in the tongue tip and there seems to be no reason why tongueto-teeth contact is any more difficult than lower-lip-to-teeth.…”

“…The goal of this paper is to argue for the importance of visual input on the shaping of phonologies, using evidence from the puzzling diachronic and synchronic instability of /θ/ and its frequent and asymmetric substitution with its highly confusable counterpart, /f/. Although the auditory confusability of the two sounds is well known (e.g., Miller and Nicely 1955) and has been argued as the cause of substitutions of the sounds (e.g., Labov et al 1968: 93;Jones 2002), none of these accounts has been able to adequately handle the asymmetry in substitution such that /f/ regularly replaces /θ/, but /θ/ is not a frequent substitution for /f/. We argue that a multi-modal model of speech perception, coupled with the heretofore under-analyzed visible articulatory variability of /θ/, can account for observed patterns.…”