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Purpose Previous studies have shown enhanced pitch and impaired time perception in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether such deviated patterns of auditory processing depending on acoustic dimensions would transfer to the higher level linguistic pitch and time processing. In this study, we compared the categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones and voice onset time (VOT) in Mandarin Chinese, which utilize pitch and time changes, respectively, to convey phonemic contrasts. Method The data were collected from 22 Mandarin-speaking adolescents with ASD and 20 age-matched neurotypical controls. In addition to the identification and discrimination tasks to test CP performance, all the participants were evaluated with their language ability and phonological working memory. Linear mixed-effects models were constructed to evaluate the identification and discrimination scores across different groups and conditions. Results The basic CP pattern of cross-boundary benefit when perceiving both native lexical tones and VOT was largely preserved in high-functioning adolescents with ASD. The degree of CP of lexical tones in ASD was similar to that in typical controls, whereas the degree of CP of VOT in ASD was greatly reduced. Furthermore, the degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with language ability and digit span in ASD participants. Conclusions These findings suggest that the unbalanced acoustic processing capacities for pitch and time can be generalized to the higher level linguistic processing in ASD. Furthermore, the higher degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with better language ability in Mandarin-speaking individuals with ASD.

Madurese exhibits a three-way laryngeal contrast in its plosive inventory, distinguishing voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless aspirated plosives. Previous studies have investigated some acoustic characteristics of the contrast but have not examined possible dialectal variation in this contrast. The present study aims to discuss the contrast by examining Voice Onset Time (VOT) and vowel quality (F1). Twenty participants (10 Western Madurese speakers and 10 Eastern Madurese speakers) were recruited and instructed to read 150 Madurese words containing plosives. The results showed that an interaction of dialect and gender were significantly correlated with VOT: male Western Madurese speakers produced shorter VOT for voiced and voiceless aspirated plosives than their Eastern counterparts. There was also variation in F1 between gender across dialects: male Western Madurese speakers produced [ə] with a lower F1 than their Eastern counterparts. It was suggested that the variation was possibly due to language contact with Javanese.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on a comparative study of Voice Onset Time (VOT) values produced by Uzbek speakers of English and native speakers of American English. The study aimed to determine significant differences in terms of the VOT value in pronunciation of voiced and voiceless stop consonants in word-initial positions. Scholarly sources on the comparative study of Uzbek and English phonetics suggest that most of the Uzbek stop consonants possess similar qualities to those of English stop sounds (Abduazizov 1992; Yusupov 2013). A descriptive comparison of Uzbek and English consonants demonstrates the difference between the two languages in isolated forms rather than in speech. This study is motivated by the fact that little is known about recent studies on the instrumental comparative study of English plosives produced by Uzbek speakers of American English. In addition, so far, no studies have been carried out in VOT analysis of English sounds produced by Uzbek speakers. The research was conducted through voice recording and analyses of data collected from Uzbek speakers and American native speakers. Recordings of 3240 overall tokens were collected and analyzed using Praat phonetic software. The mean VOT values obtained from both subject groups have been compared and statistically tested using the Independent Samples t-test. The research findings show that Uzbek subjects’ and American native subjects’ VOT values differ significantly. However, there are a few words (9 out of 52) where the differences in the VOT values of the two subject groups are not statistically significant. The research presents implications for teaching pronunciation of English plosive sounds in word-initial positions where a stop consonant followed by a vowel sound to Uzbek speakers of English by taking into account the periodic measurement of consonants. In addition, there are implications for future research that might explore other features of VOT produced by Uzbek language speakers. Keywords: Voice Onset Time; stop consonants; voiced; voiceless consonants; Uzbek

This exploratory study investigates the acoustic correlates of the Korean three-way laryngeal stop distinction in Gyeongsang long-term (LT) transplants who were born in the Gyeongsang region but moved to Seoul to pursue higher education. Acoustic data were collected from eight LT transplants, five short-term (ST) transplants, and 11 Seoul speakers to examine whether exposure to Seoul Korean (SK) affects Gyeongsang speakers’ cue-weighting in distinguishing stops in production. LT transplants produced stimuli in both Gyeongsang and Seoul dialects. A cue-weighting model based on the acoustic data reveals that voice onset time (VOT) is less important to distinguish lenis from aspirated stops for Seoul speakers and for LT transplants’ SK, as compared to ST transplants and LT transplants’ Gyeongsang Korean (GK). In addition, fundamental frequency (F0) is more important for the lenis–aspirated distinction for Seoul speakers and LT transplants’ SK, as compared to ST and LT transplants’ GK, showing that LT transplants rely less on VOT and more on F0 to distinguish lenis from aspirated stops compared to ST transplants. LT transplants’ SK reveals that they rely more on VOT and less on F0 compared to SK speakers. The cue-weighting model of the LT transplants provide empirical evidence that a series of sound changes in GK is due to inter-dialect contact.

Most studies of speech perception employ highly controlled stimuli. It is not always clear how such results extend to the processing of natural speech. In a series of experiments, we progressively explored the role of voice onset time (VOT) and potential secondary cues in adult labeling of stressed syllable-initial /b d p t/ produced by typically developing two-year-old learners of American English. Taken together, the results show the following: (a) Adult listeners show phoneme boundaries in labeling functions comparable to what have been established for adult speech. (b) Adult listeners can be sensitive to distributional properties of the stimulus set, even in a study that employs highly varied naturalistic productions from multiple speakers. (c) Secondary cues are available in the speech of two-year-olds, and these may influence listener judgments. Cues may differ across places of articulation and the VOT continuum. These results can lend insight into how clinicians judge child speech during assessment and also have implications for our understanding of the role of primary and secondary acoustic cues in adult perception of child speech.

Purpose Prior work suggests that voice onset time (VOT) may be impacted by laryngeal tension: VOT means decrease when individuals with typical voices increase their fundamental frequency ( f o ) and VOT variability is increased in individuals with vocal hyperfunction, a voice disorder characterized by increased laryngeal tension. This study further explored the relationship between VOT and laryngeal tension during increased f o , vocal effort, and vocal strain. Method Sixteen typical speakers of American English were instructed to produce VOT utterances under four conditions: baseline, high pitch, effort, and strain. Repeated-measures analysis of variance models were used to analyze the effects of condition on VOT means and standard deviations ( SD s); pairwise comparisons were used to determine significant differences between conditions. Results Voicing, condition, and their interaction significantly affected VOT means. Voiceless VOT means significantly decreased for high pitch ( p < .001) relative to baseline; however, no changes in voiceless VOT means were found for effort or strain relative to baseline. Although condition had a significant effect on VOT SD s, there were no significant differences between effort, strain, and high pitch conditions relative to baseline. Conclusions Speakers with typical voices likely engage different musculature to increase pitch than to increase vocal effort and strain. The increased VOT variability present with vocal hyperfunction is not seen in individuals with typical voices using increased effort and strain, supporting the assertion that this feature of vocal hyperfunction may be related to disordered vocal motor control rather than resulting from effortful voice production.

Featural approaches to second language phonetic acquisition posit that the development of new phonetic norms relies on sub-phonemic features, expressed through a constellation of articulatory gestures and their corresponding acoustic cues, which may be shared across multiple phonemes. Within featural approaches, largely supported by research in speech perception, debate remains as to the fundamental scope or ‘size’ of featural units. The current study examines potential featural relationships between voiceless and voiced stop consonants, as expressed through the voice onset time cue. Native English-speaking learners of Spanish received targeted training on Spanish voiceless stop consonant production through a visual feedback paradigm. Analysis focused on the change in voice onset time, for both voiceless (i.e. trained) and voiced (i.e. non-trained) phonemes, across the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest. The results demonstrated a significant improvement (i.e. reduction) in voice onset time for voiceless stops, which were subject to the training paradigm. In contrast, there was no significant change in the non-trained voiced stop consonants. These results suggest a limited featural relationship, with independent voice onset time (VOT) cues for voiceless and voices phonemes. Possible underlying mechanisms that limit feature generalization in second language (L2) phonetic production, including gestural considerations and acoustic similarity, are discussed.

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) has reaped a lot of attention in recent years. Despite the recent advancements in ASR, the potential for extracting the raw features from speech remains lacking. This paper proposes an Automatic Speech Recognition system on Malayalam speech data using spectrogram images and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The voicegram/spectrogram images of sound files are generated, which is fed into CNN. Convolutional Neural Network topology is defined with a set of Convolution and Fully Connected layers and used Softmax layer for classification. An accuracy of 93.33% achieved with this proposed model indicates that spectrogram image-based approaches have promising results in speech-based recognition. An analysis of acoustic characteristics of Malayalam disyllabic words selected to design the ASR system with formant analysis, voice onset time and spectral moments from 4000 tokens produced by 20 speakers is also conducted. A comparison between CNN model and multiple classifiers with acoustic features have been performed and proved the efficiency of deep Neural Networks over raw features.

Burushaski is an endangered language isolate spoken in Hunza, Nager, and Yasin valleys of Gilgit, Northern Pakistan. The present study investigates the acoustic correlates of Hunza Burushaski’s three-way stop laryngeal contrast (voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, and voiced unaspirated) across five places of articulation (bilabial, dental, retroflex, palatal, and velar). A wide range of acoustic correlates were measured, including Voice Onset Time (VOT), fundamental frequency (f0), first four formants (F1, F2, F3, and F4), spectral moments of stop release bursts (spectral center of gravity, spectral standard deviation, spectral skewness, and spectral kurtosis), and spectral tilt (H1*–H2*, H1*–A1*, H1*–A2*, and H1*–A3*). The data were collected from four Burushaski speakers. The findings indicated that voiceless aspirated consonants exhibited longer Voice Onset Time and higher spectral tilt onsets than their voiceless unaspirated and voiced unaspirated counterparts. The fundamental frequency was raised in both voiceless series. Some acoustic measures (e.g., Voice Onset Time and fundamental frequency) were better indicators of the laryngeal contrasts while others (spectral moments) more reliably distinguished the place contrasts. The results of Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) showed that a combination of spectral tilt and Voice Onset Time are the best descriptors of the three laryngeal categories of Burushaski.

Bilinguals' observed perceptual shift across language contexts for shared acoustic properties between their languages supports the idea that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, develop two phonemic representations for the same acoustic property. This phenomenon is known as the double phonemic boundary. This investigation replicated previous findings of bilinguals' double phonemic boundary across a series of go/no-go tasks while controlling for known confounding effects in speech perception (i.e., contrast effects) and differences in resource allocation between bilinguals and monolinguals (i.e., left-hand or right-hand response). Using a range-base language cueing approach, we designed 2 experiments. The first experiment tested whether a voice onset time (VOT) range representative of either Spanish or English phonetic categories can cue bilinguals, but not monolinguals, to use language-specific perceptual routines. The second experiment tested a VOT range with a mixture of Spanish and English phonetic categories to determine whether directing attention to a specific phonetic category can disambiguate the competition of the nonattended category. The results for Experiment 1 showed that bilinguals can rely on the distributional patterns of their native phonetic categories to activate specific language modes. Experiment 2 showed that attention can change the weight given to a native phonetic distinction. However, this process is restricted by the internal phonetic composition of the native language(s).

Although research on foreign language learning among seniors has recently accelerated, studies on L2 phonology in this age group remain scarce. Seniors may be at a great disadvantage when it comes to learning the sounds of a foreign language because age of onset has been shown to correlate negatively with ultimate attainment especially for phonology (Piske et al. 2001). However, this is all the more reason to attempt a better understanding of the mechanisms of senior. This paper offers an attempt at shedding light on how senior learners with an age of L2 onset above 60 produce voiced and voiceless L2 word-initial stops. Twenty L1 Polish senior learners of English were asked to read a list of words containing word-initial voiced and voiceless plosives in their L2 English at A2+/B1 level according to CEFR. The results show that the senior Polish learners of English produce an in-between category for the English stops (with VOT longer than for Polish, but shorter than native English). The senior learners also experienced L1 drift, but mostly in the voiceless L1 Polish stops.

Voicing contrasts are lexically important for differentiating words in many languages (e.g., "bear" vs "pear"). Temporal differences in the voice onset time (VOT) and closure duration (CD) contribute to the voicing contrast in word-onset position. However, little is known about the acoustic realization of these voicing contrasts in Australian English-speaking children. This is essential for understanding the challenges faced by those with language delay. Therefore, the present study examined the VOT and CD values for word-initial stops as produced by 20 Australian English-speaking 4-5-year-olds. As anticipated, these children produced a systematic distinction between voiced and voiceless stops at all places of articulation (PoAs). However, although the children's VOT values for voiced stops were similar to those of adults, their VOTs for voiceless stops were longer. Like adults, the children also had different CD values for voiced and voiceless categories; however, these were systematically longer than those of adults. Even after adjusting for temporal differences by computing proportional ratios for the VOT and CD, children's voicing contrasts were not yet adultlike. These results suggest that children of this age are still developing appropriate timing and articulatory adjustments for voicing contrasts in the word-initial position.

Studies of lexical and syntactic development in immersion programs are numerous, yet phonological development has received much less attention. This study compares the pronunciation of English home language students in one-way and two-way Spanish immersion programs across three sound classes: voiceless stops, rhotics, and vowels. Learner productions were analyzed acoustically and compared to those of Spanish-English bilingual peers. Findings suggest that the two-way immersion context may facilitate more nativelike articulation. Amount of exposure to native speaker input, emerging adolescent identity, and decreases in instructional use of the minority language are explored as contributing factors to the greater outcomes of two-way students.

Changes in the first language (L1) sound system as a result of acquiring a second language (L2) (i.e., phonetic drift) have received considerable attention from a variety of speakers, settings, and environments. Less attention has been given to phonetic drift in adult speakers’ L2 learning as their length of residence in America (LOR) increases. This study examines the effects of LOR on voice onset time (VOT) in L1 Korean stops. Three different groups of Korean adult learners of L2 English were compared to assess how malleable their L1 representations are in terms of LOR and whether there is any relationship between L1 change and L2 acquisition. The results showed that the effect of LOR was linguistically unimportant in the production of Korean stops. However, VOT merger as evidence of sound change in Korean stops were robust in the speech production of most of the female speakers across the groups. The results suggest that L2 English may not be the primary cause of L1 sound change. For generalizability, further study is necessary to see whether other acoustic cues show a similar pattern.

Previous research has indicated that the patterns of phonetic modulations induced by prominence are not consistent across languages but are conditioned by sound systems specific to a given language. Most studies examining the prominence effects in Korean have been restricted to segments in word-initial and phrase-initial positions. The present study, thus, set out to explore the prominence effects for Korean stop consonants in word-medial intervocalic positions. A total of 16 speakers of Seoul Korean (8 males, 8 females) produced word-medial intervocalic lenis and aspirated stops with and without prominence. The prominence was induced by contrast focus on the phonation-type contrast, that is, lenis vs. aspirated stops. Our results showed that F0 of vowels following both lenis and aspirated stops became higher when the target stops received focus than when they did not, whereas voice onset time (VOT) and voicing during stop closure for both lenis and aspirated stops did not differ between the focus and no-focus conditions. The findings add to our understanding of diverse patterns of prominence-induced strengthening on the acoustic realizations of segments.

The English voiceless stop /p/ and voiced stop /ɡ/ are absent in the consonant inventory of Arabic. This difference provides a fertile ground for empirical research in L2 speech learning among Arab L2 speakers of English. The current study, therefore, aims to explore the English stop voicing contrast as produced by Arab native speakers. Focusing on Voice Onset Time (VOT) as an acoustic parameter, the study seeks to examine the extent to which (1) Arab L2 speakers of English maintain the English stop voicing contrast for /p-b/ and /k-ɡ/, and (2) the L2 VOT continuum by Arab L2 speakers follows or deviates from the L1 VOT continuum in English. The acoustic phonetic experiment involved elicited materials of /p-b/ and /k-ɡ/ from four male native speakers of Arabic. The tokens were recorded in isolation (utterance-initial position) and in a carrier sentence (utterance-medial position). The data were then acoustically analysed following standard segmentation, annotation and measurement criteria. Results reveal that the Arab L2 speakers can, to a large extent, maintain the English stop voicing contrast across all places of articulation, with voiced stops usually being produced with “normal” negative VOT (prevoicing) and voiceless stops usually being produced with “normal” positive VOT and also accompanied with aspiration in the long-lag region. There are also exceptional cases of “abnormal” negative VOT (prevoicing) for voiceless stops and “abnormal” positive VOT (devoicing) for voiced stops, with an extremely larger number of devoiced tokens for voiced stops in comparison to prevoiced tokens for voiceless stops. The results accord well with the Speech Learning Model’s prediction that phonetically “new” sounds are relatively easier to learn than phonetically “similar” sounds. The conclusion is drawn that languages sharing the same sound contrast may exhibit different phonetic implementations in marking a phonological contrast.

The electrolarynx (EL) is an electromechanical device that enables patients to produce voice following the surgical removal of their larynx. The purpose of this study is to understand the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of Mandarin consonants produced by EL speakers. First, the acoustic characteristics (including speech intensity, consonant duration, spectral peak, and F2 onset) of Mandarin EL consonants are investigated by comparing the EL and normal consonants. Then, a perceptual evaluation of EL consonants is conducted to identify the relationship between acoustical characteristics and perceptual intelligibility. The results suggest three consonant confusion types are mainly responsible for the poor intelligibility of Mandarin EL consonants: (1) the “unaspirated-for-aspirated” confusion caused by the significantly shortened voice onset time of aspirated consonants; (2) the “voiced-for-voiceless” confusion caused by the continuous pulsing of the EL device and low consonant intensity; and (3) the “perceptual omission” caused by low intensity of consonants and / or consonant omission. The results obtained are promising and potential for further improvements in Mandarin EL speech intelligibility.

A number of recent studies have observed that phonetic variability is constrained across speakers, where speakers exhibit limited variation in the signalling of phonological contrasts in spite of overall differences between speakers. This previous work focused predominantly on controlled laboratory speech and on contrasts in English and German, leaving unclear how such speaker variability is structured in spontaneous speech and in phonological contrasts that make substantial use of more than one acoustic cue. This study attempts to both address these empirical gaps and expand the empirical scope of research investigating structured variability by examining how speakers vary in the use of positive voice onset time and voicing during closure in marking the stop voicing contrast in Japanese spontaneous speech. Strong covarying relationships within each cue across speakers are observed, while between-cue relationships across speakers are much weaker, suggesting that structured variability is constrained by the language-specific phonetic implementation of linguistic contrasts.

Objectives. Cochlear implant (CI) users typically report impaired ability to understand speech in noise. Speech understanding in CI users decreases with noise due to reduced temporal processing ability, and speech perceptual errors involve stop consonants distinguished by voice onset time (VOT). The current study examined the effects of noise on various speech perception tests while at the same time used cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) to quantify the change of neural processing of speech sounds caused by noise. We hypothesized that the noise effects on VOT processing can be reflected in N1/P2 measures, the neural changes relate to behavioral speech perception performances.Methods. Ten adult CI users and 15 normal-hearing (NH) people participated in this study. CAEPs were recorded from 64 scalp electrodes in both quiet and noise (signal-to-noise ratio +5 dB) and in passive and active (requiring consonant discrimination) listening. Speech stimulus was synthesized consonant-vowels with VOTs of 0 and 50 ms. N1-P2 amplitudes and latencies were analyzed as a function of listening condition. For the active condition, the P3b also was analyzed. Behavioral measures included a variety of speech perception tasks.Results. For good performing CI users, performance in most speech test was lower in the presence of noise masking. N1 and P2 latencies became prolonged with noise masking. The P3b amplitudes were smaller in CI groups compared to NH. The degree of P2 latency change (0 vs. 50 ms VOT) was correlated with consonant perception in noise.Conclusion. The effects of noise masking on temporal processing can be reflected in cortical responses in CI users. N1/P2 latencies were more sensitive to noise masking than amplitude measures. Additionally, P2 responses appear to have a better relationship to speech perception in CI users compared to N1.

Background/Aims: Previous research has shown that exposure to multiple foreign accents facilitates adaptation to an untrained novel accent. One explanation is that L2 speech varies systematically such that there are commonalities in the productions of nonnative speakers, regardless of their language background. Methods: A systematic acoustic comparison was conducted between 3 native English speakers and 6 nonnative accents. Voice onset time, unstressed vowel duration, and formant values of stressed and unstressed vowels were analyzed, comparing each nonnative accent to the native English talkers. A subsequent perception experiment tests what effect training on regionally accented voices has on the participant’s comprehension of nonnative accented speech to investigate the importance of within-speaker variation on attunement and generalization. Results: Data for each measure show substantial variability across speakers, reflecting phonetic transfer from individual L1s, as well as substantial inconsistency and variability in pronunciation, rather than commonalities in their productions. Training on native English varieties did not improve participants’ accuracy in understanding nonnative speech. Conclusion: These findings are more consistent with a hypothesis of accent attune­ment wherein listeners track general patterns of nonnative speech rather than relying on overlapping acoustic signals between speakers.

Resumen En inglés, el voice onset time (VOT) desempeña un rol crucial en las distinciones entre oclusivas sordas y sonoras en posición inicial de palabra. La combinación de las prácticas de entrenamiento perceptivo e instrucción explícita ofrece beneficios para la percepción y producción de esos segmentos por estudiantes de inglés. En este trabajo investigamos si la aplicación de cada una de esas técnicas brinda resultados positivos en términos de percepción y de producción de las oclusivas sordas aspiradas /p/, /t/ y /k/. Para ello, participaron 30 estudiantes brasileños de inglés, divididos en tres grupos, cada uno expuesto a diferentes tratamientos. Los participantes realizaron tareas de identificación y producción oral en tres momentos distintos (pretest, postest y postest tardío). Los resultados muestran que el entrenamiento perceptivo promueve mejoras en la percepción, pero no así en la producción. Por su parte, la instrucción explícita con prácticas de producción genera avances en la producción únicamente. Abstract In English, Voice Onset Time (VOT) plays a crucial role in the differentiation between voiceless and voiced stop sounds in word-initial position. The combination of practices of perceptual training and explicit instruction enhance the perception and production of these segments by students of English. We investigate whether the application of each of these techniques produces positive results in terms of the perception and production of aspirated voiceless stops /p/, /t/ and /k/. Thirty Brazilian students divided into three groups participated in the study, with each group exposed to different treatments. Participants carried out identification and oral production tasks in three different moments (pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest). The results show that perceptual training improves perception, but not production. On the other hand, explicit instruction with production practices only improve production. Resumo Em inglês, o voice onset time (VOT) desempenha um papel crucial nas distinções entre oclusivas surdas e sonoras em posição inicial de palavra. A combinação de práticas de treinamento perceptual e instrução explícita ofrece benefícios para a percepção e produção desses segmentos por parte de estudantes de inglês. Neste trabalho, pesquisamos se a aplicação de cada uma dessas técnicas oferece resultados positivos em termos de percepção e produção das oclusivas surdas aspiradas /p/, /t/ e /k/. Para isso, participaram trinta estudantes brasileiros, divididos em três grupos, cada um exposto a diferentes tratamentos. Os participantes realizaram tarefas de identificação e produção oral em três momentos distintos (pré-teste, pós-teste e pós-teste tardio). Os resultados mostram que o treinamento perceptual promove melhorias na percepção, mas não na produção. Por sua vez, a instrução explícita com práticas de produção gera avanços unicamente na produção.

Purpose: The interconnectedness of phonological categories between the two languages of early bilinguals has previously been explored using single-probe speech production and perception data. Our goal was to tap into bilingual phonological representations in another way, namely via monitoring instances of phonetic drift due to changes in language exposure. Design: We report a case study of two teenage English–Czech simultaneous bilinguals who live in Canada and spend summers in Czechia (Czech Republic). Voice onset time (VOT) of word-initial voiced and voiceless stops was measured upon the bilinguals’ arrival to and before their departure from a two-month stay in Czechia. Data and Analysis: Each bilingual read the same set of 71 Czech and 58 English stop-initial target words (and additional fillers) at each time of measurement. The measured VOT values were submitted to linear mixed effects models, assessing the effects of target language, measurement time, and underlying voicing. Findings/Conclusions: After the immersion in a Czech-speaking environment, for both speakers the count of voiced stops realized as prevoiced (i.e., having negative VOT) increased and the measured VOT of voiced stops (appearing different for English and Czech initially) drifted towards more negative (more Czech-like) values in both languages, while no change was detected for the voiceless stops of either English (aspirated) or Czech (unaspirated). The results suggest that the bilinguals maintain three-way VOT distinctions, differentiating voiceless aspirated (English), voiceless unaspirated (Czech), and voiced (English–Czech) stops, with connected bilingual representations of the voiced categories. Originality: Data on phonetic drift in simultaneous bilinguals proficient in their two languages have not previously been published. Significance/Implications: We show that observing phonetic shifts due to changes in the ambient linguistic environment can be revealing about the organization of phonological space in simultaneous bilinguals.

Descriptions of Australian Aboriginal English list the neutralisation of the Standard English contrast between so-called voiced and voiceless stops as one characteristic feature. This paper reports on the results of an acoustic analysis of data collected in a production task by monolingual speakers of Standard Australian English in Sydney, of Aboriginal English on Croker Island, Northern Territory, and bilingual speakers of Iwaidja/Aboriginal English and Kunwinjku/Aboriginal English on Croker Island. The results show that average values for Voice Onset Time, the main correlate of the “stop voicing contrast” in English, and Closure Duration collected from Aboriginal speakers of English do not significantly differ from that of speakers of Standard Australian English, irrespective of language background. This result proves that the stop contrast is not neutralised by these Aboriginal speakers of English. However, it can be shown that phonetic voicing manifesting itself in Voice Termination Time is a prevalent and characteristic feature of Aboriginal English on Croker Island. This feature aligns Aboriginal English on Croker Island with local Aboriginal languages and differentiates it from Standard Australian English.

Event durations are perceived to be shorter under divided attention. "Time shrinkage" is thought to be due to rapid attentional switches between tasks, leading to a loss of input samples, and hence, an under-estimation of duration. However, few studies have considered whether this phenomenon applies to durations relevant to time-based phonetic categorization. In this study, participants categorized auditory stimuli varying in voice onset time (VOT) as /ɡ/ or /k/. They did so under focused attention (auditory task alone) or while performing a low-level visual task at the same time (divided attention). Under divided attention, there was increased response imprecision but no bias toward hearing /ɡ/, the shorter-VOT sound. It is concluded that sample loss under divided attention does not apply to the perception of phonetic contrasts within the VOT range.

The Northwestern group of Indo-Aryan (Dardic) languages is generally known to have undergone consonantal shift, which resulted in the loss of voiced aspirated (VDA) stops and affricates of Sanskrit. Kalasha, an endangered Dardic language spoken in Chitral (Northern Pakistan), still preserves the Old Indo-Aryan four-way laryngeal system. The current study examines acoustic and articulatory correlates of Kalasha's four-way laryngeal contrast across places and manners of articulation, using lingual ultrasound-imaging and several acoustic measures. The analysis included the standard acoustic [voice onset time (VOT), after prevoicing interval (API), fundamental frequency onset, first four spectral moments] and articulatory (smoothing spline analysis of variance) measures, which capture laryngeal, place, and manner differences in consonants. The results showed that VOT reliably differentiated the four-way laryngeal contrast of Kalasha. VDA stops and affricates are characterized by shorter voicing lead VOT, higher API, and lower fundamental frequency onset than their voiced unaspirated (VDUA) counterparts. However, the first four spectral moments did not distinguish the two VDUA and VDA stop series. The tongue root retraction distinguishes the voiceless stops and affricates from the voiced ones.

Evaluation of precision of consonant articulation is commonly used metric in assessment of pathological speech. However, up to date most of the research on consonant characteristics was performed on English while there are obvious language-specific differences. The aim of the current study was therefore to investigate the patterns of consonant articulation in Czech across 6 stop consonants with respect to age and gender. The database used consisted of 30 female and 30 male healthy participants. Four acoustic variables including voice onset time (VOT), VOT ratio and two spectral moments were analyzed. The Czech plosives /p/, /t/ and /k/ were found to be characterized by short voicing lag (average VOT ranged from 14 to 32 ms) while voiced plosives /b/, /d/ and /g/ by long voicing lead (average VOT ranged from -79 to -91 ms). Furthermore, we observed significantly longer duration of both VOT (p < 0.05) and VOT ratio (p < 0.01) of voiceless plosives in female compared to male gender. Finally, we revealed a significant negative correlation between age and duration of voiceless (r = -0.36, p < 0.05) as well as voiced VOT (r = -0.45, p = 0.01) in female but not in male participants.

Purpose This study examined vocal hyperfunction (VH) using voice onset time (VOT). We hypothesized that speakers with VH would produce shorter VOTs, indicating increased laryngeal tension, and more variable VOTs, indicating disordered vocal motor control. Method We enrolled 32 adult women with VH (aged 20–74 years) and 32 age- and sex-matched controls. All were speakers of American English. Participants produced vowel–consonant–vowel combinations that varied by vowel (ɑ/u) and plosive (p/b, t/d, k/g). VOT—measured at the release of the plosive to the initiation of voicing—was averaged over three repetitions of each vowel–consonant–vowel combination. The coefficient of variation (CoV), a measure of VOT variability, was also computed for each combination. Results The mean VOTs were not significantly different between the two groups; however, the CoVs were significantly greater in speakers with VH compared to controls. Voiceless CoV values were moderately correlated with clinical ratings of dysphonia ( r = .58) in speakers with VH. Conclusion Speakers with VH exhibited greater variability in phonemic voicing targets compared to vocally healthy speakers, supporting the hypothesis for disordered vocal motor control in VH. We suggest future work incorporate VOT measures when assessing auditory discrimination and auditory–motor integration deficits in VH.

Sound change in the form of plosive mergers has been reported for a variety of languages and is the result of a reduction of phonetic distance between two (or more) sounds. The present study is concerned with the opposite development of phonetic differentiation in plosives (akin to a phonetic split), a less commonly reported phenomenon that is taking place in Austrian German at the moment. A previously small (or null) phonetic distinction between fortis and lenis plosives – a presumed near-merger – is gradually developing into a clear phonetic contrast in younger speakers. In the present study, voice onset time of word-initial plosives was measured in two generations of Austrian speakers (born in the middle and at the end of the 20th century), yielding an ongoing phonetic differentiation where the voice onset time of lenis consonants is shortened while, at the same time, that of fortis consonants is lengthened. These results present an insight into the recent diachronic development of Austrian German and the changes in plosive production that are currently taking place.

Voice onset time (VOT) is an acoustic property of stop consonants that is commonly manipulated in studies of phonetic perception. This paper contains a thorough description of the "progressive cutback and replacement" method of VOT manipulation, and comparison with other VOT manipulation techniques. Other acoustic properties that covary with VOT-such as fundamental frequency and formant transitions-are also discussed, along with considerations for testing VOT perception and its relationship to various other measures of auditory temporal or spectral processing. An implementation of the progressive cutback and replacement method in the Praat scripting language is presented, which is suitable for modifying natural speech for perceptual experiments involving VOT and/or related covarying F0 and intensity cues. Justifications are provided for the stimulus design choices and constraints implemented in the script.

This study compared Spanish-English bilinguals’ and English monolinguals’ VOT values for /b, d, g/ in cognates and non-cognates. Twenty-six young adult participants (fourteen bilinguals and twelve ...

Four self-identified code-switchers from Southwest Virginia and six actors who did not identify as having Southern accents each recorded two sets of stimuli in which they aimed to produce a more Southern and a more Standardized US accent. An analysis of the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of phrase and word initial voiced stops revealed that both groups of speakers produced more tokens with prevoicing (lead or negative lag voicing) when speaking in the Southern versus the Standard guise, and that in the Standard guise, the Southern speakers produced more prevoiced tokens than the actors. These findings support fairly recent descriptions of lead voicing as a feature of Southern US English. They additionally show that despite the lack of overt commentary about this feature, speakers have an awareness of the association between lead voicing and Southern US English because they manipulate the feature in a socially meaningful way; in Labov's [(1972). Sociolinguistic Patterns (Blackwell, Oxford)] terminology, negative lag voicing is a marker of Southern US English.

Differences in the way voice onset time (VOT) is used across languages to maintain stop voicing contrasts have been well-documented, but less research has focused on VOT variation within voicing categories. For example, native English speakers are generally reported to produce word-initial voiced stops with short positive VOTs, but within category differences connected to self-reported gender and ethnicity have been reported in one preliminary study, with male speakers prevoicing more than female speakers and with African American speakers prevoicing more than Caucasian American speakers. For the current study, native speakers of English from Mississippi were recorded reading three repetitions of a pseudo-randomized list of words designed to investigate the connections between gender, ethnicity, and prevoicing of word-initial voiced stops. Participants self-identified their gender and ethnicity in an open-ended language background survey completed after recordings. Significant ethnicity, but not gender, differences were found, with African American speakers prevoicing voiced stops far more than their Caucasian American counterparts. Presumably, this difference is linked, not to ethnicity, but to dialect. These findings suggest that dialectal differences play a role in the VOT variation of word-initial voiced stops and that prevoicing may be a heretofore unidentified characteristic of African American English.

This study brings together two previously largely independent fields of multilingual language acquisition: heritage language and third language (L3) acquisition. We investigate the production of fortis and lenis stops in semi-naturalistic speech in the three languages of 20 heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian with German as a majority language and English as L3. The study aims to identify the extent to which the HSs produce distinct values across all three languages, or whether crosslinguistic influence (CLI) occurs. To this end, we compare the HSs’ voice onset time (VOT) values with those of L2 English speakers from Italy and Germany. The language triad exhibits overlapping and distinct VOT realizations, making VOT a potentially vulnerable category. Results indicate CLI from German into Italian, although a systemic difference is maintained. When speaking English, the HSs show an advantage over the Italian L2 control group, with less prevoicing and longer fortis stops, indicating a specific bilingual advantage.

Summary Aim Our study was carried out to investigate the presence of known differences in voice and articulation quality after total laryngectomy. Patients provided phonation with tracheoesophageal speech prosthesis. We recorded patients’ voice onset time (VOT) values – an important parameter of acoustic analysis. Methods The study included 18 patients with total laryngectomy who received valvular speech prosthesis via a primary or secondary tracheoesophageal fistula between 2009 and 2011 at the Istanbul Training and Research Hospital Otorhinolaryngology Clinic. Twenty healthy male volunteers were included as the control group. All subjects produced the /pa/, /ta/, /ka/ syllables three times, and the VOT values were determined by recording the voices on a computer. Results A total of 38 male patients, 18 of which were patients with total laryngectomy and tracheoesophageal speech prosthesis (aged between 46 and 75 years, mean: 59) and 20 controls (aged between 50 and 70 years, mean: 58), were included in the study. The age distribution of the groups did not differ statistically (P > 0.05). In the total laryngectomy and tracheoesophageal speech prosthesis group, the VOT mean values of the /ka/ syllable were significantly lower than the control group, whereas the /pa/ (P = 0.848) and /ta/ VOT mean values (P = 0.809) were similar between groups. Conclusions This study shows that there is no significant difference in the articulation of voiceless plosives, except for the /ka/ sound, between patients using speech prostheses after total laryngectomy and controls. For standardization of these measured values and their use in clinical practice, it may be beneficial to support this study with studies that involve more patients and examine different indicators showing the quality and intelligibility of other voice characteristics.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to quantify changes in acoustic distinctiveness in two groups of talkers with Parkinson's disease as they modify across a wide range of speaking rates. Method People with Parkinson's disease with and without deep brain stimulation and older healthy controls read 24 carrier phrases at different speech rates. Target nonsense words in the carrier phrases were designed to elicit stop consonants and corner vowels. Participants spoke at seven self-selected speech rates from very slow to very fast, elicited via magnitude production. Speech rate was measured in absolute words per minute and as a proportion of each talker's habitual rate. Measures of segmental distinctiveness included a temporal consonant measure, namely, voice onset time, and a spectral vowel measure, namely, vowel articulation index. Results All talkers successfully modified their rate of speech from slow to fast. Talkers with Parkinson's disease and deep brain stimulation demonstrated greater baseline speech impairment and produced smaller proportional changes at the fast end of the continuum. Increasingly slower speaking rates were associated with increased temporal contrasts (voice onset time) but not spectral contrasts (vowel articulation). Faster speech was associated with decreased contrasts in both domains. Talkers with deep brain stimulation demonstrated more aberrant productions across all speaking rates. Conclusions Findings suggest that temporal and spectral segmental distinctiveness are asymmetrically affected by speaking rate modifications in Parkinson's disease. Talkers with deep brain stimulation warrant further investigation with regard to speech changes they make as they adjust their speaking rate.

Parkinson's disease (PD) and the parkinsonian variant of Multiple System Atrophy (MSA-P) are two neurodegenerative diseases which share similar clinical features, particularly in early disease stages. The differential diagnosis can be thus very challenging. Dysarthria is known to be a frequent and early clinical feature of PD and MSA. It can be thus used as a vehicle to provide a vocal biomarker which could help in the differential diagnosis. In particular, distortion of consonants is known to be a frequent impairment in these diseases. The aim of this study is to investigate distinctive patterns in the distortion of voiced obstruents (plosives and fricatives). It is the first study which attempts to examine such distortions in the French language for the purpose of the differential diagnosis between PD and MSA-P (and among the very few studies if we consider all languages). We carry out a perceptual and objective analysis of voiced obstruents extracted from isolated pseudo-words initials. We first show that devoicing is a significant impairment which predominates in MSA-P. We then show that voice onset time (VOT) of voiced plosives (prevoicing duration) can be a complementary feature to improve the accuracy in discrimination between PD and MSA-P.

Objective The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between vocal variability and variability of vocal-articulatory coordination in children. Furthermore, this study examined if this relationship was impacted by pediatric dysphonia. Study Design Retrospective analysis of speech samples in the Arizona Child Acoustic Database. Methods Speech samples from children 2–7 years of age were selected for analysis. Vocal variability was defined as the coefficient of variation (CoV) of fundamental frequency, taken from the center of sustained vowels. Variability of vocal-articulatory coordination was defined as the CoV of voice onset time (VOT) of voiceless stop consonants. Both objective and subjective measures of dysphonia were completed for each participant. Results Children had a negative correlation between VOT variability and vocal variability. Further analysis indicated that this relationship was present in children with typical developmental levels of dysphonia but absent for children with moderate to severe dysphonia. Increased dysphonia severity was associated with increased vocal variability. Conclusion Increased VOT variability was associated with decreased vocal variability in children with dysphonia severities consistent with typical vocal development. However, this relationship was not present in children with moderate to severe dysphonia. This study suggests that future work is needed to examine the relationships between the vocal system and vocal-articulatory coordination in children with and without diagnosed voice disorders.