The Maya Classroom in Diaspora Goti, Korinta Maldonado; Shosted, Ryan
Maya America,
01/2019, Letnik:
1, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Over the past ten years, professors and students from the University of Illinois have collaborated with the rapidly growing population of Maya residents in Champaign County, Illinois to develop ...opportunities to use, preserve, and pass on their linguistic and cultural skills. Our general goals are to support educators and school to better understand the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Maya students and to open up spaces and build support networks for the students to continue to use their language in diaspora.
The production of an ejective fricative involves an aerodynamic dilemma. An ejective requires increased intraoral air pressure, while a fricative requires air to be continuously vented through a ...narrow constriction. This venting may defeat the pressure increase. Because ejectivity is realized by forming a complete oral closure, we hypothesize that complete closure (i.e. affrication) may also typify ejective fricatives in some languages. We test this hypothesis through an acoustic production experiment with speakers of Tigrinya. We find substantial evidence that Tigrinya /s’/ is commonly realized as ts’ and comment on the plausibility of affrication as a general strategy for the realization of ejective fricatives.
•We studied productions of nasal, nasalized and oral vowels in Brazilian Portuguese.•Nasal and oral vowel congeners manifested distinct oropharyngeal articulations.•Systematic differences in F1 were ...observed for nasal and oral vowel congeners.•Nasalized vowels were not produced in the same manner as nasal vowels.•Nasal vowels are argued to be underlyingly nasal in Brazilian Portuguese.
The phonological feature ±nasal does not distinguish systematic oropharyngeal differences between oral, nasal, and phonetically nasalized vowels. A variety of studies now show that oropharyngeal shape may systematically enhance or compensate for the acoustic effects of nasal coupling. Additionally, the phonetic implementation of −nasal vowels in oral and nasal contexts is a matter of some controversy. While the velopharyngeal opening of these vowels has been inferred from aerodynamics, we know of no attempt to directly study the oropharyngeal articulation of underlyingly oral vowels in nasal and oral contexts in a language that may also have phonemically +nasal vowels. In this study, real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rt-MRI) is used to study vocal tract configuration in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), a language that arguably has +nasal (phonemically nasal) vowels and two classes of −nasal vowels (oral and phonetically nasalized). Results show oropharyngeal differences between nasal and oral vowel congeners /a∼ã/, /i∼ĩ/ and /u∼ũ/, which arguably enhance well-known acoustic effects of nasal coupling on vowel height. In addition, nasal coda consonants emerge following nasal vowels. Phonetically nasalized vowels, on the other hand, show no sign of nasal enhancement, including nasal coda emergence, implying they are underlyingly oral vowels, despite the environment in which they occur. We argue that nasal vowels in BP are underlyingly /Ṽ/, rather than /VN/ sequences, the latter distinction being reserved for nasalized vowels. Articulatory divergence of +nasal and −nasal vowels has implications in perception, sound change, and the phonetic implementation of nasality.
Nasal coda emergence (NCE) (sometimes referred to as ‘restoration’) is the process by which a nasal vowel develops an excrescent nasal coda which may or may not have been present in an earlier form ...of the spoken language. NCE is operative in the Carioca (Rio de Janeiro) dialect of Brazilian Portuguese (CBP), an Ibero-Romance language with five phonemically nasal vowels. The output of NCE (in this language) is usually a velar nasal. It has been suggested that the process may be a function of tongue position (Hajek 1991: 262). To test the null hypothesis that NCE does not correlate with vowel height or anteriority, aerodynamic (nasal and oral flow) signals were obtained from three speakers of CBP. The speakers uttered words ending in nasal vowels while wearing a circumferentially-vented pneumotach split-flow air mask. For comparative purposes, parallel data were gathered from a Hindi and a French speaker as well. The maximum nasal percentage of total flow and the maximum real nasal flow (in ml/s) were measured for each token, averaged across vowels and, in the case of CBP, across speakers. For CBP, the null hypothesis is rejected, lending support to the alternative: vowel height and posteriority indeed condition the emergence of NCE. This suggests a role for the lowered velum and/or raised tongue body in the development of coda obstruents on nasal vowels.
There is increasing evidence that fine articulatory adjustments are made by speakers to reinforce and sometimes counteract the acoustic consequences of nasality. However, it is difficult to attribute ...the acoustic changes in nasal vowel spectra to either oral cavity configuration or to velopharyngeal opening (VPO). This paper takes the position that it is possible to disambiguate the effects of VPO and oropharyngeal configuration on the acoustic output of the vocal tract by studying the position and movement of the tongue and lips during the production of oral and nasal vowels. This paper uses simultaneously collected articulatory, acoustic, and nasal airflow data during the production of all oral and phonemically nasal vowels in Hindi (four speakers) to understand the consequences of the movements of oral articulators on the spectra of nasal vowels. For Hindi nasal vowels, the tongue body is generally lowered for back vowels, fronted for low vowels, and raised for front vowels (with respect to their oral congeners). These movements are generally supported by accompanying changes in the vowel spectra. In Hindi, the lowering of back nasal vowels may have originally served to enhance the acoustic salience of nasality, but has since engendered a nasal vowel chain shift.
It is well known that, for nasal vowels, traditional estimation of the shape of the vocal tract via inference from acoustic characteristics is complicated by the acoustic effects of velopharyngeal ...coupling (i.e. nasalization). Given this complexity, measuring the shape of the vocal tract directly is, perhaps, a more desirable method of assessing oro-pharyngeal configuration. Real-time MRI (rt-MRI) allows us to explore the shape of the entire vocal tract during the production of nasal vowels. This permits us to better assess the contribution of the oro-pharyngeal acoustic transfer function to the acoustic signal, which is otherwise obscured by the conflation of the independent oro-pharyngeal and nasal acoustic transfer functions. The oro-pharyngeal shape associated with nasal vowels has implications for both synchronic and diachronic phonology, particularly in French, where descriptions of nasal vowels have long suggested that differences in oral articulation, in addition to velopharyngeal coupling, serve to distinguish oral and nasal vowels. In this study, we use single-slice rt-MRI (midsagittal slice) and multi-slice rt-MRI (oral, velopharyngeal, mediopharyngeal, and lower pharyngeal slices) to examine three nasal vowels /ɛ˜, ɑ˜, ɔ˜/ and their traditional oral counterparts /ɛ, a, o/ as produced by three female speakers of Northern Metropolitan French (NMF). We find evidence of lingual and pharyngeal articulatory configurations which may, in some cases, enhance formant-frequency-related acoustic effects associated with nasalization, viz., modulation of F1 and F2. Given these findings, we speculate that the synchronic oral articulation of NMF nasal vowels may have arisen—at least in part—due to misperception of the articulatory source of changes in F1 and F2, rather than to mere chance, as has been argued.
•We analyze rt-MRI data from oral/nasal vowels produced by three French speakers.•Measures include vocal tract area estimates and PC analyses of pixel intensities.•Some oral articulations of the nasal vowels enhance nasalization's acoustic effects.•Evidence of enhancement observed for both lingual and pharyngeal articulation.•Synchronic articulation likely resulted from diachronic change due to misperception.
Standard Georgian Shosted, Ryan K.; Chikovani, Vakhtang
Journal of the International Phonetic Association,
12/2006, Letnik:
36, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Georgian is a Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language spoken by 4 to 5 million people in the Republic of Georgia, with small diaspora communities spread out in a few republics of the former Soviet ...Union, Iran, and Turkey. Shanidze (1973) distinguishes six groups of Georgian dialects: Dasavluri (Imeruli, Guruli, Rachuli, Lechkhumuri); Ingilouri; Kartlur-Kakhuri (Kartluri, Kakhuri, Javakhuri, Meskhuri, Kizikuri); Mtiulur-Pshauri (Mtiulur-Gudamakruli, Pshauri); Pkhouri (Khevsuruli, Mokheuri, Tushuri); and Samkhret-Dasavluri (Acharuli, Imerkheuli). The Kartluri dialect is considered the basis of standard or literary Georgian. It is spoken in Kartli, an eastern Georgian province where Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, is located. Standard literary Georgian is discussed here. One male speaker from Tbilisi (the second author) was consulted for all the data presented in the illustration.
•Low/mid-low vowels spontaneously nasalize after glottal consonants in Thai.•Low/mid-low vowels after /h/ are produced with large velopharyngeal opening (VPO).•Vowels after /h/ exhibit larger VPO ...than vowels after /ʔ/.
Spontaneous nasalization is the emergence of distinctive nasalization in contexts lacking an historical etymological nasal. In Thai, low and mid-low vowels nasalize after /h/ and to a lesser degree after /ʔ/. It has been reasoned that nasalization after /h/ may occur because breathiness and nasalization are acoustically similar; both introduce higher energy at low frequencies and increase spectral tilt. Glottal consonants may generally facilitate nasalization because aerodynamically they do not require velopharyngeal closure. We investigated velopharyngeal opening (VPO) during vowels after /h/ and/ ʔ/ and measured spectral tilt (H1–H2). We measured VPO by processing oblique ultra-fast magnetic resonance images of the velopharyngeal port. Four Thai speakers exhibited a complex system of VPO that varied based on vowel height and preceding consonant. Low vowels after /h/ manifested more physiological nasalization than low vowels after /ʔ/, while the former were often produced with higher spectral tilt, which may be indicative of either increased breathiness or nasalization. While VPO is likely responsible for impressions of greater nasalization after /h/, our findings suggest that breathiness and VPO may interact in the spontaneously nasalized vowels of Thai.
In acoustic studies of vowel nasalization, it is sometimes assumed that the primary articulatory difference between an oral vowel and a nasal vowel is the coupling of the nasal cavity to the rest of ...the vocal tract. Acoustic modulations observed in nasal vowels are customarily attributed to the presence of additional poles affiliated with the naso-pharyngeal tract and zeros affiliated with the nasal cavity. We test the hypothesis that oral configuration may also change during nasalized vowels, either enhancing or compensating for the acoustic modulations associated with nasality. We analyze tongue position, nasal airflow, and acoustic data to determine whether American English /i/ and /a/ manifest different oral configurations when they are nasalized, i.e. when they are followed by nasal consonants. We find that tongue position is higher during nasalized ĩ than it is during oral i but do not find any effect for nasalized ã. We argue that speakers of American English raise the tongue body during nasalized ĩ in order to counteract the perceived F1-raising (centralization) associated with high vowel nasalization.
► Many analyses presuppose that nasal and oral vowels have the same oral properties. ► F1-modulation can be attributed to both nasalization and tongue height. ► We find that the tongue is higher in American English /i/ when preceded by a nasal. ► Speakers may be compensating for F1-modulation associated with nasality. ► Speakers may be resisting phonological vowel nasalization by raising the tongue.
In the typical speech of any language, voicing onset and offset are effortlessly coordinated with articulation as part of the intrinsic coordination of sound production. In this paper, we argue that ...voicing-articulatory coordination patterns could be shaped by sensory feedback during early speech learning and these patterns persist in mature syllable productions. Our experimental results show that voicing onset is closely associated with the peak velocity and peak amplitude of jaw and upper lip movements for VC syllables in adults. This robust coordination in the onset position may function to increase the salience of VC syllables and provide a phonetically natural explanation for vowels to undergo phonological lengthening and to avoid phonological reduction in word-initial onset position.
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