Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T20:31:15.713Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Regressive voicing assimilation: Production and perception studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2010

Scott Myers
Scott Myers*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many languages have a phonological pattern of regressive voicing assimilation, according to which an obstruent is required to match a following obstruent in voicing (e.g. Russian, Sanskrit). This restriction on the distribution of categories has parallels in the phonetic fact that an obstruent has a longer interval of glottal pulsing when it occurs before a voiced sound than when it occurs before a voiceless sound. It is proposed that the phonological pattern arises diachronically through a reanalysis of the phonetic pattern, beginning with a tendency for listeners to identify an obstruent before another obstruent as matching the latter in voicing. This paper reports on two experiments designed to test premises of this account. A production study explores how obstruent voicing in English is affected by voicing in a following segment. A perception study explores how the identification of voicing categories is impacted by the acoustic effects of following segment context. It is found that listeners tend to identify a fricative as voiceless if it is drawn from the position before a voiceless obstruent, but that a following voiced segment has no significant effect on voicing class identification. Implications for the diachronic account of regressive voicing assimilation are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 163 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abu-Mansour, Mahasen. 1996. Voice as a privative feature: Assimilation in Arabic. In Eid, Mushira (ed.), Perspectives on Arabic linguistics VIII, 201–231. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Andersen, Henning (ed.). 1986. Sandhi phenomena in the languages of Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Avram, Andrei. 1986. Sandhi phenomena in Romanian. In Andersen (ed.), 551–574.Google Scholar
Barkai, Malachi. 1972. Problems in the phonology of Israeli Hebrew. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.Google Scholar
Barry, Martin & Teifour, Ryad. 1999. Temporal patterns in Syrian Arabic voicing assimilation. 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3, San Francisco, CA, 2429–2432.Google Scholar
Bliese, Loren. 1976. Afar. In Bender, M. Lionel (ed.), The non-Semitic languages of Ethiopia, 133–165. East Lansing, MI: African Studies Center, Michigan State University.Google Scholar
Booij, Geert. 1995. The phonology of Dutch. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Burton, Martha & Robblee, Karen. 1997. A phonetic analysis of voicing assimilation in Russian. Journal of Phonetics 25 (2), 97–114.Google Scholar
Charles-Luce, Jan. 1993. The effects of semantic context on voicing neutralization. Phonetica 50 (1), 28–43.Google Scholar
Chen, Matthew. 1970. Vowel length variation as a function of the voicing of the consonant environment. Phonetica 22 (3), 129–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cho, Young-Mee. 1990. A typology of voicing assimilation. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 9, 141–155.Google Scholar
Cohn, Abigail. 1993. Nasalization in English: Phonology or phonetics. Phonology 10 (1), 43–82.Google Scholar
Cole, Ronald & Cooper, William. 1975. Perception of voicing in English affricates and fricatives. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 58 (6), 1280–1287.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dambriunas, Leonardus, Klimas, Antanas & Smalstieg, William R.. 1966. Introduction to Modern Lithuanian. Brooklyn, NY: Franciscan Fathers.Google Scholar
de Jong, Kenneth. 1991. An articulatory study of consonant-induced vowel duration changes in English. Phonetica 48 (1), 1–17.Google Scholar
Dell, François. 1995. Consonant clusters and phonological syllables in French. Lingua 95 (1), 5–26.Google Scholar
Denes, Peter. 1955. Effect of duration on the perception of voicing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 27 (4), 761–764.Google Scholar
Derbyshire, Desmond. 1985. Hixkaryana and linguistic typology. Arlington, VA: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Docherty, Gerard. 1992. The timing of voicing in British English obstruents. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Ernestus, Mirjam & Harald Baayen, R. 2006. The functionality of incomplete neutralization in Dutch: The case of past-tense formation. In Goldstein, Louis, Whalen, Doug & Best, Catherine T. (eds.), Laboratory Phonology 8, 27–49. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Francard, Michel & Morin, Yves-Charles. 1986. Sandhi in Walloon. In Andersen (ed.), 453–474.Google Scholar
Haggard, Mark. 1978. The devoicing of voiced fricatives. Journal of Phonetics 6 (2), 95–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hahn, Reinhard. 1991. Spoken Uyghur. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris. 1959. The sound pattern of Russian. s’-Gravenhage: Mouton.Google Scholar
Heim, Michael. 1976. Contemporary Czech. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers.Google Scholar
Helgason, Pétur & Ringen, Catherine. 2007. Regressive voice assimilation in Swedish. 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1357–1360.Google Scholar
Helgason, Pétur & Ringen, Catherine. 2008. Voicing and aspiration in Swedish stops. Journal of Phonetics 36 (4), 607–628.Google Scholar
Herrity, Peter. 2000. Slovene: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hogan, John & Roszypal, Anton. 1980. Evaluation of vowel duration as a cue for the voicing distinction in the following word-final consonant. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 67 (5), 1764–1771.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry. 1976. Phonologization. In Juilland, Alphonse (ed.), Linguistic studies offered to Joseph Greenberg, vol. 2, 407–418. Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri.Google Scholar
Jansen, Wouter. 2004. Laryngeal contrast and phonetic voicing: A Laboratory Phonology approach to English, Hungarian, and Dutch. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Groningen. http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/arts/w.jansen/ (17 January 2009).Google Scholar
Katz, Dovid. 1987. Grammar of the Yiddish language. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Kessinger, Rachel & Blumstein, Sheila. 1997. Effects of speaking rate on voice-onset time in Thai, French, and English. Journal of Phonetics 25 (2), 143–168.Google Scholar
Kingston, John & Diehl, Randy. 1994. Phonetic knowledge. Language 70 (3), 419–454.Google Scholar
Kluender, Keith, Diehl, Randy & Wright, Beverly. 1988. Vowel-length difference before voiced and voiceless consonants: An auditory explanation. Journal of Phonetics 16 (2), 153–169.Google Scholar
Kohler, Klaus. 1979. Dimensions in the perception of fortis and lenis plosives. Phonetica 36 (4–5), 332–343.Google Scholar
Kuzla, Claudia, Cho, Taehong & Ernestus, Mirjam. 2007. Prosodic strengthening of German fricatives in duration and assimilatory devoicing. Journal of Phonetics 35 (3), 301–320.Google Scholar
Le Dû, Jean. 1986. A sandhi survey of the Breton language. In Andersen (ed.), 435–450.Google Scholar
Lees, Robert. 1961. The phonology of Modern Standard Turkish. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Publications.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Björn. 1968. Temporal organization of syllable production. Speech Transmission Laboratory Quarterly Progress and Status Report 2/3, 1–6. Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Björn & Studdert-Kennedy, Michael. 1967. On the role of formant transitions in vowel recognition. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 42 (4), 830–843.Google Scholar
Lombardi, Linda. 1995. Laryngeal neutralization and syllable well-formedness. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 13 (1), 39–74.Google Scholar
Lombardi, Linda. 1999. Positional faithfulness and voicing assimilation in Optimality Theory. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 17 (2), 267–302.Google Scholar
Mann, Virginia & Repp, Bruno. 1980. Influence of vocalic context on perception of the [∫]–[s] distinction. Perception and Psychophysics 28 (3), 213–228.Google Scholar
Munhall, Kevin & Löfqvist, Anders. 1992. Gestural aggregation in speech: Laryngeal gestures. Journal of Phonetics 20 (1), 111–126.Google Scholar
Myers, Scott & Hansen, Benjamin. 2007. The origin of vowel length neutralization in final position: Evidence from Finnish speakers. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 25 (1), 157–193.Google Scholar
Niedermann, Max. 1910. Outlines of Latin phonetics. London: George Routledge & Sons.Google Scholar
Noonan, Michael. 1992. A grammar of Lango. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ohala, John. 1981. The listener as a source of sound change. Chicago Linguistics Society: Parasession on Language and Behavior, 178–203. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Ohala, John. 1983. The origin of sound patterns in vocal tract constraints. In MacNeilage, Peter (ed.), The production of speech, 189–216. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Ohala, John. 1990. The phonetics and phonology of aspects of assimilation. In Kingston, John & Beckman, Mary (eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology I: Between the grammar and physics of speech, 258–275. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ohala, John. 1993. The phonetics of sound change. In Jones, Charles (ed.), Historical linguistics: Problems and perspectives, 237–278. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Ó Siadhail, Mícheál. 1989. Modern Irish: Grammatical structure and dialectal variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Partridge, Monica. 1972. Serbo-Croat: Practical grammar and reader. Belgrade: Izdavački Zavod.Google Scholar
Passy, Paul. 1891. Étude sur les changements phonétiques et leurs caractères généraux. Paris: Librairie Firmin-Didot.Google Scholar
Raphael, Lawrence. 1972. Preceding vowel duration as a cue to the perception of the voicing characteristics of word-final consonants in American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 51 (4B), 1296–1303.Google Scholar
Rubach, Jerzy. 1984. Cyclic and lexical phonology: The structure of Polish. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Rubach, Jerzy. 1993. The lexical phonology of Slovak. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rubach, Jerzy. 2008. Prevocalic faithfulness. Phonology 25 (3), 433–468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1980. Prosodic domains in phonology: Sanskrit revisited. In Aronoff, Mark & Kean, Mary-Louise (eds.), Juncture, 107–129. Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri.Google Scholar
Sievers, Eduard. 1901. Grundzüge der Phonetik, 5th edn. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel.Google Scholar
Smith, Caroline. 1997. The devoicing of /z/ in American English: Effects of local and prosodic context. Journal of Phonetics 25 (4), 471–500.Google Scholar
Snoeren, Natalie, Hallé, Pierre & Segui, Juan. 2006. A voice for the voiceless: Production and perception of assimilated stops in French. Journal of Phonetics 34 (2), 241–268.Google Scholar
Stevens, Kenneth, Blumstein, Sheila, Glicksman, Laura, Burton, Martha & Kurowski, Kathleen. 1992. Acoustic and perceptual characteristics of voicing in fricatives and fricative clusters. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 91 (5), 2979–3000.Google Scholar
Vago, Robert. 1980. The sound pattern of Hungarian. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Warner, Natasha. 1998. Integrating speech perception and formal phonology. In Doran, Amanda, Majors, Tivoli, Mauk, Claude & Goss, Nisha Merchant (eds.), 1998 Conference of the Texas Linguistics Society, Texas Linguistic Forum 41, 189–202. Austin, TX: Department of Linguistics, University of Texas.Google Scholar
Warner, Natasha, Jongman, Allard, Sereno, Joan & Kemps, Rachel. 2004. Incomplete neutralization and other sub-phonemic durational differences in production and perception: Evidence from Dutch. Journal of Phonetics 32 (2), 251–276.Google Scholar
Warren, Richard. 1970. Perceptual restoration of missing speech sounds. Science 167 (3916), 392–393.Google Scholar
Wells, John C. 1982. Accents of English: The British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Westbury, John. 1979. Aspects of the temporal control of voicing in consonant clusters in English. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin. [Published as Texas Linguistic Forum 14, Austin, TX: Department of Linguistics, University of Texas.]Google Scholar
Wetzels, W. Leo & Mascaró, Joan. 2001. The typology of voicing and devoicing. Language 77 (2), 207–244.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Max. 1979. Phonology of Catalan. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Whisler, Ronald. 1992. Phonology of Sawai. In Burquest, Donald & Laidig, Wyn (eds.), Phonological studies in four languages of Maluku, 7–32. Arlington, VA: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Whitney, William Dwight. 1891. A Sanskrit grammar, 2nd edn. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel.Google Scholar
Wolf, Catherine. 1978. Voicing cues in English final stops. Journal of Phonetics 6 (4), 299–309.Google Scholar
Wolf, Hans. 1952. Osage I: Phonemes and historical phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 18 (1), 63–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yoshioka, Hirohide, Löfqvist, Anders & Hirose, Hajime. 1981. Laryngeal adjustments in the production of consonant clusters and geminates in American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 70 (6), 1615–1623.Google Scholar
Zsiga, Elizabeth. 1995. An acoustic and electropalatographic study of lexical and postlexical palatalization in American English. In Connell, Bruce & Arvaniti, Amalia (eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology IV: Phonology and phonetic evidence, 282–302. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar