Speakers, listeners, languages: Patterns of variability and contrast in spoken language dynamics
Final Report Abstract
The goal of this project was to shed new light on how the basic dynamics of speech production and perception are shaped by language-specific linguistic structure and may, at the same time, vary between individuals of the same language community in a systematic fashion. The way we produce individual speech sounds is affected by and dependent upon the sounds that precede and follow them in time, a phenomenon known as coarticulation. Coarticulation ensures rapid and effective communication — it is actively planned and is part of learned, languagespecific speaker knowledge. Also in perception, listeners actively seek out the dynamic cues of coarticulation in the speech signal. While it has repeatedly been argued that phonological contrast — i.e., which sounds form part of a language's inventory — constrains the degree of coarticulation, the empirical evidence for this claim has remained ambiguous, since variation between languages does not necessarily pattern as predicted by phonological structure. At the same time, recent studies have uncovered that the substantial individual variation commonly observed in the signaling of phonological contrast may be more than just experimental ‘noise’. Instead, it should be seen as part of a high-dimensional, language-specific productionperception dynamic, reflecting speakers’ knowledge of trading relations in perception and production. However, the nature of this structured variation is little understood and has as still to be integrated with our knowledge of systematic variation between languages. This is also due to a dearth of cross-linguistic studies with a suitable number of participants such as to allow for generalizations about within- versus cross-language variation. The goal of the project was therefore to obtain a comprehensive view on the relation between perceived and produced speech for individual language users, at a scale that will allow us to assess levels of structured variability among individuals both within and between languages. Our work focused on two phonological contrasts, nasality and lip rounding, in three languages (English, German, French) with the aim of coming to a more general understanding of how phonological structure may impact speech signal dynamics than exists to date. The project's scope was designed to open new perspectives on why and how languages differ from each other, and the cognitive relationship between speech production and perception within and across individuals.
Publications
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Language specificity vs speaker variability of anticipatory labial coarticulation in German and English. In R. Skarnitzl & J. Volín (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Conference of the Phonetic Sciences, Prague (pp. 2105-2109).
Lo, J. J. H., Carignan, C., Pouplier, M., Alderton, R., Rodriquez, F., Evans, B. G. & Reinisch, E.
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The window of opportunity: Anticipatory nasal coarticulation in three languages. Proceedings of the 20th International Conference of the Phonetic Sciences, Prague, (pp.2085-2089).
Pouplier, M., Rodriquez, F., Alderton, R., Lo, J. H., Reinisch, E., Evans, B. G. & Christopher, C.
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What French speakers' nasal vowels tell us about anticipatory nasal coarticulation. Proceedings of the 20th International Conference of the Phonetic Sciences, Prague (pp. 848-852).
Rodriquez, F., Pouplier, M., Alderton, R., Lo, J. H., Evans, B. G., Reinisch, E. & Carignan, C.
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Coarticulation across Languages (CoAL). Institut für Phonetik und Sprachverarbeitung, LMU Munich.
Carignan, C., Pouplier, M., Lo, J. H., Rodriquez, F., Alderton, R., Evans, B. G., Reinisch, E., Howson, Ph. & Neubert, K.
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Language-specific and individual variation in anticipatory nasal coarticulation: A comparative study of American English, French, and German. Journal of Phonetics, 107, 101365.
Pouplier, Marianne; Rodriquez, Francesco; Lo, Justin J.H.; Alderton, Roy; Evans, Bronwen G.; Reinisch, Eva & Carignan, Christopher
