fricatives, part 2 november 14, 2008 who’s next today: some leftover notes on vowels then: more...
TRANSCRIPT
Fricatives, part 2
November 14, 2008
Who’s Next• Today: some leftover notes on vowels
• Then: more fricatives
• Monday: fricative spectrogram matching
Swedish
Five-Vowel Spaces• Many languages have only three or five vowels, separated evenly in the vowel space in a triangle
• Here’s a popular vowel space option:
i u
e o
a
Five-Vowel Spaces
A “Bad” Vowel Space• Five vowels in a vowel system are rarely, if ever, distributed thusly:
[i]
[e]
[æ]
• Why?
Adaptive Dispersion Theory• Developed by Bjorn Lindblom and Johan Liljencrants
• (Swedish speakers)
• Idea: languages tend to maximize the distance between vowels in acoustic space…
• this helps listeners perceive contrasts between vowels
• A phonological phenomenon: “chain shifts”
• If one vowel moves…
• The rest follow suit, to maintain distinctions.
The Great Lakes Shift• One chain shift is currently taking place in the northern United States.
• Prevalent in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and many places in between
• (but not in Toronto or Windsor)
General Great Lakes
fronting
Hod
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
100012001400160018002000
F2
F1
[æ] raising
Had
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
10001500200025003000
F2
F1
backing
“ahead”
Hod
600
700
800
900
1000
1100
7009001100130015001700
F2
F1
Female Talkers
Who'ed
300
400
500
600
8001100140017002000
F2
F1
Female Talkers
New Zealand Vowel Shift
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT5AQIlmM0I
Back to Fricatives• Remember: the most common fricatives are alveolars and post-alveolars.
Voiceless Voiced Voiced/Voiceless
[s] 266 [z] 96 0.36
146 51 0.34
[f] 135 [v] 67 0.50
[x] 75 40 0.53
29 13 0.45
21 32 1.52
18 21 1.16
Some More Typology# of Fricatives # of languages % of total
0 21 6.6%
1 37 11.7%
2 62 19.6%
3 47 14.8%
4 37 11.7%
5 26 8.2%
6 28 8.8%
7 19 6.0%
8 20 6.3%
> 8 22 6.4%
Fricative Fun Facts• Of the 21 languages without any fricatives, 15 are Australian languages
• Hawaiian is another example
• Australian languages also tend to lack affricates
• But remember: many Australian languages have five or more place contrasts for stops.
• Kabardian has the most fricatives: 22
• Kabardian also has 2 (count ‘em) vowels
• Languages with one fricative: [s]
• Languages with two fricatives: [s], or [s], [f]
• Languages with three fricatives: [s], , [f]
Sibilants• [s] and are known as sibilant fricatives
• Sibilants have more acoustic energy at higher frequencies than other fricatives
• Two reasons why:
• they are obstacle fricatives
= the back of the upper teeth
louder than other fricatives
• small, short resonating filter
= between constriction and the lips
higher frequencies resonate
[s] vs. [f]
“sigh” “fie”
• Note: acoustic energy for [f] is weaker, and spread more evenly across all frequencies
vs.
“shy” “thigh”
vs.
“sigh” “shy”
[s]
Acoustic Enhancement• Note: is post-alveolar and [s] is alveolar
• more space in vocal tract in front of
• including a “sub-lingual cavity”
• This “filter” of resonates at lower frequencies
• In English, this acoustic distinction is enhanced through lip rounding for
• this extends the vocal tract
• further lowers the resonant frequencies of
• another form of “adaptive dispersion”
The Sub-lingual Cavity
•Let’s check the videotape...
Behind the Constriction
[s]
• Let’s check the ultrasound…
Other Examples• Susie and David say “speech”:
• Also: Where the shtreets have no name
• Note: there are no word-initial /sr/ sequences in English.
• “shriek” *“sreek”
Whistling Fricatives• Shona (spoken in Zimbabwe) has “whistling fricatives”
• = retroflex fricatives produced with lip-rounding
“exp.” “arrive”
“owl” “these”
“to provoke” “to blame”
“to become full” “to give birth”
The Politics of Frication• Denture-wearers often produce whistling fricatives, too.
• Barack Obama
• John McCain
• Excited speakers of English can even produce pharyngeal fricatives…
• like Keith Olbermann:
Polish• Note: lip-rounding can be used to enhance other fricative contrasts
• In Polish, it enhances the contrast between (post-)alveolar and dental fricatives
• the (post-)alveolars have the rounding
Polish, continued• Polish also has what are known as alveolo-palatal fricatives.
• = constriction in the post-alveolar region
• + raised tongue in the palatal region (behind the fricative)
Polish Sibilants
vs.
Palatography
[kasa]
Palatography
Polish Clusters• Just for kicks...
Four Fricatives
Chinese Sibilants• Mandarin Chinese also has dental, post-alveolar and alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives.
• The post-alveolars are sometimes retroflex
Chinese
Affricates
• Affricates are transcribed as stop-fricative sequences
•
• Acoustically, amplitude rises faster in affricates than in plain fricatives
• “rise time”
• Phonologically, affricates are [-continuant]
Affricate Typology• More numbers from the UPSID database:
• 522 affricates in 316 languages
• 141
• [ts] 95
• 80
• [dz] 30
• 485 affricates have sibilant fricatives
• Other affricate types are rarer:
• [pf] (German) [tx] (Navajo)
Fricative vs. Affricate
“shy”
“chime”
Polish, Again
• Polish contrasts affricates with stop + fricative sequences
Stop + Fricative vs. Affricate
Fricative Acoustics Summary• Turbulence provides the source of fricative noise
• Voiced fricatives also have a sound source at the glottis
• Obstacle turbulence tends to be louder than channel turbulence
• Sibilants are particulary high in intensity
• The filter of fricative turbulence noise changes depending on the place of articulation
• sibilants: very short filter, emphasizing high frequencies
• labials: essentially no filter (flat spectrum)
• back fricatives: longer, more vowel-like filter
• Affricates: stop-fricative sequences with shorter rise time
Some Typology• Languages with the following number of fricatives
• From the UPSID database (total of 316 languages)
Voiceless Voiced Voiced/Voiceless
21 32 1.52
18 21 1.16
17 3 0.17
[ç] 16 7 0.43
13 9 0.69