Palatal bilabial and velar stops – acoustic analysis
Agata Trawińska
Institute of Forensic Research, Cracow
In this work the results of an acoustic analysis of (i) bilabial and (ii) velar stops palatal as well as palatalised was presented. The examined stops were analysed in phonetically similar context, including initial and morphemes boundaries positions. Moreover, both palatal and palatalised stops were compared with their hard counterparts [2, 3, 7].
Presented description of stops concerned with features listed below:
closure duration,
percentage of voicing,
duration of VOT [1, 4],
spectral characteristics of the segment between plosion and the voice onset of the following vowel (i.e. non-aspirated vs. aspirated or affricated stops) [5, 8].
The acoustic analysis of the investigated consonants was undertaken for a reading list and utterances repeated more than three times by Malopolonian speakers who at least lived in Cracow during the study [9]. The group of speakers made up 4 women and 12 men; the group was quite homogenous regarding to age (about 30 years old) and education level. Additionally, two sociological factors were tested for two speakers – another dialect (Mazovian one) and different education background (basic).
All recordings of the examined speech were performed at Speech and Audio Analysis Lab, Institute of Forensic Research Cracow by means of a portable digital recorder (MiniDisc HHB, MDP 500) and a cardioidal microphone (Schoeps, model CCM-40). Extraction of acoustic equivalents of the articulatory features of speech sounds was done with an assistance of STx software by Acoustic Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Science.
The second question of the presented research was to examine the degree of non-synchronically articulated palatality of stops [6, 10, 11]. As a marker of an additional palatal tongue movement, the (iii) vocoids following palatal or palatalised stops were analysed. Groups of vocids, i.e. glide and vowel such as /a/, /o/ and /e/ were described by tracking of formants (F1–F3) and compared to the structure of formants of the appropriate vowels placed in phonetically similar context. Moreover, the glide and vowel groups were tested under different communication conditions.
It seems that the empirically based description of the palatal stops and following them vocids groups enables one: a) to make more clear phonological description of polish language as well as b) to put a line between phonetical and phonological transcription of speech.
References:
[1] Cho T., Ladefoged P., Variation and universals in VOT: evidence from 18 languages, Journal of Phonetics (1999) 27, pp. 207–229.
[2] Corneau C., An EPG Study of Palatalisation in French, ICPhS San Francisco 1999, pp.61–64.
[3] Geng Ch., Winkler R., Pompino-Marschall B., The palatal stop: Results from Acoustic-articulatory recovery of articulatory movements, 15th ICPhS Barcelona 2003, pp. 2581–2584.
[4] Jessen M., An Acoustic Study of Contrasting Plosives and Click Accompaniaments in Xhosa, Phonetica 2002 (59), pp. 150–179.
[5] Moosmüller S., Ringen C., Voice and Aspiration in Austrian German Plosives, [in press].
[6] Ostaszewska D., Tambor J., Fonetyka i fonologia współczesnego języka polskiego, Warszawa 2000.
[7] Pompino-Marschall B., Zygis M., Surface Palatalization of Polish Bilabial Stops: Articulation and Acoustics, 15th ICPhS Barcelona 2003, pp. 1751–1754.
[8] Jassem W., Podstawy fonetyki akustycznej, Warszawa 1973.
[9] Urbańczyk S., Zarys dialektologii polskiej, Warszawa 1984.
[10] Wierzchowska B., Fonetyka i fonologia języka polskiego, Warszawa 1980.
[11] Wi¶niewski M., Zarys fonetyki i fonologii współczesnego języka polskiego, Toruń 2001.