phonetic typology and universals

Phonetic typology and universals

Dr. Christian [email protected]

University at Buffalo

11/12/15

DiCanio (UB) Typology 11/12/15 1 / 15

Phonetics and typology


If one of the primary goals of phonetics is the search for generalprinciples guiding speech production, then such principles should beapplicable to a range of languages.

But at the same time, we only know that principles are general ifwe’ve looked at a range of languages.

This concern motivates us to examine universals from a cross-linguisticperspective.



Linguistic typology is the study of language classification and variation interms of structural properties. Typologists take surveys of languages todetermine which types of patterns are universal, which are morefrequent/rare, or which ones imply others; e.g. if a language has a voicedstop, it will tend to have a voiceless one.

Exploring both absolute universals and implicational universals revealssomething about the fundamental nature of human language.

Within phonetics, it reveals something fundamental about speechproduction and perception.



Distribution of voicing in obstruents in the world

Based on a balanced survey of 563 languages. How does this fit with theaerodynamic principles we have discussed?

(Maddieson, 2013)



Sampling

Of course, we never really know if a pattern is absolutely universal. Wehave only ever been able to take a sample of different languages andstatistically extrapolate based on this sample.

Out of the 7,105 languages on earth, we know something about 2,676 ofthem (Comrie et al., 2013). We probably only know something about thephonological systems of a much smaller percentage.

As far as phonetic descriptions go, we know even less - probably only about300-500 languages.



This has not stopped people from talking about universals though.

Universal patterns are predicted theoretically. We expect all languagesto have X because our theory predicts it.

Universal patterns are predicted typologically. Our survey suggestsshows that all languages have X, therefore we think it must be auniversal. So, let’s create a theory to account for it.

Yet there is just so much more to be learned! We know very little aboutthe world’s languages.



What is a phonetic universal?

There is typological work on phonological inventories from which we canextract general principles about speech production, but little typology onphonetic detail.

Some potential universals:Trading relations in stops; the universality of longer posterior stopVOT (Cho and Ladefoged, 1999).All languages have a contrast in vowel height (Ladefoged andMaddieson, 1996).If a language has voiceless nasals, it will have voiced ones (Maddieson,1984). Why might this be? (think about what nasalization does)



Review: trading relations with VOT

TABLE IV. Mean VOT (ms) of the stops in 18 languages studied in the UCLA endangeredlanguages project (as of May 1999)

Language Bilabial Dental Alveolar Retro#ex Velar Uvular

Aleut (Eastern) 59 75 78Aleut (Western) 76 95 92Apache 13 15 31Apache (aspirated) 58 80BanawaH 22 44Bowiri 17 18 39Chickasaw 13 22 36Dahalo 20 15 42 27Defaka 18 20 30Gaelic 13 22 28Gaelic (aspirated) 64 65 73Hupa 11 16 44 27Hupa (aspirated) 82 84Jalapa Mazatec 11 23Jalapa Mazatec 63 80(aspirated)Khonoma Angami 10 9 20Khonoma Angami 83 55 91(aspirated)Montana Salish 22 24 48 55Navajo 12 6 45Navajo (aspirated) 130 154Tlingit 18 28 30Tlingit (aspirated) 120 128 128Tsou 11 17 28Wari' 19 26 50}58Yapese 20 22 56

di!erence between the unaspirated velar and coronal stops is 18.9 ms and that for thecorresponding place di!erence between aspirated stops is 16.7 ms. Even Navajo, whichhas aspirated stops with an exceptionally long VOT, has longer VOTs for velar aspiratedstops than for alveolar aspirated stops. From a physiological or aerodynamic point ofview, there must be two di!erent explanations for this similarity. Any appeal to the aero-dynamic conditions shortly after the release can apply to unaspirated stops, but not toaspirated stops (certainly not the Navajo stops); and any explanation that considers thespecial characteristics of aspirated stops cannot apply to unaspirated stops. At this pointwe must note that it may be perceptually advantageous to make place di!erences in VOTthe same across aspirated and unaspirated stops. If there is a di!erence in the VOT ofvelar and coronal stops as a result of a low-cost articulatory strategy (Docherty, 1992)that works in the production of unaspirated stops, this di!erence in VOT may becomepart of a perceptual cue distinguishing these places of articulation. Once this happens itmay be deliberately used in aspirated stops as a perceptual aid for place distinctions evenwhen there is some articulatory cost to using it.

Figs 5 and 6 show that the range of VOTs associated with dental stops overlaps withthat of alveolar stops. The volume of air behind the closure is much the same in thelaminal dentals and the apical alveolars. Accordingly, the laminal dentals (which have

<ariations and universals in <O! 219

(Cho and Ladefoged, 1999)DiCanio (UB) Typology 11/12/15 8 / 15


Bursts and aspiration duration is often longer for posterior stops than foranterior ones. However, the closure duration of posterior stops is oftenshorter than for anterior stops.

Figure 3. Schematic representation of place di!erences in aspirated stops fromconstant vocal fold abduction plus di!erent closure duration. (From Maddieson,1997a, p. 622).

observed VOT variation. Weismer (1980) reports that for word initial English /p/ and /k/,the interval from the onset of the stop closure to the voice onset is the same. Based uponthis result and other evidence cited by Weismer, Maddieson (1997a) suggests anotherpossible alternative account of the place-dependent VOT: &&There is an abduction}adduction cycle of the vocal cords for voiceless stops which is longer in duration than theclosure and has a constant time course, anchored to the onset of closure (p. 621).'' Inother words, the duration of the vocal fold opening is considered to be "xed, and whenthe closure duration is relatively longer, the following VOT becomes relatively shorter(and vice versa). Fig. 3 is a schematic representation from Maddieson (1997a, p. 622)showing this relationship. Umeda (1977) and Lisker & Abramson (1964) also discuss thesame type of durational relationship between closure and aspiration.

1.2.6. Summary of reported causes of <O! variations due to place of articulation

In summary, the literature indicates that the following physiological/aerodynamic char-acteristics account, to some extent, for the variations of VOT associated with a di!erencein the place of articulation.

(1) !he volume of the cavity behind the point of constriction. The relatively smallervolume of the supralaryngeal cavity in velar stops causes a greater pressure, which willtake longer to fall and allow an adequate transglottal pressure for the initiation of thevocal folds vibration.

(2) !he volume of the cavity in front of the point of constriction. The relatively greatermass of the contained air in front of velar stops causes a greater obstruction to the releaseof the pressure behind the velar stop, so that this pressure will take longer to fall,resulting in a greater delay in producing an adequate transglottal pressure.

(3) Movement of articulators. A faster articulatory velocity (e.g., the movement ofthe lower lip as compared to the tongue dorsum) allows a more rapid decrease in thepressure behind the closure and thus a shorter time before building up an appropriatetransglottal pressure.

(4) Extent of articulatory contact area. The more extended contact area in laminaldental and velar stops results in a slower release because of the Bernoulli e!ect pullingthe articulators together. Because the articulators come apart more slowly there is alonger time before an appropriate transglottal pressure is produced.

(5) Change of glottal opening area ( for voiceless aspirated stops). The glottal openingarea after the release will decrease less rapidly for the velar than for the alveolar or labialbecause the intraoral pressure drops more slowly for the velar.

(6) !emporal adjustment between closure duration and <O!. There is a trade-o!between the closure duration and the VOT so that there is a "xed duration of vocal foldopening.

<ariations and universals in <O! 213

This suggests there is some sort of trade-off in duration (Maddieson,1997). The overall duration of the stop is determined by the timing of theglottis, but the closure/release portions can vary.



Vowel height universals

In a survey of 230 languages, Becker-Kristal found that even thoselanguages which contrast vowels for backness will tend to also distinguishthem in terms of vowel height (Becker-Kristal, 2010).

We have seen this somewhat in this course already - the vowel [u] isfrequently a bit lower than [i] (higher F1 values).

Becker-Kristal categorized languages which had 3 peripheral vowels (usually/i, a, u/) as 3S0 languages and those with 3 peripheral + 1 non-peripheralas 3S1 languages. The same categorization occurs for languages with 4 ormore vowels (e.g. 4S0, 4S1).



102

Figure 3-8: F1xF2 plots of the acoustic geometries of the structures (a) 3S0, (b) 3S1, (c) 4L0 and (d) 4L1, repeated from Appendix B. Each vowel category is represented by its one standard deviation ranges for F1 and F2. The back vowel in all structures and the non-peripheral vowel in 3S1 and 4L1 are in black, all other vowels are in grey.

There is no evidence for a split between structures with a high vowel and structures

with a mid vowel in the back and non-peripheral regions. Instead, there is a continuum of

vertical (F1) differences between the front vowel and the back and/or non-peripheral

vowel, with the front vowel being anywhere between negligibly lower (F1 higher by up

to 25Hz) to markedly higher (F1 lower by up to 140Hz) than the other vowels. However,

given the rather similar F1 standard deviations, F1 variability of the front vowel is just as

accountable for these differences as F1 variability of the back and/or non-peripheral

vowel. Moreover, there seems to be no correlation between an explicit transcription of

height contrast between the front vowel and the back/non-peripheral vowel and F1

difference. For example, among the twenty 3S0 entries, in the three entries with the



Languages with just 4 vowels (usually /i, e, a, u/) tend to include a vowelthat is phonetically between [u] and [o].

The same thing was found for languages with 6 vowels; the front and backvowels are also slightly different in terms of height, e.g. /i, e, E, a, o, u/.

Even though we use F2 to distinguish among vowel qualities, there is astrong tendency in speech production to distinguish vowels in terms ofjaw/tongue height as well.

This factor might explain why all languages use height to distinguishvowels, while there are a couple that do not use backness (or veryminimally use it), e.g. Qawasar /@, o, a/ and Yessan Mayo /1, 3, a, A/.



Phonetic fieldwork

Motivations for fieldwork:1 The desire to explore how individual languages structure their phonetic

"space" and to see how well these patterns are accounted for by moreuniversal theories.

2 A curiosity with a particular type of pattern for experimental ortheoretical interest, e.g. lingualabials in Vanuatu, the large toneinventories in Oto-Manguean languages.

3 A curiosity to test certain theories with a diversity of languages, e.g.does your theory work in Dinka? in !Xóõ? No? Well, it ain’t universalthen, buddy!

4 An areal interest. What are the phonetic patterns in languages spokenin a certain part of the world or within a certain family?



Against a “universalist” phonetics

“Once the surface phonological representation is known, this can betranslated into gradient vocal tract events.” (Halle, 1983)

While modern phonetic theories differ in how much of phoneticimplementation is controlled and intended by speakers, most agree thatlanguage learners are “products of submerging, but highly- controlled andwell-practiced behaviors below the level of conscious attention.” (Keating,1984; Kingston and Diehl, 1994).

In other words, phonetics is tightly-controlled and small details can be verylanguage-specific; it is part of the grammar.



The role of variation

What we might transcribe as the same “sound” shows a range of variabilityacross languages, e.g. [t] in English ‘date’ [teIt] is distinct from [t] inSpanish ‘toro’ [toRo] (differing in terms of passive/active devoicing).

Thus, it stands to reason that such variation must:

1 Reflect deeper phonetic/articulatory differences that we can not easilydistinguish by listening.

2 Be specifically learned by speakers and speech communities.3 Be a component of the speaker’s knowledge of their language.4 Be relevant for patterns of historical sound change.



Becker-Kristal, R. (2010). Acoustic typology of vowel inventories and Dispersion Theory:Insights from a large cross-linguistic corpus. PhD thesis, UCLA.

Cho, T. and Ladefoged, P. (1999). Variation and universals in VOT: evidence from 18languages. Journal of Phonetics, 27:207–229.

Comrie, B., Dryer, M. S., Gil, D., and Haspelmath, M. (2013). Introduction. In Dryer, M. S.and Haspelmath, M., editors, The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, chapter 1.Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Accessed on 3/31/2013.

Halle, M. (1983). On distinctive features and their articulatory implementation. NaturalLanguage and Linguistic Theory, 1:91–105.

Keating, P. (1984). Phonetic and phonological representation of stop consonant voicing.Language, 60:286–319.

Kingston, J. and Diehl, R. L. (1994). Phonetic knowledge. Language, 70(3):419–454.

Ladefoged, P. and Maddieson, I. (1996). Sounds of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Blackwell,425 pages.

Maddieson, I. (1984). Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge University Press.

Maddieson, I. (1997). Phonetic Universals. In Hardcastle, W. J. and Laver, J., editors, TheHandbook of Phonetic Sciences, chapter 20, pages 619–639. Blackwell Publishing.

Maddieson, I. (2013). Voicing in plosives and fricatives. In Haspelmath, M., Dryer, M.,Matthew, S., Gil, D., and Comrie, B., editors, The World Atlas of Language StructuresOnline, chapter 4. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, Accessed on 3/31/2014.


phonetic typology and universals

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