Structured speaker variability in Japanese stops: relationships within versus across cues to stop voicing

Tanner, J., Sonderegger, M. and Stuart-Smith, J. (2020) Structured speaker variability in Japanese stops: relationships within versus across cues to stop voicing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 148(2), pp. 793-804. (doi: 10.1121/10.0001734)

Abstract

A number of recent studies have observed that phonetic variability is constrained across speakers, where speakers exhibit limited variation in the signalling of phonological contrasts in spite of overall differences between speakers. This previous work focused predominantly on controlled laboratory speech and on contrasts in English and German, leaving unclear how such speaker variability is structured in spontaneous speech and in phonological contrasts that make substantial use of more than one acoustic cue. This study attempts to both address these empirical gaps and expand the empirical scope of research investigating structured variability by examining how speakers vary in the use of positive voice onset time and voicing during closure in marking the stop voicing contrast in Japanese spontaneous speech. Strong covarying relationships within each cue across speakers are observed, while between-cue relationships across speakers are much weaker, suggesting that structured variability is constrained by the language-specific phonetic implementation of linguistic contrasts.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This research reported was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#435-2017- 0925).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Stuart-Smith, Professor Jane and Sonderegger, Professor Morgan and Tanner, Dr James
• Authors: Tanner, J., Sonderegger, M., and Stuart-Smith, J.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• Journal Name: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• Publisher: Acoustical Society of America
• ISSN: 0001-4966
• ISSN (Online): 1520-8524
• Published Online: 14 August 2020
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2020 AIP Publishing LLC.
• First Published: First published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 148(2): 793-804
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy