Year: 2015
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Voiceless sibilant fricatives, such as the consonant sounds at the beginning of the English words sea and she, are articulated by forming a narrow constriction between the tongue and the palate, which directs a turbulent jet of air toward the incisors downstream.Thus, the production of these sounds involves the movement of a number of articulators, including the tongue, jaw, and lips; however, the principal method for analyzing the acoustics of sibilant fricatives has been to extract a single "steady state" interval from near its temporal midpoint, and estimate spectral properties of this interval.Consequently, temporal variation in the spectral properties of sibilant fricatives has not been systematically studied.This dissertation investigated the temporal variation of a single spectral property, referred to as peak ERB N -number, that denotes the most prominent psychoacoustic frequency.The dynamic aspects of peak ERB N -number trajectories were analyzed with fifth-order polynomial time growth curve models.A series of analyses revealed a number of novel findings.First, a comparison of English-and Japanese-speaking adults indicated that the languageinternal contrast between English /s/ and /S/ and between Japanese /s/ and /C/ is indicated by dynamic properties of peak ERB N -number across the time course of the sibilants.Furthermore, a cross-linguistic comparison of the adults' productions of English /s/ and Japanese /s/ indicated that the peak ERB N -number of a sibilant follows a language-specific trajectory.Next, the development of the sibilant fricative contrast in native English-and Japaneseacquiring children, between the ages of two and five years, was investigated in terms of peak ERB N -number trajectory.The English-acquiring children were found to contrast /s/ and /S/ in terms of similar aspects of peak ERB N -number trajectory as the English-speaking Lussier, for discussions of the statistical models used herein; and Dr. Eric Healy, for encouraging me to think about speech production data in terms of what is detected by the auditory system.My development as a researcher has also benefited from the mentorship of Dr. Jan Edwards and Dr. Ben Munson; together with Dr. Beckman, they have embodied the ethic that research is a social activity, and that nothing worth doing is done alone.I am greatly indebted to, and sincerely thank, all the experimenters and researchers who helped prepare, collect, and annotate the speech production data that were analyzed in this dissertation: Laura Slocum and Anne Hoffmann, for recruiting and recording the English-speaking adults and normal-hearing children; Sarah Schellinger and Emilie Sweet, for transcribing the productions from the English-speaking adults and normal-hearing children; Kiyoko Yoneyama, Junko Davis, and Yuki Sunawatari, for recruiting and recording the Japanese-speaking adults and normal-hearing children; Junko Davis and Hiroko Morioka, for transcribing the productions from Japanese-speaking adults and normal-hearing children; Fangfang Li, Chanelle Mays, Oxana Skorniakova, Asimina Syrika, Julie Johnson, and Jeff Holliday, for tagging the fricative events in the English and Japanese portions of the iv Paidologos corpus; Ann Todd and Emilie Sweet, for recruiting and recording the cochlearimplanted children; and Rebecca Hatch, for transcribing and tagging the fricative events for the productions from the cochlear-implanted children.During my time as a graduate student at Ohio State, I benefitted immeasurably from knowing Abby Walker, Andrew Plummer, and Jeff Holliday, whose friendship, humor, and curiosity were at times my best reason to go into Oxley.Lastly, I thank my wife,
Author: Patrick Reidy
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2518862783