Work

Laryngeal Contrast and Sound Change: The Production and Perception of Plosive Voicing and Co-Intrinsic Pitch

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Inspired by Beddor 2009, this article explores whether and how trading relations between coarticulatory source and effect may serve as a precursor for sound change. It aims at extending the case of vowel nasalization examined by Beddor to the relationship between closure voicing (source) and co-intrinsic pitch (effect). Through four production and perception studies, we show that the inverse source-effect relation observed for vowel nasalization is not found in the voicing contrast of French, a true-voicing language. Instead, we propose that the phonologization of co-intrinsic pitch (a.k.a. tonogenesis) originates from spontaneous devoicing (a production bias), which subsequently triggers an upweighting of pitch (a perceptual adaptation strategy).

Source: Language

DOI: 10.1353/lan.2024.a922001

Authors: Jiayin Gao, James Kirby

Institutions: Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Language: English

Topic: Phonetics and Phonology Research

Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: H2020 European Research Council

Award: The emergence and evolution of linguistic tone