Positional Velar Fronting:
An updated articulatory analysis
Tara McAllister
Montclair State University, NJ
April 10th, 2010
Acknowledgements
 Adam Albright
 Edward Flemming
 Donca Steriade
 Yvan Rose
 Katherine Demuth
 Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel
 Magdi Sobeih
 Haiyan Su
 B and family
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Positional velar fronting
 Velar fronting is frequently observed to apply in word-
initial/pretonic but not word-final/posttonic contexts
(Ingram, 1974; Chiat, 1983; Stoel-Gammon, 1996; Bills & Golston, 2002;
Morisette, Dinnsen, & Gierut, 2003; Inkelas & Rose, 2003, 2008).
 Examples of positional velar fronting (PVF):
Prosodically
strong
contexts
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Prosodically
weak
contexts
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Neutralization in strong position
 Puzzling pattern in child phonology: Phonemic contrast can
emerge in weak/final before strong/initial position (Buckley, 2003;
Inkelas & Rose, 2003, 2008; Dinnsen & Farris-Trimble, 2008).
 Reverses a strong generalization across adult phonologies:
Phonemes with limited distribution occur in strong position only.
 Has roots in perceptual asymmetry favoring initial/prevocalic over
final/postvocalic contexts (Fujimura, Macchi, & Streeter, 1978).
 Continuity problem: If we write formal constraints flexible
enough to accommodate child patterns, we predict patterns that
are unattested in adult phonological typology.
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Neutralization in strong position
 Possible solution if we adopt a phonetically-based version of
phonology (Hayes, Kirchner & Steriade, 2004):
 We know that children and adults face significantly different
phonetic pressures.
 Perceptual sensitivity (Elliott & Hammer, 1988)
 Articulatory anatomy (Crelin, 1987)
 Speech-motor control abilities (Kent, 1992)
 If children and adults are subject to different low-level phonetic
pressures, their phonologies should look different as well.
 Child-specific constraints become inactive as child-specific
phonetic pressures are eliminated in normal maturation.
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Articulatory account of velar fronting:
Inkelas & Rose (2003, 2008)
 In adult speech, consonants in strong position are produced with
larger, stronger gestures than in weak contexts (Fougeron &
Keating, 1996).
 Child perceives prosodically enhanced gesture in adult speech and
tries to replicate it.
 Constraints on child speech: Larger, more anteriorly placed
tongue (Crelin, 1987); decreased motor control (Kent, 1992).
 The child’s attempted velar closure extends into the alveolar
region, creating a coronal release.
 Phonetically-motivated process is then phonologized.
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Articulatory account of velar fronting
 I take up Inkelas & Rose’s insight that velar fronting is driven by
child-specific articulatory phonetic factors.
 Two new views:
1.
New case study data show that fronting can be conditioned by
finer-grained differences than the strong-weak dichotomy.
2.
Expanded role for child-specific limitations on speech-motor
control is proposed.
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Case study
 Subject B, 4 years, male, monolingual American English learner.
 Receiving therapy for severe speech sound disorder.
 Followed longitudinally in biweekly sessions from 3;9 to 4;5.
 Patterns of neutralization in strong position: positional velar
fronting, positional fricative gliding.
 All words containing a target velar were isolated from the
transcript of B’s speech therapy sessions.
 Total N = 2,408
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Data coding
 Observed output categories:
 *Segmented production was specifically linked to velar place;
never observed for coronal place.
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Analysis
 All targets were coded for five factors:





Prosodic context (strong vs weak);
Voicing (voiced versus voiceless target);
Vowel context (back vs nonback);
Harmony context (other velar present vs absent);
Time of elicitation (four estimated developmental stages).
 Data were fitted to a five-predictor logistic model with faithful
velar place as the dependent variable.
 Tested partial significance of predictors with χ-square statistic.
 All main terms were significant predictors of variance (p < .001).
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Results:
Prosodic context
 Main effect of prosodic context:
Weak > strong (Fisher’s Exact
p < .000).
*
 Consistent with previous
literature.
Bars show standard error.
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Results: Voicing
 Main effect of voicing:
Voiced target > Voiceless target
(Fisher’s Exact p < .000).
 New finding.
 From 4;2 on, fully faithful voiced
targets contrasted systematically
with segmented voiceless targets.
*
Bars show standard error.
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Unifying the conditioning factors
 One old question and two new ones:
 Why are velars more accurate in weak than strong position?
 Why are voiced velars more accurate than voiceless velars?
 Why does “segmented production” precede fully faithful velar
production?
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Unifying the conditioning factors
 All of the contexts associated with greater accuracy have
relatively lower level of gestural force.
 Consonant gestures are more forceful in prosodically strong
position (Browman & Goldstein, 1995; Fougeron & Keating, 1996).
 Gestural force is greater in voiceless than voiced plosives
(Wakumoto et al., 1998; Mooshammer et al., 2007).
 Voiceless stops have greater airflow (McGlone and Shipp, 1972); more
forceful gesture is needed to offset intraoral pressure/avoid spirantization
 “Segmented” production: Valving at glottis limits intraoral
pressure (Clements & Osu, 2002), allows lighter articulatory
contact.
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Unifying the conditioning factors
 How can we modify phonetically-influenced grammar to
capture general conditioning by gestural strength?
 Violable phonological constraint MOVE-AS-UNIT: “Achieve
linguopalatal contact by moving the tongue-jaw complex.”
 Three pieces to the proposal:
 Why child speakers favor jaw-controlled movements.
 How jaw-controlled movement drives fronting.
 Why MOVE-AS-UNIT is sensitive to gradient differences in
articulatory force.
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Speech-motor limitations
 Child lacks skill to plan movements with a large number of
degrees of freedom (Fletcher, 1992).
 Tongue is motorically complex; imposes simultaneous "skeletal,
movement, and shaping requirements" (Kent, 1992).
 Jaw is motorically simple (bilaterally hinged joint) .
 In early stages of development, tongue may ride passively on
active jaw (MacNeilage & Davis, 1990).
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Undifferentiated gestures
 Jaw-controlled movement is linked to an undifferentiated
pattern of linguopalatal contact.
 Undifferentiated gestures: Midsagittal linguopalatal contact
spanning alveolar through velar regions (Gibbon, 1999).
 Reflects inability to control discrete functional regions of the
tongue.
 Proposal: Fronted velars are not true coronals but
undifferentiated lingual gestures.
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Role of gestural force
 Recall tongue’s "skeletal, movement, and shaping requirements"
 When low and close to the mandible, some of the tongue’s
shaping needs are filled by the lower teeth.
 For a higher target, shaping requirements must increasingly be
filled by lingual musculature.
 Multiplies complexity of motor task.
 Increases predisposition to use a jaw-controlled gesture.
 Magnitude of MOVE-AS-UNIT violation is proportional to height
of articulatory target.
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Conclusions
 MOVE-AS-UNIT makes it possible to model B’s output across
prosodic and voicing contrasts in all documented stages of
development.
 When child-specific articulatory limitations cease to apply, the
constraint will be eliminated from the grammar.
 Goals:
 Model other problematic child processes (especially neutralization
in strong position) using phonetically-sensitive constraint MOVEAS-UNIT.
 Look for direct evidence of undifferentiated gestures in velar
fronting.
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