Speech rate effects in Hindi
Eli Asikin-Garmager
Who am I?
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PhD Linguistics student
1st (of 2) pre-dissertation research projects
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Research:
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Languages of Southeast/East Asia, particularly Indonesia
Language documentation
Sounds systems
Grammar (syntax)
Broad nature of the project
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
How are (certain types of) sounds produced by Hindi
speakers?
How do listeners perceive these sounds?
How do speakers represent these sounds in their
minds?
How do certain perceptual cues change as a
function of speech rate?
a simple English sentence…
Dan can’t get Tom to buy Pat’s dog.
Dan can’t get Tom to buy Pat’s dog.
‘Voiced’
Voiceless
(‘Aspirated’)
b
p
d
t
g
k
Stop (consonant) = is airflow completely stopped momentarily?
Voiced = are the vocal fold vibrating during production?
Aspirated = is there a puff of air following the release of closure?
Hindi: 4-way stop contrast
1 of 13 languages in a UCLA database of 451 languages
with ‘voiced aspirated’ stop consonants
Voiceless
Unaspirated
Voiceless
Aspirated
Voiced,
Unaspirated
‘Stop category’
Voiced
Aspirated
Bilabial
pal
pʰal
bal
‘take care of’ ‘knife blade’ ‘hair’
bʱal
‘forehead’
Dental
t̪al
‘beat’
t̪ʰal
‘plate’
d̪ʱal
‘knife’
Retroflex
ʈal
‘postpone’
ʈʰal
ɖal
‘wood shop’ ‘branch’
ɖʱal
‘shield’
Velar
kan
‘ear’
kʰan
‘mine’
gʱan
‘bundle’
Place of
articulation
(POA)
d̪al
‘lentil’
gan
‘song’
Hindi Stops (Ladefoged & Johnson 2011:155)
What is a spectrogram?
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Visual representation of speech
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x-axis = time
y-axis = frequency
gray scale (darkness) = intensity
waveform
spectrogram
ta:p - voiceless, unaspirated
short positive-lag VOT
(+)
VOT
V O W E L ……
Release of closure
beginning of vowel
tʰa:b - voiceless, aspirated
(+) VOT
‘aspiration’
(puff of air)
V O W E L ……
Release of oral closure
Beginning of vowel
ba:l - voiced, unaspirated
(-)VOT
V O W E L ……
Onset of voicing
(stop closure)
Release
of oral closure
Beginning of vowel
Lead & Lag Time
bʱa:r - voiced, aspirated
Lead Time
(voicing)
(-)VOT
Lag Time
(aspiration)
(+)VOT
V O W E L ……
Onset of voicing
Stop release
Vowel onset
Methods
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Participants
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convenience sample
5 native Hindi speakers living in the US
Materials
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47 target words (randomized) (all POA, all stop categories),
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word-initial, monosyllabic words with same vowel
3 speech rates (‘citation’, ‘slow’, ‘fast’)
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2 repetitions each
‘citation’ = word list
‘slow’/’fast’ = words embedded in a sentence
distractor items
Methods, cont…
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Procedures
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recordings made in sound booth in EPB
each participant performed the same 3 tasks in the same order,
(citation, slow, fast) taking a break between tasks
recordings then output to Pratt - program used for analyzing
waveforms & spectrograms
Measurements (in milliseconds)
 word duration
 lead time (‘voicing’/before release of closure)
 lag time (after release of closure/sometimes ‘aspiration’)
Lead & Lag Time (dependent variables)
bʱa:r - voiced, aspirated
Lead Time
(voicing)
(-)VOT
Lag Time
(aspiration)
(+)VOT
V O W E L ……
Onset of voicing
Stop release
Vowel onset
Methods
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Variables
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Independent: speech rate (citation, slow, fast)
Dependent: lead and lag times
Primary (stats) questions
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Primary questions:
1. Was there a statistically significant difference in
word duration for the three speech rates?
2. Were the effects found on lead and lag time
statistically significant?
3. Question #1/2, but for each individual speaker
--------------------
4. Were there any statistically significant differences for the stops based on
place of articulation?
5. Were the lead/lag times statistically significant for the (4) different stop
categories?
Selected References
Beckman, J. (2012). Privative laryngeal features and passive voicing: Evidence from Hindi. Paper presented at The Manchester
Phonology Meeting, May 26.
Beckman, J., Helgason, P., McMurray, B., & Ringen, C. (2011). Rate effects on Swedish VOT: Evidence for phonological
overspecification. Journal of Phonetics, 39(1), 39-49.
Berkson, K. H. (2012). Caputuring breathy voice: Durational measures of oral stops in Marathi.
Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, 33, 27-46.
Boersma, P., & D. Weenink. (2014). Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program].Version 5.3.63, http://www.praat.org/
Davis, K. (1994). Stop voicing in Hindi. Journal of Phonetics, 22, 177-193.
Dutta, I. (2007). Four-way stop contrasts in Hindi: An acoustic study of voicing, fundamental frequency and spectral tilt. Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Kagaya, R. & Hirose, H. (1975). Fiberoptic electromyographic and acoustic analyses of Hindi stop consonants. Annual Bulletin,
Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, University of Tokyo, 9, 27-46.
Kessinger, R. H., & Blumstein, S. E. (1997). Effects of speaking rate on voice-onset time in Thai, French, and English. Journal of
Phonetics, 25, 143-168.
Ladefoged, P., & Johnson, K. (2011). A course in phonetics (6th ed.). Boston: Wadsworth.
Lisker, L., & Abramson, A. S. (1964). A cross-language study of voicing in initial stops: Acoustical measurements. Word, 20,
384-422.
Mikuteit, S., & Reetz, H. (2007). Caught in the ACT: The timing of aspiration and voicing in East Bengali. Language and Speech,
50(2), 247-277.
THANK YOU