Cognitive Science Program

Is linguistic injustice a myth? A response to Hyland (2016) (2016)
Stephen Politzer-Ahles, Jeffrey J Holliday, Teresa Girolamo, Maria Spychalska and Kelly Harper Berkson
Journal of second language writing, 34 3

Abstract

Hyland (2016) challenges the notion of linguistic injustice in academic publishing—ie, the position that non-native speakers of English face substantial challenges relative to native speakers in the dissemination of scholarly work. Specifically, Hyland argues that there is little convincing evidence that a linguistic disadvantage exists, and that focusing on disadvantage has harmful consequences for both native and non-native English-speaking scholars. Given the huge numbers of non-native English speakers involved in academic publishing, and the pressures from university administrations to publish in English, this is an issue of great importance to the scientific community, and Hyland's call for empirical data rather than anecdotal evidence and introspection is valuable. However, we argue that Hyland underestimates the role that linguistic privilege (and its converse, linguistic disadvantage or linguistic injustice) plays …

Phonation types in Marathi: An acoustic investigation (2013)
Kelly Harper Berkson

Abstract

This dissertation presents a comprehensive instrumental acoustic analysis of phonation type distinctions in Marathi, an Indic language with numerous breathy voiced sonorants and obstruents. Important new facts about breathy voiced sonorants, which are crosslinguistically rare, are established: male and female speakers cue breathy phonation in sonorants differently, there are an abundance of trading relations, and--critically--phonation type distinctions are not cued as well by sonorants as by obstruents. Ten native speakers (five male, five female) were recorded producing Marathi words embedded in a carrier sentence. Tokens included plain and breathy voiced stops, affricates, nasals, laterals, rhotics, and approximants before the vowels [a] and [e]. Measures reported for consonants and subsequent vowels include duration, F0, Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP), and corrected H1-H2*, H1-A1*, H1-A2*, and H1-A3* values. As expected, breathy voice is associated with decreased CPP and increased spectral values. A strong gender difference is revealed: low-frequency measures like H1-H2* cue breathy phonation more reliably in male speech, while CPP--which provides information about the aspiration noise included in the signal--is a more reliable cue in female speech. Trading relations are also reported: time and again, where one cue is weak or absent another cue is strong or present, underscoring the importance of including both genders and multiple vowel contexts when testing phonation type differences. Overall, the cues that are present for obstruents are not necessarily mirrored by sonorants. These findings are interpreted with …

What does incipient/ay/-raising look like?: A response to Josef Fruehwald (2017)
Kelly Berkson, Stuart Davis and Alyssa Strickler
Language, 93 (3), e181-e191

Abstract

In examining the history of/ay/-raising before voiceless consonants in Philadelphia, Josef Fruehwald (2016) concludes that either categorical phonological conditioning was present from the very onset of this phonetic change, or the period of purely phonetic conditioning was too brief to be identified. This is based on the observation that raising is phonological in the Philadelphia data: it occurs before voiced flaps that are underlyingly voiceless (as in writing), but not before underlyingly voiced flaps (as in riding). In this response, we provide the first acoustic documentation of an English variety that shows an incipient phase of/ay/-raising where the conditioning environment is purely phonetic.

Capturing breathy voice: Durational measures of oral stops in Marathi (2012)
Kelly Harper Berkson

Abstract

The present study investigates a series of techniques used to capture the durational differences of oral stops in Marathi, an Indic language that exhibits a four-way phonemic distinction among oral stops.

Acquiring and visualizing 3D/4D ultrasound recordings of tongue motion (2018)
Steven M Lulich, Kelly H Berkson and Kenneth de Jong
Journal of Phonetics, 71 410-424

Abstract

Ultrasound is increasingly common in speech and phonetics research as technology continues to improve. The first digital 3D/4D ultrasound system was utilized for speech research nearly a decade ago, but data access, processing, and visualization were limited to (non-speech) clinical imaging applications. Access to the raw (pulse-echo or scan-converted) image data is a critical step toward making 3D/4D ultrasound an effective tool for speech research. In addition, there is a need for technical characterization of 3D/4D ultrasound systems together with a presentation of their strengths and limitations for research. This paper gives a general technical description of ultrasound systems, beginning with conventional 2D image acquisition and working up toward 3D/4D systems. Emphasis is given to one particular system – the Philips EPIQ 7G system with xMatrix X6-1 digital 3D/4D transducer – for which access to raw …

Acoustic correlates of breathy sonorants in Marathi (2019)
Kelly Harper Berkson
Journal of Phonetics, 73 70-90

Abstract

Breathy voiced sonorant consonants are typologically rare, more so than other non-modal sonorants (e.g. voiceless sonorants, which are widely attested in language families like Tibeto-Burman and Otomanguean). Similarly, they are more vulnerable to diachronic loss than voiceless sonorants (e.g. in Tibeto-Burman). The acoustic correlates of breathiness in sonorants have not been thoroughly investigated, and a question arises as to whether there is a tie between their acoustics and their typology: does the acoustic encoding of breathiness in sonorants contribute to their typological scarcity? The current study probes this question via instrumental acoustic analysis of breathy and modal obstruents and sonorants in Marathi, an Indic language. Measures standardly used to assess voice quality (F0, H1^*-H2^*, H1^*-A1^*, H1^*-A2^*, H1^*-A3^*, and Cepstral Peak Prominence) are reported. As expected, breathy voiced …

Real-time three-dimensional ultrasound imaging of pre-and post-vocalic liquid consonants in American English (2015)
Brandon Rhodes, Kelly Berkson, Kenneth de Jong and Steven Lulich
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 137 (4), 2268-2269

Abstract

Speech sound articulation is typically characterized in the mid-sagittal plane. However, lateral segments, such as the /l/ category in most varieties of English, are usually identified in introductory phonetics courses as exceptions to this rule. On the other hand, many productions of post-vocalic /l/ in varieties spoken in the lower Mid-west U.S. are noted as being non-lateral, involving only a dorsal articulation very different from the canonical coronal occlusion. Furthermore, a large body of literature indicates multi-constriction articulations, which vary by syllable position, for liquids like American English /l/ and /r/. This research presents results from a study of constriction location and laterality in pre- and post-vocalic /l/ and /r/ using real-time 3D ultrasound images of tongue motion, digitized impressions of the palate, and time-aligned acoustic signals.

Phonotactic frequencies in Marathi (2017)
Kelly Harper Berkson and Max Nelson
IULC Working Papers, 17 (PUBART),

Abstract

Breathy sonorants are cross-linguistically rare, occurring in just 1% of the languages indexed in the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database (UPSID) and 0.2% of those in the PHOIBLE database (Moran, McCloy and Wright 2014). Prior work has shed some light on their acoustic properties, but little work has investigated the language-internal distribution of these sounds in a language where they do occur, such as Marathi (Indic, spoken mainly in Maharashtra, India). With this in mind, we present an overview of the phonotactic frequencies of consonants, vowels, and CV-bigrams in the Marathi portion of the EMILLE/CIIL corpus. Results of a descriptive analysis show that breathy sonorants are underrepresented, making up fewer than 1% of the consonants in the 2.2 million-word corpus, and that they are disfavored in back vowel contexts.

Production, perception, and distribution of breathy sonorants in Marathi (2016)
Kelly Berkson
Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages, 2

Abstract

Breathy sonorants are crosslinguistically rare, and while a small amount of existing work has focused on their acoustic properties much remains to be learned about their perception and their language-internal distribution. Herein, breathy sonorants in Marathi are investigated via instrumental acoustic analysis, a perception experiment, and corpus analysis. Results reveal that breathy sonorants are under-represented language-internally in addition to being typologically rare. The acoustic differences associated with sonorant phonation contrasts are less robust than those in obstruents. They are also prone to more perception errors than obstruents, and breathy sonorants are more heavily restricted phonotactically than breathy obstruents. These data contribute to a more nuanced understanding of breathy sonorants, and lend potential insight into their typology.

Optionality and locality: Evidence from Navajo sibilant harmony (2013)
Kelly Harper Berkson
Laboratory Phonology, 4 (2), 287-337

Abstract

While many phonological processes are local, consonant harmony is of interest phonologically because it can occur non-locally. Sibilant harmony in Navajo requires that sibilants within a word have matching anteriority specifications. The process is described as being sometimes mandatory and sometimes optional, but neither the statistical nature of the occurrence in optional settings nor the factors contributing to the optionality are fully understood. This paper provides preliminary investigation into these issues using the first person possessive morpheme, which is underlyingly/ʃi-/but may harmonize to [si-]. Experiment 1, an online grammaticality judgment survey, reveals that the harmonized prefix is dispreferred in all environments. Experiment 2 presents acoustic data from three Navajo speakers: though none harmonize overtly, the spectral mean and lower bound of frication energy of the prefixal fricative are …

The nature of optional sibilant harmony in Navajo (2010)
Kelly Harper Berkson

Abstract

This thesis represents investigates optional sibilant harmony in Navajo using the first person possessive morpheme, which contains an underlyingly palatal sibilant that may harmonize to alveolar when affixed to noun stems that contain [+anterior] sibilants. The literature commonly describes sibilant harmony as being mandatory in Navajo when sibilants are in adjacent syllables, and optional when there is more distance between sibilants. In other words, sibilant disharmony is ungrammatical, but gradiently rather than categorically; in some instances disharmony is ungrammatical enough that it must be repaired through assimilation, while in other instances it is less ungrammatical and may be tolerated. The statistical nature of the variation in these optional harmony settings is not fully understood, however, and the three studies contained within this thesis were designed to investigate how often assimilation occurs in nonmandatory environments and to identify factors that contribute to the variability observed. In the first study, a Google search was used to evaluate sibilant harmony in online Navajo language use in the Spring of 2008 and again in the Spring of 2010. The findings present a picture of optional sibilant harmony that differs somewhat from the traditional view; harmony seems to be optional even in the environment that has traditionally been described as mandatory, and it occurs far less frequently than anticipated. These results led to the creation of an online survey wherein fluent speakers of Navajo provided grammaticality judgments of both assimilated and unassimilated forms. Almost universally, respondents preferred the …

Articulatory and acoustic investigation of coronals in Hakha Chin (2018)
James Smith, Stefon Flego and Kelly Berkson
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 143 (3), 1755-1755

Abstract

Coronal obstruents are profoundly common typologically, occurring in most or all of the world’s known languages. Very few languages, however, contrast coronal obstruents at the dental and alveolar places of articulation. Hakha Chin—also known as Lai—is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in western Myanmar that is reported to do so. Very little phonetic research on Chin exists, but Maddieson and Van Bik (2004) provide acoustic and static articulatory data (palatography and linguography) suggesting that the contrast is between a lamino-dental series and an apico-alveolar series. We follow up on that research using dynamic, volumetric articulatory imaging in the form of 3D/4D ultrasound. Articulatory and acoustic data from two native speakers of Chin are presented in order to contribute to a more thorough understanding of this typologically uncommon contrast.

Three dimensional ultrasound imaging of pre-and post-vocalic liquid consonants in American English: Preliminary observations (2017)
Kelly H Berkson, Kenneth de Jong and Steven M Lulich
IEEE. 5080-5084

Abstract

This study presents articulation data of American English laterals and rhotics captured by combining real-time 3D ultrasound, digitized 3D palate impressions, and time-aligned audio recordings. While articulation of laterals and rhotics has long been of interest, traditional two-dimensional imaging techniques are subject to limitations because the vocal tract is three-dimensional. The technological advances rendering 3D imaging possible therefore enable more sophisticated understanding of these complex articulations. Results from two speakers are presented, one from New England and one from Indiana. Lateral productions are different for each speaker, but both speakers exhibit mirrored temporal phasing of coronal and dorsal occlusions in /l/ in onset vs. coda position, with dorsal articulations occurring temporally closer to the neighboring vowel. Lingual shape for rhotic productions is complex but consistent …

Region, gender, and within-category variation in American English voiced stops (2016)
Abigail H Elston, Katherine Blake, Kelly Berkson, Wendy Herd, Joy Cariño, Max Nelson ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 139 (4), 2123-2123

Abstract

The two-way voicing contrast in American English stops—particularly in initial position—is often described as a long-lag (e.g., long positive VOT for /p/) versus short-lag (e.g., short positive VOT for /b/) distinction, with less frequent instances of lead voicing (e.g., negative VOT for /b/) attributed to individual variation. Systematic within-category gender and region differences have been reported, however, with more closure voicing found for male than for female speakers (Ryalls, Zipprer, and Baldauff, 1997), and more fully voiced closures for /b/ in female speakers from North Carolina than those from Wisconsin (Jacewicz, Fox, and Lyle, 2009). With this in mind, we investigate the interaction of gender and region in the prevoicing of word-initial voiced stops by comparing the VOTs of male and female speakers from Indiana and Mississippi. Participants were recorded reading three repetitions of a pseudo-randomized list of …

An acoustic analysis of the vowels and stop consonants of Bashkir (2016)
Kelly H Berkson, Matthew C Carter and Christopher M Robbins
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 139 (4), 2215-2215

Abstract

Bashkir is a language of the Volga-Kipchak branch of the Turkic language family, spoken by approximately 1.2 million ethnic Bashkirs primarily in the autonomous Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia. Minimal research has been conducted on Bashkir in English, and what research has been conducted in either Russian or English focuses on the morphophonemics, syntax, and semantics of the language: acoustic investigation of Bashkir, meanwhile, is nearly nonexistent. This study is a preliminary examination of the phonetics of Bashkir. Using data from a female native speaker in her early 50s from Ufa, Bashkortostan, we present instrumental analysis of vowels in both pre-stressed and stressed positions, as well as voice onset time measures for oral stops. The vocalic data, in particular, are surprising in multiple ways: while they largely align with descriptions of the Bashkir vowel space provided by previous sources …