In an investigation of the speech of layngedomized speakers we presently focus on their ability to distinguish behoeen voiced and voiceless speech sounds. Some of them are able to produce this distinction clearly in some contexts and it is quite remarkable considering the structure of the pharyngo-esophageal entrance, serving as the post-operative voice source. However, there are a number of ac...

This paper presents a study of devoicing of European Portuguese fricatives. Two devoicing criteria (a manual criterion and a criterion based on the ratio of variances of the laryngograph signal during the VF transition and during the fricative) were used to classify the examples into two or three categories. The results of the automatic and manual measures of devoicing are compared, and an expl...

This paper presents a study of variability in the realisation of voicing timing in phonologically voiced (European) French stop consonants. Data derived from an acoustic analysis of recordings of read speech by male and female speakers from northeastern and southwestern France are compared. The results reveal sexspecific patterning consistent with findings elsewhere that female speakers tend to...

Kenstowicz, Michael and Chiyoun Park. 2006. Laryngeal Features and Tone in Kyungsang Korean: a Phonetic Study. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology. Xx.x, xxx-xxx. F0 is one of the major phonetic correlates to the intensively studied laxtense-aspirated contrast in Korean obstruents. Numerous investigations of the standard Seoul dialect have shown that the vowels following tense or asp...

Chinese words may begin with /t/ and /d/, but a /t/-/d/ contrast does not exist in word-final position. The question addressed by experiment 1 was whether Chinese speakers of English could identify the final stop in words like beat and bead. The Chinese subjects examined approached the near-perfect identification rates of native English adults and children for words that were unedited, but perf...

This study investigates phrase-medial vowel devoicing in European French (e.g. /ty pø/ [ty ̊ pø] ‘you can’). Our spontaneous speech data confirm that French phrase-medial devoicing is a frequent phenomenon affecting high vowels preceded by voiceless consonants. We also found that devoicing is more frequent in temporally reduced and coarticulated vowels. Complete and partial devoicing were condit...

In this paper, we discuss a direct measure for the proportion of periodic and aperiodic components in speech signals. Further, in the periodic regions, we estimate the pitch period. This method is particularly useful in situations where the speech signal contains simultaneous periodic and aperiodic energy, as in the case of breathy vowels and some voiced obstruents. The performance of this algo...

The Czech voiced labiodental continuant has a special position within the system of Czech consonants. Due to its past it sometimes behaves phonologically as a sonorant, while its canonical articulatory qualities place it among obstruents. It is quite difficult to decide how much of its sound is sonorant and how much is obstruent by mere auditory analysis. We investigated whether basic acoustic ...