Duration and spectral balance of intervocalic consonants: A case for efficient communication

R. J.J.H. Van Son; Jan P.H. Van Santen

doi:10.1016/j.specom.2005.06.005

Duration and spectral balance of intervocalic consonants: A case for efficient communication

R. J.J.H. Van Son
, Jan P.H. Van Santen

Institute on Development and Disability

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

60 Scopus citations

Abstract

The prosodic structure of speech and the redundancy of words can significantly strengthen or weaken segmental articulation. This paper investigates the acoustic effects of lexical stress, intra-word location, and predictability on sentence internal intervocalic consonants from accented words, using meaningful reading materials from 4157 sentences read by two American English speakers. Consonant duration and spectral balance in such reading materials show reduction in unstressed consonants and in consonants occurring later in the word (Initial vs. Medial vs. Final). Coronal consonants behaved distinctly, which was interpreted as a shift from full to flap or tap articulation in a subset of the phoneme realizations. This shift in articulation, and part of the consonant specific acoustic variation, could be linked to the frequency distribution of consonant classes over the investigated conditions. A higher frequency of occurrence of a consonant class in our corpus and a CELEX word-list was associated with shorter durations and differences in spectral balance that would increase the communicative efficiency of speech.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	100-123
Number of pages	24
Journal	Speech Communication
Volume	47
Issue number	1-2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2005.06.005
State	Published - Jan 1 2005

Funding

This research was made possible by grants 300-173-029, 355-75-001, and 276-75-002 of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). NWO also supplied the additional funding which made this collaboration possible. This work was partly performed at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill NJ, USA. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their many detailed and helpful comments.

Funders
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek

Keywords

Acoustic reduction
Prosodic structure
Redundancy

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software
Modeling and Simulation
Communication
Language and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Computer Science Applications

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10.1016/j.specom.2005.06.005

Cite this

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title = "Duration and spectral balance of intervocalic consonants: A case for efficient communication",

abstract = "The prosodic structure of speech and the redundancy of words can significantly strengthen or weaken segmental articulation. This paper investigates the acoustic effects of lexical stress, intra-word location, and predictability on sentence internal intervocalic consonants from accented words, using meaningful reading materials from 4157 sentences read by two American English speakers. Consonant duration and spectral balance in such reading materials show reduction in unstressed consonants and in consonants occurring later in the word (Initial vs. Medial vs. Final). Coronal consonants behaved distinctly, which was interpreted as a shift from full to flap or tap articulation in a subset of the phoneme realizations. This shift in articulation, and part of the consonant specific acoustic variation, could be linked to the frequency distribution of consonant classes over the investigated conditions. A higher frequency of occurrence of a consonant class in our corpus and a CELEX word-list was associated with shorter durations and differences in spectral balance that would increase the communicative efficiency of speech.",

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N2 - The prosodic structure of speech and the redundancy of words can significantly strengthen or weaken segmental articulation. This paper investigates the acoustic effects of lexical stress, intra-word location, and predictability on sentence internal intervocalic consonants from accented words, using meaningful reading materials from 4157 sentences read by two American English speakers. Consonant duration and spectral balance in such reading materials show reduction in unstressed consonants and in consonants occurring later in the word (Initial vs. Medial vs. Final). Coronal consonants behaved distinctly, which was interpreted as a shift from full to flap or tap articulation in a subset of the phoneme realizations. This shift in articulation, and part of the consonant specific acoustic variation, could be linked to the frequency distribution of consonant classes over the investigated conditions. A higher frequency of occurrence of a consonant class in our corpus and a CELEX word-list was associated with shorter durations and differences in spectral balance that would increase the communicative efficiency of speech.

AB - The prosodic structure of speech and the redundancy of words can significantly strengthen or weaken segmental articulation. This paper investigates the acoustic effects of lexical stress, intra-word location, and predictability on sentence internal intervocalic consonants from accented words, using meaningful reading materials from 4157 sentences read by two American English speakers. Consonant duration and spectral balance in such reading materials show reduction in unstressed consonants and in consonants occurring later in the word (Initial vs. Medial vs. Final). Coronal consonants behaved distinctly, which was interpreted as a shift from full to flap or tap articulation in a subset of the phoneme realizations. This shift in articulation, and part of the consonant specific acoustic variation, could be linked to the frequency distribution of consonant classes over the investigated conditions. A higher frequency of occurrence of a consonant class in our corpus and a CELEX word-list was associated with shorter durations and differences in spectral balance that would increase the communicative efficiency of speech.

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KW - Redundancy

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Duration and spectral balance of intervocalic consonants: A case for efficient communication

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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