On the function of preaspirated voiceless fricatives in Scottish Standard English

1. On the function of preaspirated voiceless fricatives in Scottish Standard English Olga GordeevaJames Scobbie Speech Science Research Centre Queen Margaret University College Edinburgh, Scotland

2. What is preaspiration? • “co-ordinatory relationship between the vowel and the following voiceless segment” (Laver, 1994) • in North Western Europe occurs in areas covering Scandinavian, Germanic and Celtic languages • It is often described as a property of the transition between a vowel and the following /-voice/ stops (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996) • E.g. in Icelandic (Thráinsson, 1979) it seems to be a major correlate of phonological contrasts like [viht] (wide) vs. [vitt] (breadth)

3. Preaspiration of -VOICE fricatives and its linguistic function? /grt/ "grey" Piteå Swedish (North-Eastern Sweden) /gras/ Scottish Standard English MC Edinburgh

4. Other Contexts and Examples Preaspiration appears also before [T] and [st] + after other vowels of all height including [e a]

5. Preaspiration in British English • For British English varieties, preaspiration of voiceless stops [p], [t] and [k] is reported in: • Newcastle Englishas a sociolinguistic variable in young females (Docherty & Foulkes 1999, Foulkes et al. 1999) • Middlesbrough Englishwords likeMAT can be fricatedor preaspirated(Jones & Llamas, 2003). • This does not seem to apply to SSE stops • Voiceless stops are often glottalised (Wells, 1982; Stuart-Smith, 1999; Chirrey, 1999) • Or even produced with complete glottal closure as strong ejectives (Gordeeva & Scobbie, 2006).

6. Preaspiration of voiceless fricatives? • all signs of early glottal abduction and increasing breathiness in the vowel before voiceless fricativesin French, Italian and German (Gobl & Ní Chasaide, 1999): • gradually falling excitation strength • gradually rising dynamic leakage • increasingly symmetrical shape of the glottal pulse • Hypothesis: early glottal abduction (relative to supraglottal constriction) and breathy vowel offset is a universal characteristic of voiceless fricatives • “preaspiration” of voiceless fricatives has been reported in: • Central Swedish (Helgason, 2002) • Middlesbrough English (Jones & Llamas, 2003)

7. Current project • whether early onset of glottal abduction can be implemented as a variety-specific ‘phonetic realisation strategy’ (Docherty & Foulkes, 1999): • i.e. is a learnt characteristic rather than being just a universal • whether such anticipatory process can have any function in speech communication other than free variation: • Paralinguistic (e.g. conveying intimacy , Laver 1994) • Sociolinguistic (Henton & Bladon, 1978, Docherty & Faulkes, 1999) • Linguistic (e.g. in cueing word-final /VOICE/ contrasts)

8. ±VOICE contrast in fricatives In English is controlled by a multitude of cues, with voiceless fricatives: • showing much earlier cessation of voicing (Haggard, 1978; Docherty, 1992; Smith, 1997) • longer consonantal and shorter vowel duration (Smith, 1997) • higher voice source airflow during the consonant (Smith, 1997), and accordingly higher frication noise amplitude (Balise & Diehl, 1994) • Phrase-final +VOICE fricatives are often completely devoiced (Haggard, 1978; Docherty, 1992; Smith, 1997) • Phrase-final -VOICE fricatives are also often “preaspirated” (Gordeeva and Scobbie, 2004)

9. Prosodic structure and frequency of occurrence in BUS(Gordeeva & Scobbie, 2004) phrasal structure also affects the frequency of occurrence of preaspiration in SSE It is more likely to occur in phrase final positions.

10. Correlates of VOICE contrast Is VOICE contrast cued by phonetic events in Vf-transitions?  Need to increase the scope of analysis from V or f to Vf.

11. /VOICE/ contrast in Vf-transitions • Transitional preaspiration is a cue to phonological voicing in words like “lake” (brine) and “lage” (to make) in Norwegian (van Dommelen, 1998) • there is a strong perceptual bias towards the voiceless category in the presence of at least 30 ms (and longer) of preaspirated transitions • Acoustic studies suggest breathiness is a perceptually-relevant cue mediated by: • mid- and high frequency noise (Klatt & Klatt, 1990; Hillenbrand et al., 1994) • H1-H2 differences (Hillenbrand et al., 1994; Holmberg et al., 1995; Klatt & Klatt, 1990) • Listeners seem to attune to fV formant transitions for spectrally similar fricatives in fricative identification tasks (e.g. Heinz & Stevens 1961; Wagner et al 2006) • Is it possible that Vf transitional correlates of breathiness are promoted to cue VOICE, where phonetic voicing and duration are demoted?

12. Subjects • Five female speakers (controls from my PhD project) • Five male speakers • Age 23 - 45 • Most are residents of Edinburgh, born in the Central Belt • One female is born in Aberdeen, but speaks broad MC SSE

13. Materials

14. Data • The data was digitized at 11025 Hz with16-bit resolution • The male data also included parallel laryngographic recording (Laryngograph Processor ™) as a control technique for the analysis of voice offset based on speech waveforms

15. Annotation a 30 ms of glottal or whispery transition (Van Dommelen, 1998)between the offset of the modal voicing in the vowel and initiation of the friction of the following voiceless fricative

16. Acoustic Measures Voicing: voicing offset ratio (%) Duration: vowel duration (including preaspiration) duration of the coda fricative Aspiration-related measures: ZCR mid (per sec) ZCR final (per sec) ZCR change (per sec) HTN mid (dB) HTN final (dB) HTN change (dB) H1*-H2* mid (dB) H1*-H2* final (dB) H1*-H2* change (dB)

17. Voicing Offset Measurement • speech waveforms were high-pass filtered at 50 Hz to get rid of the DC component • Periodicity offset was measured from speech waveform • Cross-correlation algorithm in Praat • with minima and maxima on F0 vowel ranges in both groups • calibrated against periodicity measured from the available EGG data for male speakers to achieve the best correlations

18. Voicing Offset Ratio in Vf transitions

19. Zero-crossing rate • ZCR reflects the number of zero-crossings of the wave within a certain part of signal, divided by the number of samples in this part • High-pass filtering at 1.5*mean pitch of each vowel token • to get rid of sinusoidal waving resulting from dominating H1 in the time-domain of a waveform (Stevens,1996; Klatt&Klatt, 1990)

20. Results MANOVA for VOICE

21. Results LDA for VOICE N=358 92.2 % of phrase-final Vf-fricatives were correctly classified for VOICE

22. Results LDA for preaspiration N=298 84.9 % of all voiceless fricatives were correctly classified as preaspirated or non-preaspirated

23. Individual Results for ZCR for the VOICE test

24. HTN and voicing offset in VOICE

25. Vowel and fricative duration in VOICE

26. Conclusions • The hypothesis in this study was that transitional preaspiration can get promoted as a primary correlate of fricative VOICE • That in the phonetic contexts where other correlates like voicing are known to demote (Haggard, 1978; Docherty, 1992) in British English varieties: i.e. phrase-finally • This hypothesis is supported in this study • The most successful predictor of fricative VOICE in phrase-final positions is the rapid increase of high frequency noise in the second half of the vowel, and its high amount in the Vf-transition • Zero-crossing rate surpasses in strength the traditionally considered parameters of fricative VOICE such as voicing offset time, consonantal and vowel duration

27. Discussion • Supports the views that VOICE contrast in British English is phonetically gradual, without neutralising the phonological contrast (Docherty, 1992) • Gobl & Ní Chasaide, 1999 early glottal abduction and breathy vowel offset is a universal characteristic of voiceless fricatives • It this extent of preaspiration really automatic or is it learnt? • Perceptual relevance: prove that SSE speakers are attuned to these Vf transitions and use aspiration as a cue to VOICE