Voice Onset Time

Whiteside et al. [S.P. Whiteside, A. Hanson, P.E. Cowell, Hormones and temporal components of speech: sex differences and effects of menstrual cyclicity on speech, Neurosci. Lett. 367 (2004) 44-47] documented effects of menstrual cycle phase and sex on voice onset time (VOT) in naturally timed speech using whole words. VOT is a temporal component of speech that plays an important role in production and perception [L.L. Koenig, Laryngeal factors in voiceless consonant production in men, women, and 5-year-olds, J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 43 (2000) 1211-1228; A. Löfqvist, L.L. Koenig, R.S. McGowan, Vocal tract aerodynamics in /aCa/ utterances: measurements, Speech Commun. 16 (1995) 49-66; T.M. Nearey, B. Rochet, Effects of place of articulation and vowel context in VOT production and perception for French and English Stops, J. Int. Phon. Assoc. 24 (1994) 1-18; L.M. Rimol, T. Eichele, K. Hugdahl, The effect of voice-onset-time on dichotic listening with consonant-vowel syllables, Neuropsychologia 44 (2006) 191-196; P.G. Simos, R.L. Diehl, J.I. Breier, M.R. Molis, G. Zouridakis, A.C. Papanicolaou, MEG correlates of categorical perception of a voice onset time continuum in humans, Cogn. Brain Res. 7 (1998) 215-219; S.P. Whiteside, J. Marshall, Developmental trends in voice onset time: some evidence for sex differences, Phonetica 58 (2001) 196-210]. The present study was designed to replicate and expand upon Whiteside et al. [S.P. Whiteside, A. Hanson, P.E. Cowell, Hormones and temporal components of speech: sex differences and effects of menstrual cyclicity on speech, Neurosci. Lett. 367 (2004) 44-47] using a speeded syllable repetition paradigm. VOT measurements for 6 English plosives (/p b t d k g/) were obtained from speech samples of 15 women and 20 men (age 20-25 years). Women were tested across two points in the menstrual cycle (Days 2-5: low estrogen and progesterone/low-EP; Days 18-25: high estrogen and progesterone/high-EP) and men were tested once. Results indicated significant interaction between menstrual cycle phase and voicing (F(1,14)=8.239, P<0.02), whereby the voiced plosives (b, g) displayed shorter VOT values and the voiceless plosives (p, k) displayed longer values at the high-EP phase. Thus, the distinction between the voiced and voiceless plosive was enhanced at high-EP. Significant sex effects (F(1,33)=10.080, P<0.005) were seen with women at high-EP but not the low-EP phase having longer VOT values than men for voiceless plosives. Sex differences between the voiced and voiceless plosives were enhanced at the high-EP phase. This study indicates a role for activational ovarian hormones in regulating temporal features of speech in both whole words and speeded syllable repetition.

Perception of a nonnative language (L2) is known to be affected by crosslinguistic transfer from a listener’s native language (L1), but the relative importance of L1 transfer vis-a-vis individual learner differences remains unclear. This study explored the hypothesis that the nature of L1 transfer changes as learners gain experience with the L2, such that individual differences are more influential at earlier stages of learning and L1 transfer is more influential at later stages of learning. To test this hypothesis, novice L2 learners of Korean from diverse L1 backgrounds were examined in a pretest-posttest design with respect to their perceptual acquisition of novel L2 consonant contrasts (the three-way Korean laryngeal contrast among lenis, fortis, and aspirated plosives) and vowel contrasts (/o/-/ʌ/, /u/-/ɨ/). Whereas pretest performance showed little evidence of L1 effects, posttest performance showed significant L1 transfer. Furthermore, pretest performance did not predict post...

Previous research on the perception of foreign accent has focused on the ratings of native and near-native listeners and few studies have explored the perception of degree of foreign accent by nonnative listeners, despite the fact that it could shed light on what language learners perceive as foreign-accented and potentially tell us about their developing system. The present dissertation aims to investigate the perception of degree of foreign accent in Spanish by both native and nonnative listeners, exploring the effects of various listener-specific characteristics, including proficiency, on listeners’ perception. This thesis also explores the role of VOT and speech rate in nonnative listeners’ perception of foreign accent in Spanish, two cues that have been found to influence native listeners’ perception of foreign-accented English in previous studies.
In order to accomplish these goals the read speech of 2 native and 2 nonnative Spanish speakers, in addition to 11 distracter speakers, was recorded and Praat’s duration tool was used to create VOT and rate-modified versions of the read sentences. A total of 26 native speakers and 140 nonnative learners of Spanish heard and rated 210 modified and unmodified utterances on a 9-point scale of degree of foreign accent. The statistical analyses revealed significant differences between native and nonnative listeners’ ratings of unmodified speech. In the analyses that compared listener ratings of modified and unmodified utterances, both sets of listeners rated speech as more accented when it had longer (less native-like) VOTs and when it was slower. Conversely, listeners also rated nonnative speech as less foreign-accented when it was reproduced with shorter VOTs and at a faster rate. A number of listener-specific factors including proficiency, course enrollment, pronunciation training, comprehension, and native dialect exposure were also found to be significant predictors of listeners’ foreign accent perception. The results show that both linguistic and listener characteristics affect the perception of foreign accent by native and nonnative listeners of Spanish, and that contrary to previous findings these two listener groups do not necessarily perceive degree of foreign accent the same.

The current Trabajo de Fin de Grado aims at describing, in a first theoretical approach, the basics of the phenomenon called “aspiration” that occurs in English and, in the practical approach, at analyzing previously recorded samples of both native speakers of English and Spanish students of English in an attempt to confirm whether the latter’s production of such phenomenon is influenced or not by their mother tongue. The results of the analysis have shown that as students’ English matures in their minds as they grow in level, the process of aspiration grows in their production of English as well. However, results have also shown a lack of consistency in their production of aspiration probably caused by the influence of their mother tongue on their L2.

Key words: Aspiration in English, Lack of Aspiration in Spanish, Voice Onset Time, Plosive Bilabial-Alveolar-Velar Consonants, Spectrograms.

"This dissertation explores the phonological representation and the phonetic realization of prosodic prominence in Persian. It comprises two related parts: the first part addresses prosodic phrasing in Persian sentences, while the second part deals with phonetic correlates of prosodic prominence by reporting conducted production and perception experiments. The phonological part is carried out within the framework of Prosodic Phonology, and aims at determining the prosodic structure of Persian from foot level, up to utterance level. By adopting Optimality Theory, it tries to explain how morphosyntax-phonology interface constraints together with prosodic markedness constraints form the prosodic structure of the language. It begins with foot level and suggests that in languages like Persian which have one non-iterative weight-insensitive edgemost stress per word, a single foot which is edge-aligned with the minimal Phonological Word best explains the prosodic pattern at word level. This part also focuses on prosodic differences between lexical words and weak function words (clitics) and shows that any attempt to describe the prosodic structure of Persian without addressing this crucial difference, will not be able to provide explanation for a wide range of phenomena. This study suggests that proclitics and enclitics behave asymmetrically in Persian: enclitics prosodize as affixal clitics, while proclitics are free clitics. Next, it addresses the problem of weak function words which are not a part of their preceding or following XPs, and demonstrates how the phonological well-formedness constraints determine the direction of cliticization in these XP-external function words. It also deals with the issue of clitic clusters in Persian which was not explored in the previous works. Another contribution of this study is reclassification of so-called exceptionally initial-stressed words.
This dissertation also deals with the longstanding problem of Ezafe constructions and by reviewing previous proposals on the prosodic structure of these constructions, based on phonological evidence and phonetic observations suggests that each lexical word in an Ezafe construction maps onto a Phonological Phrase, and the Ezafe morpheme phrases with its preceding material to satisfy the phonological well-formedness constraint ONSET. The prosodic structure of XP-external clitics such as the Ezafe morpheme is explained by adopting a syntax-prosody interface constraint namely MAP-XP, that bans two sister XPs inside a single Phonological Phrase. This study proposes a ranking of OT constraints by which the prosodic structure of Ezafe constructions and other syntactic phrases such as DPs and VPs can be predicted and explained uniformly. It also proposes that the interaction between morphosyntax-phonology interface constraints and prosodic markedness constraints determine prosodic constituents of all levels and their heads, and other constraints require the heads of phonological phrases to be associated with audible accents. The rightmost Phonological Phrase in an Intonational Phrase is the head. This head associates with an accent which is perceived more prominently than the other accents. One further issue explored here is the fact that in lexicalized Ezafe constructions and also in the ones containing given/old information, some words may appear without audible accent.
The phonetic difference between final and non-final accents is the subject of the second half of this dissertation. Previous research on Persian has shown that the main acoustic correlate of prosodic prominence is f0. This study reports production and perception experiment results conducted in order to answer the question whether final (nuclear) accents are perceived more prominently than the other ones only because they are not followed by any other accent, or because they are phonetically different from the non-final (pre-nuclear) accents. The results of production experiments reveal that nuclear accented syllables have a lower f0 range, but a longer duration in comparison with pre-nuclear accented ones. Other parameters such as overall intensity, spectral tilt and vowel quality do not differ significantly in the two types of accents. Perception experiments reveal that native listeners can indeed distinguish the two types of accents without having access to the portion of the utterance that follows the final accent. This proves that the two types of accents are phonetically different. Perception tests also show that the difference between the shapes of f0 curves in the two types of accents is the main acoustic parameter that helps the listeners distinguish them from each other. In pre-nuclear accented words, the f0 peak is at the right edge of the metrically strong syllable, and the curve has a rising slope at this point. In these syllables, the peak may even occur on the initial syllable of the following word. However, in the syllables associated with nuclear accents, the f0 peak is located inside the syllable, and the curve has a falling slope at the right edge of the syllable.
If the f0 at the right edge of a nuclear accented syllable is manipulated and raised so that the f0 peak is moved to the right edge, the native listeners will perceive the word containing this syllable as a pre-nuclear accented word. This study also shows that duration alone cannot cue the difference between the two types of accents. However, when accompanied by f0 changes, it can help the listeners distinguish the two accents more easily and more efficiently.
Downloadable at: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1314_hosseini_1.pdf
"

This dissertation explores the phonetics and phonology of language contact, specifically pertaining to the integration of Spanish voiced stops /b/, /d/, and /g/ into Quichua, a language with non-contrastive stop voicing. Conflicting areas of convergence of this type appear when two or more phonological systems interact and phonemes from the target language are unknown natively to speakers of the source language.
Media Lengua is a mixed language with an agglutinating Quichua morphology, and Quichua syntactic and phonological systems where nearly all the native Quichua vocabulary has been replaced by Spanish. This extreme contact scenario has integrated the voiced stop series into Media Lengua and abundant minimal pairs are present. If the phonological system of Media Lengua is indeed of Quichua origin however, how have speakers integrated the voiced stop series productively and perceptually? Have they adopted different strategies from Quichua speakers? If so, how do they differ?
Chapter 1 sets the scene with an in-depth description of how contact between Spanish and Quichua has mutually influenced each language at the morphosyntactic level. Chapter 2 explores voice onset time (VOT) production in all five language varieties. Statistical modeling is used to search for differences in duration while taking into account a number of linguistic and demographic factors. Chapter 3 investigates stop perception in Media Lengua and Quichua, and uses Urban Spanish as a point of comparison. Chapter 4 looks at phonetic pre-nasalization in voiced stops across Media Lengua, Quichua, and Urban Spanish. Chapter 5 describes allophonic variations in stop production. The final chapter speculates on the nature of sound change at the phonetic level and explores possible origins of Media Lengua.
Production results show that Media Lengua VOT duration values have shifted away from Quichua towards Rural Spanish. The perceptual results show an age-based effect with older Quichua speakers, which shows more random responses to the stimuli than younger speakers. This effect was not found in Media Lengua or Urban Spanish speakers. Similar age-based results were also found for stop weakening tendencies in Quichua and L2 Spanish speakers, while Media Lengua, Rural, and Urban Spanish speakers were not significantly affected by age.

Variation across talkers in the acoustic-phonetic realization of speech sounds is a pervasive property of spoken language. The present study provides evidence that variation across talkers in the realization of American English stop consonants is highly structured. Positive voice onset time (VOT) was examined for all six word-initial stop categories in isolated productions of CVC syllables and in a multi-talker corpus of connected read speech. The mean VOT for each stop differed considerably across talkers, replicating previous findings, but importantly there were strong and statistically significant linear relations among the means (e.g., the mean VOTs of [pʰ] and [kʰ] were highly correlated across talkers, r > 0.80). The pattern of VOT covariation was not reducible to differences in speaking rate or other factors known to affect the realization of stop consonants. These findings support a uniformity constraint on the talker-specific realization of a phonetic property, such as glottal spreading, that is shared by multiple speech sounds. Because uniformity implies mutual predictability, the findings also shed light on listeners' ability to generalize knowledge of a novel talker from one stop consonant to another. More broadly, structured variation of the kind investigated here indicates a relatively low-dimensional encoding of talker-specific phonetic realization in both speech production and speech perception.

Aims and objectives: In this study, we investigated crosslinguistic influence in the phonetic systems of simultaneous bilinguals (2L1s) during adulthood. Methodology: Specifically, we analyzed the voice onset time (VOT) of the voiceless stop /k/ in the spontaneous speech of 14 German–French bilinguals who grew up in France or Germany. We looked at both languages, first comparing the groups, second comparing their VOT to their global accent. Data and analysis: The material consisted of interviews, lasting for about half an hour. Findings/conclusions: Most 2L1s showed distinct VOT-ranges in their two languages, even if they were perceived to have a foreign accent in the minority language of their childhood environment. We conclude that the phonetic systems of 2L1s remain separate and stable throughout the lifespan. However, the 2L1s from France had significantly shorter VOTs in German than the 2L1s from Germany, and their speech was overall more accented. These findings are discussed with respect to the role of intra-and extra-linguistic factors. Originality: Our study adds a new perspective to existing VOT studies of bilinguals by using naturalistic speech data and by comparing two groups of 2L1s who have the same language combination but grew up in different countries, which allows us to evaluate the impact of their childhood environment on VOT development. Significance/implications: Language exposure during childhood seems to be beneficial for pronunciation during adulthood.

This paper aims to investigate how tonogenesis in Seoul Korean affects non-native language acquisition in a multilingual context with L1 Cantonese, L2 English and L3 Korean. We are also interested to examine the source and direction of cross-linguistic influences in the acquisition of VOT and F0 patterns which are used for the stop contrasts. Sixteen L3 Korean learners differing in proficiencies (beginning vs. intermediate) were recorded reading a list of words embedded in carrier sentences in the three languages. Results from acoustic analyses found that the learners did not merge VOTs for the Korean lax and aspirated stop contrast, but they showed the tendency for tonogenesis, such as their heavy use of f0 in producing different Korean stops. Furthermore, comparison between the beginners and the intermediate learners revealed various cross-linguistic influences: regressive transfer of f0 on L1 and L2, bidirectional interaction of f0 values between L2 and L3, and L1 influence on the production of VOT in L2 and L3. These findings suggest that L3 transfer happens in a cue-by-cue manner, i.e. VOT and f0 need to be accounted for separately.

Voice Onset Time (VOT) is the time between the release of a stop consonant and the onset of voicing (vibrations in the vocal cords). This time is measured in ms and is negative for voiced stops and positive for unvoiced stops. VOT of +75ms and more is considered to indicated an aspirated stop.
This BA thesis compares VOT of the fortis and lenis pairs of stop phonemes in Icelandic (which is normally considered to have unvoiced unaspirated vs unvoiced aspirated stop phonemes), Bulgarian (as all Slavic and Romance languages, it has voiced vs unvoiced stops) and Swedish (where the two phonemes in each pair have allophones that are either voiced, unvoiced unaspirated and unvoiced aspirated).
The figures for Icelandic and Swedish were taken from previous works. The author measured VOT in Bulgarian.

This study investigates the extent of voicing in the voiced plosives /b, d/ across a range of phonetic contexts in Irish English. Spectrographic and waveform analysis showed that /b, d/ were almost always voiceless sentence-initially, substantially devoiced sentence-finally, and varied considerably sentence-medially. Further analysis of sentence-medial position found that if the plosive was part of a stressed syllable it was substantially less voiced than if it was part of an unstressed syllable. Focus also had an effect: less voicing was found in a nuclear syllable in narrow focus than in broad focus or a deaccented tail.
Comparison of these findings with an analogous study [6] of two other varieties of English (Wisconsin and North Carolina) did not verify the hypothesis that Irish English has a greater tendency to devoice medial /b/. Instead, there was a large inter-speaker difference, with two speakers show devoicing of /b/ frequently and two speakers infrequently.

This paper analyses variability in voice onset time (VOT) in Australian English (AusE) coronal stops, as produced by those of mainstream, and Lebanese heritage ethnicities. Data are derived from the AusTalk corpus, and from a new corpus of Lebanese Australian ("LAus") speech in Melbourne comprising 30 speakers aged 18-30. Both groups use short-and long-lag VOT for /d/ and /t/ respectively; however, speakers with Lebanese heritage exhibit substantially more pre-voiced /d/ tokens. Group-wise, there are fine phonetic differences between groups. Lebanese Australian individuals exploit a greater range of VOT values but there is no evidence of transfer of Lebanese Arabic VOT system. Instead, speakers deploy coronal stop VOT to index ethnic identities as Lebanese Australians.

In this thesis, we explore the use of temporal information in detection, estimation and classification of landmarks and events associated with the stop consonants.

To start with, a non-linear temporal measure named the plosion index (PI) is proposed to locate transients in a time series. An algorithm is proposed to extract the instants of significant excitation or the epochs from voiced speech signal using an extended concept of the PI, called the dynamic plosion index (DPI). The efficacy of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated on several large corpora comprising of simultaneous recordings of speech and electroglottographic signals, under both clean and noisy conditions. It is also compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms and its advantages over them are demonstrated.

Next, the problem of automatically locating the burst-onset landmarks of stops and affricates from continuous speech is addressed. The value of PI computed on the high-pass filtered signal is used along with a pitch-synchronously derived cross-correlation to devise a non-linear classification algorithm. It is validated on several databases under various conditions and it is shown that it compares well with the state-of-the-art methods despite its simplicity.

Further an algorithm, devoid of any requirement for an a priori transcription and statistical training, is proposed for estimating the voice onset time of stops using pitch-synchronous inner-product and zero-crossing patterns of stops and associated phones. The proposed algorithm is validated using multiple databases and compared with the existing algorithms. In the second part of this work, a method, based on the DPI, is proposed to estimate the closure duration of the stops.

Subsequently, the problem of classification of place of articulation of stops is dealt with by proposing features derived from the differences in the temporal structures of the stops. It is shown that the temporal features can be as effective as the spectral features, whereas the combination of temporal and spectral features can increase the classification accuracy.

Finally, the inter-domain applicability of the features and algorithms proposed in this thesis is demonstrated by applying the concept of DPI to solve the problem of detection of QRS complexes from the electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. The proposed algorithm involves neither any differences nor thresholds and is computationally simpler than the existing algorithms, while performing comparable to them.

BACKGROUND: Speech perception is based on a variety of spectral and temporal acoustic features available in the acoustic signal. Voice-onset time (VOT) is considered an important cue that is cardinal for phonetic perception. METHODS: In the present study, we recorded and compared scalp auditory evoked potentials (AEP) in response to consonant-vowel-syllables (CV) with varying voice-onset-times (VOT) and non-speech analogues with

Using an audiovisual perception task, two groups of native English listeners (monolinguals, and L2 learners of Spanish) were asked to identify which /p,t,k/ tokens had been produced by native English speakers and which ones by foreigners. The experiment found that self-reported criteria for foreign accent detection tended to be consistent with actual perceptual behavior, and that the L2 learners performed better, both at the group and at the individual level. These results suggest that foreign accent detection is cued by Voice Onset Time differences and taps into both our tacit knowledge of the native segmental norm and our implicit awareness of what constitutes a particular deviation from that norm. Moreover, the results suggest that, contrary to what some have assumed, monolinguals are not necessarily more sensitive to foreign accents than second language learners.

"La coordinación (o retraso) del comienzo de la sonoridad, o VOT por sus siglas en inglés, se define típicamente como la diferencia en tiempo entre la apertura de la oclusión labial, dental o velar de la consonante (distensión, que marca el comienzo del periodo de propagación espectral) y el comienzo de actividad periódica: o la barra de sonoridad de baja frecuencia, o el comienzo del F1, o bandas paralelas, lo que se dé primero. En otras palabras, el VOT puede considerarse como el intervalo de tiempo que existe entre la emisión del aire posterior a la oclusión característica de la consonante, y el comienzo de las vibraciones de la laringe, o vibración supraglotal (Winitz, 1975). El estudio de la coordinación del comienzo de la sonoridad es relevante, ya que su variación tiene consecuencias léxicas y semánticas, y una de las tareas más fundamentales de la fonología es establecer cómo es que se pueden transmitir diferentes mensajes lingüísticos a través del sonido. Ya sea que se trate de diferencias léxicas o en funciones gramaticales, los mensajes que no son idénticos deben tener distintas codificaciones físicas, sean paradigmáticas -diversos códigos de un inventario finito- y/o sintagmáticas -permutaciones diversas de los códigos- (Ohala, 1995). Existen métodos bien establecidos para descubrir las correlaciones físicas de diferentes mensajes lingüísticos en casos en los que son ambiguos o de interpretación discutible. Aunque tales estudios se consideren generalmente como de interés puramente fonético y no fonológico, es claro que es necesario poder encontrar casos en los que la realidad del habla a través de análisis fonéticos concuerde con los conceptos fonológicos para así darles validación y fundamento.

What is known as Voice Onset Timing (VOT) is typically defined as the difference in time between the opening of the labial, dental or velar consonantal closure (air release, which marks the beginning of the spectral activity), and the beginning of periodic patterns: either the low frequency sonority bar, or the beginning of formant activity. In other words, the VOT can be considered as the time interval between the emission of the air after the closure characteristic of the consonant and the onset of vibrations of the larynx, or supraglotal vibration (Winitz, 1975). The study of the timing of the start of the sonority is relevant, since its variation has lexical and semantic consequences, and one of the most fundamental tasks of phonology is to establish how it is that language can convey different messages through sound. Whether it be lexical differences or grammatical functions, non-identical messages must have diverse physical encodings, either paradigmatic -various codes of a finite inventory- and/or syntagmatic -diverse permutations of the encoding-(Ohala, 1995). Well-established methods exist for discovering physical correlations of different linguistic messages in cases that are ambiguous or possess questionable interpretation. Although such studies are generally considered purely phonetic and not phonological, it is clear that it is necessary to find cases in which the reality of speech through phonetic analysis is consistent with phonological concepts."

Emphasis, or pharyngealization, is a distinctive phonetic phenomenon and a phonemic feature of Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. The goal of this study is to investigate the effect of gender on the production of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic as manifested on the consonants themselves as well as on the adjacent vowels. To this end, 22 speakers of Jordanian Arabic, 12 males and 10 females, participated in a production experiment where they produced monosyllabic minimal CVC pairs contrasted on the basis of the presence of a word-initial plain or emphatic consonant. Several acoustic parameters were measured including Voice Onset Time (VOT), friction duration, the spectral mean of the friction noise, vowel duration and the formant frequencies (F1-F3) of the vowels. The results of this study indicated that VOT is a reliable acoustic correlate of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic only for voiceless stops whose emphatic VOT was significantly shorter than their plain VOT. Also, emphatic...

The connection between pitch, phonation and plosive voicing has been observed in many of the languages of the world, including those of the Himalayas. The paper examines different analyses of largely phonetically similar data from various Tibetan and Tamangic languages, comparing and evaluating the substantially different analyses offered in different descriptive traditions, arguing that principles of economy and descriptive adequacy allow us to choose between alternative analyses for many languages that have been described with different types of contrasts involving plosive manner and pitch height.

Within the world's languages, 88.9% (Kessinger & Blumstein, 1997) includes the voicing distinction among consonants, and voice onset time (VOT) is an acoustic cue associated with this distinction. VOT is the length of time measured between the release of a plosive and the beginning of vocal fold vibration (Cho & Ladefoged, 1997). This time, usually expressed in milliseconds (ms), is

Transcription-based studies have shown that tense stops appear before aspirated or lax stops in most Korean-acquiring children's speech. This order of mastery is predicted by the short lag Voice Onset Time (VOT) values of Korean tense stops, as this is the earliest acquired phonation type across languages. However, the tense stop also has greater motor demands than the other two phonation types, given its pressed voice quality (negative H1-H2) and its relatively high f0 value at vowel onset, word-initially. In order to explain the observed order of mastery of Korean stops, we need a more sensitive quantitative model of the role of multiple acoustic parameters in production and perception. This study explores the relationship between native speakers' transcriptions/categorizations of children's stop productions and three acoustic characteristics (VOT, H1-H2 and f0). The results showed that the primary acoustic parameter that adult listeners used to differentiate tense vs....

The paper explores the syllabic and segmental dimensions of phonological vowel disorder. The independence of the two dimensions is illustrated by the case study of an English-speaking child presenting with an impairment which can be shown to have a specifically syllabic basis. His production of adult long vowels displays three main patterns of deviance – shortening, bisyllabification and the hardening of a target off-glide to a stop. Viewed phonemically, these patterns appear as unconnected substitutions and distortions. Viewed syllabically, however, they can be traced to a single underlying deficit, namely a failure to secure the complex nuclear structure necessary for the coding of vowel length contrasts.

En este trabajo, presentamos un panorama general acerca de los principales estudios sobre la adquisición fonético-fonológica de lenguas extranjeras (LEs), que fueron realizados durante el período 2010-2012 en Brasil. Discutimos los temas prioritarios de los investigadores brasileños del área en cuestión, con miras a efectuar una reflexión sobre las principales metas a ser alcanzadas en los estudios inter-fonológicos, así como también sobre los principales problemas y desafíos a ser superados. A manera de ejemplo, llevamos a cabo un relevamiento de los trabajos más recientes, desarrollados en la región sur de Brasil, que abordan la cuestión de la adquisición de los patrones de Voice Onset Time (VOT) del inglés. Destacamos como tarea pendiente la necesidad de contar con un mapeo de los dialectos de lengua materna de los estudiantes para lograr un mejor entendimiento del proceso de adquisición. También resaltamos la importancia de establecer una mayor uniformidad metodológica no solo de la selección, cantidad y nivelación de los participantes, sino también de los instrumentos utilizados para la recolección de datos y de las pruebas experimentales. Esperamos que este relevamiento constituya un aporte significativo a la agenda de discusiones teórico-metodológicas en el área. 1. Introducción El presente trabajo tiene dos objetivos centrales. En primer lugar, presentaremos un panorama general acerca de los principales estudios sobre la adquisición fonético-fonológica de lenguas extranjeras (LEs), desarrollados en Brasil, en el período 2010-2012. En segundo lugar, discutiremos los temas prioritarios de los investigadores brasileños del área en cuestión, con miras a efectuar una reflexión sobre las principales metas a ser alcanzadas en los estudios inter-fonológicos, así como también sobre los principales problemas y desafíos a ser superados. Finalmente, efectuaremos un relevamiento de los trabajos más recientes, desarrollados en la región sur de Brasil, que abordan la cuestión de la adquisición de los patrones de Voice Onset Time (VOT) del inglés. La observación y el análisis de estos trabajos nos permitirán evaluar diferentes metodologías e intereses respecto a un mismo fenómeno.