SSF December 10th - Dr. James Kirby

Talk Title: Production and perception of onset F0: Insights from the EVOTONE project

Abstract:

In many (possibly all) languages, obstruent consonants influence the fundamental frequency (F0) of the following vowel. The magnitude and temporal extent of these obstruent-intrinsic F0 perturbations (‘onset F0’ for short) varies considerably, but the historical record leaves little doubt that these perturbations have frequently given rise to lexical tones, tone splits, and F0-based contrasts more generally. In the simplest cases, a laryngeal contrast that is signaled primarily through presence vs. absence of voicing (/ba/∼/pa/) may come instead to be signaled by a difference in F0 height (/pà/ ∼ /pá/). This process is well-documented in many languages of East and Southeast Asia, but has also been observed in Indo-European languages such as Punjabi and Afrikaans. 

Despite the ubiquity of this sound change, it remains unclear exactly how it takes place. Critical questions include: is there naturally occurring covariance in production between different cues to the voicing contrast? Do listeners treat these cues as perceptually equivalent? And what drives the enhancement of onset F0 in production, and increases its salience in perception? In this talk, I will review ongoing work from our group addressing these issues, focusing on contextual sources of microprosodic variation; attempts to induce imitation of microprosodic enhancement; and how perceptual equivalence between prevoicing and onset F0 could give rise to a novel parse of the acoustic signal. Our interim findings highlight the importance of structured individual differences in both production and perception.