On the Lack of Fricative Articulations of [B] in the World ...plaza.ufl.edu/cpindziak/resources/PindziakThesis.pdfAbstract Although the voiced bilabial fricative, [B], is purported

University of FloridaDepartment of Linguistics

On the Lack of Fricative Articulations of[B] in the World’s Languages

Author:Charles J. Pindziak

April 11, 2012

This paper is submitted in partial satisfaction of the honors requirements for the degree Bachelorof Arts in linguistics. It was advised by Dr. Fiona McLaughlin.

Copyright c© 2012 by Charles J. Pindziak.

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Methods 42.1 Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42.2 Recordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52.3 Processing and Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62.4 Criteria for Classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3 Results 93.1 Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93.2 Selected Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103.3 Ambiguous Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

4 Discussion 184.1 Aerodynamics of [B] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184.2 Examples of True Fricative [B] in Ewe Rounded Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204.3 Data from L1 Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

5 Modeling [B] 265.1 Straw Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265.2 Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265.3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

6 Phonological Ramifications 306.1 Issues with the Reclassification of [B] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306.2 Boersma’s (2008) Three-Form Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326.3 Formalizing [B] as Both an Approximant and a Fricative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

7 Conclusion 37

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List of Figures

1.1 Ewe: [eBe]; “Ewe” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2.1 Waveform of [v] in the Kwangali word [evu] “ground” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72.2 Spectrogram of the Kwangali word [evu] “ground” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3.1 Bemba: [Baka], [BaBa]; “take care of” – “itch” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113.2 Kwangali: [veta], [Beta]; “fetch water” – “beat” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123.3 Ewe: [eBe], [eve]; “Ewe” – “two” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123.4 Initial consonant and transition into vowel of Ganda word [Bon:a] “all” . . . . . . . . 133.5 Ganda: [Bon:a]; “all” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143.6 Ganda: [kuBa]; “to be” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143.7 Logba: [uBa]; “measles” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153.8 Logba: Comparison of waveforms [B] (top) and [v] (bottom) from minimal pair [uBa],

[uva]; “measles” – “side” (amplitude not to scale) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4.1 Ewe: [Bu]; “to open” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214.2 Waveform of [B] segment from Ewe [Bu]; “to open” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214.3 Ewe: [eBe]; “Ewe” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224.4 Ewe: [Be(

>tsi)]; “rain” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

5.1 Model of channel formed at the lips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

6.1 Sonority curves with [B] in a complex onset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316.2 Mart́ınez-Celdrán’s (2004) classification of approximants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326.3 Boersma’s (2008) model of the phonology-phonetics interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

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List of Tables

2.1 Languages for analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3.1 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

4.1 Ewe word list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

5.1 Straw lengths (in mm) and areas (in mm2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275.2 Channel models and their capability to produce turbulent flow . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

6.1 Phonetic evaluation of [laba] “he washes” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356.2 Evaluation of /kabRa/ “goat” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366.3 Phonetic evaluation of [Bu] “to open” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

iii

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to several people who helped make this project the best that it could be; the errors

that remain are mine alone. First, I thank Fiona McLaughlin, my faculty advisor, for giving me the

independence to pursue my research interests wherever they take me, while at the same time always

giving me support and guidance so that I stay on the right path. I also thank Ratree Wayland,

who taught me everything I know about phonetics and has always kept her office door open to

listen to my ideas and offer friendly feedback on previous drafts of this and other papers. I thank

Jimmy Harnsberger for introducing me to spectrogram analysis, and I am grateful to Sean Witty

for taking a freshman with no experience in linguistics and giving him the confidence to produce

professional-quality research (I hope).

This research also benefited from funding from UF’s University Scholars Program and Depart-

ment of Spanish and Portuguese, which financed my trip to the Universitat de Barcelona to create

recordings of Catalan speakers. I thank Maria-Rosa Lloret for her indispensable help recruiting

speakers and Ana Maria Fernández-Planas for giving me access to the university’s phonetics lab

and equipment. I am also grateful to them and their students for being so welcoming towards me

and making me feel at home throughout my stay in Barcelona.

On a more personal level, I thank my parents for always supporting me and encouraging me

to follow my interests and talents. Lastly, but most importantly, I thank my grandfather, Roland

Chapman, for teaching me at a young age what the square-root button on a calculator does, even

though I had convinced myself that whatever math behind it was too hard to learn. Were it not

for our whimsical discussions from poker probabilities, to perpetual-motion machines, to P?= NP,

I would not have conceived of this project, nor have had the intellectual drive to execute it.

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Abstract

Although the voiced bilabial fricative, [B], is purported to exist in several of the world’s languages,

tokens from a sample of 9 languages that are claimed to contain [B] showed no evidence of frication

noise. The lack of noise implies that the bilabial constriction is not narrow enough to create a

turbulent airstream, which is fundamental to the fricative class. Therefore, the bilabial continuant in

these languages should be classified as an approximant. Mathematical modeling and some empirical

evidence of bilabial constrictions with rounded lips indicate that fricative articulations of [B] are

possible in rounded environments, but since [B] is usually realized with the lips spread, true fricative

productions of [B] are much rarer than traditionally claimed.

Chapter 1

Introduction

In the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database (UPSID), the voiced bilabial fricative, [B],

occurs in 55 of the 451 indexed languages, i.e., 12.2 percent of the languages in the database. This is

one of the highest instances among the nonstrident fricatives, surpassed only by [v] (96 languages =

21.29%) and very slightly by [G] (56 = 12.42%). What is puzzling about the frequency of [B] is that

its voiceless counterpart, [F], occurs in only 41 of the languages in UPSID (9.09%). Bilabial is the

only place of articulation of fricatives with a cross-linguistic voiced-to-voiceless ratio greater than

one.1 This trend is a challenge to phonetic markedness since voiced fricatives are more difficult

to articulate than voiceless ones, because air pressure needs to be elevated in two places in the

vocal tract: below the glottis to produce voicing and behind the constriction to produce frication.

Indeed, Ohala (1997) reports a cross-linguistic tolerance of voiced stops over voiced fricatives, with

an estimation of 24 percent of the world’s languages lacking voiced stops in their inventories as

opposed to 38 percent lacking voiced fricatives. Given this markedness and the generalization

that asymmetries in language inventories include the unmarked member over the marked one, it is

puzzling that [B] occurs more often than [F] in language.

Another peculiarity of [B] is evident in an acoustic study of voiced fricatives by Jackson & Shadle

1Maddieson (1984:45), using an earlier version of UPSID containing 317 languages, points out that the voiced-to-voiceless ratio of dental fricatives is also greater than one, with 21 languages containing [D] in their inventories and18 containing [T]. The languages added to UPSID after Maddieson’s publication have tilted this ratio below one.

1

(2000). The researchers used a computer algorithm to separate voiced fricatives into their harmonic

(voicing) and anharmonic (noise/turbulence) components. They discovered that [B], as produced

by their research participants, displayed an anharmonic component with a magnitude very close to

zero, requiring [B] tokens to be excluded from the rest of their analysis. Very little anharmonicity,

thus dominated by a periodic component, would suggest an approximant articulation of [B]. Since

voicing is unmarked in sonorants, an approximant articulation of [B] would be consistent with the

voiced-to-voiceless ratio mentioned earlier.

This raises the question of whether [B] has been misclassified in many of the languages in UPSID

resulting in the puzzling voiced-to-voiceless ratio. Misclassification of approximants as fricatives

is not uncommon. Recasens (1991) and Mart́ınez-Celdrán (2004) have presented spectrographic

evidence that [B] and several other so-called voiced fricatives are articulated as approximants in

Catalan and Spanish. Examining the Basque language, Hualde classified [B] as a fricative in his

phonological investigation (1991), but later classified the sound as an approximant in a phonetically-

based article for the Illustrations of the IPA series (2010). In fact, [B] claimed as a true fricative

rarely, if ever, surfaces in the phonetics literature. While a spectrogram of the Ewe word [eBe] “Ewe”,

appears in Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:142, the spectrogram does not manifest any frication noise

during the articulation of [B], which is fundamental to the fricative manner.

Recordings taken at the University of Florida of an Ewe speaker’s production of [B] (discussed

in more detail in Chapter 4.2) demonstrate another characteristic of the articulation of [B]. In the

waveform and spectrogram of this speaker’s production of [eBe] (Figure 1.1), after the transition

from the vowel (1), the [B] segment is initially devoiced (2) to facilitate production of turbulent

flow, and then gains voicing (3) shortly before transitioning to the following vowel. At the onset

of voicing, however, the fricative quality is lost. The reduction in flow caused by an adducted

glottis makes adequate pressure build-up for voiced-fricative production phonetically difficult. This

is especially true for [B] because the precision for forming a narrow constriction is more easily

accomplished by the tongue than the lips. Besides the question of whether [B] is often misclassified

in languages, these Ewe recordings and the lack of true fricative [B] in the phonetics literature raise

another question, namely, whether true fricative articulations of [B] (i.e. with simultaneous voicing

2

and frication) can be found in any language.

Figure 1.1: Ewe: [eBe]; “Ewe”

This paper examines the waveforms and spectrograms of tokens of [B] in 9 languages for evidence

of fricative articulations. The languages under examination, the source of the recordings, and the

criteria for fricative classification are all addressed in the Chapter 2. Chapter 3 presents the results

of this examination, showing that fricative articulations of [B] are virtually non-existent in language.

Chapter 4 offers some aerodynamics-based information for the paucity of fricative [B] and displays

a few cases where true fricative [B] tokens surfaced in rounded environments (i.e. adjacent to a

rounded vowel) in a follow-up experiment. Chapter 5 explores modeling production of [B], and

Chapter 6 discusses the effects of non-fricative [B] on phonology.

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Chapter 2

Methods

2.1 Languages

Most of the recordings for this analysis were obtained from the UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive

(http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/). According to the homepage of this archive, the database

contains recordings of over 200 languages with transcriptions from the original field documents. The

interface allows the user to search by phonetic symbol, and the search results return all the languages

in the database that have that phonetic symbol anywhere in the accompanying transcriptions.

A search of [B] was conducted on the database. From the search results, all the language record-

ings of too poor quality for phonetic analysis were discarded. This included, for example, recordings

with high-amplitude background noise and recordings that were sampled at a low rate (< 10kHz).

For all of the languages that had not been discarded yet, the accuracy of the accompanying tran-

scriptions was verified with an outside source, to affirm that the languages indeed are purported to

contain [B] in their inventories. Languages for which the existence of [B] in their inventories could

not be verified were also discarded.

This process eliminated all but the 9 languages that are shown in Table 2.1. The “Reference”

column displays sources that attest that the associated languages indeed have [B] in their inventories.

Note that, as mentioned earlier, Hualde’s 2010 phonetic analysis concludes that Basque’s bilabial

4

continuant is an approximant, contrary to his 1991 phonological analysis (cited in Table 2.1), which

labels this segment as a fricative. Despite Hualde’s subsequent correction, Basque is still included

in the present analysis to offer a second look. Table 2.1 also shows the phonemic status of [B] in

these languages and any significant contrasts with [B] in their inventories.

Table 2.1: Languages for analysis

Language Family Contrasts Reference

Basque isolate (/b/ → [B]) Hualde (1991)Bemba Bantu /B, w/ Sims (1959)

Catalan Romance (/b/ → [B]) Wheeler (2005)Ewe Kwa /B, v, F, f/ Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996)

Ganda Bantu /B, v, f, v:, f:/ Ashton et al. (1954)Kwangali Bantu /B, v/ Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996)

Logba Kwa /B, v, F, f/ Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996)Mazatec (Jalapa) Oto-Manguean /B/ Garellek & Keating (2011)

Venda Bantu /B, v, F, f/ Ziervogel et al. (1972)

2.2 Recordings

All of the recordings of these languages from the UCLA database were created using word lists. The

native speakers were prompted to read one word at a time, and therefore, the recordings contain

careful but not quite hyperarticulated tokens. Since these recordings are void of coarticulatory

pressures that come about from fluid speech, they are most likely to show evidence of fricative

articulations, which require a constricted channel that might not quite be realized all the time in

casual speech.

The details of the recordings are available on the UCLA Archive website. Most were created

on tape and later digitized and stored as WAV files. The UCLA database creators used a sampling

rate of 44kHz to digitize all analog recordings, even though most of the UCLA analog recordings do

not preserve frequencies above 11kHz. Therefore, downsampling these recordings to 22kHz removes

noise introduced during the digitization process without discarding information from the original

signal.

The only language for which the recordings did not come from the UCLA database was Catalan.

5

The Catalan recordings come from a corpus that I recorded at the Universitat de Barcelona in

a sound-attenuated booth in the university’s phonetics lab, with a Shure SM10A head-mounted

microphone connected to a Marantz Professional PMD671 solid-state recorder, sampling at 44kHz.

2.3 Processing and Software

Prior to analysis, all the recordings were downsampled to 22kHz using the command-line program

Sound eXchange (http://sox.sourceforge.net/), since the analog recordings did not contain

information about the signal above 11kHz prior to digitization (as mentioned above). The lack of

information in the signal above 11kHz is not a problem for the present analysis of [B]. All fricatives

show at least part of their frication noise below this 11kHz cutoff. Moreover, the noise spectrum of

[B] is diffuse, spanning many frequencies from low to high (cf. [v]), since it is produced at the lips

with no channel in front to shape the noise.

The analysis of the recordings was done in Praat (http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/). The

default settings in Praat were changed to produce spectrograms from 0 to 10kHz. This larger

frequency window helps make frication noise more visible.

2.4 Criteria for Classification

Voiced fricatives are comprised of a (quasi)periodic component from the vibration of the vocal

folds as well as an aperiodic component created as air passes through the supraglottal constriction.

Therefore, the presence of both periodic and aperiodic energy is fundamental to the fricative class.

In a waveform, a voiced-fricative articulation is apparent by a sinusoidal component (periodic) with

random deviations from periodicity that look like a jagged overlay (aperiodic), as in Figure 2.1.

In a spectrogram, a voiced fricative is manifested by noise spanning across many frequencies

(aperiodic) modulated by periodic striations, which are residuals of vocal-fold vibration. Aperiodic

noise as well as striations are visible during the articulation of [v] in Figure 2.2, which begins about

halfway into the spectrogram.

6

Figure 2.1: Waveform of [v] in the Kwangali word [evu] “ground”

In the examination of the purported voiced-bilabial-fricative segments in the 9 languages in

Table 2.1, both the waveforms and the spectrograms were consulted. A judgment was made that

classified them as fricatives if and only if the segments manifested both a periodic and an aperiodic

component. The results of these judgments appear in Chapter 3.

It may seem that the harmonics-to-noise ratio (see Qi & Hillman (1997) for an overview, or

Boersma (1993) for the mathematically-minded) may be helpful for this discrimination, but it

ultimately does not aid in making a distinction between fricative and non-fricative. At best, it

computes an accurate value in dB that suggests how much noise is present in the signal, but then

the researcher must impose an arbitrary critical value below which a segment is a fricative and

above which it is a non-fricative. The critical value could be established empirically by measuring

the harmonics-to-noise ratio of many fricative [B] and non-fricative [Bfl] and then demarcating the

midpoint between the two groups as the threshold, but since the present analysis does not assume

that true fricative [B] exists, this empirical basis is not possible. Therefore, harmonics-to-noise ratio

measurements were not consulted for fricative–non-fricative discriminations.

7

Figure 2.2: Spectrogram of the Kwangali word [evu] “ground”

8

Chapter 3

Results

3.1 Details

All tokens of purported [B] had a periodic component from voicing, but overwhelmingly they lacked

an aperiodic, noisy component to justify their classification as fricatives. The results of this dis-

criminatory analysis appear in Table 3.1. The “Environments” column provides a summary of the

contexts in which [B] tokens occurred in the recordings of the language. “/B/-/v/ pairs” indicates

that the researcher had the subject contrast /B/ and /v/ in successive minimal pairs. All tokens

were produced as approximants, i.e. lacking a channel constricted enough to produce aperiodic

noise,1 except the few tokens produced in environments followed by parenthetical fractions in Ta-

ble 3.1. The fractions convey how many of the tokens in that environment were not produced as

approximants, and the manner of articulation of these tokens is listed in the rightmost column,

“Alt. productions”. Of the 126 total tokens, only 3 were produced as possible fricatives, labeled in

the table as “aperiodic continuant” and “weak fricative”. Even so, these 3 cases are ambiguous,

1There is sometimes confusion about the articulation of certain fricatives. Strident (also called sibilant) fricatives(e.g. [s]) are produced with a constriction, creating an aperiodic component, and then the airflow comes in contactwith an obstacle, namely, the teeth. The contact with the obstacle amplifies the frication noise such that stridentfricatives are the noisiest segments. [B] is a non-strident fricative; that is, it is articulated with a constriction,creating an aperiodic component, but the airflow does not make contact with an obstacle. Therefore, non-stridentfricatives contain an aperiodic component, but it does not have as high an amplitude as the strident fricatives. Thisis sometimes confused as non-strident fricative lacking an aperiodic component altogether, but that is not the case;non-strident fricative simply do not have as noisy an aperiodic component as stridents.

9

and are addressed in Chapter 3.3.

Table 3.1: Data

Language Speakers Tokens Environments (non-approx) Alt. productions

Basque male 4 V V (1/2), V u (2/2) stop (3)Bemba female 8 V V, # , u w

Catalan 1 M, 3 F 32 V V, u u, i i (1/4), V w, V R stop (1)Ewe male 8 V V, /B/-/v/ pairs

Ganda male 7 # o (1/1), u a, u i, i i, o u aperiodic cont. (1)Kwangali 2 M, 1 F 23 # , V V, u e, /B/-/v/ pairs

Logba male 3 u a (2/3) weak fricative (2)Mazatec 4 M, 1 F 35 # V

˜Venda male 6 #

3.2 Selected Data

The following waveforms and spectrograms were chosen as representative of the total 126 tokens

under investigation. The Bemba words [Baka] “take care of”, and [BaBa] “itch” in Figure 3.1 show

[B] articulations lacking fricative noise (compare to the noisy release of [k]). Strong formants are

visible in the second [B] articulation in [BaBa]. This is typical of many intervocalic [B] tokens in the

corpus.

Figure 3.2 shows a minimal pair in Kwangali: [veta], “fetch water”, and [Beta] “beat”. Noise

is apparent about halfway through the labiodental fricative, [v], but no noise surfaces in the artic-

ulation of [B]. The duration of [B] is substantially shorter than that of [v], perhaps indicative of a

more glide-like articulation. Short-duration [B] was most common intervocalically in the examined

tokens, but word-initial short-duration [B] was not rare. The formants in [B] show a subtle decrease

in frequency, as predicted by Perturbation Theory for labial constrictions, but it is not as robust

as it would be if it were accompanied by a movement of the back of the tongue towards the velum.

That is, this approximant articulation of [B] is not the same as the labio-velar approximant [w]

because it does not have a velar gesture.

Ewe is perhaps the best known language to contain the voiced bilabial fricative in its inventory,

10

Figure 3.1: Bemba: [Baka], [BaBa]; “take care of” – “itch”

but even Ewe shows approximant-like articulations of [B] instead of fricative.2 In the minimal pair

[eBe] “Ewe”, and [eve] “two”, noise is clearly visible in the labiodental fricative [v] but lacking in

[B] (Figure 3.3).

2It will be shown in Chapter 4.2 that in recordings from a follow-up experiment, a native Ewe speaker produced[B] as a fricative in some rounded environments, but not as a fricative in all the environments where [B] is said tosurface.

11

Figure 3.2: Kwangali: [veta], [Beta]; “fetch water” – “beat”

Figure 3.3: Ewe: [eBe], [eve]; “Ewe” – “two”

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3.3 Ambiguous Cases

As seen earlier in Table 3.1, all the tokens lacked fricative qualities except a few cases from Ganda

and Logba, which do not quite manifest true fricative qualities but leave some uncertainty. These

tokens are presented in this section.

A close examination of the waveform of the initial consonant of the Ganda word [Bon:a] “all”

(Figure 3.4), reveals some irregularities that could be labeled as aperiodicity. The waveform shows

low amplitude at the onset of the [B] articulation, which then reaches a minimum before the vowel

transition, presumably arising from the greatest degree of constriction during the production. Al-

though this waveform is messy, it does not quite show the particular aperiodicity of fricatives. In

addition, the spectrogram of [Bon:a] (Figure 3.5) does not show any evidence of an initial fricative.

Moreover, other tokens from Ganda show no evidence whatsoever of frication, such as [kuBa] “to

be” (Figure 3.6), where it is difficult to pick out the intervocalic consonant by the waveform or

spectrogram.

Figure 3.4: Initial consonant and transition into vowel of Ganda word [Bon:a] “all”

13

Figure 3.5: Ganda: [Bon:a]; “all”

Figure 3.6: Ganda: [kuBa]; “to be”

14

Another interesting case comes from Logba. The three tokens mentioned in Table 3.1 are all of

the same word: [uBa] “measles”. The informant repeated this word three times in a row, and two

of the tokens showed some weak frication noise. One of those tokens appears in Figure 3.7. The

spectrogram displays some noise, but it is not clear whether it is simply an artifact of the recording.

This word forms a minimal pair in Logba with [uva] “side”, and a comparison of the waveforms

of the two intervocalic fricatives appears in Figure 3.8. The labiodental fricative [v] shows jagged

edges close to the peaks in the period, which are typical of fricatives but lacking in the [B] token.

This comparison with [v] implies that the Logba [B] tokens are not really fricatives, either.

Figure 3.7: Logba: [uBa]; “measles”

15

Figure 3.8: Logba: Comparison of waveforms [B] (top) and [v] (bottom) from minimal pair [uBa],

[uva]; “measles” – “side” (amplitude not to scale)

These few ambiguous cases support a greater point: Even when the benefit of the doubt is given

to questionable fricative segments, upon further scrutiny they fail to exhibit characteristics shared

by other voiced fricatives in the language, or fricatives in general. Given the over 100 tokens from

16

9 different languages across several language families, it seems unlikely that [B] is ever consistently

realized as a fricative.

17

Chapter 4

Discussion

4.1 Aerodynamics of [B]

Fricatives are produced by channeling air through a small constriction. The velocity of the air flow

and the size of the constriction determine whether the resultant flow will be turbulent (fricative) or

laminar (non-fricative). Since a more constricted channel can consequently increase the velocity of

the flow, and since articulations are not simply supraglottal processes but involve control of the lungs

as well, modeling fricatives is complex. Catford (1977:121) concludes that fricative articulations are

typically possible with channels having cross-sectional areas between 3 mm2 and about 20 mm2,

with approximant and resonant articulations above 20 mm2. Similarly, Stevens (2000:33) delineates

the normal range1 for fricative-producing channels as between 5 mm2 and 20 mm2, with vowel-like

productions from 20 mm2 to 30 mm2 to as much as 300 mm2 (= 3 cm2). That is, compared to

approximants and vowels, fricatives are only possible in a very narrow range of constriction sizes.

Forming channels of 20 mm2 or less can be accomplished by the tongue given its musculature, but

the lips are much more restricted. Since [B]2 is normally produced with unrounded lips (Ladefoged

1However, Stevens (2000) cites the MRI research of English fricatives by Narayanan et al. (1995), which showsfricative articulations by some subjects exceeding 20 mm2, though none of the research subjects’ productions exceeded30 mm2.

2One might wonder why this discussion is centered on [B] with no mention of its voiceless counterpart, [F]. Thisis because voiceless fricatives, voiceless approximants, and voiceless vowels are all noisy. Therefore, it is impossible

18

& Maddieson 1996:141), and since the average width of adult lips is 55.60 mm for males and 50.89

mm for females (Ferrario et al. 2000), a constriction distributed across the width of the lips could

have a vertical clearance no greater than 0.36 mm for men and 0.39 mm for women. Achieving this

level of constriction seems unlikely, particularly with the co-articulatory pressures of fluent speech.

It is especially unlikely in languages in which [B] surfaces as the output of a lenition process, since

the realization of a stop seems articulatorily easier.

Although 20 mm2 is just an estimate of the maximal area for fricatives, it is worth noting

that because of the aerodynamics of voicing, voiced-fricative productions with channels substantial

greater than 20 mm2 do not seem possible.3 Voiced fricatives are even more difficult to produce

because they require two locations of high air pressure: below the glottis to stimulate vocal-fold

vibration and behind the constriction to create turbulent flow. The continuous opening and closing

of the vocal folds decreases the mean velocity of the air flow, making turbulence especially diffi-

cult to achieve. Voicing is sometimes temporarily suspended during part of the articulation, and

the environment surrounding the fricative affects the likelihood of the suspension of voicing (Hag-

gard, 1978; Stevens et al., 1992). For example, intervocalic voiced fricatives are more often voiced

throughout their articulation than voiced fricatives adjacent to another voiced fricative. The sus-

pension of voicing facilitates turbulent-flow production, though it is not likely to permit turbulent

flow for much greater constriction sizes.

Even though [B] is usually unrounded at least in the 9 languages under examination, an ar-

ticulation of [B] in a rounded environment would decrease the width of the lips such that the

maximal length of the vertical constriction to produce turbulence would be more reasonable. This

is investigated in the following section.

to distinguish a fricative articulation of [F] and an approximant articulation of [Ffl] solely based on the presence or

absence of noise. Perhaps this distinction could be argued based on the size of the constriction, but it is more difficultto justify than noise presence.

3Indeed, Catford (1977) and Stevens (2000) both came up with the 20-mm2 threshold by looking primarily atvoiceless fricatives.

19

4.2 Examples of True Fricative [B] in Ewe Rounded Envi-

ronments

To test the effects of rounded lips on the articulation of [B], a male native speaker of Ewe was

recorded producing a list of VCV, VCCV, CV, and CCV words, which appear in Table 4.1 tran-

scribed in the IPA. The consonants in these words were stops, fricatives, and approximants, and all

tokens were actual words in Ewe. The speaker read through the list three times. For the present

study, only the tokens containing [B] were analyzed; the others served as distractors. The recording

was made on a Shure SM10A head-mounted microphone in a sound-attenuated room at the Uni-

versity of Florida and was sampled at 44kHz. The tokens from this recording were not included in

the dataset in Table 3.1.

Table 4.1: Ewe word list

Word Meaning Word Meaning

[eãa] you cooked [Bu] to open[eBe] Ewe [eBu] you open[eve] two [exe] you capture[eFa] you polished [Gla] to hide[efa] you was cold [eGla] you hid

[eBlo] mushroom [ewO] you made[eFli] you bought [ehe] you pulls[evlo] you are evil [wu] to kill

[efli] you cut [e>gbO] you came back

[Bã] to move, stir [e>kpO] you saw

[Be>tsi] rain

[B] showed true voiced-fricative characteristics in two out of the three repetitions of [eBu] as

well as all three repetitions of [Bu]. The waveform and spectrogram of one of the of the [Bu] tokens

appears in Figure 4.1. A very noisy component is easily visible in the spectrogram halfway through

the articulation of [B]. A closeup of the waveform of just the [B] portion appears in Figure 4.2. In

the waveform, the onset of frication noise is also easily recognizable starting at the halfway point

of the production.

20

Figure 4.1: Ewe: [Bu]; “to open”

Figure 4.2: Waveform of [B] segment from Ewe [Bu]; “to open”

21

Something curious surfaced (introduced in Chapter 1) in this native speaker’s productions of

[B] in unrounded environments, as well. For example, in the speaker’s production of [eBe] “Ewe”

(Figure 4.3), noise is apparent despite the unrounded articulation. However, the production of

frication noise seems to come at the cost of voicing. In this example, after the transition (1) from

the previous vowel into the fricative segment, unmodulated (i.e. voiceless) frication noise appears

in the spectrogram (2), but once voicing is introduced (3), frication noise vanishes.

Figure 4.3: Ewe: [eBe]; “Ewe”

This interaction between frication noise and voicing makes sense when considering the role of

aerodynamics. Voicing ceases with the abduction of the vocal folds while permitting a larger volume

of air to pass through the glottis. This increase in volumetric flow rate causes frication noise even

though the lips may not be ideally constricted for a bilabial fricative.4 When voicing returns,

however, the adduction of the vocal folds substantially decreases the volumetric flow rate such that

4Similarly, voiceless approximants and voiceless vowels are noisy because of the increase in flow from a spreadglottis, despite the wider constriction.

22

the conditions for frication are no longer met.

This raises the question as to whether this token can really be labeled a voiced bilabial fricative.

Voicing and frication do not occur simultaneously, yet they both appear at some point during the

segment’s production. Haggard (1978) and Stevens et al. (1992) both have documented that periods

of devoicing occasionally occur during the production of voiced fricatives; however, they note that

intervocalic voiced fricatives are the least likely to show periods of devoicing, yet all three tokens

of [eBe] of this speaker had devoicing, with very little overlap between the voiced and fricative

components. The three tokens of [Bu], on the other hand, had simultaneous voicing and frication

throughout.

A few other caveats need to be added to this informant’s productions of [eBe]. The duration

of [B] is much longer than that of a typical intervocalic fricative, approaching close to 200 ms.

Indeed, [B] in Figure 4.3 appears to be almost as long as the surrounding vowels. Moreover, the

token of [eBe] from the UCLA Archive (which appeared in Figure 3.3) is much shorter and shows

no frication, even though both tokens were recorded using similar procedures (list with mono- and

bisyllabic words, mostly VCV). Therefore, this articulation of intervocalic [B] may be idiosyncratic

to this informant.

It is worth noting that not all unrounded articulations of [B] from this speaker showed frication

noise and devoicing. Rather, some articulations were completely periodic, displaying no frication

and maintaining voicing throughout, like most of the tokens analyzed in Table 3.1. Only one of

the three repetitions of [Be>tsi] had a faint amount of voiceless noise during the production of the

initial consonant, whereas the other two tokens were voiced and periodic (as in Figure 4.4, which

shows only the first syllable, [Be]). Hence, even though this informant is more likely to produce

devoiced fricative tokens of [B] than the informant from the UCLA Archive, he still produced some

frictionless exemplars of [B]. Perhaps this number would be greater in flowing speech.

23

Figure 4.4: Ewe: [Be(>tsi)]; “rain”

More native speakers of languages containing [B] are needed to verify the effects of rounding

on [B] productions. Rounding may not be equally as effective in triggering fricative articulations

of [B] in all languages. For example, the rounded vowel preceding [B] in the Ganda token [kuBa]

“to be”, did not facilitate frication noise (Figure 3.6), but the same rounded vowel may have been

responsible for creating weak frication in the Logba tokens of [uBa] “measles” (Figure 3.7).

4.3 Data from L1 Acquisition

While acoustically [B] lacks the characteristics of a voiced fricative, it does not manifest many of the

characteristics of an approximant, either. Approximants are typically high-amplitude segments with

clear formant structure. However, many of the [B] tokens have a low amplitude with weak formants

at best, though there are some tokens that look quite vowel-like, particularly those resulting as

output from a lenition process. Catford (1977) proposes a continuum from fricative to approximant

24

to vowel based on constriction size, so if a voiced consonant is lacking the level of constriction to

produce noise, it would fall into the approximant category, regardless of whether it has the typical

characteristics associated with approximants.

The argument that [B] is phonetically an approximant and not a fricative could be made stronger

if language-acquisition data showed that children acquire [B] around the same time as approximants.

Vowel-like segments are learned by children fairly quickly, but fricatives are difficult to acquire,

especially voiced fricatives. If children produce [B] closer to when they start producing approximants

rather than when fricative productions surface in their speech, then the phonetic classification of

[B] as an approximant is meaningful.

While [B] is in the phonetic inventory of Catalan and Spanish, which have been extensively

studied for L1-acquisition data, similar research is lacking in languages in which /B/ is a phoneme.

Since [B] in Catalan and Spanish surfaces as an allophone of /b/ through a lenition process, it

requires that the child understand a phonological rule, which causes a delay in acquisition that is

not due to the articulatory complexity of the segment alone. Therefore, only acquisition data from

languages with phonemic /B/ can provide insight on the classification of [B].

L1-acquisition data from languages with consonants phonetically similar to [B] in their phonemic

inventory, such as [v] (Ewe, Ganda, Kwangali, Logba, Venda) and [F] (Ewe, Logba, Venda), would

be the most useful for [B] classification. This would be a productive basis for future research.

25

Chapter 5

Modeling [B]

5.1 Straw Models

Modeling [B] in subjects is easier than many other sounds because [B] is produced at the outer

end of the vocal tract (the lips), so a satisfactory model can be created with minimal invasion

and minimal corruption of natural speech conditions. An experiment was conducted with drinking

straws of various sizes to shape the lips of a subject to determine at what cross-sectional area

frication noise appears.

Physical modeling of [B] has certain advantages over pure mathematical models (e.g. with

Reynolds number). For instance, the lungs expel air at a greater flow rate through a less constricted

vocal tract than a more constricted vocal tract (see Prathanee et al. 1994), and this complex trade-

off is difficult to compute. Physical models simplify the involved mathematics to achieve greater

reliability by eliminating uncertain or unknown parameters and thus reducing inaccuracies.

5.2 Methods

Five drinking straws with different diameters were used, which appear in Table 5.1. One male

subject with experience in phonetics participated. To model production of [B], a straw was placed

26

in the subject’s mouth, and he was asked to shape his lips around the straw without rounding or

puckering. The straw was then removed, and the gap between subject’s lips was examined to make

sure it retained the same diameter of the straw. The subject was then asked to place his tongue in

the position for [@] and phonate normally (i.e. the same volume as conversational speech) without

changing the configuration of his lips. This procedure was repeated for each of the five straws. The

speaker’s productions were recorded using a Tascam DR-05 Linear PCM Recorder positioned 30 cm

left of the speaker’s mouth. This ensured that airflow from the mouth did not come in contact with

the microphone. The recordings were analyzed in Praat.

Table 5.1: Straw lengths (in mm) and areas (in mm2)

Straw Diameter Cross-Sectional Area Real Area of Channel

1 3 7.07 13.932 5 19.63 38.713 6 28.27 55.744 7 38.48 75.875 7.5 44.18 87.09

For precision, the straw ideally would be kept in the speaker’s mouth throughout the production;

however, this was not an option for the current experiment. Even when the straw was cut down

to a few centimeters in length, it shaped the noise in the acoustic signal such that it was difficult

to observe the presence or lack of an aperiodic component. When the straw was cut to match the

cross-sectional width of the lips, it could not be held in place by the subject and was ejected shortly

after the onset of phonation.

When drinking, the lips pucker to clamp down on a straw to create an airtight channel, fa-

cilitating suction, but the musculature of unrounded (un-puckered) lips is not able to maintain a

precise, circular gap. Rather, the cross-sectional area of the channel created at the lips with a

straw as a guide is shaped like Figure 5.1. The yellow circle represents the cross-sectional area

of the straw, and the area outside the circle is an approximation of the additional space resulting

from the imperfect closure of the lips around the straw. The angles are estimates but nevertheless

produce a much more accurate model than a simple circle. The area of the model in Figure 5.1 can

be calculated by determining the area of one of the right triangles (Equation 5.1) and multiplying

27

the result by 4 (there are four triangles: two drawn on the right side and the two not drawn on

the left side of the model). After adding the area of the 80◦ of the circle that is not overlapped

by the triangles (Equation 5.2), the area of the whole model is known. The total-area function is

simplified to Equation 5.3. “Real Area of Channel” in Table 5.1 was calculated with this equation,

whereas “Cross-Sectional Area” refers to the cross-section of the straw alone.

Figure 5.1: Model of channel formed at the lips

RR

70◦

70◦

Area of triangle =R2 tan 70◦

2(5.1)

Area leftover in circle =2

9· πR2 (5.2)

A = 2R2(

tan 70◦ +π

9

)(5.3)

5.3 Results

The channel formed by Straw 1, the smallest straw, was the only channel capable of producing

a turbulent airstream at the volume of normal speech (Table 5.2). This is consistent with Cat-

ford’s (1977:121) and Stevens’s (2000:33) calculations that 20 mm2 is the upper bound for the

cross-sectional area of turbulence-producing channels (Chapter 4.1).

28

Table 5.2: Channel models and their capability to produce turbulent flow

Straw Real Area of Channel (mm2) Turbulence?

1 13.93 yes2 38.71 no3 55.74 no4 75.87 no5 87.09 no

In addition to steady, normal-intensity phonation, the subject was asked to produce intensity

(i.e. sound pressure) glides for each of the lip configurations. Reetz & Jongman (1998:68) note that

intensity increases by about the square of the increase in subglottal pressure; increased subglottal

pressure induces a greater volumetric flow rate, such that the conditions for turbulence may be

achieved. After the subject’s lips were configured with the straw, he began to phonate softly and

gradually elevated the intensity of his voice up to the point at which he was yelling behind his

lips. With increased intensity and subglottal pressure, the channel configured with Straw 2 was

able to produce turbulence at 16 dB greater than the intensity level at which turbulence surfaced

in Straw 1. Channels configured with Straws 3–5 did not produce turbulence even at +18 dBStraw 1

(the loudest that the speaker could raise his voice). This reinforces the conclusions in Chapter 4.1

that real-world unrounded bilabial constrictions resulting in turbulent flow cannot be achieved.

29

Chapter 6

Phonological Ramifications

6.1 Issues with the Reclassification of [B]

Even though the phonetic evidence in Chapters 3–5 supports [B] as an approximant rather than

a fricative, the reclassification of [B] is phonologically problematic in languages that require a low

sonority value for [B]. For example, [.Bl] and [.BR] are valid onsets in Catalan and Spanish, but if [B]

were considered a glide-like approximant, it would have a sonority value greater than the following

liquid in the onset. As a fricative, [B] has a low sonority value, yielding a sonority curve that rises

through the following liquid into the vowel (Figure 6.1 (a)), but [B] as an approximant produces

a curve that falls then rises to the vowel (Figure 6.1 (b)). Wheeler (2005) was the first to point

out these effects on sonority and to contest the reclassification of [B] as an approximant in Catalan,

despite Recasens’s (1991) spectrographic evidence that [B] has vowel-like qualities.

Minimal Sonority Distance constraints make rectifying this sonority mismatch even more dif-

ficult. Mart́ınez-Celdrán (2004) advocates for the label spirant to be applied to [Bfl], and defines

spirant as a subclass of approximant, alongside rhotics as central approximants (Figure 6.2). This

granular taxonomy for approximants may justify assigning spirants their own sonority value, which

could be lower than taps and other liquids, such that sonority would rise through [BflR] and [B

fll] on-

sets. However, Catalan and Spanish forbid onset clusters of a sibilant-fricative followed by a liquid,

30

Figure 6.1: Sonority curves with [B] in a complex onset

sonority

segmentB R V

(a) [B] is a fricative

sonority

segmentB R V

(b) [B] is an approximant

e.g. *[.zl] and *[.Zl], whereas these languages allow [.BR] and [.Bl]; therefore, the sonority distance

between [B] and liquids must be greater than that of sibilant fricatives and liquids, and hence, [B]

must be an obstruent.

The observation that [B] must be an obstruent phonologically but is realized phonetically as

an approximant cannot be explained by the simple /underlying form/ → [surface form] model of

phonology. Sonority operates only on the surface form, because this is the level where syllabifi-

cation takes place, but the surface form, which is identical to the phonetic realization in tradi-

tional phonology, shows no characteristics of a fricative articulation that is necessary to account

for syllable structure in Catalan and Spanish. Rather, the behavior of [B] in syllables requires a

phonological model that separates the phonology-driven surface form from the articulatory-minded

phonetic form. This can be accomplished with Boersma’s (2008) model of the phonetics-phonology

interface.

31

Figure 6.2: Mart́ınez-Celdrán’s (2004) classification of approximants

approximants

semi-vowels

[j î 4 w]

consonants

centrals

laterals

[l l L L]rhotics

[ô R]

spirants

[Bfl

V Dfl JflG]fl

6.2 Boersma’s (2008) Three-Form Model

Boersma (2008) proposes a model of phonology where the mapping of discrete segments onto a

continuous phonetic form is nontrivial. The model consists of three levels: the underlying form,

the surface form, and the phonetic form. The underlying form is defined the same way as in classic

phonology; it is the discrete, abstract mental representation of a lexical item. The surface form is

an intermediate form between the underlying form and the phonetic form; it is made up of discrete

units and is where all phonological processing (e.g. assimilation, syllabification) takes place. The

phonetic form1 is a continuous, concrete production of the surface form. The phonetic form can be

represented by its spectrogram, or the set of fully-implemented (i.e. non-abstract) motor commands

that govern the production of the utterance. For simplicity, the phonetic form can be represented

with IPA symbols, keeping in mind that they are placeholders for a fully-specified, continuous

sound. This model is illustrated in Figure 6.3. Note that single brackets are used for the surface

form and double brackets for the phonetic form.

A profound discussion on the validity of this model is beyond the current scope, though it

1Boersma (1998) further divides the phonetic form into the auditory form and the articulatory form, since themapping from perception to production is not trivial, either; however, he shows in his later work (2008) that a singlephonetic form suffices for simpler applications.

32

Figure 6.3: Boersma’s (2008) model of the phonology-phonetics interface

/Underlying Form/

phonological processing

[Surface Form]

mapping to motor commands

[[Phonetic Form]]

/pæt/

aspiration

[phæt^]

has been successful at capturing phonological phenomena that are difficult or impossible to handle

with classic phonology (e.g., see Boersma 2007 for this model’s thorough treatment of h-aspiré in

French). It also captures the observation that syllable boundaries are necessitated by phonology

but have no acoustic correlate; syllable boundaries operate on the surface form and are discarded

during the mapping to the phonetic form. See Boersma (1998, 2008, 2009) for further discussion of

this model.

6.3 Formalizing [B] as Both an Approximant and a Fricative

In Catalan and Spanish, [B] results as the output of a lenition process for the input /b/. Under

Optimality Theory, lenition is motivated my the Lazy constraint, which is violated on a gradient

by the degree of articulatory effort required to articulate the sound (1). Kirchner (1998) defines

articulatory effort in detail, but to summarize, precision and articulator displacement are the two

main factors of effort. For example, sounds that require a precisely constricted channel (e.g. strident

fricatives) take more effort to produce than sounds articulated with a more relaxed vocal-tract

configuration (e.g. approximants). Taking into account the articulatory-effort scores of different

manners of articulation yields the relative hierarchy in (2).

33

(1) Lazy: Minimize articulatory effort. (Kirchner 1998)

(2) Relative articulatory effort: affricates > stridents > stops > non-stridents > approximants

(after Kirchner 1998:ch. 4)

Lazy operates on the phonetic form in Boersma’s (2008) three-form model because its domain

is the mapping of segments onto articulatory gestures. Lazy is at odds with *Map(b, Open), a cue

constraint that disallows the mapping of [b] onto a continuant articulation (3). Cue constraints are

the correlates of faithfulness constraints at the phonetic level; whereas faithfulness constraints are

concerned with preserving the features of an underlying form in the surface form, cue constraints

preserve elements of the surface form in the phonetic form. As explained by Boersma (2008), cue

constraints “express the speaker-listener’s knowledge of the relations between continuous auditory

cues and discrete phonological surface elements.” In the case of *Map(b, Open), the speaker-

listener knows that a good phonetic realization of [b] is one with a full obstruction of the vocal

tract. To account for lenition, Lazy must outrank *Map(b, Open) (4).

(3) *Map(b, Open): Do not map [b] onto an articulatory command without a full closure.

(4) Lazy � *Map(b, Open)

The ranking in (4) is sufficient to handle lenition in Catalan and Spanish. This is demonstrated

in the evaluation of the Spanish word [laba]→ [[laBfla]] “he washes” (Tableau 6.1). The approximant

[[Bfl]] requires the least articulatory effort and is thus optimal. Following the effort hierarchy after

Kirchner (1998) in (2), [[B]] incurs only a slightly more severe violation of Lazy; however, given the

aerodynamic evidence in Chapter 4.1 regarding the production of fricative [[B]], it is clear that this

sound requires a substantially greater amount of effort (i.e. precision and articulator displacement)

outside of a rounded environment. This is why the violation of Lazy by fricative [[B]] has been

marked as the most severe among the candidates listed in Tableau 6.1. It is worth noting that in a

stochastic implementation of OT (see, for example, Boersma & Hayes 2001), the overlap between

Lazy and *Map(b, Open) would be such that *Map(b, Open) would outrank Lazy in a minority

of productions. In these cases, the candidate that does not violate *Map(b, Open) would be

34

realized phonetically, i.e. [[laba]], which is expected and attested (e.g. in Table 3.1, 3 [B] tokens in

Basque and 1 in Catalan were realized as stops).

Tableau 6.1: Phonetic evaluation of [laba] “he washes”

[laba] Lazy *Map(b, Open)

a. laba ∗!

b. laBa ∗!∗∗ ∗

c. + laBfla ∗

d. laza ∗!∗ ∗

The pairing of Boersma’s (2008) model of the phonetics-phonology interface with Kirchner’s

(1998) articulatory-based Lazy makes a powerful statement on lenition, namely, that lenition has

no effect on syllabification. Consider the evaluation of the surface and phonetic forms in parallel for

the Catalan and Spanish word /kabra/ “goat” in Tableau 6.2, in which the constraint responsible

for syllabification, SonSeq (5), has been added. Lazy is concerned only with the [[phonetic form]],

whereas SonSeq sees only the [surface form]. With no motivation to lenite up until the phonetic

realization, the fully-faithful and sonority-satisfactory [ka.bRa] is optimal, which is paired with the

optimal phonetic form [[kaBflRa]] because Lazy � *Map(b, Open). Although the surface form

[ka.BflRa] could be proposed as a candidate by Gen from a rich base (candidate d.), it violates

SonSeq and any relevant Id-Manner-type faithfulness constraints not mentioned in Tableau 6.2.

Indeed, the lenited form is only seen at the phonetic level.

(5) SonSeq: Sonority rises through an onset.

This Lazy-based model can be applied even to languages with /B/ as a phoneme. Since con-

straints are universal, Lazy exists in all languages, but it is lowly ranked in non-leniting languages,

such that it may not be effective at guaranteeing the realization of [[Bfl]]. To overcome this, the

granularization of Lazy, as done by Kirchner (1998:ch. 6), is useful. For a language with /B/ as

a phoneme (realized as [[Bfl]]) that does not have lenition of stops, Lazy(Mid) (6) is ranked low

so that stops are realized with a full closure, while Lazy(High) (7) is ranked high so that /B/ is

35

Tableau 6.2: Evaluation of /kabRa/ “goat”

/kabRa/ SonSeq Lazy *Map(b, Open)

a. [ka.bRa], [[kabRa]] ∗!

b. [ka.bRa], [[kaBRa]] ∗!∗∗ ∗

c. + [ka.bRa], [[kaBflRa]] ∗

d. [ka.BflRa], [[kaB

flRa]] ∗!

articulated as [[Bfl]]. Mid and High could be substituted with real articulatory-effort scores (see

Kirchner 1998:ch. 2). It does not seem unreasonable to expect that languages have some con-

straint that blocks very difficult productions (Lazy(High)). Perhaps this is analogous to English

/nEkst+stAp/ → [[nEkstAp]].

(6) Lazy(Mid): Avoid production of sounds that require a moderate degree of effort.

(7) Lazy(High): Avoid production of sounds that require a very high degree of effort.

In addition, this OT model can explain the minority of productions of true fricative [[B]] in

rounded environments by the Ewe speaker in Chapter 4.2. For example, in the production of [[Bu]],

anticipatory coarticulation causes rounding of [[B]]. This rounding brings the lips close enough

together to facilitate turbulent flow and true fricative production of [[B]] (Tableau 6.3). In fact, it

would require more articulatory effort (i.e. articulator displacement) to produce an approximant

in this case because the lips would either have to be pulled farther apart (candidate b.), or the

coarticulatory pressures brought on by [[u]] would have to be overcome (candidate c.).

Tableau 6.3: Phonetic evaluation of [Bu] “to open”

[Bu] Lazy

a. + Bwu

b. Bflu ∗!

c. Ḃu ∗!

36

Chapter 7

Conclusion

Waveform and spectrographic evidence from a sample of 9 languages has shown that [B] is rarely

realized as a true voiced fricative. The only case where true voiced fricative realizations of [B]

surfaced was in rounded environments (e.g. before the vowel [u]) in a recording of a native Ewe

speaker. The decrease in lip width caused by the rounded environment creates a constriction small

enough to produce frication noise. However, rounding does not appear to have the same effect on

[B] in all languages.

Aerodynamic calculations with Reynolds number and physical models using drinking straws to

simulate the production of [B] at bilabial constrictions of different sizes attest to the impracticality

of true fricative realizations of [B]. While the reclassification of [B] as an approximant may seem

problematic for phonological theory, more detailed phonological models that better capture the

phonetics-phonology interface can handle the mismatched phonetic and phonological characteristics

of [B].

Research on the perception of [B] is needed to provide more insight on its classification. Frication

noise (e.g. onset frequency of noise) is an important perceptual cue for fricative identification and

discrimination. Since [B] lacks this noise component, it would be important to see what other

phonetic qualities of [B] are perceptually relevant, and whether these phonetics qualities coincide

with those used for the perception of approximants.

37

References

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IntroductionMethodsLanguagesRecordingsProcessing and SoftwareCriteria for Classification

ResultsDetailsSelected DataAmbiguous Cases

DiscussionAerodynamics of [B]Examples of True Fricative [B] in Ewe Rounded EnvironmentsData from L1 Acquisition

Modeling [B]Straw ModelsMethodsResults

Phonological RamificationsIssues with the Reclassification of [B]Boersma's boersma2008emergent Three-Form ModelFormalizing [B] as Both an Approximant and a Fricative

Conclusion