1

THE PROSODY OF THE PROSODY OF KELANTAN MALAY: KELANTAN MALAY:

The Case of The Case of Initial Geminate ConsonantsInitial Geminate Consonants

Hilmi Hamzah

Supervisors:

Associate Professor Janet Fletcher Professor John Hajek

THE PROSODY OF THE PROSODY OF KELANTAN MALAY: KELANTAN MALAY:

The Case of The Case of Initial Geminate ConsonantsInitial Geminate Consonants

CONFIRMATION TALK

2

3

THE STORY OF MY FIRST-YEAR PhD LIFE & THE FOUR STAGES

4

1st STAGE:

GETTING LOST

5

THE WORLD OF PROSODY

• “A suprasegmental organisation of segmental sounds

into higher-level constituents.” (Shattuck-Hufnagel &

Turk, 1996)

• “A set of higher-level organisation structures that

account for variations in pitch, loudness, duration,

spectral tilt, segment reduction and their associated

parameters.” (Clark, Yallop & Fletcher, 2007)

6

PROSODIC HIERARCHY

(Pierrehumbert & Beckman, 1998)

7

• L2 Speech Learning - Speech Learning Model (Flege et al., 1995) - Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best, 1993)

• L2 Intonation - Japanese & Korean English (Ueyama & Jun, 1998) - Indian English (Wiltshire & Harnsberger, 2006)

• 11 SUMMARIES

SECOND LANGUAGE (L2) PROSODY

8

2nd STAGE:

GETTING FOUND

9

• Intervocalic position (e.g. Malayalam, Sienese Italian)• Initial position (e.g. Swiss German, Cypriot Greek) • Abramson's experiments (1986, 1987, 1991, 1998, 1999,

2003, 2004) on Pattani Malay • Kelantan Malay in Malaysia VS. Pattani Malay in

Thailand

GEMINATE CONSONANTS

10

11

• /kabo/ 'blurry vision' vs. /kkabo/ 'a beetle'

• /gadƷi/ 'salary' vs. /ggadƷi/ 'a saw tool'

• /maƔi/ 'to come' vs. /mmaƔi/ 'a cupboard'

KELANTAN MALAY

SINGLETON CONSONANT vs. GEMINATE CONSONANT

12

WHAT ARE GEMINATE CONSONANTS?

• Long Consonants: two phones in a same syllable• Double Consonants: two phones across syllables

(Abercrombie, 1967) • Distinctive length: distinguishes languages that contrast

meanings through gemination (Abramson, 1986)• Geminate consonants: prolonged 1½ or 2 times longer

(Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996)• Closure duration is the most salient acoustic correlate

13

PREVIOUS STUDIES

• Hankamer et al. (1989) on Turkish & Bengali: closure duration is the main acoustic feature

• Doty et al. (2007) on Finnish: voice onset time (VOT) and relative amplitude play significant roles

• Gordon (2009) on Ingrian: fundamental frequency (F0) is more significant

INTERVOCALIC GEMINATE CONSONANTS

14

• Kraehenmann (2001) on Swiss German: closure duration is the primary acoustic feature

• Muller (2003) on Cypriot Greek: VOT duration is a secondary feature

• Abramson (1986, 1987, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2004) on Pattani Malay: closure duration is associated with other prosodic factors

PREVIOUS STUDIES

INITIAL GEMINATE CONSONANTS

15

KELANTAN MALAY

• Derived from the 'loss' of prefixes, prepositions, trisyllabic & reduplicated words from Standard Malay

• Based on impressionistic approach (e.g. Karim, 1965; Che Kob, 1985)

16

AIMS OF THE STUDY

• To offer instrumental insights into the prosody of Kelantan Malay (KM)

• To investigate the acoustic correlates of singleton-geminate contrast

• To employ a series of laboratory phonology experiments • To yield the first acoustic phonetic analysis of initial

geminate consonants in KM

17

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

• To explore the possible prosodic transfers between KM and L2 learning

• To contribute to research in language education• To compare the results with other languages

18

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• What are the segmental and suprasegmental features

involved in the production and perception of initial

geminate consonants in KM?

• What are their acoustic parameters?

• What is the relationship between initial geminate

consonants and the prosody of KM?

19

3rd STAGE:

GETTING EXCITED

20

FIRST PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENT

• To investigate the production of initial geminate consonants as spoken by 6 native speakers of KM

• To record a number of minimal pairs of singleton-geminate contrast in 3 controlled contexts

• To ascertain the acoustic correlates that underlie the distinction between the pairs

• To examine the role of initial geminate consonants in stress placement and intonational prominence

OBJECTIVES

21

MATERIALS

• 10 phonemes = 19 minimal pairs = 38 tokens• Disyllabic: C(C)VCV / C(C)VCVC• 3 groups:

(1) voiceless stops : /p/ vs /pp/ - /t/ vs /tt/ - /k/ vs /kk/ (2) voiced stops : /b/ vs /bb/ - /d/ vs /dd/ - /g/ vs /gg/ (3) sonorants : /m/ vs /mm/ - /n/ vs /nn/ - /ŋ/ vs /ŋŋ/ /l/ vs /ll/

• 2 distinct vowels after each consonant (high vowel /i/ & low vowel /a/), except /ŋ/ vs /ŋŋ/ (low vowel /a/ only)

22

TOKENS

23

PARTICIPANTS & PROCEDURES

• 6 native speakers of KM (3 males & 3 females)• 6 recording sessions at the Horwood Language Centre

(1 hour and 15 mins per session)• Tokens randomly presented in Standard Malay orthography

through powerpoint slides on a computer• Recorded in 3 controlled contexts:• (A) Citation

- 228 utterances X 6 speakers = 1368 utterances (B) Carrier Sentence - /diɔ katɔ (target word) tigɔ kali/ “he said (target word) three times” - 228 utterances X 6 speakers = 1368 utterances

24

PROCEDURES – cont'd

• (C) Focus condition - 20 tokens (20 unique sentences) - 3 questions elicited 3 replies with 3 focus conditions: [i] a broad focus reply [i] a reply with a narrow focus on non-target words [iii] a reply with a narrow focus on target words

25

PROCEDURES – cont'd

• Example: /mmaɣi/ = cupboard Sentence: /diɔ lətɔɁ badƷu dalɛ mmaɣi/ “he put a shirt in a cupboard ” Questions: 1. /diɔ waɁ ggapɔ?/ “what did he do?” 2. /diɔ lətɔɁ buku kɔ dalɛ mmaɣi?/ “did he put a book in a cupboard?” 3. /diɔ lətɔɁ badƷu dalɛ beɁ kɔ?/ “did he put a shirt in a bag?”

• 300 utterances X 6 speakers = 1800 utterances• Total number of utterances for all 3 contexts = 4536

26

DATA ANALYSIS

• Utterances from the carrier sentence have been analyzed • Annotation was conducted using Praat (Boersma, 2001)• Segments & duration values were extracted and analyzed

statistically using EMU-R (Harrington, 2010)• Average closure duration was measured in milliseconds

(the beginning of the consonantal closure --> the onset of voicing)

• Duration values were submitted to t-tests and ANOVA

27

28

RESULTS

• The effect of participant (6 levels) is highly significant (F(5,1248)=269.23, p<.001)

• The effect of phoneme (10 levels) is highly significant (F(18,1248)=75.59, p<.001)

• The effect of singleton-geminate contrast (2 levels) is highly significant (F(1,1248)=11838.57, p<.001)

• Singleton-geminate contrast is highly significant in all 10 consonant pairs (t-ratio=-27.3 to -13.1, p<.001)

• Range of durational ratios: 2.03 (/k/-/kk/) to 2.82 (/l/-/ll/)

29

DURATIONAL RATIOS

30

DURATIONAL RATIOS

•

31

EFFECT OF GENDER

• The effect is significant for all consonants (t-ratio=2.53 to 8.22, p<.014), except /ŋŋ/(t-ratio=1.35, p=.187)

• Male speakers produce all consonants with longer average duration

32

GENDER – Singleton Consonant

33

GENDER – Geminate Consonant

34

EFFECT OF GENDER

35

EFFECT OF VOWEL HEIGHT

• The effect is highly significant for all singleton consonants (t-ratio=2.87 to 11.25, p<.006), except /p/ (t-ratio=0.61, p=.542) and /n/ (t-ratio=1.07, p=.289)

• It is not significant for all geminate consonants (t-ratio=0.006 to 1.65, p>.05) except /kk/ (t-ratio=2.62, p=.001)

• Longer duration when followed by high vowel /i/

36

VOWEL HEIGHT – Singleton Consonant

37

VOWEL HEIGHT – Geminate Consonant

38

EFFECT OF VOWEL HEIGHT

39

EFFECT OF MANNER OF ARTICULATION

• The effect is significant for the durational ratios of all consonant pairs (F(2,1290)=3.187, p<.041)

• The effect is highly significant across both singleton and geminate consonants (p<.001)

40

EFFECT OF MANNER OF ARTICULATION

41

DISCUSSION

• All initial geminate consonants are clearly distinguished from singleton consonants in terms of closure duration

• The significant effect of gender is unexpected, but both gender groups show a clear durational contrast

• Durational ratios of the initial contrast in KM are somewhat higher than medial contrast in other languages

• The preliminary results provide experimental confirmation for initial geminate consonants in KM

42

4th STAGE:

GETTING CONFIRMED

43

FIELDWORK TRIP

• Fieldwork trip in Kelantan, Malaysia - 90 days (1st October 2010 – 31st December 2010) - 10 local districts - 48 participants - 83 hours of experiment duration - 1,126 kilometres of travel distance around the state - 4 major experiments

44

PRODUCTION EXPERIMENT

• Citation, Carrier Sentence, Focus Condition• 10 participants (5 males & 5 females) • Stricter control on the participants' background

(a) CONTROLLED DATA

45

PRODUCTION EXPERIMENT

• Map Task Activities - based on the Human Communication Research Centre (HCRC) Map Task (Anderson et al., 1991)

• To elicit the production of initial geminate sonorants • 4 map-pairs - 12 landmarks for each pair• 8 participants (2 male pairs & 2 females pairs)

(b) SPONTANEOUS DATA

46

PERCEPTION EXPERIMENT

• 2 sets of force-choice identification test • 228 synthesized stimuli - based on 6 minimal pairs, using

3 parameters: closure duration, F0 & amplitude

(a) IDENTIFICATION TEST

47

PERCEPTION EXPERIMENT

• 2 sets of AX discrimination test (same/ different)• 314 modified stimuli - based on one minimal pair • 30 participants (15 males & 15 females) for both

identification and discrimination tests

(a) DISCRIMINATION TEST

48

FUTURE ANALYSES

• To compare the results of spontaneous data with controlled data using the combination of other acoustic parameters

• To explore the possible events of stress placement, intonational prominence & degemination

• To test the results of perception experiments against those of production experiments

49

PROGRESS TO-DATE

• A request of amendment (ethics application) • A paper for the 13th AICSST 2010 • A PhD fieldwork funding scheme • The development of new experimental materials • The links with future participants• The direction and timeline of the research project