Learnability of laryngeal abduction in voiceless fricatives : cross-linguistic evidence
Citation
Gordeeva, O. (2007) Learnability of laryngeal abduction in voiceless fricatives : cross-linguistic evidence, Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of the ICPhS, , , pp. 433-436,
Abstract
Previous research of laryngeal-oral gestural coordination
in vowel-voiceless fricative sequences
(Vf) shows that earlier timing of glottal opening
relative to oral constriction is a languageindependent
aerodynamic property. In this paper,
we provide evidence that the extent of this gestural
dissociation is nonetheless learnable in a varietyspecific
way, and is, thus, actively controlled. This
study shows that in some British English varieties,
large temporal laryngeal-oral dissociation in Vf
transitions is a correlate of the fricative /voice/
contrast, while the dissociation is much tighter in a
language neutralising /voice/ such as Russian. The
learnability of Vf-gestures is important in the
context of theories on gestural phonology and
acoustic multidimensionality of the /voice/
contrast.