Christopher Doty | Northeastern University (original) (raw)

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Papers by Christopher Doty

Eighth Annual Conference of the …, Jan 1, 2007

The present study examined a variety of acoustic correlates to the stop length contrast in Finnis... more The present study examined a variety of acoustic correlates to the stop length contrast in Finnish beyond the duration of the consonant itself. Of interest were the durations of surrounding vowels, the duration of voice onset time (VOT), and the amplitude of the release burst and the following vowel. Results indicated that for geminate stops, VOT is shorter and the amplitude of both the following vowel and the release burst are higher than for singleton stops. Further, long vowels preceding geminate stops are shorter than those preceding singleton stops, although no difference was found for short vowels. Post-consonantal vowel duration does not vary as a function of consonant length, but is affected by the length of the first-syllable vowel. These results agree with data from other languages in some respects, but not in others. It is proposed that this discrepancy arises from the fact that Finnish, despite being stress-or syllable-timed, also has moralike length features.

Journal of Phonetics, Jan 1, 2010

In this paper we investigate the historical origins and acoustic correlates of tone as it has dev... more In this paper we investigate the historical origins and acoustic correlates of tone as it has developed in subdialects of the Guerrero dialect of Nahuatl spoken in the Balsas River valley of central Guerrero state in Mexico. Some subdialects have developed high tone on a syllable preceding a syllable with a breathy-voiced coda [ɦ] (< *h). In subdialects retaining [ɦ], vowels in syllables with coda [ɦ] have slightly lowered F0. Given this, we hypothesize that, in the tonogenetic Nahuatl variants, the relatively higher F0 on the preceding syllable was phonologized as a high-low F0 contour beginning on the preceding syllable and ending on the syllable containing the coda [ɦ]. Through this tonal development, hybrid stress and tone systems have arisen, as the historical penultimate stress accent found in Nahuatl generally has been retained. Though such systems are rare, a comparison of the development of other such hybrid systems indicates that they follow a similar historical path. That is, a stress languages develops tone through the reinterpretation of a coarticulatory F0 effect as a tonal specification. We suggest that hybrid stress and tone systems may be unstable and found that, in subdialects with innovated tone, stress may be transitioning to tone.

The Journal of the Acoustical …, Jan 1, 2006

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Jan 1, 2009

The present study examined the effects of boundary strength and stress on nasal coarticulation wi... more The present study examined the effects of boundary strength and stress on nasal coarticulation with neighboring segments. Acoustic and nasal airflow data were recorded from four speakers as they produced intervocalic fricative-nasal and nasalfricative sequences that spanned a word-internal boundary or a word boundary under two different stress conditions. Although neither stress nor boundary affected preservatory nasal airflow, tautosyllabic stress was associated with increased anticipatory nasal airflow within a word, but not at the a word boundary where coarticulation decreased or stayed the same. The interaction between boundary strength and stress was attributed to condition-dependent differences in the relative durations of individual segments. Overall, the study suggests that stress-induced lengthening of a velar gesture results in the leftward spread of nasality if adjacent segments are not also substantially lengthened by prosodic factors.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Jan 1, 2006

Eighth Annual Conference of the …, Jan 1, 2007

The present study examined a variety of acoustic correlates to the stop length contrast in Finnis... more The present study examined a variety of acoustic correlates to the stop length contrast in Finnish beyond the duration of the consonant itself. Of interest were the durations of surrounding vowels, the duration of voice onset time (VOT), and the amplitude of the release burst and the following vowel. Results indicated that for geminate stops, VOT is shorter and the amplitude of both the following vowel and the release burst are higher than for singleton stops. Further, long vowels preceding geminate stops are shorter than those preceding singleton stops, although no difference was found for short vowels. Post-consonantal vowel duration does not vary as a function of consonant length, but is affected by the length of the first-syllable vowel. These results agree with data from other languages in some respects, but not in others. It is proposed that this discrepancy arises from the fact that Finnish, despite being stress-or syllable-timed, also has moralike length features.

Journal of Phonetics, Jan 1, 2010

In this paper we investigate the historical origins and acoustic correlates of tone as it has dev... more In this paper we investigate the historical origins and acoustic correlates of tone as it has developed in subdialects of the Guerrero dialect of Nahuatl spoken in the Balsas River valley of central Guerrero state in Mexico. Some subdialects have developed high tone on a syllable preceding a syllable with a breathy-voiced coda [ɦ] (< *h). In subdialects retaining [ɦ], vowels in syllables with coda [ɦ] have slightly lowered F0. Given this, we hypothesize that, in the tonogenetic Nahuatl variants, the relatively higher F0 on the preceding syllable was phonologized as a high-low F0 contour beginning on the preceding syllable and ending on the syllable containing the coda [ɦ]. Through this tonal development, hybrid stress and tone systems have arisen, as the historical penultimate stress accent found in Nahuatl generally has been retained. Though such systems are rare, a comparison of the development of other such hybrid systems indicates that they follow a similar historical path. That is, a stress languages develops tone through the reinterpretation of a coarticulatory F0 effect as a tonal specification. We suggest that hybrid stress and tone systems may be unstable and found that, in subdialects with innovated tone, stress may be transitioning to tone.

The Journal of the Acoustical …, Jan 1, 2006

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Jan 1, 2009

The present study examined the effects of boundary strength and stress on nasal coarticulation wi... more The present study examined the effects of boundary strength and stress on nasal coarticulation with neighboring segments. Acoustic and nasal airflow data were recorded from four speakers as they produced intervocalic fricative-nasal and nasalfricative sequences that spanned a word-internal boundary or a word boundary under two different stress conditions. Although neither stress nor boundary affected preservatory nasal airflow, tautosyllabic stress was associated with increased anticipatory nasal airflow within a word, but not at the a word boundary where coarticulation decreased or stayed the same. The interaction between boundary strength and stress was attributed to condition-dependent differences in the relative durations of individual segments. Overall, the study suggests that stress-induced lengthening of a velar gesture results in the leftward spread of nasality if adjacent segments are not also substantially lengthened by prosodic factors.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Jan 1, 2006