35.1765, Review: A model of sonority based on pitch intelligibility: Albert (2023)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-1765. Thu Jun 13 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.1765, Review: A model of sonority based on pitch intelligibility: Albert (2023)

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Date: 14-Jun-2024
From: Christopher Geissler [cageissler42 at gmail.com]
Subject: Phonetics: Albert (2023)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.2041

AUTHOR: Aviad Albert
TITLE: A model of sonority based on pitch intelligibility
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Laboratory Phonology
PUBLISHER: Language Science Press
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Christopher Geissler

SUMMARY

The first three chapters of A model of Sonority based on Pitch
Intelligibility provide a general introduction (Ch. 1), as well as
context on sonority (Ch. 2) and discrete vs. continuous models (Ch.
3). The review of past literature on sonority offers three main
criticisms: that sonority-based concepts, particularly sonority
slopes, have been over-generalized (§2.2.1); that sonority-based
accounts fail to explain aspects of cross-linguistic typology
(§2.2.2); and that sonority has lacked a consistent acoustic correlate
(§2.2.3). The empirical generalizations identified are /s/-stop
clusters, which are unexpectedly common, and the difference between
two kinds of sonority plateaus: the more-common low-sonority plateaus
(e.g. /sf/), and the less-common high-sonority plateaus (e.g. /nm/).
In terms of theoretical architecture, Chapter 3 surveys literature on
the interface between symbolic and continuous approaches, urging a
renewed focus on perception (rather than production), as well as a
principled separation of symbolic and dynamic models.

Chapter 4 outlines the proposed solution for these problems,
“Perceptual regimes of repetitive sound (PRiORS)”, a framework for
thinking about the linguistic role of sound patterns that recur at
different rates. This synthesizes previous research in a novel
presentation. Broadly speaking, patterns slower than 20 Hz are
perceived as rhythm, while those above 20 Hz are perceived as pitch
(including spectral structure). Very slow (<0.5 Hz) patterns are not
perceived as rhythmic, while very fast (>5,000 Hz) patterns, where
audible, are not clearly distinguished. Albert identifies the syllable
duration and structure as a balance between being long enough to
include sufficient periods for pitch perception, while still being
short enough to be perceived rhythmically. As a consequence, the
tension between discrete and continuous models is resolved by
assigning phenomena to different perceptual systems according to the
rate at which patterns recur.

The core proposal of the book, the Nucleus Attraction Principle (NAP),
is outlined in Chapter 5 and presented with two implementations in
Chapter 6. In this model, syllable nuclei are attracted to sonority
peaks, which are defined in terms of periodic energy–the component of
acoustic energy from periodic, rather than aperiodic sources. This
redefinition approximates a standard sonority sequence, with vowels
having the most periodic energy and voiceless obstruents the least. To
implement this in a model of syllable well-formedness, the sonority of
the syllable onset is calculated and compared to the sonority of the
syllable nucleus. If the sonority of the onset is small enough
relative to the sonority of the nucleus, the result is identified as
one syllable. However, if the sonority of the onset is too large
relative to the sonority of the nucleus, then two syllables are
identified.

Two implementations of the NAP are presented: a symbolic “top-down”
model, and a continuous “bottom-up” model. In the top-down model,
natural classes are assigned a numeric value (from 1 to 4)
corresponding to abstracted periodic energy. For a C1C2V onset, the
difference in sonority (V - C1) is added to (C2-C1); this measures the
ability of the first consonant to compete as a syllable nucleus, and
results in subtly different predictions than models based on sonority
rises, falls, and plateaus. In the bottom-up model, the center of mass
is calculated for periodic energy in the onset cluster and for the
nucleus. If the distance between these two is too great, the CCV
sequence will be parsed as two syllables.

The next third of the book presents two studies that test the
predictions of the NAP. The first (Chapter 7) presents the results of
three perception experiments, in which German- and Hebrew-speaking
participants were presented with nonce words featuring non-homorganic
CC onsets of varying sonority. In a forced-choice task, speakers were
simply asked to judge whether they heard one or two syllables, and
their responses and response times were recorded. Sonority of the
stimuli was calculated using the top-down and bottom-up NAP models as
well as four traditional models of sonority. Of the six sonority
models, the top-down NAP performed best in explaining the results,
followed by the bottom-up NAP model. The experiments are complemented
by a corpus study of Modern Hebrew Segholate nouns. (Chapter 8)
investigates whether word-initial onset clusters in derived plurals
are permitted or avoided (by vowel epenthesis). Again, the top-down
NAP is found to be the best-performing model. Data from these studies
is presented in appendices and is available in OSF repositories.

Finally, Chapter 9 describes ProPer, a toolkit for calculating
periodic energy, taking phonetic measurements with it, and creating
visualizations of periodic energy and F0. These are freely available
online and implemented in popular free software (Praat and R). Chapter
10 offers a general conclusion, with suggestions for future work.

EVALUATION

The book is a valuable contribution to the phonological study of
syllable structure. “Syllable” and “sonority” have proven to be useful
terms yet difficult to define, and this book offers a refreshing
perspective. The core theoretical proposals, PRiORS and the NAP, are
simple ideas with subtle and interesting implications. The combination
of corpus and experimental studies, along with computational
implementations, provides a solid empirical grounding.

The book is also commendable for its adherence to open science
practices, and readers are encouraged to examine and consider using
materials from the component studies. Code and data for Chapter 7’s
NAP study is available at (https://osf.io/y477r/), while Chapter 8’s
corpus study has code and a link to the data at
(https://osf.io/wuf3j/). The ProPer system is available for use by
other researchers on GitHub
(https://github.com/finkelbert/ProPer_Projekt) and OSF
(https://osf.io/28ea5/). The documentation is accessible, and uses
freely-available software that is familiar to many linguists and
speech scientists (Praat, R, and RStudio).

For a highly quantitative work, Albert (2023) offers much to
phonologists who work with categorical, symbolic representations. The
distinction between top-down, symbolic NAP and bottom-up, dynamic NAP
presents a subtle tension that speaks to deep divides within
linguistics concerning the relationship between discrete and
continuous representations. Albert states his own position in §6.1 and
§10.3, arguing that the top-down NAP is an outcome of learning the
bottom-up dynamics. Interestingly, the top-down model outperforms the
bottom-up model in the perceptual experiment (§7.8), lending support
to more categorical models. The success of the top-down model makes
this an attractive alternative to the SSP, and I encourage researchers
to continue testing the predictions and examining the consequences
that differ between the NAP and SSP.

In contrast to the explicitly-implemented NAP models, the PRiORS
framework seems somewhat underdeveloped. There is an undeniable
elegance to partitioning perceptual systems by rate of change, but it
is unclear what this achieves. Perhaps this is a failure on the part
of this reviewer’s imagination.

While quantitatively impressive, the actual success of the NAP as an
improvement over the SSP is mixed. Among its successes is the NAP’s
ability to distinguish between plateaus of high and low sonority, such
as /mn/ vs. /fs/. It also succeeds at its goal of explaining why
/s/-stop onset clusters are relatively common despite their falling
sonority. Unfortunately, the same mechanism is not able to account for
differences in the behavior of different voiceless stops. Why would a
language permit /s/-stop clusters but not /f/-stop clusters? Likewise,
while the NAP can account for the moderately common /sf/ clusters, it
does not predict why /sf/ should be more common than /fs/. Perhaps
these questions should be addressed with a different kind of account,
not sonority, but shifting the locus of explanation offers a
redefinition of the problem, rather than a solution.

Redefinition, then, is a key theme of the volume. The NAP is an
intuitive and attractive new formulation of sonority, one deserving of
attention from phonologists and phoneticians. Foregrounding periodic
energy likewise offers a potentially-useful new tool in the study of
prosody and phonotactics. ProPer produces attractive and
thought-provoking visualizations, and  along with PRiORS may spark
creative developments as well. To its credit, these shifts in
perspective open new kinds of questions: What are the possible NAP
threshold values, and how do they differ across languages? Might the
periodic energy centers of mass relate to other syllable landmarks,
such as C-centers (Browman & Goldstein 1988), P-centers (Barbosa et
al. 2005), or jaw movement trajectories (e.g. Erickson et al. 1998)?
Could the attractor landscape of the NAP be integrated with other
dynamic approaches such as Dynamic Field Theory (Schöner & Spencer
2016)? Can the NAP help explain the typology of syllable codas? And of
course, if /s/-stop sequences are common, why are /f/-stop sequences
rare?

Overall, Albert (2023) is a well-written volume with substantial
merits. The organization into relatively short, coherent chapters
encourages engagement with specific empirical components as well as
the major ideas. Different chapters will appeal to readers with
specific interests, be it in symbolic phonology, acoustic phonetics,
or a combination. I hope to see the ideas in this volume applied to
other data sources and rigorously tested and debated. Individual
chapters could also meaningfully contribute to course syllabi, either
for high-level theory or as interesting case studies, and the linked
software is accessible enough for use by students with some background
in Praat and R.

REFERENCES

Barbosa, Plínio A., Pablo Arantes, Alexsandro R. Meireles & Jussara M.
Vieira. 2005. Abstractness in speech-metronome synchronisation:
P-centres as cyclic attractors. In Interspeech 2005, 1441–1444. ISCA.

Browman, Catherine P. & Louis Goldstein. 1988. Some Notes on Syllable
Structure in Articulatory Phonology. Phonetica 45(2–4). 140–155.

Erickson, Donna, Osamu Fujimura & Bryan Pardo. 1998. Articulatory
Correlates of Prosodic Control: Emotion and Emphasis. Language and
Speech 41(3–4). 399–417.
DFT

Schöner, G., & Spencer, J. P. 2016. Dynamic thinking: A primer on
dynamic field theory. Oxford University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Christopher Geissler received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Yale
University for his dissertation “Temporal articulatory stability,
phonological variation, and lexical contrast preservation in diaspora
Tibetan”. He served as a postdoctoral researcher in English
Linguistics at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, and is currently
a Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Carleton College. His
research focuses on speech timing, phonetic variation, and the
relationship between articulatory phonetics and phonological
representation. He values collaborating with students and improving
pedagogy in linguistics.



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