14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14) San Francisco, CA, USA August 1-7, 1999

Acoustic Characteristics of Normal and Distorted Fricatives

Creighton J. Miller (1), Paul Hoffman (2), Gordon Schuckers (3), Richard Berry (4)

(1) Murray State University, Murray, KY, USA
(2) Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA
(3) Louisiana State University Medical Center, Shreveport, LA, USA
(4) The Richard Stockton State College of New Jersey, USA

This experiment investigated the abilities of adults and normal children to imitate normal, lateralized, and retracted fricatives in CV contexts. Distribution measures derived from spectral analyses of the fricative noise were evaluated with respect to subject age, phonetic context and articulatory distortion. The results revealed significant manner/place influences on fricative production as well a trend towards less articulatory precision by the children. Although lateral /s/ was difficult for children, their measurable /s/ distortions were very similar to those of adults.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Miller, Creighton J. / Hoffman, Paul / Schuckers, Gordon / Berry, Richard (1999): "Acoustic characteristics of normal and distorted fricatives", In ICPhS-14, 839-841.