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Bulgarian voicing contrast: at home and abroad

Research · May 2015

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2688.1444

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Maria Dokovova
University of Strathclyde
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 Bulgarian Voicing Contrast:
At Home and Abroad

Supervisors: Dr James Kirby and Prof. D. Robert Ladd

Word count: 9881

March, 2015
Acknowledgments
I want to thank my supervisors James Kirby and Bob Ladd who always had time and good

advice for me. They gave me inspiration, support and several wonderful opportunities.

I’m especially grateful to all the participants in the study and everyone who helped me reach

them.

Tihomir Rangelov who helped me understand his thesis in Icelandic and Tom Booth who

gave me advice on statistics also have a special contribution to this dissertation.

Finally, I want to thank all my friends, my boyfriend and my family for always supporting me.

2
Table of contents
Abstract............................................................................................................................................ 4
Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 5
1. Literature Review....................................................................................................................... 7
1.1 VOT................................................................................................................................ 7
1.2 Voicing in closure ......................................................................................................... 11
1.3 Closure duration............................................................................................................ 13
1.4 Fundamental frequency ................................................................................................ 14
1.5 Change in VOT ............................................................................................................. 17
1.6 Bulgarian language ....................................................................................................... 20
2. Predictions .................................................................................................................................. 22
3. Methods ...................................................................................................................................... 23
3.1 Participants .................................................................................................................. 23
3.2 Stimuli .......................................................................................................................... 24
3.3 Procedure ..................................................................................................................... 24
3.4 Analysis ........................................................................................................................ 17
3.5 Statistical approach...................................................................................................... 29
4. Results ........................................................................................................................................ 30
4.1 Effect of speech rate...................................................................................................... 30
4.2 VOT................................................................................................................................ 30
4.3 Voicing in the closure.................................................................................................... 33
4.4 Closure duration ........................................................................................................... 33
4.5 F0 Analysis.................................................................................................................... 33
4.6 Differences between speakers with different AL.......................................................... 34
5. Discussion ................................................................................................................................... 37
5.1 VOT ............................................................................................................................... 37
5.2 Closure........................................................................................................................... 39
5.3 F0 .................................................................................................................................. 40
5.4 Effect of AL................................................................................................................... 40
5.5 Limitations and advantages of the study ...................................................................... 43
6. Conclusions & suggestions for future research ....................................................................... 44
7. References .................................................................................................................................. 46
8. Appendices .................................................................................................................................. 52

3
Abstract
The first task of the present study is to investigate the importance of several parameters for

the voicing distinction in Bulgarian. The second task focuses on VOT and voicing in the

closure in Bulgarian, under the influence of English as an ambient language.

The participants include 10 people who live in Bulgaria and 10 in Scotland, UK. Within each

country there are five younger and five older speakers. They read a list of words containing

the stops /b, d, g, p, t, k/ in initial and word-medial stressed position. This contributed to 3799

tokens in total.

All of the cues which are measured (VOT, voicing in the closure, closure duration, F0) show

significant differences for voiced and voiceless stops and some cross-linguistic tendencies on

VOT are confirmed. The results on the second task show that exposure to English as an

ambient language leads to changes in voiced consonants (prevoicing frequency, duration and

voicing in the closure). However, no changes are found for voiceless stops. Differences are

observed with regard to the amount of exposure to English: speakers who have lived longer

in the UK are more affected by the English phonology.

This study raises important questions about the use of voiced consonants in research on

language influence and the implications of methodology.

4
Introduction
This dissertation will focus on different correlates of the voicing distinction in Bulgarian stop

consonants and specifically on the changes occurring in Voice Onset Time (henceforth VOT)

and closure voicing as a result of prolonged contact with English. For the purpose, two

groups of native Bulgarian speakers were studied – one living in Bulgaria and another in

Scotland, UK.

Correlates of the voicing distinction have been investigated across languages and the results

show that there is cross-linguistic difference in the way they are implemented (even within

language families). Some of these include VOT, voicing in the closure of stops, closure

duration (CD), and fundamental frequency (f0) of the following vowel. The stop place of

articulation (POA) and the quality of the following vowel have been shown to have an effect

on the duration of VOT in some languages. Bulgarian is an understudied language in this

respect and data on the way it realises voicing contrast are necessary before investigating how

the language changes. There exists some evidence that VOT in L1 can change due to contact

with a different ambient language, but the area is under-researched. Considering that there are

at least half a million Bulgarians living in Anglophone countries (according to unofficial

estimates of embassies), it is relevant to ask whether the voicing contrast realisation of

Bulgarian can change over time for these speakers.

The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold:

1. Provide descriptive phonetic information on the realization of the voicing contrast in

Bulgarian, which currently is lacking in literature: duration of VOT, effect of following

vowel and place of articulation on VOT, voicing in the closure, closure duration, f0 curves

following voiced and voiceless stops.

5
2. Compare VOT and voicing in the closure in the productions of two groups of Bulgarian

speakers, differing in their ambient language (English and Bulgarian) and seek evidence of

language influence.

6
1. Literature Review
1.1 VOT
The term Voice Onset Time, introduced by Lisker and Abramson (1964), is the time between

the release of the consonant and the beginning of vocal-fold vibrations. This definition allows

for distinguishing two categories: positive VOT (voicing lag) when voicing starts after the

burst, and negative VOT (voicing lead) when voicing starts before the burst. It is considered a

useful marker of the voicing distinction in many languages and has served as a classification

criterion (Lisker & Abramson, 1964). Languages with a 2-way VOT contrast are often split

between ‘aspirating’ languages, which mainly distinguish between short lag and long lag

consonants and ‘true-voice’ (or voicing) languages, which distinguish between prevoicing

and short-lag consonants. English falls in the first group and Bulgarian (together with most

other Slavic and Romance languages) into the second. Hence, the following overview will

mainly focus on the latter group. There will be a few examples of aspirating languages,

mainly English, as its influence is expected in half of the data in the present study.

The main characteristic of voicing languages is the presence of prevoicing in initial position.

In Russian 97% of word-initial voiced consonants were produced with prevoicing and the

mean positive VOT was 25.3ms (Ringen & Kulikov, 2012). Ringen and Gosy (2009) for

Hungarian, Sokolovic-Perovic (2012) for Serbian and Shimizu (1996) for Japanese report that

100% of initial voiced consonants were prevoiced, and that there was no overlap in terms of

VOT between the two categories. In French citation speech voiced consonants were produced

with negative VOT 94% of the time (Caramazza and Yeni-Komshian, 1974).There are some

notable exceptions such as Canadian French with 58% of initial prevoicing and Dutch – with

only 75% (Caramazza &Yeni-Komshian, 1974; van Alphen &Smits, 2004). They will be

discussed in Section 1.5.

7
Phonologically voiceless stops in aspirating languages are produced with significantly longer

positive VOT than phonologically voiced stops. English is considered an aspirating language;

however, a number of studies report that its voiced category is occasionally produced with

prevoicing and the tendency seems to be subject-specific (Lisker and Abramson, 1964;

Docherty, 1992). Table 1 below presents summarised VOT values for English from three

different studies.

Consonant/Study Lisker&Abramson* (1964) Suomi (1980) Docherty (1992)

/p/ 58 40 42
/t/ 70 55 64
/k/ 80 56 62
/b/ -101/1 2 15
/d/ -102/5 7 21
/g/ -88/21 15 27
Table 1. Mean VOT (ms) of initial English stops reported in literature
*Negative VOT values report cases of prevoicing
Data on Scottish varieties is of particular importance to this study as the speakers whose

ambient language is English live in Edinburgh and the Glasgow area. Docherty (2011)

studied VOT of stop consonants from speakers living at the Scottish-English border. The

main finding of the study is that younger speakers in all locations produced both voiced and

voiceless consonants with longer VOT than older speakers and use prevoicing for voiced

consonants less often than older speakers. Another important finding is that speakers from

Scotland had on average 10ms shorter voicing lag on voiceless consonants than speakers in

England. Stuart-Smith et al (2014) also report that younger Glaswegian speakers tend to have

longer aspiration than older speakers, which they associate with a sound change. These trends

are also associated with the social class of the speakers, where vernacular forms tend to have

shorter aspiration and be more prone to prevoicing (Scobbie, 2006).

8
1.1.2 Place of articulation
In general, the tendency is for positive VOT to increase as the POA moves from front to back,

while in the same circumstances negative VOT decreases (Docherty, 1992).

The strength of these tendencies varies across languages and voicing categories. It was

reported in Swedish (Beckman, 2011; Helgason & Ringen, 2008) and for Hungarian (Gosy &

Ringen, 2009) where was found a significant effect of place of articulation for /p/</t/</k/ in

word-initial position. Lousada (2010) reports the same for both initial and medial position in

European Portuguese and van Alphen and Smits (2004) found a shorter voicing lag for initial

/p/ than for /t/ in Dutch citation form. However, according to Sokolovic-Perovic (2012) in

Serbian this tendency was significant only in a sentence frame, but not in citation form1.

Contrary to a large body of studies, which supports the /p/</t/</k/ tendency in English,

Docherty (1992) found that in Southern British English only /p/ was significantly shorter than

/k/ and /t/, and /k/ tended to be shorter than /t/. In Glaswegian English there was a clearer

difference for voiced (reaslised as short-lag) than for voiceless consonants in the direction

/b/</d/</g/ (Stuart-Smith et al 2014). In Russian there were no significant differences

between VOT at different POA, though in initial position the tendency /p/</t/</k/ is observed

(Ringen and Kulikov, 2012). Finally, Cho and Ladefoged (1999) found that in their sample of

17 languages almost all show significantly longer lags for velar stops than bilabial and

alveolar. They found no significant differences between bilabial and coronal consonants.

However, when focusing on the cross-linguistic distribution of VOT only for velar POA, its

variation was continuous and not discrete across languages. This suggests that in different

languages VOT for a given category (voiced or voiceless) is usually targeted around a part of

the VOT spectrum. Language-specific constraints, as well as universal physiological

1
In citation form there might be greater attention to controlling the output.

9
principles then affect the actual output, which may or may not result in unintentionally

different VOT for different POA (Cho & Ladefoged, 1999).

To sum up, it appears that while tendencies do exist with regard to duration of voicing lag

and place of articulation they are neither consistent across and within languages and

conditions, nor do they always produce significant effects.

POA-related tendencies seem to be even more variable for consonants produced with

prevoicing.

According to Smith (1978)2 POA affects the frequency and length of prevoicing in English in

the expected /g/</d/</b/ direction. In Swedish Beckman (2011) found significant differences

between prevoicing durations with tendency /g/</d/</b/ in initial position, while Helgason

and Ringen (2008) observed significant differences only between /g/</d/ and /g/</b/ in initial

position. Other studies, such as van Alphen and Smits (2004) for Dutch, Gosy and Ringen

(2009) for Hungarian and Sokolovic-Perovic (2012) for Serbian found only a tendency of

change in this direction, but did not obtain significant results. Ringen and Kulikov (2012) did

not report significance levels for Russians, but the growth of prevoicing goes in the opposite

direction of what is expected: /b/</d/</g/.

1.1.3 Following vowel quality

Various studies report an effect on the length of positive VOT related to the following vowel

quality. High vowels such as /i/ and /u/ are preceded by longer VOT compared to lower

vowels such as /e/ and /a/. This has been reported for English (Docherty, 1992, Klatt, 1975),

Serbian (Socolovic-Perovic, 2012), Portuguese (Lousada, 2010), Hungarian (Gosy, 2001) and

Italian (Esposito, 2002).

2
As quoted in van Alphen & Smits (2004).

10
In the case of prevoiced stops results are less consistent. For prevoicing in English, Smith

(1978)2 did find that the duration and frequency of prevoicing were related to the height of

the following vowel. This was not replicated for Dutch by Van Alphen and Smits (2004).

Yeni-Komshian et al. (1977) propose that the front-back distinction has an effect on the

length of the VOT, as prevoicing was significantly shorter and the lag was significantly

longer before /i/ than before /a/ and /u/ for Lebanese Arabic. In the same study they report

results on French stops, where this vowel effect was present only for voiceless consonants.

As with the effect of place of articulation, tendencies regarding prevoiced consonants are less

consistent. This might be a result of stronger active control on negative VOT through

mechanisms such as spirantisation and prenasalisation (Sokolovic-Perovic, 2012; Sole &

Sprouse, 2011). This kind of manoeuvres might override or interfere with physiological

causes for differences in POA. Sokolovic-Perovic (2012), Cho & Ladefoged (1999) and

Docherty (1992) summarise such physiological causes for differences in VOT due to POA

and following vowel but their discussion is beyond the scope of this paper. As these

differences in VOT are not used for expressing a voicing contrast, they can be symptomatic

of different manners of speech (e.g. citation or spontaneous) and language-specific uses of

active control on VOT.

1.2 Voicing in closure

An important correlate of the voicing contrast is voicing in the stop closure. As discussed

below, voicing languages seem to voice consistently throughout the closures of voiced stops

and keep voiceless stops without phonation. On the other hand, English seems to show more

variability. Voicing in the closure is usually analysed in word-medial post-vocalic position or

word-initial position either embedded in a carrier sentence, or in spontaneous speech.

11
Gosy and Ringen (2009) report that in Hungarian medial intervocalic position 95.5% of

closures were fully voiced. Similarly, Sokolovic-Perovic (2012) found that in Serbian in

word-initial, sentence-medial position, 95% of phonologically voiced tokens were fully

voiced compared to voiceless stops, which had no phonation. The results for French were

similar (99%) when voiced closure was defined as closure with over 75% voicing and closure

without phonation was defined as having less than 25% voicing (Abdelli-Beruh, 2004). In

word-initial position sentence-medially and in word-medial intervocalic position 99% of the

voiced closures were fully voiced and none of the voiceless closures had phonation. For

Russian Ringen and Kulikov (2012) report that over 97% of word-medial closures were fully

voiced for voiced stops, while voiceless stops were produced with no phonation. The same

pattern was observed in Swedish in initial, medial and final position (Helgason and Ringen,

2008). In European Portuguese word-medial position, most voiced tokens had longer voicing

than the voiceless (Lousada, 2010). But there were often cases with broken voicing. For the

most part these studies disregarded short leftover phonation in the closure from the preceding

vowel (see example in Fig. 1). Despite the overall similarity, it is apparent that some of these

languages tend to use more voicing than others.

Figure 1. Segmentation examples in Russian from Kulikov (2012). Residual voicing in a

voiceless /t/ closure.

12
Data for English, however, suggests that in word-medial intervocalic position the voicing

tends to be broken. Docherty (1992) found interrupted voicing in 97% of the cases in word-

initial intervocalic position (in comparison to 68% reported by Suomi (1980)) and almost all

cases of uninterrupted voicing came from one speaker. Docherty (1992) and Suomi (1980)

found similar amount of voicing within closures of voiced stops (between 51.9% - 66.48% of

the closure duration was voiced). For voiceless consonants Docherty found that between

10% and 20% of the closure duration was voiced, while Suomi reported less than 10%. This

would correspond to leftover voicing from the preceding vowel. The amount of voicing was

significantly different between voiced and voiceless consonants (Docherty, 1992). Stuart-

Smith et al (2014) suggest that there is a sound change expressed in the tendency for less

voicing in the closures of voiced consonants when produced by younger Glaswegian speakers

compared to an older group.

The overview on prevoicing and voicing in the closure shows that English speakers use less

vocal fold vibration in the manifestation of the voicing contrast than speakers of voicing

languages.

1.3 Closure duration

There is evidence from some languages that closure duration is an important cue of voicing

contrast through the widespread tendency of voiceless stops having longer closure duration

than voiced. Most notably a study on Swiss German has shown that while differences in VOT

between ‘voiced’ and ‘voiceless’ stops were almost non-existent, voiceless stop closures had

more than twice the duration of voiced (Willi, 1996)3. This suggests that there might be a

compensation mechanism between the use of cues indicating voicing contrast in this

particular case. In European Portuguese voiceless stops had longer CD in all word positions

3
As quoted by Jessen (1998).

13
(Lousada, 2010). Abdelli-Beruh (2004) replicated these results for French intervocalic stops

both in syllable-initial and syllable-final conditions. Ringen and Kulikov (2012) report the

same results for word-medial intervocalic consonants in Russian. Sokolovic-Perovic (2012)

found that Serbian closure duration is consistently longer for voiceless stops word-initially,

medially and finally, for all subjects, with large effect size.

However, there is some evidence contradicting this clear pattern even in voicing languages.

Esposito (2002) found no significant effect of voicing category on the closure duration in

Italian (even though the expected tendency was present). Fuchs (2005) found that in German

stressed initial position the closure for /d/ was longer than /t/ for all subjects, but the opposite

was true in post-stress position. This evidence goes against the trend reported for Swiss

German. In Southern British English there were insignificant differences between voiced and

voiceless consonants in initial intervocalic stressed environment (Docherty, 1992). Similarly

to what was reported by Fuchs (2005) the alveolar position violated the general tendency

(4ms difference for /p/> /b/, 3ms for /k/>/g/ and 3ms for /d/>/t/). However, Lisker (1957)

reports that in English intervocalic post-stressed /p/ was on average 45ms longer than /b/.

It appears that closure duration is more clearly associated with the voicing contrast in voicing

languages, however, counter-examples such as Italian (Esposito, 2002) and Swiss-German

(Willi, 1996)3 demonstrate that variation is possible not only within a language family but

also between very closely related languages.

1.4 Fundamental frequency

A phenomenon called ‘f0 perturbations’ has been commonly observed across languages.

Vowels following voiced consonants start with lower fundamental frequency than vowels

following voiceless consonants (English and French (Hombert, 1976), German (Jessen, 1998),

Italian (Esposito, 2002), Japanese (Shimizu,1996) etc.). However, this process is not as

14
directly related to the length of VOT as it appears at first sight. As demonstrated by Hombert

(1976) a voicing language like French produces similar f0 contrast following voiced and

voiceless stops as English, even though English voiced consonants have similar VOT to

French voiceless stops. (see Fig. 2)

Figure 2. Fundamental frequency measures (vertical axis) of vowels following ptk and bdg
(orthographic) as a function of glottal period (horizontal axis) for two American English speakers
(1 female and 1 male) and two French speakers (1 female and 1 male). The upper curve
represents average F0 measurements after ptk, the lower curve represents average F0
measurements after bdg. Reproduced from Hombert 1976.

Ohde (1984) investigated the relationship between VOT and f0 in English, and a more

complex relationship emerged. The VOT of phonologically voiced stops and phonologically

voiceless (realized as unaspirated in second position in a consonant cluster) was nearly

identical and the VOT of aspirated stops was longer. Yet f0 of voiceless unaspirated was

distinct from the phonologically voiced and similar to the values following aspirated

15
consonants. This finding suggests that the link between f0 and VOT is not straightforward

and some level of active control might be at play (van Alphen & Smits, 2004). Similarly to

what was mentioned about the closure duration in Swiss German, when VOT does not

express the voicing contrast other cues are still present and fulfil that function.

However, just using this evidence it is not clear whether f0 is actively manipulated after

voiceless or voiced stops or both, in order to maintain the contrast. Hanson (2009) found that

in English, f0 following voiced consonants patterns the same way as when following nasals,

while voiceless stops (either with short or long lag) were followed by higher f0. As nasals do

not require special laryngeal adjustments to sustain voicing, f0 following these can be taken

as a baseline, which is not actively controlled.

Kirby and Ladd (2014) replicated Hanson (2009) for two voicing languages – French and

Italian. They found that overall f0 following voiced consonants patterned the same way as

when following nasal consonants. One of the conclusions in both studies is that if there is an

articulatory gesture aimed at enhancing the voicing contrast, it is probably associated with the

voiceless group.

F0 perturbations seem to serve as cues of voicing contrast without being directly dependent

on VOT. It needs to be noted that the shape of the f0 curve is also affected by language-

specific international patterns, which is a discussion beyond the scope of this paper. The

focus will be kept on the distance between the curves following stops of both voicing

categories.

16
1.5 Change in VOT
1.5.1 Indirect evidence
A number of studies suggest that extensive language contact and proficiency in L2 can lead

to a change of VOT values in the native language.

The earliest discussion of language influence on VOT dates back to Caramazza and Yeni-

Komshian (1974) who found evidence of a phonetic shift in monolingual Canadian French

compared to monolingual Canadian English and other French dialects. While French and

Canadian English showed a clear distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants in

VOT, Canadian French categories had overlapping VOT. Canadian French speakers

produced significantly more tokens of voiced stops with voicing lag. In addition to that,

French speakers had significantly shorter lags than Canadian French speakers. The authors

conclude that English, being the more dominant language in the country both culturally and

economically, has influenced Canadian French.

Two other studies also indirectly suggest the possibility of a sound change influenced by an

aspirating L2. Van Alphen and Smits (2004) discovered for Dutch that prevoicing was the

best predictor of the voicing distinction in terms of perception. However, the voicing lead

was absent in 25% of the voiced productions across 10 speakers. The authors suggest that the

participants’ fluency and exposure to English from undubbed television, have influenced their

pronunciation of Dutch, which is one of the few Germanic languages that use prevoicing to

express phonological contrast.

Swedish is also a Germanic language which uses prevoicing, as demonstrated by Beckman

(2011) and Helgason and Ringen (2008). Keating (1983), however, reported no prevoicing

for Swedish speakers in word-initial position. As pointed out by Helgason and Ringen (2008)

the participants for Keating’s study lived in the USA and were recorded there, which may be

17
connected to the reduction of the vocal lead. Even though the subjects of Helgason and

Ringen (2008) all spoke English, they lived in an environment where Swedish was dominant

(however, note that in van Alphen and Smits (2004) prevoicing was affected despite the fact

that the ambient language was Dutch.)

1.5.2 Systematic comparisons

Other studies have systematically investigated the influence of an L2 on the VOT production

in L1, but it appears that so far only one of them has included consonants with prevoicing.

Sancier and Fowler (1997) investigated a speaker of native Brazilian Portuguese and

proficiently acquired English. In three sessions of translation tasks in the USA, Brazil and the

USA after a several months spent in each place, the subject produced systematically different

values of voicing lag in the direction of the VOT of the ambient language in both her

Portuguese and English productions.

The authors point out that unlike the conscious imitation of features within L2 in order to

resemble native speakers of a language; there is no social motivation for speakers to imitate

the ambient language in their L1. They suggest the possibility of a gestural drift

(“perceptually guided change in the speech of bilingual speakers, because of a change in their

linguistic environment”) (Sancier & Fowler, 1997, p. 421). They suggest that a single mental

category is used for the representation of “similar phones”.

Flege (1987) found that the level of proficiency of L2 affects the VOT production in L1. He

focused on productions of /t/ of French- American English bilinguals and compared them to

the corresponding values of monolinguals of the two languages. Integrated immigrants of

each country showed the greatest departure from the target VOT values in their native

languages, followed by American professors teaching in French. The VOT of American

18
students returning from a year-abroad experience in France did not differ from the control

group.

These findings were confirmed by Major (1992). He observed the VOT of voiceless stops in

English and Brazilian Portuguese for five female Americans, immigrants in Brazil. All of

them had spent between twelve and thirty-five years in Brazil and had strong motivation to

retain fluency in both languages. He found that fluency in L2 correlated significantly with

loss of fluency in casual English speech, and that VOT was more affected in casual speech

than in speech elicited with formal tasks.

Heselwood and McChrystal (1999) measured the VOT of Panjabi speakers, a language with a

three-way stop contrast in each POA: voiced, unvoiced and aspirated. The authors did not

find an effect of place of acquisition of Panjabi (Pakistan or Bedford UK), though they found

an effect of age. The under-25 group tended not to realize prevoicing, unlike the older group.

Nevertheless, the authors point out that even though prevoicing did not indicate the voicing

contrast, other cues such as the burst amplitude could be involved. 4 The difference in

prevoicing for the two age groups could be partially due to sociolinguistic factors or levels of

proficiency in English.

Despite this convincing evidence of changes in VOT happening as a result of contact with

aspirating languages it has not been replicated in two studies, concerning the Slavic group.

Socolovic-Perovic (2012) investigated acoustic correlates of VOT in Serbian. She recorded

two speakers who had lived in the UK for 7 and 8 years but their VOT did not differ

significantly from the average of their corresponding gender and age groups. Specifically for

Bulgarian, Rangelov (2008) reports VOT based on his own production. The author – a native

Bulgarian speaker, is fluent in a number of aspirating languages and at the time of the

4
However, f0 would probably not serve as such. Panjabi has lost its breathy voiced stops which
are realised as short-lag voiceless, but keeping their rising tone. (Tolstaya, 1981).
19
recording he had spent six months in Iceland. Despite that, he produced VOT that ranged in

values typical of other Slavic languages. Both studies were undertaken in formal conditions,

which might explain the lack of change. In addition to that, in Rangelov (2008) the speaker

was also the researcher, which may have led to enhancing the desired production.

1.6 Bulgarian language

1.6.1 Phonemic inventory
Bulgarian is an East South Slavic Language (Sussex and Cuberley, 2006). It distinguishes

between three places of articulation for oral stops: bilabial, pre-alveolar and velar (Ternes and

Vladimirova-Buhz, 1990). All plain consonants have palatal counterparts. Ignatova-Tsoneva

and Baeva (2009) and Choi (1998) provide evidence that Bulgarian ‘soft’ consonants should

be interpreted as ‘plain’ undergoing palatalization in restricted contexts, instead of the

traditional analysis with two sets of consonants – ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ (Tilkov and Boyadzhiev,

19775). There are five vowels that appear in stressed syllables: /i/, /e/, /a/, /ɤ/, /o/, /u/ (Ternes,

1990).

For the purposes of this study only plain consonants, without palatalization were used and

test items with front vowels were avoided due to risk of palatalization (Ternes et al., 1990)

1.6.2 Research on VOT

It is hard to find reports on VOT measurements for Bulgarian. In that respect, Rangelov

(2008) provides a comprehensive presentation. His results (including palatalized stops) are

presented in table 2.

Bilabial Dental Velar

Voiceless 27 32 45
Voiced -124 -110 -109
Table 2 Bulgarian VOT (ms) in isolation. Reproduced from Rangelov (2008).

5
As quoted by Ignatova-Tsoneva and Baeva (2009) and Choi (1998).
20
There are several limitations to the study. First, the data is taken from only one speaker, who

is also the researcher, which creates the possibility of bias. The test items contain two non-

words (stops +/j/ sequences in isolation). Also throughout the corpus the target consonants

appear in both stressed and unstressed positions, initial and word-medial. The significance of

POA and following vowel quality was not reported, but voiceless consonants seem to exhibit

a more robust difference in POA than the voiced. Despite that, the results are coherent with

the data on voicing languages discussed above and provide a good indication of the VOT

patterns to be expected in the present study.

21
2. Predictions
Based on the literature review the following hypotheses have been formed:

H0: There will be no difference between the two voicing categories in terms of VOT, closure

duration, voicing in the closure and f0 perturbations.

H1: There will be a difference between the two voicing categories expressed in the following

way:

1. Voiced stops will have negative VOT and voiceless stops will have positive VOT.

2. The closures of voiced stops will be fully voiced and will have shorter duration than

voiceless stops.

3. Voiced stops will be followed by lower f0 than voiceless stops.

Additional observations are made for the effect of POA and vowel quality on VOT but no

specific predictions are proposed given the variability in the reported data. It is expected that

tendencies will be clearer for voiceless than for voiced stops.

H0: There will be no difference in the way the voicing contrast is manifested for speakers

whose ambient language (AL) is Bulgarian and speakers whose AL is English.

H1: There will be a difference in the way the voicing contrast is manifested for speakers with

AL Bulgarian and with AL English, expressed with longer positive VOT for voiceless stops

and a lower number of voiced stops with prevoicing in the AL English group.

In addition to that, it is expected that closures of voiced stops will be less often fully voiced

for speakers with AL English. The difference in duration of voicing leads will be observed

but predictions cannot be formed due to a lack of data on the subject. The speakers’ age

coincides with longer exposure to English. It will be investigated whether VOT and voicing

in the closure differ between age groups.

22
3. Methods
A descriptive study was performed in the period July –December 2014. It investigates

phonetic aspects of native Bulgarian speech with and without strong influence of English.

3.1 Participants
In order to achieve the tasks two groups of equal size of native speakers of Bulgarian were

sampled and recorded: 10 who live in Bulgaria and 10 in Scotland (Edinburgh and the

Glasgow area). Within each subgroup there were 5 younger speakers (in their early 20s, 1

male 4 female in both countries) and 5 older (Bulgaria: mean age 58.2; 2 male 3 female,

Scotland: mean age 48.6; 3 male, 2 female).

Three participants in the older Bulgarian group reported having studied English. Only one of

them reported to use it occasionally for verbal communication (no more than once a month).

Within the younger Bulgarian group, all participants had studied English in school. All but

one reported to use it daily or weekly in verbal or written communication and only one

communicated with native English speakers. None of them had studied another aspirating

language and all considered Bulgarian as their primary language. All participants reported

some daily exposure to English from the media; however, it was impossible to quantify it

based on their self-report.

The members of the older Scottish group had lived in the UK for 9.4 years on average. All of

them used English on a daily basis at work. Apart from one participant, they spoke only

Bulgarian at home. Four members of the younger group were 4th year Edinburgh University

students. One of them had spent 9 months on exchange in Sweden in 3rd year. The fifth

participant had lived in the UK for 2 years for postgraduate studies and had previously spent

5 years in Germany. The same participant had spent 5 childhood years in India, attending an

English language school. Two of the younger participants use English at home.

23
Even though fluency was not measured the two age groups within AL English correspond to

different length of time spent in an Anglophone country.

3.2 Stimuli
The full list of test items is presented in Appendix 1. Eight items with each consonant (/b/, /d/,

/g/, /p/, /t/, /k/) were represented in word-initial and word-medial intervocalic position at the

onset of a stressed syllable (96 words in total). In word-initial position the sample was

balanced for vowels following the stop: /a/, /ɤ/, /o/, /u/, in order to control for effect of vowel

height. In word-medial position this was not possible due to the constraint of always using

stressed syllables. /e/ and /i/ were dispreferred because there is a natural tendency for

palatisation before these vowels (Ternes et al, 1990). In the eastern regions of Bulgaria

(where many of the participants live) it can even reach a form of affrication for dental and

velar consonants. Some 210 fillers were also used.

3.3 Procedure
Recordings took place in a quiet environment usually in the participants’ homes. One of the

participants carried out the recordings independently in a sound studio after receiving detailed

instructions. The rest were recorded using a Zoom H1 recorder to .wav format (96kHz/24 bit).

As the recording environment varied, some recordings contain reverberation. The participants

were instructed to read each stimulus twice at a rate that felt natural to them including a small

pause between the words. They were encouraged to use everyday pronunciation and avoid

overarticulation. When an error was detected speakers were asked to repeat the word

correctly, which sometimes resulted in more than two usable tokens per word. Information

about the speakers’ language experience was obtained through a short questionnaire

(Appendix 2).

24
3.4 Analysis
Due to repeated corrections of errors of pronunciation 3853 tokens were collected, instead of

3840 (20 speakers x 96 words x 2 repetitions). Of them 54 were excluded for issues that were

not detected during recording (hesitations, wrong stress, misreading), noise, or lack of visible

burst, which resulted in 3799 tokens. Several participants often used spirantisation for

intervocalic /g/, which accounts for 23 (42%) of the excluded tokens. The sound files were

analysed using Praat (Boersma and Weenink 1992-2014).

3.4.1 Voicing lead

The beginning of voicing lead was marked at the onset of voicing using the waveform as a

primary cue (point “l” in tier one, Fig. 3). The end of the voicing lead was marked either at

the end of voicing on the waveform (in cases of interruption) or at the stop onset (point “s” in

the first tier, Fig. 3).

Figure 3. Prevoicing in word-initial /d/

Cases where formants or nasal traces were found in the lead were included in the duration of

the lead (Fig. 4)

25
Figure 4. Nasal traces found in the lead of a word-initial /g/

3.4.2 Voicing lag

Voicing lag was measured from the stop onset until the onset of regular periodicity on the

waveform (between the first bar on tier two and point “v” on tier one, Fig. 5). This approach

is recommended in Francis, Ciocca and Yu (2003), who compared the accuracy of different

cues for voicing onset.

Figure 5. Positive VOT in word-initial /t/

3.4.3 Vowel duration

Vowel duration was measured in order to control for rate of speech. Kessinger and Blumstein

(1998) found that the duration of the vowel changes as a function of the rate of speech. Pind

(1995) concludes that the ratio vowel to rhyme is invariable across speech rates, while no

such ratio is apparent for VOT. Based on these conclusions, the onset of the vowel was

marked from the start of regular periodicity in the waveform (point “v”, tier one, Fig. 3, 4, 5).

26
The offset was marked as an interruption of second and third formants, or a sharp change in

their direction combined with a change in the amplitude, when the following segment was a

semivowel or lateral approximant (second bar in tier two, Fig 3, 4, 5).

3.4.4 Closure duration

Closure onset was marked at the end of the preceding vowel (see 3.4.3). The closure offset

was measured at the burst of the following consonant. Reverberation and noise in some

recordings impeded precise measurements of voicing within the closure. As a result two

categories were distinguished – fully voiced closures (Fig.6) and closures where voicing

breaks before the end (Fig. 7 and 8). Discussion of closure duration implies intervocalic

word-medial position in this study.

All boundaries were automatically moved to the nearest zero-crossing of the waveform. For

more examples of segmentation see Appendix 3.

Figure 6. Full voicing in the closure of intervocalic /d/

27
Figure 7. Broken voicing in the closure of intervocalic /d/ closure

Figure 8. Voiceless closure of intervocalic /k/

3.4.5 F0
F0 of the following vowel was measured using an adapted script of Wempe and Boersma

(2003) with a 15ms frame and 50-500 Hz pitch range. Measurements were taken at 12

equidistant points. In order to account for inter-speaker variation each of the data points was

turned into a z-score (the data point subtracted from speaker mean, divided by speaker

standard deviation) (Rose 1987). Points for which Praat returned no value or a wrong value

due to pitch halving were not included in the calculations.

28
3.5 Statistical approach
Statistical analyses were carried out using IBM SPSS version 22. Thanks to the large sample

size of tokens (3799) parametric tests were preferred even if some assumptions were violated.

Graphical and tabular presentations were used for the descriptive analysis of data.

Quantitative variables were presented with mean values and standard deviations and

qualitative with counts and proportions.

For hypothesis testing independent samples Student t-test was used when comparing two

groups, and ANOVA when comparing more than two groups simultaneously. If Levene’s test

was significant, Welche’s t-test and Games-Howell tests were used. Otherwise Tukey HSD

was applied. For categorical variables chi-square test was applied. Results were considered

significant at alpha level = .05.

29
4. Results
Even though the first hypothesis was focused on the AL Bulgarian group only, the same

analyses were applied to the AL English group in order to determine if the same tendencies of

expressing the voicing contrast apply. Due to a limitation of space, detailed results of the

statistical comparisons for the second group are presented in Appendix 4. Voiced stops in

medial position were excluded from comparisons on VOT as voicing often ran through the

burst, and no meaningful VOT measures could be obtained. For this reason and due to space

limits VOT of voiceless medial stops was not used in comparisons.

4.1 Effect of speech rate

The correlation between VOT and vowel duration in the data pooled across ambient

languages was significant for voiceless stops (both medial and initial position) (Pearson’s

r(1908) = -.111, p < .001) and for voiced stops in initial position (Pearson’s r(943) = -.150, p

< .001). The correlation between vowel and closure duration was significant for voiceless

(Pearson’s r(949)=.07, p=.03) but not for voiced stops (p=.293).

Due to the negative correlation between VOT and vowel duration (i.e. longer vowels do not

co-occur with longer VOT), and the small r-values it was assumed that speech rate does not

affect VOT and closure duration in an important way and was not analysed further.

4.2 VOT
The following table presents measurements on VOT in all conditions and groups that will be

compared further in the section.

30
VOT (ms): AL Bulgarian AL English
M SD N M SD N
Initial including Voiced -118.89 40.00 465 -89.37 50.20 482
short-lag voiced
Voiceless 30.25 18.26 477 32.39 19.91 478
stops
Initial per consonant /b/ -122.00 34.16 152 -107.75 31.93 145
(excluding short-lag /d/ -124.63 40.41 155 -109.34 33.27 143
voiced stops) /g/ -110.25 43.46 158 -88.75 31.73 144
/p/ 20.04 10.36 160 21.21 11.69 161
/t/ 20.55 8.69 157 22.66 8.34 160
/k/ 49.97 49.97 160 53.23 18.15 161
Initial voiced stops /a/ -112.53 40.22 116 -93.85 33.39 111
preceding vowels /ɤ/ -122.1 36.53 115 -105.63 29.93 105
(excluding short-lag /o/ -118.09 41.79 118 -103.69 34.42 109
voiced stops) /u/ -112.87 40.89 116 -104.94 34.42 107
Initial voiceless stops /a/ 25.55 17.21 118 27.52 17.38 120
preceding vowels /ɤ/ 29.01 16.24 120 30.30 17.08 120
(excluding short-lag /o/ 31.17 21.25 119 33.78 23.35 122
voiced stops) /u/ 35.21 16.81 120 37.92 19.83 120
Table 3. VOT (ms) measurements for AL Bulgarian and AL English speakers

There was little overlap between the VOT of the two voicing categories comparing only VOT

in word-initial position. VOT of voiced consonants was significantly different from that of

voiceless (t(646) = 73.29, p<0.001, d = -4.8). Almost all (98%) of voiced consonants were

prevoiced (6 short-lag tokens) (Fig.9). After excluding the cases with short-lag, mean

duration of the lead was 120.65ms, SD=37.13. The difference in VOT between both voicing

categories was significant (t(646)=73.29, p<.001, d = -5.97)

Figure 9. Histogram of VOT of voiced consonants, initial position, ambient Bulgarian

31
Unlike the normal distribution of negative VOT of voiced consonants (Fig.9), voiceless

consonants have skewed positive VOT distribution (Fig.10).

Figure 10. Histogram of VOT of voiceless consonants, initial position, ambient Bulgarian

4.2.1. Effect of place of articulation

Cases of voiced stops produced with short-lag were excluded from the analysis. Analysis of

variance showed a main effect of consonant on VOT in voiceless (F(2, 474) = 340.70,

p< .001) and voiced stops (F(2,456) = 6.78, p = .001) in initial position. Post-hoc Games-

Howell tests indicated that VOT was longer for voiceless velar stops than for bilabial and

dental stops (p<.001). The duration of prevoicing was shorter for voiced velar stops than the

front stops (p<.001). The bilabial-dental contrast was insignificant in both categories.

4.2.2 Effect of following vowel

Analysis of variance revealed a main effect of following vowel on VOT only in voiceless

consonants (F(3,473) = 6.02, p < .001) (initial position). Post-hoc test using Tukey’s HSD

showed significant differences between /u/ and /a/ (p < .001) and /u/ and /ɤ/ (p = .039).

32
The main effect was not significant for voiced consonants (p = .069) even with the short-lag

cases excluded. Post-hoc Tukey test showed that the clearest difference was between /u/ and

/a/ (p = .087).

4.3 Voicing in the closure

For 92.8% of medial voiced consonants there was full voicing throughout the closure – 34 of

470 tokens were with interrupted voicing. In 4% (21 of 470 tokens) of the medial voiceless

consonants appeared to be fully voiced throughout the closure.

4.4 Closure duration

An independent samples t-test showed that voiceless closures were significantly longer than

voiced ones (t(851) = 17.1, p < .001, d = 1.12).

Closure AL Bulgarian AL English

duration (ms)
M SD N M SD N
Voiced 103.29 22.08 470 95.65 21.65 478
Voiceless 133.13 30.73 470 125.27 28.00 479

Table 4. Closure duration of medial stops per voicing category, per ambient language

4.5 F0 Analysis
Voiced and voiceless stops differed in relation to the height of F0 of the following vowel.

The difference was greater in the first third of the vowel (t(1800) = 7.36, p < .001, d =0.443),

lessened by the second third (t(1831) = 3.28 p = .001, d = 0.154), and disappeared in the last

part of the vowel (p = .242). Separate tests were run for initial and medial position but no

difference was observed so the results here are combined for position.

33
 Mean f0
AL Bulgarian AL English
z-scores
Both
positions M SD N M SD N
Bin1 voiceless 0,21 0,96 914 0,31 0,92 901
voiced -0,10 0,85 919 -0,07 0,86 917
Bin2 voiceless 0,09 0,97 914 0,18 0,95 901
voiced -0,05 0,91 919 -0,09 0,90 917
Bin3 voiceless 0,02 1,01 914 0,09 0,97 901
voiced -0,03 0,91 919 -0,14 0,96 917

Table 5. Descriptive statistics on F0 z scores for the 3 consecutive parts of the vowel (bin1-
bin3) per voicing category, per AL

The graph presents the movement of the normalised F0 curve throughout the vowel following

voiced and voiceless stops.

0.3
0.25
Mean values of z scores

0.2
0.15
0.1
voiceless
0.05
voiced
0
-0.05 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

-0.1
-0.15
Points of measurement of F0

Figure 11. Movement of F0 curve in AL Bulgarian

4.6 Differences between speakers with different AL

4.6.1 VOT
Independent samples t-tests showed that there was not a significant difference in the VOT of

voiceless stops (p=.084). However, the length of prevoicing (i.e. excluding short-lag voiced

stops) was significantly shorter for the UK group (t(889) = -7.87, p < .001, d = -6.29).

34
An analysis of variance with fixed factors Age and AL and a dependent variable VOT of

voiceless stops showed neither a significant interaction (p=.214) nor main effect of ambient

language (p=.076). There was a significant main effect of age (F(1,955)=34.92, p < .001).

Dependent Variable: VOT of voiceless stops

Ambient language Age Mean SD N
Bulgarian younger 33.06 18.97 240
older 27.40 17.08 237
Total 30.25 18.26 477
English younger 36.72 22.83 241
older 28.05 15.36 241
Total 32.39 19.91 482
Table 6. Descriptive statistics for VOT of initial voiceless stops stratified by age and AL

When the dependent variable was VOT of voiced stops there was a significant interaction

(F(1,889) = 23.64, p < .001) and main effects of AL (p < .001) and age (p < .001).

Dependent Variable: VOT of voiced stops (excluding short-lag stops)

Ambient language Age Mean SD N
Bulgarian younger -100.44 29.13 220
older -139.26 33.85 239
Total -120.65 37.13 459
English younger -93.52 30.57 229
older -111.44 34.33 203
Total -101.94 33.57 432
Table 7. Descriptive statistics for VOT of initial voiced stops stratified by age and AL
In addition to that there are significantly more occurrences of voiced stops without voicing

lead (n=46) for the AL English group (chi-square=31.41, N=943, p<.001).

4.6.2 Voicing in the closure

The proportion of voiced stops with broken voicing was .072 for the Bulgarian group and .21

for the UK group. The difference in proportions was significant (chi-square=26.42, N =

1080, p < .001). We looked for an association between age and number of broken voicing in

35
the closures, separately for AL. Chi-square tests did not show a significant difference in the

proportions of closures with broken voicing between younger and older speakers with AL

Bulgarian (p=.509) Older speaker with English had significantly more tokens with broken

voicing than younger speakers with the same AL (Pearson chi-square=5.819, N=478, p=.016)

(Table 8).

Al Bulgarian Al English
Full Broken Total Full Broken Total
Younger
speakers 218 19 237 207 40 247
Older speakers 218 15 233 173 58 231
Total 436 34 470 380 98 478

Table 8. Number of medial voiced stops with broken /full voicing in the closure per age and
within AL

36
5. Discussion
The overall findings support the idea that VOT, voicing in the closure, closure duration and

F0 are all robust correlates for the voicing contrasts in Bulgarian.

5.1 VOT
Voiceless consonants are all produced with positive VOT (M = 30ms) reaching over 80ms,

which resembles the data for Russian language (Ringen and Kulikov, 2012). Similar mean is

obtained by Rangelov (2008) (35ms), though he includes data from palatalised consonants

which had longer durations of VOT. The mean prevoicing duration was 120.65ms (including

the short-lag items -118.89ms) which is comparable to the one reported by Rangelov (2008)

for Bulgarian (114.3ms) and Sokolovic-Perovic (2012) for Serbian (112 ms).

The mean VOT values for voiced stops in Bulgarian seem to be in the higher end of the

spectrum reported for other languages (Table 9).

Language/VOT (ms) First author & Year Voiced Voiceless

Turkish Ogut F., 2006 -42.8 53.2
Lebanese Arabic Yeni-KomshianG., 1977 -60.6 25.6
French Yeni-KomshianG., 1977 -69.4 30.6
Russian Ringen C., 2012 -74.0 25.3
Japanese Shimizu K.,1996 -79.7 14.0
Swedish Helgeson P., 2008 -82.3 64.0
EU Portuguese Lousada M., 2010 -88.0 33.0
Hungarian Gosy M., 2009 -93.0 21.1
Serbian Sokolovic-PerovicM., 2012 -112.0 52.0
French Ryalls G., 1995 -142.7 82.0
Table 9. VOT for voicing languages reported in the literature, ordered by negative VOT

It needs to be taken into account that the majority of studies base their results on small

samples, usually within a restricted age group which cannot be representative of a whole

37
language6. In that respect the current study has the advantage of reporting for two distinctive

age groups.

In terms of the effect of POA on VOT length the results are the same for both language

groups. Front consonants have significantly shorter lags and longer leads than velars, but do

not differ between themselves. The same tendency is reported by Ogut et al. (2006) for

Turkish. The space behind the point of constriction for velars is smaller than for front places

of articulation (Cho & Ladefoged 1999). The resulting pressure is higher and takes longer to

reduce at an appropriate level to begin voicing. Another evidence of the voicing difficulty at

this POA is the high number of velar stops that were excluded before analysis due to

spirantisation (N = 23). The lack of difference between front POA suggests that the velocity

of articulators and contact surface between articulators must have been similar for /p/ and /t/,

/b/ and /d/ (Cho and Ladefoged 1999).

The vowel effect on VOT produces consistent results for both Bulgarian and UK groups. In

the initial voiceless condition the high vowel /u/ is preceded by significantly longer lags than

/a/ and /ɤ/. Voiced consonants in the Bulgarian group do not differ in prevoicing according to

the following vowel. In the UK group the only significant contrast is between /a/ and /ɤ/.

Overall, the findings support previously reported data that high vowels are preceded by

longer positive VOT (Arabic Lebanese and French, Yeni-Komshian and Caramazza (1977);

Portuguese, Lousada (2010), Italian, Esposito (2002) etc.).

As expected, the VOT of voiceless consonants is more affected by the following vowel than

prevoicing. This supports the argument that prevoicing is connected to active control. In

addition to that there are traces of nasality found in 30% of all prevoiced initial stops (274

6
Note the difference between the two studies reporting on French. Yeni-Komshian (1977) does not report a
mean age for the speakers but Ryalls G., 1995 has chosen speakers with a mean age 65, which is associated with
longer prevoicing.

38
cases). This process of prenasalisation is known in some voicing languages. Sole and

Sprouse (2011) report that 74% of the Spanish initial voiced stops have nasal leakage. Their

explanation is that prenasalisation diminishes oral pressure and eases beginning of voicing.

5.2 Closure
Similarly to other languages with prevoicing, most voiced medial stops have fully voiced

closures both in the Bulgarian and the UK group. In the Bulgarian group 98.7% of closures

are fully voiced, which is very similar to the results for French (Abdelli-Beruh, 2004),

Russian (Ringen & Kulikov, 2012), Swedish (Helgason & Ringen, 2008), Serbian

(Sokolovic-Perovic, 2012) and Hungarian (Gosy & Ringen, 2009), where it is about 95%.

Both language groups have longer closure duration for voiceless than voiced consonants –

about 30ms mean difference. The results correspond to findings for word-medial intervocalic

position in other Slavic languages such as Serbian (Sokolovic-Perovic, 2012) Russian

(Ringen and Kulikov, 2012), but also French (Abdelli-Beruh, 2004), Portuguese (Lousada,

2010), German (Jessen, 1998) and for /p/ and /b/ (intervocalic and between vowel and /l/) in

English (Lisker, 1957).

It has been proposed that the longer the closure, the higher the possibility of devoicing due to

the build-up of supraglottal pressure (Ohala, 1983; Fuchs, 2005). Accordingly, Fuchs does

not find a difference between the closure durations of devoiced /d/ and /t/. Abdelli-Beruh

(2004) reports the same results on final devoiced stops in French, but Kulikov (2012) states

that in Russian underlyingly voiceless stops have longer closures than devoiced stops. It

needs to be investigated further to what extent the closure duration is related to the amount of

voicing within the closure (Sokolovic-Perovic, 2012).

39
5.3 F0
F0 perturbations are present in the data for both the Bulgarian and UK group. F0 after voiced

AL Bulgarian stops rises up in the last third of the curve, and does not maintain a significant

distance from its voiceless counterpart. The UK group, keeps the distinction throughout. The

fact that the distinction between both categories is kept for at least 2/3rds of the vowel

supports the argument of Hombert et al. (1979). They argue that perturbations are not simply

a spontaneous result of tensing the vocal cords for voiceless stops or a quick drop of oral

pressure for voiced stops.

In addition to that, it is worth mentioning that f0 remains close to the speakers’ mean for

voiced consonants (Fig. 11), and starts higher than the mean following voiceless consonants.

This does not contradict the idea that f0 after voiceless consonants diverges in order to

enhance the voicing contrast, observed by Hanson (2009) and Kirby&Ladd (2014).

5.4 Effect of AL
Three out of the four studied parameters suggest influence of English, as an ambient language.

As expected, prevoicing of word-initial stops occurred less often in the UK group. This is

congruent with the data from younger Panjabi speakers living in the UK

(Heselwood&McChrystal, 1999), Canadian French speakers, surrounded by Canadian

English (Carramazza&Yeni-Komshian, 1974) and Swedish speakers, living in the USA

(Keating, 1983).

The review so far has not found any study reporting a difference in length of prevoicing or

number of stops with broken voicing in the closure caused by the ambient language. In our

study speakers with AL English have significantly shorter prevoicing than those with AL

Bulgarian. Additionally, it is discovered that prevoicing for older speakers with AL English

has undergone a greater change than for younger speakers of the same AL (evident from the

40
significant interaction in ANOVA). This leads to questioning whether a similar effect would

have been observed in the data of Heselwood&McChrystal (1999) for the older speakers,

who almost never dropped their prevoicing and appeared uninfluenced by English.

Voicing in the closure also breaks more often for speakers with AL English. As seen in

Docherty (1992) and Suomi (1980) voiced medial stops with broken voicing are quite

common in English. While there is no significant difference in the amount of closures with

broken voicing for the Bulgarian group (which suggests homogeneity), such is found in the

UK group. Older speakers of the UK group break voicing in the closure more often than

younger speakers who have lived less time in an anglophone country.

These data suggest that the older group is more influenced by English than the younger group

(even though the younger group with AL English has overall shorter prevoicing). This

confirms the expectations based on Flege (1987) and Major (1992) that people who have had

more input (in our case it is more precise to say longer input) of L2 will be more affected by

its phonology.

An analysis of variance reveals that there is a significant main effect of age. Younger

speakers in either country have significantly shorter leads and longer lags in comparison to

older speakers. This partially resembles the data from Docherty (2011), who reports that

younger speakers of English have longer aspiration and less frequent prevoicing. He does not

report differences in length of prevoicing between age groups. Further investigation in this

contrast might reveal that the difference is due to a sound change or sociolinguistic causes

(Stuart-Smith 2014; Docherty 2011).

Conversely, changes in positive VOT have been reported by studies such as Flege (1987) and

Sancier&Fowler (1997), but no significant differences are recorded here (a small tendency of

longer lags is observed in the UK group – 2 ms difference). There are two main possibilities

41
for the lack of distinction in positive VOT. Either a change in positive VOT has occurred but

the procedure failed to extract data that reflects it, or the speakers have not been influenced

by English aspiration.

If a change exists there are two likely explanations why it is not captured. 1. A small change

might have happened on an individual level and a within-subject study of the type of Sancier

and Fowler (1997) would have been able to capture it but it is impossible using different

subjects as controls. 2. With a formal elicitation task speakers are more likely to control their

output which might neutralise the appearing change (Major 1992). The type of formal

elicitation used here aims to obtain prevoicing data in absolutely initial position, as opposed

to voiced closures in spontaneous speech, thus requiring a harder task from the speakers.

If VOT is measured on spontaneous speech the difference in prevoicing may be even greater

than the reported and the difference in positive VOT would reach significance. The reason

why a difference in prevoicing is detected, despite the formal method of elicitation, might be

the fact that it is generally a hard task to initiate and sustain prevoicing in initial position,

requiring active strategies of support (Sole & Sprout, 2011, Allen 1985). On the other hand,

short-lag VOT, typical of Bulgarian, is less taxing in terms of effort.

There are also multiple reasons why a change in positive VOT may not have happened. The

first is the input. As discussed previously, speakers of Scottish varieties have shorter lags and

more prevoicing than speakers of Southern British English varieties. Previous research on the

influence of English has focused on General American and Southern British English varieties.

Although Scottish Standard English and vernacular varieties are not the only ones spoken in

Edinburgh and Glasgow, they would constitute a greater part of the input for the speakers

than in previous experiments. Also, 7 out of 10 UK participants spoke only Bulgarian at

home, which lessens the input of native English speech. Another factor is the fluency in

42
English, which was not measured for this study. Major (1992) found that fluency in the

foreign ambient language was related to higher amount of change in the native language.

These explanations do not account for the fact that fluency and input were the same within

each speaker, yet they led to different overall results for voiced and voiceless stops.

5.5 Limitations and advantages of the study

The limitations of the present study might be related to the lack of information on the English

fluency of the participants, the cross-sectional design of the measurements instead of

longitudinal, the formal elicitation task and the sample size of the participants. The effect of

the first three is already discussed. While the sample size of the participants is not large (N =

20), it is an advantage that results are replicated in two different age groups. This is a

contribution of the present study to the scarce data on the voicing contrast in the Bulgarian

language. The diverse origin of the participants has not influenced the results as they are

replicated both for the Bulgaria based speakers (mostly from the Eastern parts of Bulgaria)

and for the UK based speakers (mostly from Central and Western Bulgaria).

Our study seems to be the first to investigate the influence of L2 on the length of prevoicing

and voicing in the closure in the native language.

43
6. Conclusions & suggestions for future research
The study provides novel phonetic information on the realisation of the voicing contrast in

Bulgarian and an exploratory analysis on VOT in particular.

More specifically the following conclusions can be made:

1. There are significant differences between voiced and voiceless stops in terms of: VOT,

closure duration, voicing in the closure and f0 of the following vowel. These four

characteristics can be considered as important cues of the voicing distinction in

Bulgarian;

2. Despite minimal overlap, voiced stops have mostly negative VOT and voiceless stops

have always positive VOT;

3. There is full voicing in the closure of voiced stops but it is never full in voiceless stops;

4. Voiced stops have shorter closure duration than voiceless stops;

5. Voiceless stops are followed by higher f0 than voiced stops, for at least two-thirds of the

vowel;

6. Some cross-linguistic tendencies are confirmed:

 Voicing lag is longer at velar POA than front POA;

 Voicing lead is shorter at velar POA than front POA

 Voicing lead is longer when preceding high vowels than low vowels;

 Voiceless stops seem to be more affected by the following vowel quality than voiced

stops;

7. There is an influence on Bulgarian for speakers with English as an ambient language,

characterised by:

 A higher number of voiced stops without prevoicing;

44
  Shorter prevoicing for the UK group than for the Bulgarian group;

 A higher number of voiced closures with broken voicing for the UK group

8. Longer exposure to English leads to a greater amount of change in voiced stops.

Despite the strong expectations, there was a lack of significant difference in the length of

positive VOT between the two groups. This is either a result of the chosen methodology, or

reflects an unequal influence from English on the two voicing categories.

The results of this study suggests new directions for future research:

1. The relationship between prenasalisation and lead duration and stop POA have not been

addressed in this study. Yet simple observations of the data suggest that there might be more

prenasalisation at velar positions. As already discussed this position is linked with a higher

rate of spirantisation in intervocalic position and a combination of active manoeuvres

associated with this stop would not be unlikely.

2. Future studies on the influence of English on prevoicing languages need to take into

account the length of prevoicing and stop closure voicing, as these seem to be cues of voicing

contrast particularly prone to change. It can be investigated whether voiced stops realised

with a positive VOT maintain lower f0 curve. Similarly, it can be checked if closures of

voiced stops with broken voicing are still shorter than closures of voiceless stops.

3. Two lines of reasoning have been suggested to explain the lack of influence on positive

VOT. It is crucial for further research in the field to establish whether this is caused by the

methodology, or if it is possible for voiced stops to be affected more.

It is hoped that the results of the present study have contributed to the existing research in

voicing contrast and have formed a basis for further exploration in this area.

45
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Appendix 1
/p/
initial intervocalic

палав /palɤf/ playful нападам /nɤ’padɤm/ to attack

пълен /pɤlɛn/ full копая /ko’pajɤ/ to dig
поря купувам
/porjɤ/ to rip /ku'puvɤm/ to buy
пуша /puʃɤ/ to smoke опора /o'porɤ/ support (n.)

палец /palɛt͡s/ thumb напускам /nɤ'puskɤm/ to leave

път /pɤt/ road запъвам /zɤ'pɤvɤm/ to get stuck
пол /pol/ gender напълно /nɤ'pɤlno/ completely
пух /pux/ fluff опулен /o'pulɛn/ wide-eyed

/t/
initial intervocalic

тази /tazi/ this пътувам /pɤ'tuvɤm/ to travel

тънкост /tɤnkost/ thinness потъвам /po'tɤvɤm/ to sink
точа отърсвам
/tot͡ʃɤ/ to roll /o'tɤrsvɤm/ to shake off
тука /tukɤ/ here потапям /po'tapjɤm/ to sink

там /tam/ there наточвам /nɤ'tot͡ʃvɤm/ to sharpen

тъжен /tɤʒen/ sad натупам /nɤ'tupɤm/ to beat up
той /toj/ he затапям /zɤ'tapjɤm/ to cork
туш /tuʃ/ ink/touchdown котак /ko'tak/ tom-cat

/k/
initial intervocalic

каня /kanjɤ/ to invite oкоп /o'kop/ trench

кърпя /kɤrpjɤ/ to mend окова /o'kovɤ/ shackle
коля акула
/koljɤ/ to slaughter /ɤ'kulɤ/ shark
куче /kut͡ʃe/ dog бекон /be'kon/ bacon

камък /kamɤk/ stone акация /ɤ'kat͡sijɤ/ acacia

къща /kɤʃtɤ/ house покълвам /po'kɤlvɤm/ to sprout
кон /kon/ horse ръка /rɤ'ka/ arm
куфар /kufɤr/ suitcase локум /lo'kum/ Turkish delight

52
 /b/
initial intervocalic

бавен /baven/ slow oбувам /o'buvɤm/ to put on shoes

бърз /bɤrs/ fast обичам /o'bit͡ʃɤm/ to love
боря /borjɤ/ to fight набуча /nɤ'but͡ʃɤ/ to jab
буден /buden/ awake обуча /o'but͡ʃɤ/ to educate

бал /bal/ ball оборя /o'borjɤ/ to refute

бъчва /bɤt͡ʃvɤ/ barrel обагрен /o'bagrɛn/ tinted
бой /boj/ fight обадя /o'badjɤ/ to call
буца /but͡sɤ/ lump обърнат /o'bɤrnɤt/ turned over

/d/
initial intervocalic

давам /davɤm/ to give подавам /po'davɤm/ to hand

дъжд /dɤʃt/ rain удавя /u'davjɤ/ to drown
Дунав /dunɤf/ Danube удобен /u'doben/ convenient
доза /dozɤ/ dose надуша /nɤ'duʃɤ/ to smell

дар /dar/ gift удачен /u'dat͡ʃen/ convenient

дъб /dɤp/ oak надувам /nɤ'duvɤm/ to inflate
дух /dux/ spirit ударя /u'darjɤ/ to hit
дом /dom/ home надъхам /nɤ'dɤxɤm/ to incite

/g/
initial intervocalic

галя /galjɤ/ to stroke oгъвам /o'gɤvɤm/ to bend

гърч /gɤrt͡ʃ/ convulsion снага /snɤ'ga/ body
гузен /guzɛn/ guilty нагоре /nɤ'gore/ upwards
говор /govor/ speech погубя /po'gubjɤ/ to ruin

гащи /gaʃti/ pants вагон /vɤ'gon/ wagon

гъба /gɤbɤ/ sponge/mushroom погълна /po'gɤlnɤ/ to devour
гума /gumɤ/ eraser оголен /o'golnɛn/ exposed/nude
гол /gol/ naked рагу /rɤ'gu/ ragout

53
Appendix 2
Questionnaire

1. Age:

2. Gender:

3. Languages, used at home:

4. Languages used/listened to everyday (incl. music, TV, surroundings, etc.):

5. Other languages you have studied:

Please, answer the following questions for every language (but the native), you have

mentioned earlier, separately.

1/ When did you start learning/ using this language?

2/ How often do you use (speak/write) this language (e.g. daily, weekly, mоnthly,

yearly, with a narrow circle of people)?

3/ Do you use it mostly in written or oral form?

4/ Approxiamtely how often do you listen to this language(e.g. daily, weekly,

mоnthly, yearly, with a narrow circle of people) and from what medium

(conversations in person, on the phone, internet, films, music etc.)?

54
Appendix 3
More spectrogram/waveform images

An example of segmentation of a vowel (segment “n”) before /j/.

An example of segmentation of a vowel (segment “n”) before /j/.

55
An example of strong prenasalisation of /g/.

An example of weak prenasalisation of /b/.

56
Appendix 4
Statistical analysis for the AL English group

In the ambient English group there was more overlap between the VOT of the two voicing

categories, again focusing on word-initial position. VOT of voiced consonants was

significantly different from that of voiceless (t(622) = 49.32, p <.001, d = -3.19). 90% of

voiced consonants were produced with prevoicing (46 short-lag tokens). Excluding the cases

with short-lag, mean duration of the lead was -101.94ms, SD = 33.57.

Fig 1. Histogram of VOT of voiced consonants, initial position, ambient English

57
Fig 2. Histogram of VOT of voiceless consonant, initial position, ambient English

Analysis of variance showed a main effect of consonant (place of articulation) on VOT in

voiceless (F(2,479) = 294.51, p < .001) and voiced stops (F(2,432)= 18, p < .001). Post-hoc

Games-Howell analyses indicated that VOT was longer for velar stops than for bilabial and

dental (p<.001) but there wasn’t a significant difference between bilabial and dental. The

same conclusion was reached for voiced stops using Tukey’s HSD. Cases of voiced stops

produced with short-lag were excluded from the analysis.

Analysis of variance showed a main effect of following vowel on VOT only in voiceless

consonants (F(3, 478) = 6.31, p < .001). Tukey’s HSD test showed significant differences

between VOT preceding /u/ and /a/ (p < .001) and /u/ and /ɤ/ (p = .014) and a difference

between /a/ and /o/ nearing significance (p = .064).

The main effect was significant for voiced consonants (F(3,428) = 3.00, p = .031). A post-hoc

Tukey analysis showed a significant difference only between /a/ and /ɤ/ (p=.048).

58
 79.5% of medial voiced consonants were produced with full voicing throughout the closure

(98 of 478 tokens had interrupted voicing). 1% (6 of 479) of the medial voiceless consonants

appeared to have full voicing throughout.

An independent samples t-test showed that voiceless stops had significantly longer closures

than voiced (t(899) = 18.31, p < .001, d = 1.189).

Voiced and voiceless stops differ though the height of f0 of the following vowel. Unlike in

Bulgarian when the ambient language is English the distance between the “voiced” and

“voiceless” f0 is kept in all three bins (bin 1: t(1816)=9.05,p<.001, d=0.424; bin2:

t(1816)=6.26, p<.001, d=0.294; bin3 t(1816)=4.97, p<.001, d=0.233)

0.5

0.4
Mean values of z scores

0.3

0.2

0.1 voiceless
voiced
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
-0.1

-0.2

-0.3
Points of measurement of f0

Figure. 3 Movement of F0 curve in AL English

59

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