DOCTORAL DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Quantifying the Sonority Hierarchy

本论文的总主题是声音。具体而言，将解决以下问题：(1)什么是声音？(2)响度的发音、声学和/或听觉基础是什么？(3)声音应该如何量化？(4)音阶是通用的还是特定于语言的？(5)在正式的语音限制中，声音应该扮演什么角色？人们早就认识到，音高的差异决定了音节内声音的顺序，这一模式在所有语言中都可以观察到。为了解释这种普遍的影响，许多语言学家认为，声音的响度源于声音的发音或感知方式的差异。然而，迄今为止，响度的语音定义（在发音、声学或感知方面）仍然难以捉摸。因此，许多音韵学家和语音学家质疑声音的理论有效性，声称这个概念是不可能以具体的方式表征的。因此，这个项目的潜在贡献是解决关于声音的物理基础的长期争议。该项目的目标是确定五个物理参数中哪一个最能表征响度差异：强度（响度）、口腔气流峰值速率、口腔内气压峰值、收缩持续时间或第一个共振峰的频率。这些特征中的每一个都将在英语和西班牙语的多个母语人士的讲话中系统地研究所有语言特定的音素，辅音和元音。本研究的目的是证明，基于这些物理相关的一个或多个值，响度可以以精确、一致、非任意和语音为基础的方式进行量化。

The general topic of this dissertation is sonority. Specifically, the following issues will be addressed: (1) What is sonority? (2) What is the articulatory, acoustic, and/or auditory basis of sonority? (3) How should sonority be quantified? (4) Is the sonority scale universal or language-specific? and (5) What role should sonority play in formal phonological constraints?It has long been recognized that sonority differences determine the sequencing of sounds within syllables, a pattern observed in all languages. In order to explain this universal effect, many linguists have suggested that sonority derives from differences in how sounds are pronounced or perceived. However, to date a phonetic definition of sonority (in articulatory, acoustic, or perceptual terms) has remained elusive. Consequently, a number of phonologists and phoneticians have questioned the theoretical validity of sonority altogether, claiming that this notion is impossible to characterize in a concrete way. Consequently, the potential contribution of this project is to resolve a long-standing controversy regarding the physical basis of sonority.The goal of this project is to determine which of five physical parameters best characterizes sonority differences: intensity (loudness), peak rate of oral air flow, peak intraoral air pressure, constriction duration, or frequency of the first formant. Each of these characteristics will be systematically studied in the speech of multiple native speakers of both English and Spanish for all language-specific phonemes, consonants and vowels alike. The objective of this research is to demonstrate that sonority can be quantified in a precise, consistent, non-arbitrary, and phonetically-grounded way based on the values of one or more of these physical correlates.