The document summarizes the research proposal and preliminary findings of a PhD study investigating the prosody of initial geminate consonants in Kelantan Malay. The study conducted production experiments with native speakers, analyzing acoustic correlates like closure duration. Results showed significant differences in duration between singleton and geminate consonants. Gender and vowel height also influenced duration. Further experiments on spontaneous speech and perception are planned to provide more robust analysis of initial geminates in Kelantan Malay prosody.

1. THE PROSODY OF KELANTAN MALAY: The Case of Initial Geminate Consonants Hilmi Hamzah Supervisors: Associate Professor Janet Fletcher Professor John Hajek THE PROSODY OF KELANTAN MALAY: The Case of Initial Geminate Consonants CONFIRMATION TALK

3. THE STORY OF MY FIRST-YEAR PhD LIFE & THE FOUR STAGES

4. 1st STAGE: GETTING LOST

5. THE WORLD OF PROSODY “ A suprasegmental organisation of segmental sounds into higher-level constituents.” (Shattuck-Hufnagel & Turk, 1996)‏ “ A set of higher-level organisation structures that account for variations in pitch , loudness , duration , spectral tilt , segment reduction and their associated parameters .” (Clark, Yallop & Fletcher, 2007)

6. PROSODIC HIERARCHY (Pierrehumbert & Beckman, 1998)

7. L2 Speech Learning - Speech Learning Model (Flege et al., 1995) - Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best, 1993)‏ L2 Intonation - Japanese & Korean English (Ueyama & Jun, 1998) - Indian English (Wiltshire & Harnsberger, 2006) ‏ 11 SUMMARIES SECOND LANGUAGE (L2) PROSODY

8. 2nd STAGE: GETTING FOUND

9. Intervocalic position (e.g. Malayalam, Sienese Italian)‏ Initial position (e.g. Swiss German, Cypriot Greek) Abramson's experiments (1986, 1987, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2004)‏ on Pattani Malay Kelantan Malay in Malaysia VS. Pattani Malay in Thailand GEMINATE CONSONANTS

11. /kabo/ 'blurry vision' vs. /kkabo/ 'a beetle' /gad Ʒ i/ 'salary' vs. /ggad Ʒ i/ 'a saw tool' /ma Ɣ i/ 'to come' vs. /mma Ɣ i/ 'a cupboard' KELANTAN MALAY SINGLETON CONSONANT vs. GEMINATE CONSONANT

12. WHAT ARE GEMINATE CONSONANTS? Long Consonants : two phones in a same syllable Double Consonants : two phones across syllables (Abercrombie, 1967) Distinctive length : distinguishes languages that contrast meanings through gemination (Abramson, 1986)‏ Geminate consonants : prolonged 1 ½ or 2 times longer (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996)‏ Closure duration is the most salient acoustic correlate

13. PREVIOUS STUDIES Hankamer et al. (1989) on Turkish & Bengali : closure duration is the main acoustic feature Doty et al. (2007) on Finnish : voice onset time (VOT) and relative amplitude play significant roles Gordon (2009) on Ingrian : fundamental frequency (F0) is more significant INTERVOCALIC GEMINATE CONSONANTS

14. Kraehenmann (2001) on Swiss German : closure duration is the primary acoustic feature Muller (2003) on Cypriot Greek : VOT duration is a secondary feature Abramson (1986, 1987, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2004) on Pattani Malay : closure duration is associated with other prosodic factors PREVIOUS STUDIES INITIAL GEMINATE CONSONANTS

15. KELANTAN MALAY Derived from the 'loss' of prefixes , prepositions , trisyllabic & reduplicated words from Standard Malay Based on impressionistic approach‏ (e.g. Karim, 1965; Che Kob, 1985)‏

16. AIMS OF THE STUDY To offer instrumental insights into the prosody of Kelantan Malay (KM)‏ To investigate the acoustic correlates of singleton-geminate contrast To employ a series of laboratory phonology experiments To yield the first acoustic phonetic analysis of initial geminate consonants in KM

17. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY To explore the possible prosodic transfers between KM and L2 learning ‏ To contribute to research in language education To compare the results with other languages

18. RESEARCH QUESTIONS What are the segmental and suprasegmental features involved in the production and perception of initial geminate consonants in KM? What are their acoustic parameters ? What is the relationship between initial geminate consonants and the prosody of KM?

19. 3rd STAGE: GETTING EXCITED

20. FIRST PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENT To investigate the production of initial geminate consonants as spoken by 6 native speakers of KM To record a number of minimal pairs of singleton-geminate contrast in 3 controlled contexts To ascertain the acoustic correlates that underlie the distinction between the pairs To examine the role of initial geminate consonants in stress placement and intonational prominence OBJECTIVES

21. MATERIALS 10 phonemes = 19 minimal pairs = 38 tokens Disyllabic: C(C)VCV / C(C)VCVC 3 groups: (1) voiceless stops : / p / vs / pp / - / t / vs / tt / - / k / vs / kk / (2) voiced stops : / b / vs / bb / - / d / vs / dd / - / g / vs / gg / (3) sonorants : / m / vs / mm / - / n / vs / nn / - / ŋ / vs / ŋŋ / / l / vs / ll / 2 distinct vowels after each consonant (high vowel / i / & low vowel / a /), except / ŋ / vs / ŋŋ / (low vowel / a / only)‏

22. TOKENS

23. PARTICIPANTS & PROCEDURES 6 native speakers of KM (3 males & 3 females)‏ 6 recording sessions at the Horwood Language Centre (1 hour and 15 mins per session)‏ ‏ Tokens randomly presented in Standard Malay orthography through powerpoint slides on a computer Recorded in 3 controlled contexts: (A) Citation - 228 utterances X 6 speakers = 1368 utterances (B) Carrier Sentence - / diɔ katɔ (target word) tigɔ kali / “ he said (target word) three times” - 228 utterances X 6 speakers = 1368 utterances

24. PROCEDURES – cont'd (C) Focus condition - 20 tokens (20 unique sentences) - 3 questions elicited 3 replies with 3 focus conditions : [i] a broad focus reply [i] a reply with a narrow focus on non-target words [iii] a reply with a narrow focus on target words

25. PROCEDURES – cont'd Example: / mmaɣi / = cupboard Sentence : / diɔ l ət ɔɁ bad Ʒ u dalɛ mmaɣi / “ he put a shirt in a cupboard ” Questions : 1. / diɔ waɁ ggapɔ? / “ what did he do? ” 2. / diɔ l ət ɔɁ buku kɔ dalɛ mmaɣi ?/ “ did he put a book in a cupboard? ” 3. / diɔ l ət ɔɁ bad Ʒ u dalɛ beɁ kɔ ?/ “ did he put a shirt in a bag ? ” 300 utterances X 6 speakers = 1800 utterances Total number of utterances for all 3 contexts = 4536

26. DATA ANALYSIS Utterances from the carrier sentence have been analyzed Annotation was conducted using Praat (Boersma, 2001)‏ Segments & duration values were extracted and analyzed statistically using EMU-R (Harrington, 2010)‏ Average closure duration was measured in milliseconds (the beginning of the consonantal closure --> the onset of voicing )‏ Duration values were submitted to t -tests and ANOVA

28. RESULTS The effect of participant (6 levels) is highly significant ( F (5,1248)=269.23, p <.001)‏ The effect of phoneme (10 levels) is highly significant ( F (18,1248)=75.59, p <.001)‏ The effect of singleton-geminate contrast (2 levels) is highly significant ( F (1,1248)=11838.57, p <.001)‏ Singleton-geminate contrast is highly significant in all 10 consonant pairs ( t- ratio=-27.3 to -13.1, p <.001)‏ Range of durational ratios: 2.03 (/k/-/kk/) to 2.82 (/l/-/ll/)

29. DURATIONAL RATIOS

30. DURATIONAL RATIOS

31. EFFECT OF GENDER The effect is significant for all consonants ( t -ratio=2.53 to 8.22, p <.014) , except /ŋŋ/( t- ratio=1.35, p= .187)‏ Male speakers produce all consonants with longer average duration

32. GENDER – Singleton Consonant

33. GENDER – Geminate Consonant

34. EFFECT OF GENDER

35. EFFECT OF VOWEL HEIGHT The effect is highly significant for all singleton consonants ( t- ratio=2.87 to 11.25, p <.006), except /p/ ( t -ratio=0.61, p= .542) and /n/ ( t -ratio=1.07, p= .289)‏ It is not significant for all geminate consonants ( t -ratio=0.006 to 1.65, p >.05) except /kk/ ( t -ratio=2.62, p= .001)‏ Longer duration when followed by high vowel /i/

36. VOWEL HEIGHT – Singleton Consonant

37. VOWEL HEIGHT – Geminate Consonant

38. EFFECT OF VOWEL HEIGHT

39. EFFECT OF MANNER OF ARTICULATION The effect is significant for the durational ratios of all consonant pairs ( F (2,1290)=3.187, p <.041)‏ The effect is highly significant across both singleton and geminate consonants ( p <.001)‏

40. EFFECT OF MANNER OF ARTICULATION

41. DISCUSSION All initial geminate consonants are clearly distinguished from singleton consonants in terms of closure duration The significant effect of gender is unexpected , but both gender groups show a clear durational contrast Durational ratios of the initial contrast in KM are somewhat higher than medial contrast in other languages The preliminary results provide experimental confirmation for initial geminate consonants in KM

42. 4th STAGE: GETTING CONFIRMED

43. FIELDWORK TRIP Fieldwork trip in Kelantan, Malaysia - 90 days (1st October 2010 – 31st December 2010) - 10 local districts - 48 participants - 83 hours of experiment duration - 1,126 kilometres of travel distance around the state - 4 major experiments

44. PRODUCTION EXPERIMENT Citation, Carrier Sentence, Focus Condition 10 participants (5 males & 5 females) Stricter control on the participants' background (a) CONTROLLED DATA

45. PRODUCTION EXPERIMENT Map Task Activities - based on the Human Communication Research Centre (HCRC) Map Task (Anderson et al., 1991)‏ To elicit the production of initial geminate sonorants 4 map-pairs - 12 landmarks for each pair 8 participants (2 male pairs & 2 females pairs)‏ (b) SPONTANEOUS DATA

46. PERCEPTION EXPERIMENT 2 sets of force-choice identification test 228 synthesized stimuli - based on 6 minimal pairs , using 3 parameters : closure duration, F0 & amplitude (a) IDENTIFICATION TEST

47. PERCEPTION EXPERIMENT 2 sets of AX discrimination test (same/ different)‏ 314 modified stimuli - based on one minimal pair 30 participants (15 males & 15 females) for both identification and discrimination tests (a) DISCRIMINATION TEST

48. FUTURE ANALYSES To compare the results of spontaneous data with controlled data using the combination of other acoustic parameters To explore the possible events of stress placement, intonational prominence & degemination To test the results of perception experiments against those of production experiments

49. PROGRESS TO-DATE A request of amendment (ethics application) A paper for the 13th AICSST 2010 A PhD fieldwork funding scheme The development of new experimental materials The links with future participants The direction and timeline of the research project