Massively multilingual speech corpora as a resource for investigating phonetic universals: Consonant F0 effects in Catalan

Abstract

Universality in speech and its underlying causes have long been debated amonglinguists. In this thesis, I investigated consonant F0 effects, a proposed phoneticuniversal where the voicing status of a stop influences the pitch of an adjacentvowel. This analysis delved into the size, duration, and consistency of the effect.Additionally, it examined the influences of various linguistic and sociolinguistic factors in its realization. Finally, the causes of the effect were disentangled, discussed,and integrated into a larger theoretical discussion. Analyzing a large spoken cor-pus, the results confirmed the existence of the effect in Catalan and offered valuableinsights into the competing articulatory and perceptual constraints, as well as intothe interaction between phonology and phonetics in the realization of consonant F0 effects. This thesis significantly contributes to the linguistic community by present-ing a comprehensive analysis that underscores the potential of large spoken corporain enhancing our understanding of human speech.