Acoustic-phonetic Analysis Research Articles

An Acoustic–Phonetic Description of Hidatsa Vowels

In this study, we report on results of a preliminary acoustic–phonetic analysis of the Hidatsa vowel system. We conducted acoustic measurements of Hidatsa vowels in terms of averaged temporal and spectral properties of these phones. Our durational analysis provides strong evidence that Hidatsa has a ten-vowel system with phonemically long and short vowels, in addition to two diphthongs. Our spectral measurements consisted of averages and time-evolution dynamic properties of the first three formants (F1, F2 and F3) at 30 equally spaced time points along the central portion of each vowel. The centers and distributions of the F1 and F2 formants, as well as their time-averaged trajectories, provide strong evidence for separate vowel qualities for both the short and long vowels. These measurements also show that all Hidatsa vowels have some degree of time-dependent spectral change, with the back vowels generally displaying a longer time-evolution track. Lastly, our results also indicate that in Hidatsa mid-short vowels do not appear with the same frequency as the other vowels, and that the short [é] has no unstressed counterpart.

Rima Aliterasi dan Asonansi sebagai Sumber Ritma Linguistik Surah Fatihah yang Mensinkroni Gelombang Otak

Sound rhythm is one of the factors that make the sound of the Holy Quran rhythmic and synchronous that change the rhythm of human brain waves. However, less studies have been found, and previous studies have focused more on the end rhyme system (end faselah) of the verses of the Qur'an. Thus, we conducted an acoustic phonetic study on the rhyming system in the verses of the Qur'an which is the source of the rhythmic sound in the verses of the Qur'an which contributes to the aesthetics of the sound. Acoustic phonetic analysis was performed on sound waves from Surah al-Fatihah using PRAAT software by comparing its intensity with Arabic News. As a result, we found the existence of a rhyme system of alliteration and assonance in the verses of this surah, that is, in the first, third, fifth and seventh verses which are highlighted by the contours of intensity and time duration of letters, syllables and words that show the greatness of God, giving birth to a feeling of closeness to God in addition to giving birth to the effect of persuasion which is the basis of spiritual therapy. In addition, the end rhyme system found in the Fatihah Chapter is significant (p<0.05) compared to the Arabic News. In conclusion, the Fatihah Chapter also has a rhyme system in its verses, not only at the end of the verse, suggesting that the brain that listens to the sound of the Qur'an is able to synchronize and form rhythmic and harmonious waves that influence mental and physical well-being.

Kesan Modul Terapi Realiti (MTR) Terhadap Ciri-ciri dan Kemurungan Mangsa Buli dari Perspektif Islam

Sound rhythm is one of the factors that make the sound of the Holy Quran rhythmic and synchronous that change the rhythm of human brain waves. However, less studies have been found, and previous studies have focused more on the end rhyme system (end faselah) of the verses of the Qur'an. Thus, we conducted an acoustic phonetic study on the rhyming system in the verses of the Qur'an which is the source of the rhythmic sound in the verses of the Qur'an which contributes to the aesthetics of the sound. Acoustic phonetic analysis was performed on sound waves from Surah al-Fatihah using PRAAT software by comparing its intensity with Arabic News. As a result, we found the existence of a rhyme system of alliteration and assonance in the verses of this surah, that is, in the first, third, fifth and seventh verses which are highlighted by the contours of intensity and time duration of letters, syllables and words that show the greatness of God, giving birth to a feeling of closeness to God in addition to giving birth to the effect of persuasion which is the basis of spiritual therapy. In addition, the end rhyme system found in the Fatihah Chapter is significant (p<0.05) compared to the Arabic News. In conclusion, the Fatihah Chapter also has a rhyme system in its verses, not only at the end of the verse, suggesting that the brain that listens to the sound of the Qur'an is able to synchronize and form rhythmic and harmonious waves that influence mental and physical well-being.

“I can't see myself ever living any[w]ere else”: Variation in (HW) in Edinburgh English

AbstractSociolinguistic research across Scotland in recent decades has documented an erosion of the phonemic contrast between /ʍ/ (as in which) and /w/ (as in witch). Based on acoustic phonetic analysis of 1,400 <wh> realizations produced by eighteen Edinburgh women born between 1938 and 1993, I argue that in the context of Edinburgh this is best understood as a complex sociolinguistic variable (HW) encompassing (at least) six fricated and fricationless variants. Realizations vary in type and relative duration of frication, voicing, and glide quality. Bayesian statistical analysis suggests that choice and realization of variants is conditioned by speaker's social class, style, and phonetic context. Unlike some prior work, I do not find evidence of ongoing (apparent-time) change or an effect of contact with Southern British English. Fricated variants are most prevalent in formal speech styles and in the speech of middle-class women, while working-class speakers favor fricationless variants.

An Acoustic-Phonetic Approach to Effects of Face Masks on Speech Intelligibility.

This study aimed to examine the effects of wearing a face mask on speech acoustics and intelligibility, using an acoustic-phonetic analysis of speech. In addition, the effects of speakers' behavioral modification while wearing a mask were examined. Fourteen female adults were asked to read a set of words and sentences under three conditions: (a) conversational, mask-off; (b) conversational, mask-on; and (c) clear, mask-on. Seventy listeners rated speech intelligibility using two methods: orthographic transcription and visual analog scale (VAS). Acoustic measures for vowels included duration, first (F1) and second (F2) formant frequency, and intensity ratio of F1/F2. For consonants, spectral moment coefficients and consonant-vowel (CV) boundary (intensity ratio between consonant and vowel) were measured. Face masks had a negative impact on speech intelligibility as measured by both intelligibility ratings. However, speech intelligibility was recovered in the clear speech condition for VAS but not for transcription scores. Analysis of orthographic transcription showed that listeners tended to frequently confuse consonants (particularly fricatives, affricates, and stops), rather than vowels in the word-initial position. Acoustic data indicated a significant effect of condition on CV intensity ratio only. Our data demonstrate a negative effect of face masks on speech intelligibility, mainly affecting consonants. However, intelligibility can be enhanced by speaking clearly, likely driven by prosodic alterations.

Centralized vowels in Muduga

AbstractProto-Dravidian had a system of ten vowels consisting of five qualities (i, e, a, o, u), each with short and long counterparts. Some South Dravidian languages have expanded systems with innovative vowels that are described as centralized or retroflex. However, the phonetic nature of the vowels, and the list of languages that have them, remain poorly described. We present evidence that Muduga, a South Dravidian language of Kerala, is among the languages with expanded vowel systems. It has five innovative vowel qualities, three of which can be considered phonemic. Historical-comparative evidence indicates that the new qualities result from: (i) retraction of front vowels before retroflex consonants and alveolar /r/; and (ii) fronting of back vowels before alveolar and palatal consonants (except /r/ and /j/). Loss of conditioning consonants in some contexts has led to emergent contrasts. Acoustic phonetic analysis of two male speakers suggests that the new vowels are centralized along the front-back axis, but not retroflex or rhotacized. We compare these results to related developments in other South Dravidian languages and discuss correlations between retroflexion and retraction that motivate the observed patterns.

Acoustic Analysis of Vowels in Konkani

Konkani is an under-resourced language mainly spoken on the west coast of India. Although linguistic analyses of vowel sounds in various dialects of Konkani have been done in the past, more accurate analysis of Konkani vowels, especially an acoustic-phonetic analysis, was never carried out. In this article, we present a detailed analysis of nine Konkani vowels, namely /i/, /e/, /ε/, /u/, /o/, /ɔ/, /a/, /ə/, and /ɨ̞/ . The dataset used for the analysis was created from audio recordings of 28 native speakers of Goan Konkani. Based on the experimental results, we propose a vowel chart for Konkani. We also observed a partial loss of Konkani vowel / ɨ̞ / in the regular speech of native speakers. This change is also evident in the substitution analysis of vowel phonemes that was carried out by us as a part of this study.

Auditory cortex is susceptible to lexical influence as revealed by informational vs. energetic masking of speech categorization

Speech perception requires the grouping of acoustic information into meaningful phonetic units via the process of categorical perception (CP). Environmental masking influences speech perception and CP. However, it remains unclear at which stage of processing (encoding, decision, or both) masking affects listeners’ categorization of speech signals. The purpose of this study was to determine whether linguistic interference influences the early acoustic–phonetic conversion process inherent to CP. To this end, we measured source level, event related brain potentials (ERPs) from auditory cortex (AC) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) as listeners rapidly categorized speech sounds along a /da/ to /ga/ continuum presented in three listening conditions: quiet, and in the presence of forward (informational masker) and time-reversed (energetic masker) 2-talker babble noise. Maskers were matched in overall SNR and spectral content and thus varied only in their degree of linguistic interference (i.e., informational masking). We hypothesized a differential effect of informational versus energetic masking on behavioral and neural categorization responses, where we predicted increased activation of frontal regions when disambiguating speech from noise, especially during lexical-informational maskers. We found (1) informational masking weakens behavioral speech phoneme identification above and beyond energetic masking; (2) low-level AC activity not only codes speech categories but is susceptible to higher-order lexical interference; (3) identifying speech amidst noise recruits a cross hemispheric circuit (ACleft → IFGright) whose engagement varies according to task difficulty. These findings provide corroborating evidence for top-down influences on the early acoustic–phonetic analysis of speech through a coordinated interplay between frontotemporal brain areas.

FIRST ROUNDTABLE ON PRACTICES AND STANDARDS IN FORENSIC AUTHORSHIP ANALYSIS (OVERVIEW 3)

The article provides an overview of the reports of the 1st Roundtable on Practices and Standards in Forensic Authorship Analysis held by the International Association of Forensic Linguistics and the Centre for Digital Humanities at the University of Manchester on May 15, 2019. It includes the reports by Erica Gold, Lecturer on forensic speech at the University of Huddersfield “Probability coefficient in the Forensic Speech Science: Current Situation” and Stefan Evert, Professor of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg “Statistical Significance in the Literary Authorship Attribution”. At the end of each report, there are questions to the speaker and answers to them. The first (fifth) report examines a situation where a sample of the speech of a known speaker from among the suspects and samples of the speech of an unknown speaker are compared. Usually two methods are combined: auditory (perceptual) and acoustic phonetic analysis; automatic (computer) speech recognition. It is proposed to use a probability coefficient when attributing the text, which expresses the degree of correspondence between the speech samples under consideration. The disadvantages of computer speech analysis include the arbitrary choice of reference groups, the lack of statistical information, and the need to take into account different aspects of texts (stylistic, communication channel, recording quality, etc.). The next report is devoted to stylometry and is based on the analysis of works of art. Relevant parameters for such studies include: sentence length, word length, frequency class; vocabulary richness; syntactic complexity; spelling; choice of synonyms. Different methods of statistical calculations including the Burrows's delta are considered. The potential limitations of these methods are formulated (the influence of genre on style; applicability to small-volume texts; resistance to noise, for example, errors in automatic text recognition).

Diva Diction

As a follow-up to the author’s 2018 analysis of New York City English in film, this article turns its attention to the whole country over the same 80-year period of 1930–2010, using acoustic phonetic, quantitative, and statistical analysis to identify the most important changes in the pronunciation of North American English by 40 European American leading actresses in their best-known films. Focusing mostly on vowel production, the analysis reveals a gradual shift from East Coast patterns rooted in the speech of New York City to West Coast patterns rooted in the speech of Los Angeles. Changes include a decline in /r/ vocalization, which is restricted almost entirely to the period before the mid-1960s; a decline in the low back distinction between /o/ and /oh/ (lot and thought); a new distinction between /æ/ (trap) and its allophone before nasal consonants (e.g., ham or hand); shifts of /æ/ and /oh/ to a lower, more central position in the vowel space; and fronting of the back upgliding vowel /uw/ (goose). These and other patterns correspond closely to those identified in the speech of ordinary people, revealing an intriguing parallel between public speech in the mass media and private speech in local communities.

Acoustic-phonetic analysis of speech following a lobectomy or esophagectomy

An observational study was conducted to monitor and detect the onset of altered level of consciousness and delirium in patients after a major non-cardiac thoracic surgery. Speech recordings from patients were recorded pre-operatively and once daily in the post-operative setting until hospital discharge. A vocabulary consisting of vowels in a coarticulatory neutral environment is used to identify differences in timing or typical articulatory movements that would be indicative of impairment due to delirium. More than one recording session across days is needed in order to compare the patients' speech to their own speech to identify patterns and changes for that talker. Programming has been developed that utilizes the Praat software package to take acoustic-phonetic measurements of pitch, formant frequencies, and amplitude every 6 ms. This processing has generated tens of thousands of rows of data across 1,166 h-vowel-d words reflecting typical patterns for each of the 16 subjects with more than one recording session. This unique dataset has led to insights that go beyond the original intent of identifying the potential onset of delirium including patterns of dyspnea resulting from the surgery. The initial findings from mining the extensive dataset will be presented.

현대중국어 역행동화에 관한 실험음성학적 연구

현대중국어 역행동화에 관한 실험음성학적 연구

Acoustic properties of Vietnamese initial consonants

In acoustic phonetic research, phonetic data is needed to prove authenticity. The acoustic phonetic analysis method is valid for verifying previous phonetic hypotheses. Thereby, lay the foundations of science to reinforce the notion of phonetic or phonetic study. The formant frequencies F1, F2, F3 are considered as the basis for measuring vowels. According to consonants, the length of VOT, formant transitions, antiformants, and locus frequencies will be noted. In this article, we present the basis to measure Vietnamese initial consonants such as: voiced consonants, voiceless consonants, stop consonants, fricative consonants, nasal consonants. The voiced consonants will have a voice bar and voiceless consonants will have no voice bar. Fricative consonants always have higher frequencies than stop consonants. Based on the spectral image of a consonant, we can determine the articulation of consonants. The acoustic properties of the nasal consonant and lateral consonant are nearly identical to the acoustic properties of the vowels, because in the construction of these consonants, the vocal cords are more vibrating.

Smith Island English: Past, Present, and Future—and What Does It Tell Us about the Regional, Temporal, and Social Patterning of Language Variation and Change?

This article presents results of apparent- and real-time study of dialect variation and change in Smith Island, a small community in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay characterized by a dwindling population and increasing contact with mainlanders. Data come from an original apparent-time study gathered in 1985, a restudy conducted in 2000, and an ongoing restudy begun in 2015. Analysis methods include quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of select features in the two previous studies, acoustic phonetic analysis of the vowel space of individuals in the current study, and holistic observations regarding the course of dialect change in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Key sociolinguistic issues addressed include the nature of the phonological systems of small, rural communities at the periphery of larger dialect areas; possible pathways of dialect change in endangerment situations; and the role of the social meanings of language varieties and variants in shaping the course of language change in the face of increasing cultural and linguistic contact.

The Lombard effect observed in speech produced by cochlear implant users in noisy environments: A naturalistic study.

The Lombard effect is an involuntary response speakers experience in the presence of noise during voice communication. This phenomenon is known to cause changes in speech production such as an increase in intensity, pitch structure, formant characteristics, etc., for enhanced audibility in noisy environments. Although well studied for normal hearing listeners, the Lombard effect has received little, if any, attention in the field of cochlear implants (CIs). The objective of this study is to analyze speech production of CI users who are postlingually deafened adults with respect to environmental context. A total of six adult CI users were recruited to produce spontaneous speech in various realistic environments. Acoustic-phonetic analysis was then carried out to characterize their speech production in these environments. The Lombard effect was observed in the speech production of all CI users who participated in this study in adverse listening environments. The results indicate that both suprasegmental (e.g., F0, glottal spectral tilt and vocal intensity) and segmental (e.g., F1 for /i/ and /u/) features were altered in such environments. The analysis from this study suggests that modification of speech production of CI users under the Lombard effect may contribute to some degree an intelligible communication in adverse noisy environments.

Gender and second language style

Abstract Gender has been shown to be a salient factor in acquisition of second language variation (Adamson & Regan, 1991; Major, 2004; Meyerhoff & Schleef, 2012; Rehner, Mougeon, & Nadasdi, 2003; Schleef, Meyerhoff, & Clark, 2011). However, these studies have primarily focused on learner production of target language variation and style in the sense of attention paid to speech. There has been little focus on learner perceptions of the social meanings associated with L2 variants and styles. The present article addresses this gap in the research by examining L2 learner perceptions of a gendered style of speaking in Mandarin Chinese known as sajiao. Results from a perception experiment confirm the salience of gender in the acquisition of L2 variation and show that American L2 Mandarin learners have acquired some of the social meanings associated with sajiao but not others. An acoustic phonetic analysis of sajiao is also presented.

What the f***: An acoustic-pragmatic analysis of meaning in The Wire

The award-winning television drama, The Wire, contains a famous scene in which Detectives Moreland and McNulty discuss the crime scene they are investigating using only variations of a single expletive—fuck. Despite limited vocabulary, viewers are able to extract meaning and interpret the scene. This study considers all of the expletives produced in the scene, and carries out an acoustic analysis of / ʌ /—F1~F3 (midpoint and averages) and vowel duration. These measurements are then used in combination with Gricean (Grice 1975) and neo-Gricean (e.g. Horn 1984) pragmatic analysis in an attempt to categorize the intended meaning of fuck as: intensification, confusion, dissatisfaction or suspicion (Fairman 2009). Vowel measurements are considered for Moreland and McNulty individually, and vowel normalization is carried out in order to determine pragmatic categorizations across both detectives. This paper argues that acoustic-phonetic analysis can augment Gricean and neo-Gricean pragmatic analysis by providing a means of determining whether what appears at a lexical level to be conversationally implicated meaning is in fact conventional implicature conveyed at the phonetic level.

Coronal stop deletion in Hawai'i English

Coronal Stop Deletion (CSD) is believed to be constrained by the phonological environment and the word’s morphological make-up (i.e., monomorphemic, semi-weak past tense, regular past tense) (Guy 1991; Hazen 2011). In this talk, we present results from an analysis of CSD in the speech of four speakers of Hawai'i English. In addition to using a traditional approach (i.e., auditory analysis of CSD in word-final position), we also analyzed CSD in non-final position (e.g., followed by plural -s) and conducted acoustic phonetic analysis of /t/ in tokens where it was realized. The results demonstrate highly significant effects of environment. Additionally, there is no effect of morpheme type; instead, the results provide evidence that deletion is favored in words with a greater number of morphemes, regardless of whether the coronal stop is found in the stem or the affix. Additionally, the acoustic analysis suggests that the effect of following environment is acoustically gradient: tokens followed by a voiceless, non-alveolar consonant (i.e., the environment that most strongly disfavors deletion in our data) are most likely to be realized with complete occlusion in the vocal tract. Implications for models of speech production are discussed.

Closure duration as an acoustic correlate of the word-initial singleton/geminate consonant contrast in Kelantan Malay

Closure duration has been established cross-linguistically as the universally most reliable and consistent acoustic feature of consonant gemination. In this study, we conduct an acoustic phonetic analysis of the word-initial singleton/geminate consonant contrast in Kelantan Malay (KM) in order to explore the extent to which closure duration marks such a contrast in this Malay variety. KM is particularly unusual among the world׳s languages in that the contrast is restricted to word-initial position. A corpus of elicited materials consisting of singleton/geminate voiceless stops, voiced stops and sonorants were produced in words in isolation (i.e., utterance-initial position) and in a carrier sentence (i.e., utterance-medial position) by sixteen native speakers of KM. Results show that closure duration is a robust acoustic correlate of the consonant contrast in KM, i.e., word-initial geminates in KM are always associated with significantly longer closure duration than their corresponding singletons. The closure duration differences between singletons and geminates are also similar across utterance positions (at least for voiced stops and sonorants). In utterance-medial contexts, the effect is particularly strong in the closure duration of voiceless stops. Overall, closure duration is indeed a highly robust acoustic marker for this cross-linguistically rare word-initial consonant contrast in KM.

The Participation of a Northern New Jersey Korean American Community in Local and National Language Variation

This study investigates the variable patterning of two English phonemes, /ɔ/ and /æ/, in the speech of 24 second- and 1.5-generation Korean Americans from Bergen County, New Jersey, which borders New York City and contains the most densely populated Korean American community in the United States. Detailed acoustic phonetic analysis reveals that in general Bergen County Korean Americans produce a raised /ɔ/ nucleus, in accordance with New York City English, and tense /æ/ in prenasal environments, in accordance with General American English. Positive correlations between speaker age and the frontness of /ɔ/ and distance in vowel space between /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ suggest a change in apparent time toward fronting of /ɔ/ and shortening of the distance between two vowels (and hence possibly movement toward a low back merger). Speaker sex patterns are also apparent, with female speakers showing a closer distance and more overlap between /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ than male speakers, and females showing a clearer split between tense /æ/ in prenasal environments and lax /æ/ elsewhere. In general, the patterning of variation for /æ/ among Bergen County Korean Americans shows an alignment to the general American norm, while the patterning for /ɔ/ suggests that Korean Americans are adopting the local norm. Future research will be needed to corroborate these patterns across a wider range of speaker ages.