Apical Vowels Research Articles

The articulatory properties of apical vowels in Hefei Mandarin

Apical vowels are widely observed across Chinese dialects, such as the rime of [sɹ̩55] ‘think’ in Mandarin Chinese, which is a syllabic approximant homorganic to its preceding sibilant. The apical vowels in Hefei Mandarin differ from those in Mandarin Chinese and most other languages in three aspects: (i) there are three phonetic apical vowels [ɹ̩], [ɹ̩ʷ], and [ɻ̩] while others usually have one or two, (ii) the alveolar apical [ɹ̩] appears after both homorganic and non-homorganic consonants, e.g. [sɹ̩] vs. [pɹ̩], and (iii) there is a phonological contrast between an unrounded apical [ɹ̩] and a rounded apical [ɹ̩ʷ], e.g. [sɹ̩] vs. [sɹ̩ʷ]. The articulatory properties of the three apical vowels were examined in this study using ultrasound techniques and the results revealed that: (i) the commonalities of tongue gestures for the apical vowels include a retracted tongue root, a lowered tongue dorsum or blade, or both, together with a coronal constriction implemented with the blade and/or the tip; (ii) lip gestures are involved in distinguishing the three apical segments; (iii) the three segments each have its distinct articulatory gestures within a speaker that cannot be simply attributed to the influence from their preceding consonants, with [ɹ̩] and [ɹ̩ʷ] involving a grooving in the front part of the tongue and [ɻ̩] involving a retraction of tongue body in the back region of the vocal tract; (iv) the articulatory gesture of [ɹ̩] after a homorganic consonant, e.g. in [sɹ̩], is similar to that after a non-homorganic consonant, e.g. in [pɹ̩], suggesting an independent articulatory target for this segment.

On the nature of apical vowel in Jixi-Hui Chinese: Acoustic and articulatory data

Chinese languages have a set of segments known as apical vowels, which have been analysed in previous studies as either genuine vowels, fricative vowels, fricative consonants, or approximants. This study is concerned with the apical vowel attested in Jixi-Hui Chinese. We examine this segment from acoustic and articulatory perspectives and argue that it is best defined as a fricative /z/. Phonologically, Jixi-Hui Chinese /z/ is a distinct phoneme that is exclusively attested in syllable nucleus position where it constitutes a tone-bearing unit and which can undergo tonal sandhi processes. It can appear not only after coronal sibilants /s ts tsʰ/, but also after bilabials /p pʰ/ and nasals /m n/. Acoustically, we show that this segment contains frication noise in its initial phase in the majority of cases, with a formant structure towards its end. The analysis of the zero-crossing rate confirms this significant presence of noise, clearly distinguishing this segment from genuine vowels. Furthermore, articulatory analyses of ultrasound data show that /z/ has a near-identical tongue shape to fricative /s/ on both mid-sagittal and coronal planes, in both sibilant and non-sibilant contexts. These findings are viewed in light of the variability in the way /z/ is phonetically implemented in Jixi-Hui Chinese.

A phonetic case study of Tŝilhqot’in /z/ and /zʕ/

This paper provides an acoustic description of /z/ and /zʕ/ in Tŝilhqot’in (Northern Dene). These sounds are noted by Cook (1993, 2013) to show lenition and some degree of laterality in coda position. Based on recordings made in 2014 with a single, mother-tongue speaker of Tŝilhqot’in, we describe their acoustic properties and examine their distribution as a function of prosodic position and segmental environment. We find that they vary along three dimensions: manner (fricative–approximant), degree of retraction (non-retracted–retracted), and laterality (non-lateral–lateral). In addition, some tokens have a characteristic ‘buzziness’, which has been associated with the Chinese front apical vowel (Shao & Ridouane 2018, 2019) and the Swedish ‘Viby-i’ (Westberger 2019). We argue that ‘lenition’ (Kirchner 2004, Ennever, Meakins & Round 2017) can only account for some of the observed variation and suggest that both /z/ and /zʕ/ are specified for two tongue articulations: tongue tip/blade and tongue body (Laver 1994), encompassing laterality (and concomitant retraction) in addition to the primary coronal gesture.

Place uniformity and drift in the Suzhounese fricative and apical vowels

Abstract Suzhounese exhibits an unusual place anteriority contrast between rounded and unrounded dorso-palatal high front vowels, postalveolar fricative vowels, and apico-alveolar apical vowels. This arrangement is vulnerable to loss under intensifying contact with Standard Mandarin. Using acoustic and tongue ultrasound data, we investigated the phonetic implementation of place in the Suzhounese fricative and apical vowels and the similarity of place targets with the apico-alveolar and alveolo-palatal fricative consonants /s/ and /ɕ/, and the front vowel /i/. Two age cohorts differing in their acquisition history and usage of Standard Mandarin were investigated. The younger cohort, who had earlier and likely more intense exposure to Standard Mandarin, exhibited a subphonemic shift in the fricative vowels toward less anterior, more /i/-like constrictions. Due to this shift, implementation of place targets among vowels and consonants was less uniform for the younger cohort, particularly in acoustic terms, but articulatory target uniformity among the vowels at each place was robust for both cohorts regardless of the degree of shift. We discuss possible contact-based mechanisms for the observed changes, as well as implications of the observed interactions between L1–L2 transfer and L1-internal structural cohesion.

Ultrasonic Imaging Investigation of Tongue Movement Patterns of Cleft-Related Lateralized and Palatalized Misarticulation.

To explore the tongue movement patterns on Mandarin speaking children with repaired cleft palate with lateralized and palatalized misarticulation (LPM) using ultrasound imaging technique. A group of 20 subjects who were diagnosed with speech sound disorder after cleft palate repairment, and another group of 18 children with LPM were recruited. A group of 20 typical children were recruited as the control group. The ultrasonography was used to collect the articulation pattern of the 8 single vowels that are /a/, /o/, / ɘ/, /i/, /u/, /y/, /ɨ/, /ʉ/ in Mandarin Chinese. Various ultrasonic tongue parameters were analyzed from both sagittal and coronal planes. Compared with the control group, coronal height of peak point, coronal tongue dorsum constraint index, sagittal peak point offset distance, sagittal distance between tongue tip and peak point, and sagittal tongue dorsum constraint index of /ɘ/,/i/, /y/ and /ɨ/ were significantly smaller in the cleft-related lateralized and palatalized group (CLP) and noncleft-related lateralized and palatalized group (NLP) ( P < 0.05). Compared with the noncleft-related later- alized and palatalized group and control group, sagittal peak point offset distance of the vowels /ɘ/ and /i/ was significant smaller in the cleft-related lateralized and palatalized group group ( P < 0.05). The ultrasound images on the children with cleft palate showed a midline elevation of the tongue and a significant apical constriction. The children with LPM showed a midline elevation at the coronal plane and anterior movement of the tongue high point at the sagittal plane. The apical vowels were more informative and accurate in indicating the features of LPM than other vowels.

Fricative vowels as an intermediate stage of vowel apicalization

Abstract Diphthongization and apicalization are two commonly detected phonetic and/or phonological processes for the development of high vowels, with the process of apicalization being of particular importance to the phonology of Chinese dialects. This paper describes acoustics and articulation of fricative vowels in the Suzhou dialect of Wu Chinese. Acquiring frication initiates the sound change. The production of fricative vowels in Suzhou is characterized by visible turbulent frication from the spectrograms, and a significant lower Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio vis-à-vis the plain counterparts. The acoustic study suggests that spectral characteristics of fricative vowels play a more important role in defining the vowel contrasts. The fricative high front vowels have comparatively greater F1 and smaller F2 and F3 values than their plain counterparts, and in the acoustic F1/F2 plane, the fricative vowels are located in an intermediate position between their plain and apical counterparts. The articulatory study revealed that that not only tongue dorsum but also tongue blade are involved in the production of fricative high front vowels in Suzhou. Phonologically, plain high front vowels, fricative high front vowels, and apical vowels distinguish in active place of articulation, namely being anterodorsal, laminal, and apical respectively; and frication becomes a concomitant and redundant feature in the production of fricative or apical vowels. It is concluded that the fine-grained phonetic details suggest that the fricative high front vowels in Suzhou is at an intermediate stage of vowel apicalization in terms of both acoustics and articulation.

日本語のス・ツの母音と中国語の舌尖前母音について

中国語の非円唇舌尖前母音と日本語のウ列母音との類似性が注目されている。本稿では、明代の中国資料における音訳漢字の用法から、中国人が非円唇の舌尖前母音をもつ漢字で日本語のス・ズ・ツ・ヅを写す歴史は16世紀の室町時代末期に遡ることができることを明らかにしつつ、江戸時代の近世唐音資料では日本人がス・ズ・ツで中国語の非円唇舌尖前母音を写し、明治期の中国資料でも中国人が非円唇舌尖前母音でス・ズ・ツを写す歴史を辿り、中国人が日本語のウ列母音を非円唇舌尖前母音、日本人が中国語の非円唇舌尖前母音をウ列の母音としてとらえてきた歴史的事実を素描している。その上で、この現象は日本語のウ列母音の非円唇化の現れとして見ることが可能で、非円唇化が密接に係わる母音無声化の歴史を知る上で重要な示唆になることを明らかにしている。なお、本論の結論は朝鮮資料から見ても齟齬する点はない。

Perceptual distinctiveness between dental and palatal sibilants in different vowel contexts and its implications for phonological contrasts

Mandarin Chinese has dental, palatal, and retroflex sibilants, but their contrasts before [_i] are avoided: The palatals appear before [i] while the dentals and retroflexes appear before homorganic syllabic approximants (a.k.a. apical vowels). An enhancement view regards the apical vowels as a way to avoid the weak contrast /si-ɕi-ȿi/. We focus on the dental vs. palatal contrast in this study and test the enhancement-based hypothesis that the dental and palatal sibilants are perceptually less distinct in the [_i] context than in other vowel contexts. This hypothesis is supported by a typological survey of 155 Chinese dialects, which showed that contrastive [si, tsi, tsʰi] and [ɕi, tɕi, tɕʰi] tend to be avoided even when there are no retroflexes in the sound system. We also conducted a speeded-AX discrimination experiment with 20 English listeners and 10 Chinese listeners to examine the effect of vowels ([_i], [_a], [_ou]) on the perceived distinctiveness of sibilant contrasts ([s-ɕ], [ts-tɕ], [tsʰ-tɕʰ]). The results showed that the [_i] context introduced a longer response time, thus reduced distinctiveness, than other vowels, confirming our hypothesis. Moreover, the general lack of difference between the two groups of listeners indicates that the vowel effect is language-independent.

On the fricative vowels in Suzhou Chinese

Apical vowels are widely distributed in Chinese dialects, whereas fricative vowels or strident vowels are less known. This paper is an acoustic and articulatory study of fricative vowels in the Suzhou dialect of Wu Chinese. The acoustic data from 20 speakers show that the fricative vowels have formant patterns between their plain and apical counterparts. Linguographic data from four speakers reveal that more laminal part of the tongue is involved in the production of the fricative vowels than their plain counterparts, which are basically anterodorsal. And the EMA study from three speakers confirms a comparatively advanced lingual configuration in the production of the fricative vowels. Although the production of fricative vowels is characterized by visible turbulent frication from the spectrograms, and a significantly lower harmonics-to-noise ratio, the results suggest that spectral characteristics of fricative vowels and apical vowels play a more important role in defining the vowel contrasts. That is, plain high vowels, fricative high vowels, and apical vowels distinguish in place of articulation, namely, being anterodorsal, laminal, and apical, respectively. And frication could be treated as a concomitant and redundant feature in the production of fricative or apical vowels.

Temporal organization of frication in fricativized vowels

Fr icative vowels are vocoids that exhibit a clear formant structure as well as fricative noise produced by a labiodental or (post)alveolar constriction (Connell 2007). A pical vowels, similar vocoids found in many Chinese languages, have known (post)alveolar constrictions, but it has been debated whether or not these actually generate substantial fricative noise (cf. Lee-Kim 2014). In order to better understand the relationship between these two segment types, acoustic data was obtained for the fricativized vowels in two Chinese languages (Standard Mandarin and Suzhou Wu) as well as Kom, a Grassfields Bantu language spoken in Cameroon. Analysis of fricativized vowel spectra and timecourses suggests two predominant types, one with steady-state fricative noise of a relatively low intensity, and a second that is more internally dynamic, exhibiting high-intensity frication toward the beginning of the vowel and lower-intensity frication towards the end. Standard Mandarin’s apical vowels are shown to be broadl...

A spectral analysis of the apical vowel in Yongding Hakka

The so-called apical vowels are wide-spread in Chinese dialects. A main difference between apical and dorsal vowels is in the fact that the apical vowels are syllabic approximants. This study investigates the spectral characteristics of the plain apical vowel in Yongding Hakka spoken in the southwest of Fujian Province in southeastern China. Results show (i) the F-pattern of the plain apical vowel of Yongding Hakka differs from those of the dorsal vowels, in that despite the linguo-palatal constriction during the plain apical vowel is made in the more anterior part of the mouth cavity than during the vowel /i/, the plain apical vowel has a lower F2; (ii) the F-patterns of the plain apical vowels of Yongding Hakka and other Chinese dialects are similar; (iii) the F-pattern of the rounded apical vowel of Ningbo dialect is similar to that of the plain apical vowels of other Chinese dialects; and (iv) the retroflex apical vowel of Beijing Mandarin has a marked low F3 compared to the F3 for other apical vowels. This study offers preliminary spectral data for a large-scale investigation of the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of the apical vowels of different types of Chinese dialects.

An articulatory and acoustic investigation of Mandarin apical vowels

The present study investigates the articulatory and acoustic properties of apical vowels in Mandarin Chinese using ultrasound and acoustic measures. Instead of the high front vowel, dental and retroflex sibilants are known to be followed by apical vowels made with tongue tip/blade, rather than the tongue body. The ultrasound images of one Beijing speaker confirmed that the tongue tip/blade gesture indeed remains unreleased during the production of these vowels. However, it also revealed that the tongue body for apical vowels is significantly retracted with a relative order of the vowel following dentals being more retracted than the vowel following retroflexes. This gave rise to a consistent acoustic consequence; the second formant of the vowel after dentals of six Mandarin speakers was significantly lower than that of the vowel after retroflexes. In addition, the third formant of the vowel after a retroflex was significantly lowered and nearly merged with the second formant, indicating that the vowel is also strongly retroflexed. The correct analysis is thus claimed to include the apical gestures as secondary features added to the main articulation of the tongue body as in the following notation: a dentalized back vowel and a retroflexed mid vowel.

Spectral analysis of the vowels of the Peking dialect.

The paper presents the spectral characteristics of the dorsal and apical vowels in open syllables of the Peking dialect. Results show that (i) of the dorsal category the high and low vowels are monophthongs, whereas the mid‐back vowels and rhotacized ə are diphthongal; (ii) the two apical vowels are similar in F1 and F2, but differ considerably in F3, with a lower F3 for the retroflexed than the plain one; (iii) the extensive overlaps between the vowel ellipses for the unrounded mid‐back vowel and plain apical vowel in the F1F2 plane and between those for the rhotacized ə and retroflexed apical vowel indicate that the difference in perceptual quality between the paired vowels may be attributed to the dynamic property of the formant frequencies; (iv) as expected, the average F‐values for the vowels are higher for females than males, however, the patterns of positions of the vowel ellipses in the F1F2 plane between the two genders are similar; and (v) the scaling between female and male F‐values is nonuniform across vowel categories and across formant frequencies. The formant data will also be discussed in connection with the quality descriptions of the vowels in the past studies of the Peking dialect.

Apicalization and Its Related Changes Before and After the Menggu Ziyun

The term“apical vowel” is first seen in Bernhard Karlgren’s work Études sur la phonologie chinoise and widely accepted by Chinese linguists. However apical vowel is merely an articulatory description. In phonological analyses apical vowels actually create problems. They cannot be described as front, central, or back, and even cannot be included in a regular vowel chart. In this article we examine the historical process which produced the apical vowels and related changes before and after the Menggu Ziyun 蒙古字韻. Based on the analyses it is quite obvious that apicalization and other related changes after the retroflex initials are the results of the same phonological change. The result of this change is simply to delete the [+front] feature of the final after the retroflex initials. Thus phonologically the so-called apical vowels have to be central vowels that lack the front feature. The nature of this change can also be learned from analysis of the hP’ags-pa spellings employed in the MGZY. The hP’ags-pa spellings of the Yuan time not only provide the first phonetic transcription of a Chinese phonology; they also provide an insightful phonological analysis.

The articulatory and acoustical characteristics of the ‘‘apical vowels’’ in Beijing Mandarin

The study investigates the articulatory and acoustical characteristics of the two so-called ‘‘apical vowels’’ in Beijing Mandarin, which have been referred to as ‘‘apical anterior vowel’’ and ‘‘apical posterior vowel’’ by the linguists in China. The ‘‘apical posterior vowel’’ has also been described as a retroflex. The results of an EMA (electromagnetic articulograph) analysis show that both vowels are apical, with the tip of tongue approaching the alveolar region for the ‘‘anterior vowel’’ and the postalveolar region for the ‘‘posterior vowel.’’ The ‘‘posterior vowel’’ is pharyngealized, as the body of tongue in particular the posterodorsal portion is pulled backward toward the pharynx. Acoustical data obtained using the CSL4400 speech analysis software show that the two ‘‘apical vowels’’ have similar F1 value. The F2 value is slightly larger for the ‘‘posterior vowel’’ than ‘‘anterior vowel.’’ Thus, the correlation between a larger F2 and the advanced tongue position is not applicable to these ‘‘apical vowels.’’ The main difference between the two ‘‘apical vowels’’ is in F3, where the value is much smaller for the ‘‘posterior vowel’’ than ‘‘anterior vowel.’’ It is assumed that the smaller F3 value for the ‘‘posterior vowel’’ is due to pharyngealization.

Enhancement of distinctiveness in strident fricatives: An example from Mandarin Chinese

Strident fricatives in Mandarin may be followed by fricative vowels, which are made with the tongue body in essentially the same position as in the corresponding fricative (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996). Specifically, the vowel [i] may occur only after the palatalized fricative, the apical vowel after the alveolar fricative, and the retroflex vowel after the palatoalveolar fricative. Given the complementary distribution, the three phonetically distinct vowels are generally considered allophones. Under the view that the implementation of discretely specified distinctive features may be enhanced by gradient, non-contrastive articulatory gestures to maintain perceptual distinctiveness (Keyser and Stevens, 2003), it is proposed that the three vowels are derived from an underlying [i] and are modified to enhance the defining articulatory and acoustic attributes of the fricatives. Acoustic data from six speakers indicate that the defining acoustic attributes for the fricatives, i.e., spectral prominences in discrete frequency ranges, are associated with distinct tongue configurations. The articulatory and acoustic properties of the palatalized fricative is most compatible with those of [i], whereas the tongue body backing gesture in the alveolar and palatoalveolar fricatives are consistent with lowered F2 frequency in the apical and retroflex vowels. [Work supported by NIH.]