Back Vowels Research Articles

Phonetic Detail and Dimensionality in Sound-shape Correspondences: Refining the Bouba-Kiki Paradigm

Sound symbolism is the process by which speakers link phonetic features with meanings non-arbitrarily. For instance, speakers across languages associate non-words with rounded vowels, like bouba, with round shapes, and non-words without rounded vowels, like kiki, with spiky shapes. Researchers have posited that this link results from a cognitive association between sounds and visual or proprioceptive cues made in their production (e.g. sounds of rounded vowels cue the image of rounded lips, which is mapped to rounded shapes). However, non-words used in previous studies differ from one another along multiple phonetic dimensions, some showing no clear iconic mapping to shape. This study teases apart these features, finding that vowel backness, consonant voicing, and consonant place of articulation each elicit a sound symbolic effect, which is amplified when these dimensions are combined. This investigation also probes object properties that can be involved in sound symbolic association, bringing the “ bouba-kiki” paradigm, typically involving the use of abstract shapes, into the realm of real-world objects. To shed light on ways that sound symbolism may operate in natural language, this study suggests that future research in this paradigm would benefit from consideration of both more detailed phonetic correlates and more refined object properties.

Interaction of social and linguistic constraints on two vowel changes in northern England

AbstractThis paper focuses on the way that local social indexicality interacts with principles of vowel change. A combination of real and apparent time data from the northern English dialect of York indicate fronting of tense back vowels in thegoatandgooselexical sets, and diphthongization of traditionally monophthongal mid-vowels in thefaceandgoatlexical sets. The latter process of change, a northward diffusion of more prestigious southern forms, has been noted for some other northern English dialects, but has not been described acoustically in published work. We show that these two vowel changes have different social meanings in the community. As is the case in previous studies,goatandgoosefronting is not strongly associated with different speaker groups in the community. Monophthongal realizations offaceandgoat, on the other hand, are strongly associated with the speech of the local community, especially working-class speech. The results align with predictions of Labov's (1994) principle III of vowel change in that they show thatgoosefronting precedesgoatfronting. However, we argue that a full understanding of the trajectories of change requires attention to social indexical properties of these variants as well. In particular, the scarcity of fronted variants of monophthongalgoatis explained as a consequence of local indexing of such forms.

Learning dynamic transitions of central and back monophthong vowels in American English.

Learning dynamic transitions of central and back monophthong vowels in American English.

Comparison of Nasal Acceleration and Nasalance Across Vowels

The purpose of this study was to determine the performance of normalized nasal acceleration (NNA) relative to nasalance as estimates of nasalized versus nonnasalized vowel and sentence productions. Participants were 18 healthy speakers of American English. NNA was measured using a custom sensor, and nasalance was measured using the KayPentax Nasometer II. Speech stimuli consisted of CVC syllables with the vowels (//, /æ/, /i/, /u/) and sentences loaded with high front, high back, low front, and low back vowels in both nasal and nonnasal contexts. NNA showed a small but significant effect of the vowel produced during syllable stimuli but no significant effect of vowel loading during sentence stimuli. Nasalance was significantly affected by the vowel being produced during both syllables and sentences with large effect sizes. Both NNA and nasalance were highly sensitive and specific to nasalization. NNA was less affected by vowel than nasalance. Discrimination of nasal versus nonnasal stimuli using NNA and nasalance was comparable, suggesting potential for use of NNA for biofeedback applications. Future work to improve calibration of NNA is needed to lower intersubject variability.

New contrast acquisition: methodological issues and theoretical implications

This article presents data on the acquisition of the low back vowel contrast by native speakers of Canadian English who have moved as adults to the New York City region, examining how these speakers who natively possess a single low back vowel category have acquired the low back vowel distinction of the new ambient dialect. The speakers show remarkable first dialect stability with respect to their low back vowel system, even after many years of new dialect exposure: in minimal pair contexts, nearly all of the speakers continue to produce and perceive a single vowel category. However, in word list and conversational contexts, the majority of speakers exhibit a small but significant phonetic difference between words likecotandcaught, reflecting the separation of these word classes in the new dialect to which they are exposed; moreover, the realization of these words shows frequency effects consistent with a lexically gradual divergence of the two vowels. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theories of phonological representation and change, as well as their methodological implications for the study of mergers- and splits-in-progress.

The vowel spaces of Southern Californian English and Mexican Spanish as produced by monolinguals and bilinguals

The vowel spaces of Southern Californian English and Mexican Spanish were investigated using three groups of speakers: 11 English monolinguals (8 females), 11 Spanish monolinguals (9 females), and 10 Spanish-English bilinguals (7 females). Speakers produced six repetitions of the ten American English vowels [ i, ɪ, ɛ, æ, ɑ, ɔ, ʊ, u, ʌ, and ɜr] and six repetitions of the five Spanish vowels [i, e, a, u, and o]. Monolinguals produced vowels in one language; bilinguals produced vowels in both languages. Preliminary analysis shows Southern Californian English back vowels were less fronted compared to the results of Hagiwara (1997) from Southern Californian English, but more fronted than those of Hillenbrand et al. (1995) on General American English. Mexican Spanish back vowels [u] and [o] were substantially fronted compared to Castilian Spanish vowels [Bradlow (1995)], while [i] was lower and less fronted. In general, Mexican Spanish vowels were produced higher and more backed than Southern Californian English vowels in monolingual productions. Bilinguals produced their two vowel spaces closer together but with less dispersion than monolinguals, showing how bilinguals keep both language categories distinct.

On distinguishing articulatory configurations and articulatory tasks: Tamil retroflex consonants

Speech production can be described in multiple coordinate frames: articulatory configurations, gestural tasks, and acoustic patterns. Examination of the achievement of retroflex stops and liquids in Tamil suggests that we must consider separately the gestural task of apical pre-palatal constriction and the articulatory maneuver to achieve the task. The maneuver of the tongue during retroflex consonants varies across vowel contexts. Specifically, in the symmetrical intervocalic contexts between back vowels /a/ and /u/, an apical pre-palatal constriction is achieved by curling back the tongue. In the context of high front vowel /i/, a laminal pre-palatal constriction is achieved by bunching the tongue. However, the location of retroflex consonant constriction within the vocal tract is consistent across all of these vowel contexts, suggesting that the constriction task remains the same. Variation in the articulatory configuration of the retroflex in the two contexts was quantified through Gaussian curvature functions at fourteen points along the tongue, sampled at evenly spaced points throughout the vocal tract, on every other gridline of a polar-rectangular grid in every frame in each utterance. The empirical results support the notion that the articulatory configuration coordinate frame and the gestural task frame provide separate, but related, descriptions of speech production.

Exploring vowel mergers in northeast Ohio

The northeast corner of Ohio, as listed on dialect area maps, contains the boundaries of several dialect regions. This study compared perception and production for speakers from northeast Ohio and surrounding areas who merge and do not merge back vowels before /l/ in words such as “pool, pull, pole, dull.” Acoustic formant analysis indicated a lowered and fronted vowel, as expected, for those who merge some or all of these types of words but different patterns of merging were seen, especially when a final syllable was added as in “pulling.” Formant values were compared with values in “Luke” and “look.” Perceptually, preliminary results indicate that the merged vowel is often labeled as /u/ unlike findings for other US dialect regions such as Utah. Productions from over 100 speakers were situated on detailed dialect maps.

Vowel production in Mandarin accented English and American English: Kinematic and acoustic data from the Marquette University Mandarin accented English corpus

Few electromagnetic articulography (EMA) datasets are publicly available, and none have focused systematically on non-native accented speech. We introduce a kinematic-acoustic database of speech from 40 (gender and dialect balanced) participants producing upper-Midwestern American English (AE) L1 or Mandarin Accented English (MAE) L2 (Beijing or Shanghai dialect base). The Marquette University EMA-MAE corpus will be released publicly to help advance research in areas such as pronunciation modeling, acoustic-articulatory inversion, L1-L2 comparisons, pronunciation error detection, and accent modification training. EMA data were collected at a 400 Hz sampling rate with synchronous audio using the NDI Wave System. Articulatory sensors were placed on the midsagittal lips, lower incisors, and tongue blade and dorsum, as well as on the lip corner and lateral tongue body. Sensors provide five degree-of-freedom measurements including three-dimensional sensor position and two-dimensional orientation (pitch and roll). In the current work we analyze kinematic and acoustic variability between L1 and L2 vowels. We address the hypothesis that MAE is characterized by larger differences in the articulation of back vowels than front vowels and smaller vowel spaces compared to AE. The current results provide a seminal comparison of the kinematics and acoustics of vowel production between MAE and AE speakers.

On the Role of Phonetic Motivation and Frequency in the Acquisition of Alternations

German nouns may alternate in two ways: a final word-final voiceless obstruent in the singular may correspond to a voiced one in the plural and a back vowel in the singular may correspond to a front one in the plural. We investigate the role of phonetic motivation and frequency in the acquisition of these alternations. The voicing alternation has a phonetic motivation, but the vowel alternation does not. On the basis of two corpus studies, we conclude that both alternations occur with equal frequency in the ambient language. In two production experiments, one with 5-yearolds and one with adults, we asked both populations to form plurals for given singular words and nonces. The children produce more voicing alternations in nonces than adults and fewer vowel alternations than adults. We conclude that children rely more on phonetic motivation than adults.

Hungarian neutral vowels: A microcomparison

In Hungarian, stems containing only front unrounded (neutral) vowels fall into two groups: one group taking front suffixes, the other taking back suffixes in vowel harmony. The distinction is traditionally thought of as purely lexical. Beˇ nuo and Gafos (2007) have recently challenged this position, claiming that there are significant articulatory differences between the vowels in the two groups. Neutral vowels also occur in vacillating stems. These typically contain one back vowel and one or more neutral vowels, and accept both front and back suffixes, with extensive inter- and intra-speaker variation. Based on Beˇ nuo and Gafos’s line of argument, the expectation is that vacillating stems will display a kind of phonetic realisation that is distinct from both harmonic and anti-harmonic stems. We present the results of an ongoing acoustic study on the acoustics of neutral vowels, partly recreating Beˇ nuo and Gafos’s conditions, but also including vacillating stems. To map the extent of individual and dialectal variation regarding vacillating stems, a grammaticality judgement test was also carried out on speakers of two dialects of Hungarian, crucially differing in the surface inventory of neutral vowels. We present our first findings about how this phonetic difference influences the phonological behaviour of vacillating stems.

The Canadian Shift in two Ontario cities

ABSTRACT: The Canadian Shift, a change‐in‐progress that is affecting the lax vowel subsystem of Canadian English, has been found to be active in a number of cities across Canada. Very little is known about the geolinguistic history and spread of the shift, however. Combining apparent time data from Thunder Bay, Ontario, with a comparison of lax vowel pronunciation in the speech of young people from both Thunder Bay and Toronto, the current study presents evidence against the hypothesis that the Canadian Shift has spread to Thunder Bay by way of a gravity model of diffusion. Although not identical, the vowel configurations are quite similar in the speech of young people from the two cities, and the apparent time findings suggest that the shift in Thunder Bay has not lagged behind the shift in Toronto. Results support the proposal that the English of Thunder Bay and Toronto share a common source and that the low back vowel merger, the pre‐cursor for the shift, was brought westward with the settlers to Thunder Bay in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Subsequently, the Canadian Shift occurred simultaneously in both areas. Evidence of more urban features in the pronunciation of several Thunder Bay teenagers also raises questions about the future impact of mobility on the local dialect.

English vowels produced by Cantonese–English bilingual speakers

The present study attempted to test the postulate that sounds of a foreign language that are familiar can be produced with less accuracy than sounds that are new to second language (L2) learners. The first two formant frequencies (F1 and F2) were obtained from the 11 English monophthong vowels produced by 40 Cantonese–English (CE) bilingual and 40 native American English monolingual speakers. Based on F1 and F2, compact-diffuse (C-D) and grave-acute (G-A) values, and Euclidean Distance (ED) associated with the English vowels were evaluated and correlated with the perceived amount of accent present in the vowels. Results indicated that both male and female CE speakers exhibited different vowel spaces compared to their AE counterparts. While C-D and G-A indicated that acquisition of familiar and new vowels were not particularly different, ED values suggested better performance in CE speakers’ productions of familiar vowels over new vowels. In conclusion, analyses based on spectral measurements obtained from the English vowel sounds produced by CE speakers did not provide favourable evidence to support the Speech Learning Model (SLM) proposed by . Nevertheless, for both familiar and new sounds, English back vowels were found to be produced with greater inaccuracy than English front vowels.

Transfer, Similarity or Lack of Awareness? Inconsistencies of German Learners in the Pronunciation of LOT, THOUGHT, STRUT, PALM and BATH

The current study presents acoustic analyses of non-high back vowels and low central vowels in the lexical sets LOT, THOUGHT, STRUT, PALM and BATH as pronounced by German learners of English. The main objective is to show that learners of English at university level are highly inconsistent in approximating the vowels of their self-chosen target accents British English (BrE) and American English (AmE). To that end, the acoustic qualities of the English vowels of learners are compared to their native German vowels and to the vowels of native speakers of BrE and AmE. In order to facilitate statements about the effect of increased experience, the study differentiates between students in their first year at university and in their third year or later. The results obtained are highly variable: In some cases the learners transfer their L1 vowels to English, other cases show clear approximations to the target vowels, while other cases again document the production of new vowels neither found in German nor in English. However, close approximation to the target vowels only sometimes correlates with higher proficiency. This might be an indicator of a low level of awareness of systematic differences between the BrE and AmE vowel systems. But the data also indicate that the more advanced learners produce more distinct AmE BATH vowels and BrE THOUGHT vowels than the less advanced learners, which points to a partial increase of awareness resulting from increased experience. All in all it seems that raising the awareness of differences between target accents in L2 instruction is necessary if the envisage goal is for learners to reach near-native pronunciation.

Locality in exceptions and derived environments in vowel harmony

The regular realm of vowel harmony in Assamese consists of right-to-left regressive [Atr] harmony. In contrast with this regular pattern of vowel harmony, the exceptional Assamese processes dealt with in this paper are symptomatic of the behavior of a pair of morphemes that trigger additional processes not seen elsewhere in the language. This pair of morphemes allows raising of the otherwise opaque vowel / / and fronting/backing of / / depending on the [Back] quality of a mid vowel adjacent to / /. Raising is strictly local in the presence of preceding high and low vowels, but there is also another pattern which shows backness assimilation to a previous vowel if there are mid vowels preceding the / / of the input. This exceptional raising occurs to allow [Atr] harmony to spread regressively by changing the [−Atr] low vowel into a [+Atr] mid vowel. I analyse these cases within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004) and show that these exceptional occurrences are morpheme-specific. It is also shown that these exceptional occurrences lend themselves to an account based on indexation of markedness constraints (Flack 2007; Ota 2004; Pater 2000, 2006, 2009). Consequently, the Assamese examples show that indexed markedness constraints are able to deal with an exceptional alternation where a low vowel undergoes harmony locally. This article also shows that an emergence of the unmarked analysis is required to account for the low back vowel that alternates with a front vowel if there is a preceding front vowel. This article goes beyond the problems encountered in Assamese, and claims that there is no need to invoke locality in exceptional blocking in vowel harmony, as both exceptional and non-exceptional blocking in vowel harmony are always local and bounded. The goal of this paper is to shed light on exceptional and emergent processes, arguing that they are always local and governed by strong universal properties of grammar.

Effects of the electrode location on tonal discrimination and speech perception of mandarin‐speaking patients with a cochlear implant

This study assessed the effects of varying the electrode location on tonal discrimination and speech perception in Mandarin Chinese-speaking patients. A controlled study with six experimental conditions. Seven Mandarin-speaking listeners who received a MED-EL cochlear implant (CI), ranging in age from 12.88 to 36.43 years (mean, 25.51 years), with an average of 5.28 years of device experience, participated this study. To evaluate the effects of electrode location, six experimental conditions each with the switch off at six different electrodes were designed. Identification tests of Mandarin lexical tones and words were performed. Among experimental conditions with electrode lengths of 31, 23.8, and 16.6 mm, the CI subjects exhibited improved vowel and consonant identification in the condition of 31 mm, reflecting the apical location of electrodes. Specifically, the improvement was observed in the identification score for the vowel backness and height, as well as for the consonant place of articulation. Comparison among three settings with a same electrode length of 12.6 mm and the setting with stimulation to the midregion of the cochlea produces better words as well as the vowel and consonant identification compared with stimulation to basal and apical regions. However, no significant difference was observed for the lexical tone identification among conditions with different electrode location and stimulating region. Less mismatch of the frequency-to-place alignment may account for the improvement of word identification in conditions with electrodes coverage to more apical location; and in conditions where the mid-region of the cochlea were stimulated.

ASSIMILATION OF FINAL LOW BACK VOWEL IN EGHLIDIAN DIALECT

In this article, the low back vowel /A/ in word-final positions in Eghlidian dialect, one of Persian dialects, is studied. This vowel is represented phonetically as [A], [o] and [@] in different phonetic environments. Therefore many words were collected via interviewing ten native speakers so that these different alternant forms can be accounted for appropriately. Since one of the authors of this article is a native speaker of the dialect, the verity of the data is confirmed. In writing this article, the collected data were classified in terms of different alternations of the vowel /A/, then related contexts were analyzed. Analysis of data showed that, firstly, in individual words, the final vowel /A/ is pronounced as [o] when it is preceded by a non-glottal consonant; however, it is pronounced as [A] when preceded by a glottal consonant and, secondly, in continuous speech, as a result of an assimilation, the final position vowel /A/ is pronounced as [o] and [@], respectively according to the graveness and acuteness of its preceding consonant.

Acoustic and Perceptual Description of Vowels in a Speaker With Congenital Aglossia

The goals of this study were to (a) compare the vowel space produced by a person with congenital aglossia (PWCA) with a typical vowel space; (b) investigate listeners’ intelligibility for single vowels produced by the PWCA, with and without visual information; and (c) determine whether there is a correlation between scores of speech intelligibility of PWCA speech and the acoustic properties of those speech samples. The main objective of this study was to determine whether a PWCA was able to compensate for the lack of tongue and whether listeners were able to compensate perceptually for the possible atypical acoustics of the PWCA. Cineradiography for this article was limited to observation of gross function of the tongue base and mylohyoid. An audiovisual recording of the PWCA speaker’s output was obtained for a series of isolated vowels, diphthongized vowels, and vowels in monosyllables. Production of vowels was analyzed acoustically and perceptually. Vowels were presented to listeners under two conditions: audiovisual and audio only. Paired differences sample tests revealed no statistical differences in intelligibility for the audio versus audiovisual conditions. Mean intelligibility for vowels was 78.5% overall. Intelligibility was a function of vowel position, with the front vowels revealing the least intelligibility and the back vowels revealing the greatest intelligibility. Quantitative analysis of F1–F2 formant data revealed that the speaker’s front vowels showed greater distances from the back vowels when compared with the F1–F2 means of normative data.

Biomechanically Preferred Consonant-Vowel Combinations Fail to Appear in Adult Spoken Corpora

Certain consonant/vowel (CV) combinations are more frequent than would be expected from the individual C and V frequencies alone, both in babbling and, to a lesser extent, in adult language, based on dictionary counts: Labial consonants co-occur with central vowels more often than chance would dictate; coronals co-occur with front vowels, and velars with back vowels (Davis & MacNeilage, 1994). Plausible biomechanical explanations have been proposed, but it is also possible that infants are mirroring the frequency of the CVs that they hear. As noted, previous assessments of adult language were based on dictionaries; these "type" counts are incommensurate with the babbling measures, which are necessarily "token" counts. We analyzed the tokens in two spoken corpora for English, two for French and one for Mandarin. We found that the adult spoken CV preferences correlated with the type counts for Mandarin and French, not for English. Correlations between the adult spoken corpora and the babbling results had all three possible outcomes: significantly positive (French), uncorrelated (Mandarin), and significantly negative (English). There were no correlations of the dictionary data with the babbling results when we consider all nine combinations of consonants and vowels. The results indicate that spoken frequencies of CV combinations can differ from dictionary (type) counts and that the CV preferences apparent in babbling are biomechanically driven and can ignore the frequencies of CVs in the ambient spoken language.

Acoustic Comparison of Vowel Sounds Among Adult Females

This study consist of an experiment comparing acoustic characteristics of vowel production among females. The aim of this investigation was to explore the stability among vowels with quantification of acoustic changes in the voice related to speech production associated with an ample variety of vowel sounds. An additional goal was to establish a systematic control of variables and standardization of the data collection procedures. All data were collected in a quiet environment using the Computerized Speech Lab (CSL; Kay Elemetrics, Montvale, NJ), a computer-based system designed to measure characteristics of voice. Jitter and shimmer, measures of perturbation that reflect characteristics of voice, were applied. Two additional acoustic measures were examined: (1) noise-to-harmonic ratio (NHR), a general evaluation of presence of noise in the voice signal; and (2) voice turbulence index (VTI), related to turbulence caused by abnormal adduction of vocal folds. A systematic methodology of data collection was organized, in an effort to establish a research protocol based on relevant literature, involving (1) keeping constant fundamental frequency (F0) and intensity, (2) positioning of participants and recording equipment, and (3) environmental noise. When measured acoustic parameters of vowels were compared, results revealed that the vowel sounds had a significant effect on shimmer and VTI. Furthermore, speech sounds classified as back vowels exhibited less perturbation and noise in the acoustic signal: the high-back vowels [u] and []; and the mid-back vowels [o] and [], demonstrated most of the statistically significant reduced values of shimmer and VTI among the 12 vowels compared. Further comparisons among front and back vowels grouped in clusters associated to more and less variability led to statistically significant differences in shimmer, NHR, and VTI. Overall, speech sounds classified as back vowels exhibited less variability and noise. Based on the results of this study, back vowels of the English language should be used in voice acoustic tasks in females, given the higher stability of their acoustic signal, as compared with other vowels tested.