Back Vowels Research Articles

English Vowel Hiatus and Consonant Epenthesis

Vowel hiatus arises when two vowels are locally adjacent but heterosyllabified within words or across word boundaries. In English, as well-described, vowel clash is resolved by two strategies; glide insertion and glottal stop insertion. In fact, these sounds are not underlyingly present but added for ease of articulation in casual or fast speech. Following sonority-driven prominence scale in V1-V2 sequences, the least marked glides are the most favored to fix vowel hiatus. Which glide is adopted is closely related to the feature of the first vowel; for a palatal /j/-glide, V1 is a high front vowel, for a labio-velar /w/-glide, a high back vowel and for a central liquid /r/-glide, also called the intrusive r, a non-high vowel, i.e. homorganic. Furthermore, provided that V2 gets stressed, a laryngeal plosive also fills an empty onset even though it is the most marked at the point of vowel hiatus. These hiatus resolution strategies are well-couched into Optimality Theory(OT) (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004; McCarthy and Prince, 1995) where Dep[F] type constraints ranked over the sonority-driven markedness constraints determine the glide j/w-epenthesis the best and the intrusive r the second-best if the former is banned. Glottal stop addition is also employed as a rescue strategy to remove vowel clash when glides are all blocked, i.e. before V2 bearing stress.

Central vs. Back Vowels

Central vs. Back Vowels

Low vowel variation in three French-speaking countries

AbstractIt is commonly noted that standard French is losing the contrast between its two low vowels /a/ and /ɑ/, due to the fronting of the back vowel. The difference in length, which accompanied the qualitative difference of this pair, is affected as well. In mainland France, this tendency can be found to various degrees across the country, and is spreading throughout the speech community. This article further develops the picture of the current status of the low vowel contrast by investigating Belgian and Swiss French, where length is known to play overall a far more prominent role in the vowel inventories than it does in standard French. Are Belgian and Swiss French also affected by the merger of the two low vowels? To what extent can a difference in length and/or timbre still be found? And how do the patterns of contrast neutralisation/preservation relate to the developments in France?

Coordinated systems in Taiwan Mandarin tone production: An investigation of laryngeal and tongue movements

While electroglottography (EGG) is commonly used to examine different phonation types as well as laryngeal closure and opening of segments, only limited EGG studies focus on tonal quality [Brunelle et al., 2010, Phonetica, 67:147]. In particular, it is not yet clear how laryngeal movements in terms of its vibration magnitude and vertical displacement may be associated with pitch contour in tone production. The current study tackles this question by examining the amplitude of EGG pulses and laryngeal heights across four tones in Taiwan Mandarin. Ultrasound images are also obtained to assess the temporal relationship between tongue positioning and laryngeal movements during tone production. Preliminary results show that while the laryngeal area is more constricted by low, back vowels, a stronger correlation between EGG amplitude and pitch contour is found. On the other hand, when the tongue is positioned in the front of the cavity, larger degrees of freedom around the laryngeal area yield a lesser correlation between EGG amplitude and pitch contour but a stronger correlation between laryngeal height and pitch contour. The results suggest that tone production may be a result of a combination of laryngeal vibration and spatial coordination between the laryngeal and supralaryngeal movements. [Funding from MOST.]

Comparative analysis of South Korean and North Korean vowels: A pilot study

This study investigates cardinal vowels of standard North Korean and South Korean. Prior reports have suggested that North and South Korean vowels have undergone changes after decades of relative isolation. This poster reports a pilot study investigating the ways in which the language standards of North and South Korea are similar and different by examining the speech of newscasters from each country. Acoustic analysis of the speech data suggested that North Korean vowels [ɛ] and [ae] were produced in the higher position relative to the South Korean counterparts, and the back vowels [ʌ] and [o] showed overlapping formant values unlike the South Korean counterparts. The perception experiment suggested that South Korean listeners could not accurately identify the North Korean [ʌ] and [o]. These results indicate that there may be interesting differences across North Korean and South Korean vowels.

Acoustic features of intelligible speech produced under reverberant environments

Clear speech has been shown to have an intelligibility advantage over conversational speech in reverberant environments. Speech produced in reverberant environments is also reported to be more intelligible than ones produced in normal environments. Speakers adapt to the environments by modifying their articulation, and acoustics of speech. The speech produced under reverberant conditions should be modified similarly with the clear speech. Identifying the distinctive features which are shared between these speech types gives insights into which acoustic features are robust cues even in reverberant environments. In the present study, we investigated voices uttered by speakers who produced Japanese words under reverberant conditions (T60 = 1 s–5 s). Speech intelligibility tests, and acoustic analyses were performed. The results showed that, first, speech produced under long T60 is more intelligible in reverberant environments. Second, the intelligible speech has expanded vowel space with high F2 for front vowels and low F2 for back vowels, and high F1 for open vowels and low F1 for close vowels. Brief formant transitions were also found. These articulatory/acoustic modifications are likely to be enhancements of significant perceptual cues. The acoustic/articulatory features of each vowel become clearer (hyper-articulated speech; i.e., clear speech.) Moreover, perceptual compensation to reduce co-articulation effects should become easier.

Effects of L2 experience on L2 vowel production and L1 speakers' perception of the improved vowels

Effects of L2 experience on the production of L2 vowels were investigated and the perceptual accuracy of the L2 vowels by native speakers was tested to examine whether an improvement in vowel articulation leads to higher accuracy. A total of twenty Mandarin Chinese differing in the experience (6 months vs. 2 years) were compared to ten native Korean speakers in their production of seven Korean vowels, /i,ɛ,ɨ,ʌ,o,u,a/. More experienced Chinese speakers were expected to have acquired new Korean vowels, /ɛ,ɨ,ʌ,o/, in a more native-like manner than the inexperienced group. The results showed that Chinese learners were able to produce the three similar vowels, /i, u, a/ in a native-like manner even before any exposure to Korean. After 2 years of experience, they have shown to produce the new mid vowels, /ɛ, ʌ/ with greater height distinctions (F1 values) from adjacent high vowels. Although the two high back vowels, /o, u/ were deviant from the native norm, the Experienced group learned to distinguish the vowels with a distinctive F2 frequency, which has become a critical cue for the distinction of the two merging vowels by young Seoul speakers. When native Korean speakers were asked to identify the vowels produced by Chinese speakers, not only new mid vowels but also similar vowels were more accurately identified for the experienced group. The greatest improvement in perceptual accuracy was shown for the categories that were newly established by the inexperienced learners.

Patterns of the Mainstream Sound Change in a Liminal Region: Low Back Merger in Washington DC

This study investigates the low back vowel merger (lot-thought merger) of African American and European American speakers in Washington DC. The study aims to follow up with the previous investigation by Labov et al. (2006) on low back merger in DC, and investigate whether African American speakers in DC are participating in the merger, one of the majority-led sound changes. The study also examines the difference in low back vowel production between African Americans from a particular quadrant of the city, namely, Southeast (SE), and those from elsewhere in DC. Data are taken from forty sociolinguistic interviews with natives of DC. The vowels were analyzed acoustically, taking F1 and F2 measurements at three different points of a vowel. Both the F1 and the F2 dimensions of the low back vowels and the degree of overlap were examined. The degree of overlap was measured by calculating the Pillai score for each speaker, with duration and following environment taken into account. Results indicate that DC is conservatively participating in the merger, with European American speakers exhibiting higher degrees of overlap than African American speakers. An age effect is also observed, but only among African American speakers who are not from SE. The study further argues that the participation in the mainstream sound change by some African Americans can also be analyzed as convergence to the local white norm, and that this convergence is more likely to be carried out by African American speakers who are not from SE, a section of the city in which the contact between African American speakers and European American speakers is minimal.

Vowels and tones in Poula

AbstractThis paper presents a sketch of the vowels and tones in the Poula language as spoken in the Naamai (Koide) village of Manipur. Acoustic studies on the vowels and tones are conducted in this work, and it is concluded that Poula has a six vowel inventory like many of the languages in the vicinity; however the distribution of vowels in Poula is quite peculiar, with the absence of high back vowels and presence of two high front vowels. In case of tones, this study reports four tones in Poula, namely, High-falling, Rising-falling, Mid and Low. The paper concludes with a short discussion on tones in Poula underived words.

Ekialdeko /o/-ren igoeraren testuinguru fonologikoaren bila / Looking for the phonological context of /o/-raising in Eastern Basque

Lan honetan euskarazko /o/ erdiko atzeko bokalaren igoera aztertzen da. Hots-eredu hau batez ere zubereran eta erronkarieran garatu zen, nahiz eta ekialdeko beste euskalkietan ere aurki daitekeen. Bilakabide honen adibideak batu eta horien testuingurua zehaztu ostean, fonetikoki sudurkarituriko [õ]-ren igoera bezala deskriba daitekeela proposatuko da. Hots aldaketa hau sudurkaritasunaren berezko anbiguotasun fonetikoaren bitartez azaltzea proposatuko da, ambigutasun hau F1-en eremuan «formante sudurkariak» gehitzeak eragiten duela. Laburbilduz, lan honek deskribapen fonologikoak erraz azaltzen ez duen baina fonetikoki arazorik gabe azal daitekeen hots-eredu bat aurkezten du, fonetikaren garrantzia ikerketa historiko eta fonologikoan azpimarratzen delarik.

Nonconvergence and Divergence in Bilingual Phonological and Phonetic Systems: Low Back Vowels in Moundridge Schweitzer German and English

This study explores the bilingual phonology of two heritage speakers of Moundridge Schweitzer German (msg) from Moundridge, Kansas. The speakers are descendants of Mennonite speakers of German who settled in the area around Moundridge, Kansas, in the 1870s. The production of Moundridge Schweitzer German /a/ and /ɔ/ and American English /a/ and /ɔ/ were compared and no evidence of phonological or phonetic convergence was found. For one speaker, there was evidence that phonetic realizations of /a/ and /ɔ/ in the two languages were diverging with a merger or a near merger of the two vowels in the heritage variety of German but not in English.

Bouba/Kiki in Touch: Associations Between Tactile Perceptual Qualities and Japanese Phonemes.

Several studies have shown cross-modal associations between sounds and vision or gustation by asking participants to match pre-defined sound-symbolic words (SSWs), such as “bouba” or “kiki,” with visual or gustatory materials. Here, we conducted an explorative study on cross-modal associations of tactile sensations using spontaneous production of Japanese SSWs and semantic ratings. The Japanese language was selected, because it has a large number of SSWs that can represent a wide range of tactile perceptual spaces with fine resolution, and it shows strong associations between sound and touch. In the experiment, we used 120 everyday materials to cover basic material categories that could be associated with fundamental dimensions of tactile perception. Upon contact with these materials, participants expressed their tactile sensations by using Japanese SSWs, and at the same time, evaluated the tactile sensations by semantic differential scales using adjective pairs. Thanks to the variety of testing materials, we were able to demonstrate the existence of systematic associations between sounds and tactile fundamental perceptual dimensions in a more detailed and comprehensive way than ever done so before. In particular, we found that for vowels, positive tactile ratings were associated with the back vowel (/u/), while negative ratings were associated with the front vowels (/i/ and /e/). The central vowels (/o/ and /a/) were mainly associated with rough, hard, and dry feelings. Consonants were categorized based on vocal features and articulation. The category of the voiced consonants (e.g., /dz/ and /g/) corresponded to feelings of roughness, while that of voiceless consonants (e.g., /ʦ/, and /s/) corresponded to feelings of smoothness. The categories of the bilabial plosive (/p/ and /b/) and voiced alveolar nasal (/n/) consonants were mainly related to soft, sticky and wet feelings, while that of voiceless alveolar affricate (/ʦ/) and voiceless velar plosive (/k/) consonants were related to hard, slippery and dry feelings.

The influence of dialect in sound symbolic size perception

Prior research on sound symbolism and referent object size establishes that words with front vowels are perceived to refer to smaller objects than do back vowels (Ohala 1997; Klink 2000). Some dialects of American English exhibit vowel movement along the front-back axis which may influence perceived object size. This study focuses on California English /u/-fronting (Hinton et al. 1987) and predicts that shifting from a standardly back vowel [u] to a more front vowel [ʉ] is paired with a shift from a large perceived object size to a smaller perceived object size. This paper describes two experiments in which participants either silently read (reading task) or listened (listening task) to stimulus words and rated perceived object size. California English speakers in the reading task experiment perceived words with /u/ to be smaller than did non-California English speakers. This result suggests that sound symbolic perception is sensitive to fine phonetic variability due to a person’s dialect.

Acoustic measures of delabialized velars in Hong Kong Cantonese

Hong Kong Cantonese is undergoing a neutralization of the labialized velar /kw/ with the plain velar /k/ before the round back vowel /ɔ/ that is well-documented auditorily but not acoustically (Bauer, 1982; Newman, 1987; To et al., 2015). The present data from 14 native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese seeks to determine what acoustic characteristics differentiate non-neutralized /k/ and /kw/, and whether neutralization of these segments in neutralization environment is complete or incomplete. Initial data analysis suggests that locus equations on the second and third vowel formants may not be reliable cues in distinguishing plain and clearly labialized (non-merged) velars in this dialect of Cantonese, although formant lowering and increased vowel length for non-merged, labialized productions appear consistent, and intensity measures at 50 ms post-vowel onset may prove to be an important cue as well. The most consistent cues for labialization in clearly labialized articulations of target words will then be...

Formant pattern and spectral shape ambiguity in vowel synthesis: The role of fundamental frequency and formant amplitude

When investigating formant pattern and spectral shape ambiguity in Klatt synthesis, an earlier study showed that the perceived vowel quality of Standard German vowel sounds can be changed by varying fundamental frequency only [Maurer et al. (2017). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 141(5):3469-3470]. In this follow-up study, the previous original synthesis experiment was repeated twice, firstly, with fundamental frequencies (fo) of the corresponding sounds lowered by one octave, and secondly, with different ratios of the first and second formant amplitudes. Here, the role of the fo range and the formant amplitudes for the investigation of formant pattern and spectral shape ambiguity in vowel synthesis was further examined. The same five phonetic expert listeners that participated in the previous experiment also identified all of the newly synthesised sounds in a multiple-choice identification task. Results revealed that the perceived vowel quality only changes for fos above 200 Hz and that, for back vowels, the ratio of the formant amplitudes used in the Klatt synthesis also affects vowel recognition. Thus, the results of the experiments confirm earlier indications of a non-systematic relation between fo or pitch and formant patterns or spectral envelopes for vowel recognition.

若年層韓国語ソウル方言における/o/と/u/の言語変化の一側面―先行子音種と発話単位の違いが2母音の重なりに与える影響―

若年層韓国語ソウル方言における/o/と/u/の言語変化の一側面―先行子音種と発話単位の違いが2母音の重なりに与える影響―

The Influence of Dialect in Sound Symbolic Size Perception

Author(s): Shibata, Andrew | Abstract: Prior research on sound symbolism and referent object size establishes that words with front vowels are perceived to refer to smaller objects than do back vowels (Ohala 1997; Klink 2000). Some dialects of American English exhibit vowel movement along the front-back axis which may influence perceived object size. This study focuses on California English /u/-fronting (Hinton et al. 1987) and predicts that shifting from a standardly back vowel [u] to a more front vowel [ʉ] is paired with a shift from a large perceived object size to a smaller perceived object size. This paper describes two experiments in which participants either silently read (reading task) or listened (listening task) to stimulus words and rated perceived object size. California English speakers in the reading task experiment perceived words with /u/ to be smaller than did non-California English speakers. This result suggests that sound symbolic perception is sensitive to fine phonetic variability due to a person’s dialect.

Sound iconicity of abstract concepts: Place of articulation is implicitly associated with abstract concepts of size and social dominance.

The concept of sound iconicity implies that phonemes are intrinsically associated with non-acoustic phenomena, such as emotional expression, object size or shape, or other perceptual features. In this respect, sound iconicity is related to other forms of cross-modal associations in which stimuli from different sensory modalities are associated with each other due to the implicitly perceived correspondence of their primal features. One prominent example is the association between vowels, categorized according to their place of articulation, and size, with back vowels being associated with bigness and front vowels with smallness. However, to date the relative influence of perceptual and conceptual cognitive processing on this association is not clear. To bridge this gap, three experiments were conducted in which associations between nonsense words and pictures of animals or emotional body postures were tested. In these experiments participants had to infer the relation between visual stimuli and the notion of size from the content of the pictures, while directly perceivable features did not support–or even contradicted–the predicted association. Results show that implicit associations between articulatory-acoustic characteristics of phonemes and pictures are mainly influenced by semantic features, i.e., the content of a picture, whereas the influence of perceivable features, i.e., size or shape, is overridden. This suggests that abstract semantic concepts can function as an interface between different sensory modalities, facilitating cross-modal associations.

A preliminary examination of the gender role in back-vowel fronting in Central Louisiana

In addition to the Southern Vowel Shift that involves /ɛ ɪ/ fronting, high back vowels also tend to be fronted in white Southern U.S. speech (Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006; Thomas, 2001). The tense /u/ is the first to shift in the back-vowel system, followed by the lax /ʊ/. Gender effect on the degree of fronting has been reported for one vowel but not the other: Male speakers lead in /u/fronting, whereas /ʊ/ fronting occurs more or less uniformly across speakers of different genders (Clopper, Pisoni, & de Jong; Fridland, 2001). This study provides a preliminary examination of the role of gender in the relative degree of back vowel fronting in young adult speakers from Central Louisiana. They were recorded producing words with target vowels in a variety of tasks: word list and passage reading, sentence creation, and informal conversation. The formant values were analyzed with a reference to other vowels in each speaker and with a reference to average values for Southern U.S. English reported in previous rese...

The distribution of the retroflex lateral allophone of the liquid phoneme in Korean

The liquid phoneme in Korean is known to have an optional retroflex allophone in syllable-final positions (Lee 1999). However, there lacks literature evaluating when and how this retroflex allophone is realized. To define the distribution of the retroflex allophone of the liquid phoneme in Korean, this study uses a read speech corpus of Seoul Korean to track the rhotacization of the liquid phoneme in coda positions. Rhotacization of the liquid is detected and measured by the lowering of the third formant. Preliminary results show that the liquid phoneme in coda position is realized as retroflex when preceded by a back vowel, and when followed by another liquid phoneme (gemination). The results suggest that the liquid phoneme is not simply optionally rhotacized in coda positions; instead, the retroflex allophone is realized in contexts defined by the preceding vowel and the following consonant. Future research remains to further examine the articulatory and perceptual aspects of the rhotacization.