Front Vowels Research Articles

Revisiting the Acquisition of Onset Complexity: Affrication in Québec French.

I investigate the acquisition of affrication in Québec French (QF), where affricates are in complementary distribution with coronal stops, being realized before high front vowels and glides. Previous research on other languages shows that affricates are acquired before branching onsets, which supports the idea that complexity at the level of the segment is acquired before complexity at the level of the syllable (Lleó & Prinz, 1997). In contrast, I hypothesize that affricates are acquired after branching onsets in QF, as learners are required to understand the constraints on their distribution. I examine longitudinal data from two QF-speaking children for whom the acquisition of branching onsets has been previously analyzed (Rose, 2000). Results show that affricates are indeed acquired after branching onsets, consistent with the hypothesis. Overapplication errors indicate that children make generalizations about the phonological constraints on affrication from an early age, which is expected for the acquisition of rules.

Vowel fronting, raising, and backing in Luzon and north-central Sulawesi

This article presents an overview of four shifts – low vowel fronting, low vowel backing, back vowel fronting, and mid vowel raising – found in a number of languages on or near the Pacific coast of Luzon in the Philippines and in north-central Sulawesi in Indonesia. A more extensive illustration of low vowel fronting is given for Umiray Dumaget than has previously been made available, and a second, sporadic correspondence in Umiray Dumaget is shown to be only irregular and unconditioned. Interactions with Philippine-type morphology are also shown to result in synchronically productive alternations in Umiray Dumaget and several of the Mongondow-Gorontalo languages.

Pronunciation Errors of English Front Vowels by Yemeni EFL Learners

In the domain of English as a foreign language, many learners still face some difficulties in articulating vowel sounds of English, particularly the front ones. This study attempts to describe Yemeni EFL learners' errors while pronouncing the English front vowels. The subject of this study was the eighth-semester students studying at the English department, Faculty of Education, Mahweet branch, Sana'a University. The descriptive qualitative approach was utilized in this study. The data was collected by recording learners' pronunciation of English front vowel minimal pairs. The data was then compared with the ones produced by an English native speaker. The findings resulted were confirmed by the spectrogram technique to identify the formants of F1 and F2 made by the learners in Praat Software Device. English front vowels /i / - / I /- / Ԑ / and / ae / were the target sounds. The study's findings revealed that Yemeni EFL learners' pronunciation differs from those produced by native English speakers. It was also revealed that Yemeni EFL learners are still struggling in articulating English front vowel sounds due to the influence of the sound system of their native language that causes such pronunciation problems in the target language.

A Contrastive Study of English and Arabic Vowel Phonemes

Consequently, the present study sheds light on a very important aspect that is a contrastive analysis of segmental vowel phonemes of both L1 and L2. As one of the Problems, that is affecting the teaching/learning process of ELT. Then to clarify the different areas between the segmental vowel phonemes of Arabic and English. It also aims at making a comparative segmental analysis in the vowel phonemes of both L1 - L2, in order to shed light on the areas of difficulties. Taking into account the different forms of sounds in relation to their spellings. Also the sound systems of both languages L1 and L2. Particular the areas of common mistakes. Thus, it encourages teachers to check English pronunciation before teaching and predict problems before they happen. Also the use of advanced methods and pronunciation dictionary for (IPA). It also helps learners to master all the significant sound features and basic structural patterns. On the phonological levels, differences cause difficulties e.g. The areas of Arabic /p/ and /v/ ,and English front vowels phonemes /i:/-/i/- /e/- /æ/, central /ə:/- /ə/-/Λ/,and back/a:/-/o/-/ ﬤ:/-/u/-/u:/ phonemes in English, they do not exist in Arabic. In addition to the English vowel /e/ which doesn’t exist in Arabic. This observation can't be only linguistically, but it will also confirm by L2 learners. These theories need to be clarified in order to allow rules to be expressed. In the English language, there are 26 alphabetical letters which are totally different than their sounds. Another drawback is the alphabetical method which is intended to teach reading by means of spelling. There is no one –to- one correspondence between sounds and letters. That is to say, each different sound cannot be represented by the same letter. There are also words which are spelt differently but sound the same. Therefore, the present study concentrates on the difficulties that Learners and beginners face in using English segmental vowel phonemes. It also tries to get new methods and new ideas. This study is based on the practical experience of the writer, being specialized in English phonology, a lecturer and an author of a phonetics textbook for beginner learners who learn English as a foreign language. And as a supervisor who follows undergraduate students in the field of experience. That is, in order to find out possible remedial solutions, better suggestion and recommendations. Then follows a descriptive method to achieve this purpose. With the sample of twenty student girls. As a case study of undergraduate trainees of Majmaah Universitiy in the training field, to collect data from the subjects’ real environment during talks, speeches, presentations and teaching in the Field Experience. The results were recorded to be analyzed. In particular, the areas of English vowels and diphthongs that are totally different than in Arabic.

Cross-dialectal vowel mapping and glide perception

Formant transitions from a high front vowel to a non-high, non-front vowel mimic the formant signature of a canonical [j], resulting in the perception of an acoustic glide (Hogoboom 2020). We ask if listeners may still perceive a glide when canonical formant transitions are absent. We investigated the mapping of an Appalachian English (AE) monophthongal [aɪ] in hiatus sequences, monophthongal [aɪ.a]. If participants map this monophthongal [aɪ] to a high front position, they might perceive a glide that is not supported by the acoustic signal, which we call a phantom glide. Ninety-six participants (45 of which were native AE speakers) heard 30 different English words ending in [i], [ə], or monophthongal [aɪ] (i.e. tree, coma, pie) that had been suffixed with either [-a] or [-ja]. They were asked to identify which suffixed form they heard. Participants in both dialect groups sometimes perceived a glide that was truly absent from the speech stream. In these cases, participants mapped static formants in monophthongal [aɪ.a] stimuli to a diphthongal /aɪ/ with a high front endpoint, causing the perception of the necessary F1 fall and subsequent rise of a [j]. Using recent models of speech processing, which encode both social and acoustic representations of speech (e.g. Sumner et al. 2014), we discuss the mapping of monophthongal [aɪ] to a privileged diphthongal underlying form.

Variation in the articulation of Russian stressed vowels and the mechanics of palatalization in consonants

A 3D/4D ultrasound study of Russian stressed vowels in the context of ‘soft’ (phonetically palatalized or palatal) versus ‘hard’ consonants reveals that vowels in these two contexts differ systematically in terms of the position of the tongue root while the tongue dorsum is less consistently modified depending on the speaker, vowel or consonant context. This paper proposes that the observed vowel allophony, as well as the softness contrast in Russian consonants, and the contrast between front and central high vowels, are all defined in terms of the feature [ATR].

Contextual prominence in vowel perception: Testing listener sensitivity to sonority expansion and hyperarticulation.

High front vowels have been shown to undergo two competing forms of acoustic (and articulatory) modulation due to prosodic prominence-(1) hyperarticulation: more extreme high/front articulations under prominence and (2) sonority expansion: more open articulations, allowing more energy to radiate from the mouth. This study explores how these effects translate into listeners' perception of the contrast between the vowels /i/ and /ɪ/. Results show that listeners uniformly expect a hyperarticulated vowel (acoustically) under prominence, and adjust categorization of an F1/F2 continuum accordingly. Results are discussed in relation to production findings and possible accounts of why listeners favor hyperarticulation in perception.

Sound Symbolism in the Proto-Turkic Language

Studies on the Turkic languages have shown that the difference between related terms concerning m ale and female , including back and front vowels, is a “ separate case ” (a special case). In this article, such a phenomenon was studied in more depth and detail, and for the first time, it was associated with sound symbolism. This work aims to show the role of sound symbolism in the classification of kinship terms related to man and woman in the P roto-Turkic language. To achieve this goal, we conducted experimental work with four babies . Our experiment was based on the bo u b a /kiki effect, which is used in modern linguistics. Besides, in the research work, an associative experiment was conducted with students studying at Karaganda University. Thirty-five students took part in the experiment. The study results showed that infants associated the image of a man, large objects with back vowels, and the image of a woman, small objects with front vowels. According to the results obtained using the associative method, the participants associated the front vowels with the stimulus “ female ” , and the back vowels were not associated with “ male ” . However, the participants showed an advantage in associating men with the uvu lar consonant [q] , which is only combined with back vowels. In the Turkic languages, we also found that terms associated with back ( thick ) vowels have meanings associated with males, and terms associated with front (thin) vowels have meanings associated with females. Keywords : s ound s ymbolism; Proto- Turkic language ; Turkic l anguages; Proto-language; m ale and f emale c ategories; v owels

Velar lateral allophony in Mee (Ekari)

Velar lateral sounds are rare and their acoustics and contextual effects are understudied. Positional variants of velar laterals are also rarely reported. This paper documents a previously unknown allophony pattern of the velar lateral in Mee (Trans New Guinea; Indonesia), based on an elicitation study with two speakers and a controlled set of recordings from one of the speakers. Our main dataset included carrier phrase recordings of Mee words with the velar lateral, representing the diverse set of contexts where the velar lateral occurs. Our acoustic findings suggest that the Mee velar lateral is realized as a laterally released velar stop [ɡᶫ] before front vowels, and with uvular closure followed by a fricative release [ɢʁ] before back vowels. In line with this description, we found differences in the second formant of the preceding vowel and the periodicity of the release for the two allophones. We explore the implications of our findings for the typology of velar laterals.

Coarticulation and learnability of transparent vowels in vowel harmony

The representations of transparent vowels in vowel harmony have been of interest to phonologists because of the challenges they pose for constraints on locality and complexity. One proposal is that transparent vowels in back vowel harmony may be intermediate between front and back. The present study uses two artificial language learning experiments to explore the psychological reality of acoustic differences in transparent vowels in back vs. front vowel contexts. Participants were exposed to a back/round vowel harmony language with a neutral vowel that was spliced so that the F2 was lower in back vowel contexts and higher in front vowel contexts (the Natural condition) or the reverse (the Unnatural condition). While only participants in the Natural condition of Experiment 1 were able to learn the behavior of the transparent vowel relative to a No-Training control, there was no difference between the Natural and Unnatural conditions. In Experiment 2, only participants in the Natural condition learned the vowel harmony pattern, though there were no significant differences between the two conditions. No condition successfully learned the behavior of the transparent vowel in Experiment 2. These results suggest that the effects of small differences in the F2 value of transparent back vowels on learnability are minimal.

Bidirectionality of language contact: Spanish and Catalan vowels

The disproportionate number of studies in Barcelona and the Balearic Islands observing Spanish contact effects in Catalan production, rather than Catalan contact effects in Spanish production, is an oversight of bidirectionality and the probabilistic nature of social factors in situations of language contact. Accordingly, the present study analyzes both Catalan and Spanish mid front vowel production data from Barcelona to investigate whether Catalan contact effects occur in Spanish via a process of dissimilation, and whether such effects are strengthened in younger speakers due to the relatively recent implementation of Catalan linguistic policy in the educational and public spheres. The results are suggestive of dissimilation, where phonetic distinctions are maintained between Spanish /e/ and the two Catalan mid front vowels across both F1 and F2. Additionally, analyses of variance across F1 and F2 reveal that Spanish /e/ productions across F1 are more diffuse in younger speakers and Catalan mid front vowels across F2 are less diffuse, providing evidence of reciprocity in contact effects. These results underscore the bidirectional nature of language contact and advocate for the use of variance of F1 and F2 as a metric of phonological contact effects.

Acoustic analysis of vowel formant frequencies in genetically-related and non-genetically related speakers with implications for forensic speaker comparison.

The purpose of this study was to explore the speaker-discriminatory potential of vowel formant mean frequencies in comparisons of identical twin pairs and non-genetically related speakers. The influences of lexical stress and the vowels’ acoustic distances on the discriminatory patterns of formant frequencies were also assessed. Acoustic extraction and analysis of the first four speech formants F1-F4 were carried out using spontaneous speech materials. The recordings comprise telephone conversations between identical twin pairs while being directly recorded through high-quality microphones. The subjects were 20 male adult speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP), aged between 19 and 35. As for comparisons, stressed and unstressed oral vowels of BP were segmented and transcribed manually in the Praat software. F1-F4 formant estimates were automatically extracted from the middle points of each labeled vowel. Formant values were represented in both Hertz and Bark. Comparisons within identical twin pairs using the Bark scale were performed to verify whether the measured differences would be potentially significant when following a psychoacoustic criterion. The results revealed consistent patterns regarding the comparison of low-frequency and high-frequency formants in twin pairs and non-genetically related speakers, with high-frequency formants displaying a greater speaker-discriminatory power compared to low-frequency formants. Among all formants, F4 seemed to display the highest discriminatory potential within identical twin pairs, followed by F3. As for non-genetically related speakers, both F3 and F4 displayed a similar high discriminatory potential. Regarding vowel quality, the central vowel /a/ was found to be the most speaker-discriminatory segment, followed by front vowels. Moreover, stressed vowels displayed a higher inter-speaker discrimination than unstressed vowels in both groups; however, the combination of stressed and unstressed vowels was found even more explanatory in terms of the observed differences. Although identical twins displayed a higher phonetic similarity, they were not found phonetically identical.

SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY OF MAITHILI URDU

This paper on the Mithilanchal Urdu, a dialect of the Indo-Aryan language family, would be an interesting study in the time of the Corona Pandemic, as it may be considered a minority language or dialect and such languages and dialects have been found to be especially vulnerable in the times of calamities like the present COVID-19 pandemic. However, this paper would basically provide a baseline upon which post-pandamic studies can be based for exploring the effect of the pandemic. The present study reflects the segmental phonology of Maithili Urdu, a dialect of the Indo-Aryan language family, spoken mainly in the Mithilanchal region of the state of Bihar in India. Maithili Urdu does not have its own script or literature, yet it has maintained an oral history over many centuries. It has contributed in enriching the Maithili, Hindi and Urdu language and literature very profoundly. There are ten vowels in Maithili Urdu. It would be very interesting to know that out of these, there are four front vowels, four back vowels, and two central vowels. Lip rounding is not distinctive, but only the back vowels are rounded. Out of these ten vowels, three are short and seven are long. Length, thus, is a distinctive feature in Maithili Urdu, where short and long vowels show full phonological opposition in all positions. These are all pure vowels, non-nasalized. All vowels in Maithili Urdu can be nasalized. Consonantal phonemes in Maithili Urdu show four-way contrast between voiceless and voiced and unaspirated and aspirated at bilabial, dental, retroflex, palatal, velar, and glottal places of articulation. Phonetically, affricates also behave like stops. Similarly, the taps, laterals, and nasals also show a two-way contrast between unaspirated and aspirated. Aspiration, thus, is an overriding characteristic of the Maithili Urdu sound system. This study has greatly benifited from the similar work done by Dixit, 1963; Halle & Mohannan 1985; Masud Husain Khan, 1986; Hyman, 2003. In this paper, a brief overview of segmental phonology of Maithili Urdu will be presented wherein vowels and consonants and their phonotactic behavior will be described in detail.

Phonology and Phonetics of L2 Telugu English

The paper provides a partial phonological and phonetic description of the segmental structure of L2 Telugu English (TE). Previous research on the subject has been carried out in the context of a more general notion of Indian English (IE), so the properties of TE as distinct from other varieties of IE (e.g., Gujarati English) have largely remained unexplored. We have primarily focused on areas that previous research identified as prominent issues in the study of IE: vowel inventory and production, representation and realization of liquids, word-final obstruent phenomena, and allophones of /w/. To account for these aspects of TE, we have combined a generative approach to the study of an individual’s linguistic competence with linguistic fieldwork as a means of collecting first-hand data. On the basis of collected data, we have conducted a spectrographic analysis of TE vowels and a distributional analysis of TE consonants. The paper provides the first description of the acoustic spaces of TE vowels. We found that all vowels except [?] and [i] are more central in TE than in General American English. /r/ was realized as either [r] or [?] without a specific pattern, and occasionally as [?] in the intervocalic position. /l/ was realized as [?] in word-final position and as [l] elsewhere. TE displayed word-final obstruent devoicing for all obstruents except for /b/, which was consistently unreleased. /w/ was realized as [?] before front vowels and as [w] elsewhere. While previous research that concentrated on the broad notion of Indian English recognized the issue of /w/-allophony, it has not provided a principle that governs the exact distribution of /w/’s allophones. By combining the generative framework with linguistic fieldwork, we have accounted for this long-standing puzzle with a single rule: /w/ ? [?] / __ [–CONS, –BACK].

The sound of size revisited - New insights from a German-Hungarian comparative study on sound symbolism

Languages consistently display sound symbolic effects. In our study we expand size-related sound symbolic research to German and Hungarian, languages with both rounded and unrounded high front vowels as well as/ø/, so that we can separate the effect of lip rounding and vowel backness. Our subjects had to rate artificial words with CVCVCV structure. For analysis we used crossed random effect models in a way that is novel in this field. Results confirm previous findings: voiced consonants and back vowels are perceived to be larger. Additionally, we show that lip rounding increases size.

Palatalization in Central Bùlì

Palatalization is a process through which non-palatal consonants acquire palatality, either through a shift in place of articulation from a non-palatal region to the hard palate or through the superimposition of palatal qualities on a non-palatal consonant. In both cases, there is a front, non-low vowel or a palatal glide that triggers the process. In this paper, I examine the palatalization phenomena in Bùlì using Feature Geometry within the non-linear generative phonological framework. I argue that both full and secondary palatalization occur in Buli. The paper further explains that, the long high front vowel /i:/, triggers the formation of a palato-alveolar affricate which is realized in the Central dialect of Bùlì, where the Northern and Central dialects retain the derived palatal stop.

The Phonoaesthetic Features in T.S. Eliot’s Selected Poems

A comprehensive revision on literature, especially poetry, reveals that there is a very strong connection between poetry and phonology. This paper identifies the phonoaesthetic instances in poetry i.e., consonance and assonance in five selected poems written by T.S. Eliot who was the most prominent figure in English poetry.
 This paper finds out the answers to questions behind the use of such features and the harmony and aesthetic value between the process of writing a poem and phonological features such as consonance and assonance whether they have been used intentionally or casually.
 This paper shows that T.S. Eliot utilizes phonoaesthetic features i.e., consonance and assonance as stylistic features to add musicality and emphasis on certain phrases and words. It also confirms the hypothesis of this article that plosives consonants and close front vowels are heavily used and most frequently by (114) and (112) times for /s/ and /t/ and (77) and (85) times for /e/ and /i/.

Native non-prototypicality in vowel perception induces prominent neuromagnetic mismatch intensities in non-native speakers: a pilot study.

Neural mismatch response resulting from the difference between prediction and observation is related to change detection and discrimination. Robust neuromagnetic brain activity of auditory mismatch-related perception occurs in response to non-prototypical vowels inacross-category contrasts for first-language speakers. However, whether this non-prototypicality effect applies to within-category vowel perception remains to be elucidated. Here, healthy Japanese adults (n = 7) were subjected to magnetoencephalography (MEG) while watching a silent movie, and passively listened to synthesized English vowels /i/. We observed the source-level mismatch effect to the mid-high near-front vowel deviant [ɪ] with the most non-prototypical, unspecified feature in the participants' native language system. The mismatch effect recruited the left posterior superior temporal sulcus with a peak latency of 225ms post-stimulus onset. We further studied whether a longer F1 distance between vowel pairs would increase mismatch-activated intensities, however, we did not observe neuromagnetic changes when the prototypical anchor standard [i] was compared with three non-prototypical deviants differing in first resonance frequency (F1) values. Our results indicate that an F1 increase in within-category upper front vowel perception is a strong activator of mismatch responses measured by source-level activated intensities for non-native listeners.

Spectral and Temporal Characteristics of Vowels in Konkani.

The present study was undertaken to study the acoustic characteristics of vowels using spectrographic analysis in Mangalorean Catholic Konkani dialect of Konkani spoken in Mangalore, Karnataka, India. Recordings were done using CVC words in 11 males and 19 females between the age range of 18-55years. The CVC words consisted of combinations of vowels such as (/i, i:, e, ɵ, ə, u, o, ɐ, ӓ, ɔ/) and consonants such as (/m, k, w, s, ʅ, h, l, r, p, ʤ, g, n, Ɵ, ṭ, ḷ, b, dh/). Recordings were done in a sound-treated room using PRAAT software and spectrographic analysis was done and spectral and temporal characteristics such as fundamental frequency (F0), formants (F1, F2, F3) and vowel duration. The results showed that higher fundamental frequency values were observed for short, high and back vowels. Higher F1 values were noted for open vowels and F2 was higher for front vowels. Long vowels had longer duration compared to short vowels and females had longer vowel duration compared to males. The acoustic information in terms of spectral and temporal cues helps in better understanding the production and perception of languages and dialects.

Репрезентация финно-угорского *ä непервого слога (на материале мокшанских диалектов)

Introduction: the article examines the development of the Finno-Ugric phoneme *ä of the non-first syllable in the Moksha language, the representatives of which are represented by different inter-dialect and intra-dialect correspondences, depending on the specific phonetic position. The subject of the research is the dialects of the Moksha language. Objective: to research the representative potential of the Finno-Ugric non-first syllable *ä in the Moksha dialects in accordance with the phonetic environment; to determine its correspondences and to map the distribution areal. Research materials: the data collected during dialectological expeditions by the graduate students and employees of the Linguistics Sector of the Research Institute for the Humanities under the Government of the Republic of Mordovia, as well as by students of the National Department of the Philological Faculty of the Mordovian State University in the period from 2000 to 2015. Results and novelty of the research: in the result of our research, we came to the conclusion that the reflexes of the Finno- Ugric phoneme *ä of the non-first syllable are represented in all three dialects of the Moksha language. The historical vowel has survived only in the so called ä-dialect. It is observed in the position of a closed syllable in the presence of the same vowel in the first syllable (in several words), as well as in the position of an open syllable with front vowels in the first syllable, where it alternates with a back vowel a; in the other two dialects it corresponds to the vowel of the middle rise e. In the absolute outcome of most of the words *ä was realized into Ч, ə and ě, ə, which in the auslaut of names after a single consonant, being in a weak position, is dropped out. The vowel elision at the morphemic junction continues to the present day. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that the history of the development of the Finno-Ugric phoneme *ä of the non-first syllable has not been sufficiently considered. The relevance of the chosen topic is dictated by the need to study the unique features of the vocalism of the Moksha dialects in connection with the deep assimilative processes occurring in the language.