High Front Vowel Research Articles

An ultrasound study of contextual and syllabic effects in consonant sequences produced under heavy articulatory constraint conditions

The present ultrasound study investigates lingual coarticulatory resistance and differences in tongue configuration and contextual variability for consonants in syllable onset vs coda position in Catalan /iC#Ci/ sequences. In agreement with comparable ultrasound data for /aC#Ca/ sequences reported in an earlier study, coarticulatory resistance turned out to be less for /r/ (which is realized as a trill in onset position and exhibits a more tap-like realization in coda position), /l/ (which is not strongly dark), /s/ and the alveolopalatal /ɲ/ than for /p, t, n, k/. As expected, contextual variability was less for /iC#Ci/ than for /aC#Ca/ sequences due to the highly demanding requirements put on the tongue body by the high front vowel. Regarding the syllable-position-dependent differences, consonants were often longer but not less variable articulatorily in syllable initial than syllable final position. Syllable-position differences in lingual configuration could be ascribed to either a trend for consonants to be more prominent in onset vs coda position or to prominent coarticulatory effects from flanking /i/ rather than from the contextual consonant in the cluster. The conclusion is drawn that the reason why consonants may sound more reduced in coda vs onset position in heterosyllabic clusters is due less to their actual lingual configuration than to their being manifestly shorter and to specific production characteristics which depend not only on the upper articulators but on the jaw cycle as well.

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.

Accent-induced bias in linguistic transcriptions

Many linguistic analyses rely on phonetic transcriptions. Two factors that might affect the accuracy of transcriptions are perceived accent and the listener's linguistic knowledge about that accent. This article focuses on the susceptibility of transcribers to such accent-induced bias, based on speaker's accent, transcriber's variety, and the transcriber's knowledge about the language variety they are transcribing. We offer a method to statistically detect accent-induced biases in linguistic transcriptions.This article investigates accent-induced bias in transcriptions of Reference French and Laurentian French (in Canada). In Reference French, high front vowels are phonologically tense /i y/, but they may be phonetically realised as lax [ɪ ʏ]. In Laurentian French, lax [ɪ ʏ] occur as allophones of /i y/. We compare transcriptions of different groups of coders: native speakers of Reference French, native speakers of Laurentian French, and advanced L2 learners of French who are native speakers of Dutch. Half of the Dutch group was informed about the native variety of the speakers and the other half was not.Results show that perceived accent among the native transcribers is a relatively strong predictor for transcribed sounds. In addition, the Dutch transcribers who were informed about the speaker's variety transcribed more lax vowels in Laurentian French and more tense vowels in Reference French than the Dutch transcribers who were not informed. Native transcribers also showed contextual effects related to the allophonic distribution of the vowels in Laurentian French. These results are indicative of accent-induced bias. The results are analysed in a predictive top-down model to explain the effect of prior experience and information about the language variety in speech perception.

Effects of nonlinear frequency compression on the acoustic properties and recognition of speech sounds in Mandarin Chinese.

The present study examined the change in spectral properties of Mandarin vowels and fricatives caused by nonlinear frequency compression (NLFC) used in hearing instruments and how these changes affect the perception of speech sounds in normal-hearing listeners. Speech materials, including a list of Mandarin monosyllables in the form of /dV/ (12 vowels) and /Ca/ (five fricatives), were recorded from 20 normal-hearing, native Mandarin-speaking adults (ten males and ten females). NLFC was based on Phonak SoundRecover algorithms. The speech materials were processed with six different NLFC parameter settings. Detailed acoustic analysis revealed that the high front vowel /i/ and certain compound vowels containing /i/ demonstrated positional deviation in certain processed conditions in comparison to the unprocessed condition. All five fricatives showed acoustic changes in spectral features in all processed conditions. Fourteen Mandarin-speaking, normal-hearing adult listeners performed phoneme recognition with the six NLFC processing conditions. When the cut-off frequency was set relatively low, recognition of /s/ was detrimentally affected, whereas none of the NLFC processing configurations affected the other phonemes. The discrepancy between the considerable acoustic changes and the negligible adverse effects on perceptual outcomes is partially accounted for by the phonology system and phonotactic constraints in Mandarin.

Laryngeal height, modal registers, and modes of phonation contribute jointly to vocal timbre

Timbre encompasses every distinguishing quality of a sound other than its pitch, duration, loudness, and sound location. Musical sound makers exploit contrasts in timbre. The voice organ in particular is capable of an impressive array of vibrational patterns with acoustic consequences perceived as timbral changes. As a first step towards determining the dimensionality of perceptual timbre in a singing human voice, we assessed the relation between, on the one hand, production parameters, executed by a well-trained vocalist capable of the articulation control necessary for demonstrations, and on the other hand, the complex spectral and temporal modulations in the acoustic signal of the resulting 50 timbral variants. Production parameters on a high front vowel included 5 laryngeal heights (from the lowest possible to a mostly elevated position), 4 modes of phonation (clean, blowy, breathy, and pressed), and several changes to resonance (nasal, bright, and muted) as well as vocal register differences comparing vocal fry and modal registers. Raised and lowered larynx positions alter formants in a regular manner that overlaps with phonation patterns and other articulatory alterations of resonance.

Three-dimensional ultrasound images of Polish high front vowels

The 3-D ultrasound method has been applied to collect data on Polish high front vowels. In particular, Polish has one unambiguous high front vowel and another one that in the phonological literature is variously referred to as high central or back unrounded and transcribed as [ɨ]. While there exists a sizeable body of articulatory research on Polish, including X-rays from as early as the 50s and 60s, the ultrasound data reveal more detail about the position of the tongue center and tongue root. The data evaluated so far support the view that the vowel transcribed as [ɨ] is a front vowel. The two front vowels differ in the position of the tongue root, relative raising of the tongue, and extent of lip gesture, but do not differ substantially with regard to tongue body advancement on the font-back axis. The data also capture the temporal aspect of speech, and together with time-aligned audio recordings and video recordings of the lips, allow for fine-grained analysis of the acoustic effects of these articulatory gestures.

Sound Symbolism in English: Weighing the Evidence

It is generally recognized that the form of some words is not entirely arbitrary. Some words are clearly partly onomatopoeic, as with buzz, but claims are often made that there are correlations between form and meaning that do not always involve sound, initial gl- allegedly being associated with emitting light as in glitter, glimmer and glow, and the rhyme -ump being associated with a solid mass as in words like lump, stump and rump. This is sound symbolism or phonaesthesia. An exploration of the Oxford English Dictionary reveals that while some proposed examples have little or no basis, some sets of rhymes such as -ash and -ump and the group of words with the onset fl- can be shown to have grown considerably during the Modern Period with some echoic formations, some blends and some shifts of meaning. The oft-claimed association of high-front vowels with smallness and low vowels with largeness also receives some support. Compounds with vowel alternation or onset alternation also exhibit sound symbolism.

Stressed vowel assimilation to palatal consonants in early Romance

This study is an investigation of the phonetic causes of stressed mid and low vowel raising and diphthongization before single palatal consonants and [jC] sequences in the Early Romance languages, as for example [a] raising in Spanish leche derived from Latin [ˈlakte] ‘milk’. The initial hypothesis put to test is that the chances that vowel assimilation applies should increase with the prominence of the anticipatory consonant-to-vowel effects in tongue dorsum raising and fronting and in the second formant (F2) frequency. In accordance with this prediction, vowel assimilatory processes were found to operate most often before [j] + dentoalveolar sequences and single palatals involving maximal dorsal contact in the case of [a] (and to some extent for [ɛ ɔ] as well), and before single palatals rather than before consonant sequences with [j] in the case of [o]. Moreover, assimilation was more prone to affect [ɛ a ɔ o] than the mid high front vowel [e]. The phonetic account of vowel raising and diphthongization reported in the present study complements other explanatory proposals based on chronological and etymological factors. It also supports the notion that the categorization of segmental coarticulatory effects as assimilatory increase with coarticulation size, and that the diachronic vowel changes in question occurred at a time when palatal consonants were in the process of gaining stability.

Age and Phonetic Influences on Velar Flutter as a Component of Nasal Turbulence in Children With Repaired Cleft Palate.

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of age and selected phonetic factors on velar flutter as a component of nasal turbulence in children with repaired cleft palate. A total of 30 children with repaired cleft palate with or without cleft lip ranging in age from 4 to 13 years (mean, 8.6 years; standard deviation, 2.4 years) who exhibited nasal turbulence characterized by velar flutter participated in the study. The headset of a nasometer was used to record the children producing multiple repetitions of consonant-vowel (CV) syllables that contrasted the stops /p/ and /t/ with the fricatives /f/ and /s/ and the high-front vowel /i/ with the low mid-central vowel /Λ/. All targeted consonants were coded relative to the presence of flutter using both perceptual and spectral criteria. Percentages of syllables coded for flutter were calculated as a function of consonant and vowel types. Intra-and interjudge reliability of coding was high. Percentages of syllables with velar flutter ranged from a high of 100% to a low of 4% among the participants. A Spearman rank-order correlation between age and percentage of syllables with flutter was nonsignificant. Mantel-Haenszel tests for repeated measures indicated that flutter occurred more often during production of syllables containing /i/ (62%) when compared with /Λ/ (50%) (P = .029). Velar flutter as a component of nasal turbulence varies widely among children with repaired cleft palate. CV syllables with high vowels appear to trigger velar flutter more often than syllables with low vowels.

Analysis of children’s high front vowel area function using three-dimensional ultrasound imaging

Understanding children’s speech production can follow from an analysis of children’s vocal tract area functions. While some studies have used imaging techniques on children to measure tongue contours, to our knowledge, no vocal tract area functions of children have been examined. We attempt to measure the oral cavity vocal tract area functions of children’s vowels using three-dimensional ultrasound imaging recordings of the tongue and palate. In this investigation, we model the oral cavity area function of the vowel [i] of children and compare it to that of an adult oral cavity area function measured using the same ultrasound technique. We show evidence that the tongue positioning and articulation of the vowel [i] is dramatically different for children and adults. Specifically, we focus on how the different tongue positioning of children and adults affects the vocal tract transfer function of [i]. Some theories of children’s speech, either mechanically or perceptually based, can be inferred from these findings and will be compared to previous studies. [Work supported in part by NSF Grant 1551113, NSF Grant 1551131, NSF Grant 1514544, and NIH Grant R01DC007124.]

An Ultrasound Study of Coarticulatory Resistance and Coarticulatory Aggression

<em><span lang="EN-IN">The term 'coarticulatory resistance' refers to the degree to which a given segment, a consonant or a vowel, resists potential interference of neighbouring segments. The phoneme has coarticulatory resistance exert stronger influence on neighbouring phoneme and exhibit less contextual variation, this characteristic termed as 'coarticulatory aggression'. The present study aims to analyse the coarticulatory resistance and coarticulatory aggression based on ultrasound imaging technique. Thirty adult Malayalam speakers participated as subjects. The stimuli consisted of VCV sequences, with C corresponding to voiced/voiceless counterparts of dental stops (/t̪/, /d̪/) or retroflex stops (/ʈ/, /ɖ/) or velar stops (/k/, /g/), in the context of vowels /a, i, u/. Measurements of coarticulation resistance of consonants, preceding vowels and following vowels were carried out based on Root Mean Square (RMS) distance between the tongue contours of vowels and consonants. Results showed that coarticulatory resistance of consonants were decreased in the order from retroflex followed by velars and dentals. High front vowel /i/ resisted coarticulation of preceding consonant better than other vowels considered. It highlights the trend of </span><span lang="EN-IN">Degree of Articulatory Constraint (DAC) </span><span lang="EN-IN">model for both consonant and vowel system.</span></em>

Palatalization in educated Cairene Arabic

In the speech of some educated Cairenes, the coronal stops /t d tˤ dˤ/ acquire a secondary palatal articulation before high front vowels and glides, resulting in [tj] or [dj]. Based on first-hand data, this article provides a detailed phonetic and phonological investigation of this palatalization process in an attempt to fill a descriptive gap in the literature on Cairene Arabic. By examining the full range of triggers, targets, and potential blockers, I demonstrate that this is a phonetic coarticulatory effect, and that it should be distinguished from phonological assimilation. I also explore the hypothesis that this process – characterized as a sound change in progress – has been phonologized in a different sociolect of Cairene Arabic.

Variability of Acoustic Features of Hypernasality and it’s Assessment

Hypernasality (HP) is observed across voiced phonemes uttered by Cleft-Palate (CP) speakers with defective velopharyngeal (VP) opening. HP assessment using signal processing technique is challenging due to the variability of acoustic features across various conditions such as speakers, speaking style, speaking rate, severity of HP etc. Most of the study for hypernasality (HP) assessment is based on isolated sustained vowels under laboratory conditions. We measure the variability of acoustic features and detect HP using vowel /i/, /a/ and /u/ in continuous read speech with gradually increasing severity of HP of CP speakers. Linear predictive coding (LPC) method is used for acoustic feature extraction. In first part of our study, we observe the variation in acoustic parameters within and across vowel category with gradually increasing HP. We observe that inter-speaker variability in spectral features among CP subjects for vowel /i/ is 0.96, /a/ has 1.13 and vowel /u/ has 2.05. The inter-speaker variability measurement suggests that high back vowel /u/ is mostly affected and has the highest variability. High front vowel /i/ is least affected and has the lowest variability with HP. In the second part, ratio of vowel space area (VSA) of hypernasal and normal speech is calculated and used as a measure for HP detection. We observe that VSA spanned by CP subjects is 0.65 times less than isolated uttered Bangla nasal VSA and 0.43 times less than read speech uttered English oral VSA.

Adaptation of English stops into Mandarin Chinese

This study investigates the adaptation of English stops into Mandarin Chinese. English stops have a binary [±voice] contrast, whereas Mandarin Chinese stops are distinguished by aspiration. A corpus study based on 720 English loanwords shows that English voiced stops are mapped to the unaspirated stops in Mandarin Chinese while English voiceless stops are mapped to the aspirated stops in Mandarin Chinese, regardless of whether the English stops are aspirated or unaspirated. This finding is in favor of the phonological view on loanword adaptation in that phonemic contrast in the source language is maintained through one-to-one mapping between the source sounds and the loan sounds. However, the English bilabial aspirated stop [ph] is mapped to either the aspirated or unaspirated bilabial stop in Mandarin Chinese. Further, the English velar stop before a high front vowel is mapped to the Mandarin Chinese affricate. Such mappings differ from the general pattern and can be explained by perceptual similarity based on VOT between the source sounds and the loan sounds. We draw a conclusion that both faithful phonological contrast and perceptual similarity work together for the adaptation of English stops into Mandarin Chinese. (Qingdao University of Science and Technology · Chonnam National University)

Conditional Entropy and Deflected Contrast for Epenthetic Vowels in Korean Loanwords

In either Korean loanword phonology or second language acquisition, the affricate consonant system is quite notable in its behavior of invoking vowel epenthesis. Contra our expectation that as default or unmarked vowel, a mid-high vowel /□/ emerges as usual, a high front vowel /i/ arises in this specific context. In this article, we try to prove that this type of divergence comes from Korean-specific dependency between preceding affricates and accompanying vowels. In other words, for the bigrams consisting of affricates-vowels, a certain degree of conditional entropy therein is believed to make a difference in Korean. The transfer effect of the L1 sound patterns proves to be valid under the condition that a threshold level of probability or entropy for the concerned sequence in L1 should be met. Another factor contributes to the nature of anti-homonymy by differentiating the /z/-ending stimuli from the affricate-ending as part of deflected contrast. (Daejeon University)

FREQUENCY EFFECTS ON THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF ENGLISH WORDS WITH HIGH FRONT VOWELS

The aim of the present study is to examine to what extent intelligibility scores, as measured through word transcription, correlate with lexical frequency and with listeners’ familiarity with the target words. 32 listeners from different language backgrounds had to orthographically transcribe ten missing target-words (all CVC words, five with the tense high front vowel and five with its lax counterpart), which were produced by Brazilian Portuguese learners of English. In order to assess word frequency, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (DAVIES, 2013) was used. Moreover, listeners’ familiarity with the target lexical items was assessed using a four-point rating scale. Spearman correlations revealed significant, and moderate to strong relationships between intelligibility, frequency and familiarity, showing that the more frequent the lexical item, the more intelligible it was according to listeners’ performance; the more familiar listeners were to a certain lexical item, the more intelligible it was. Furthermore, the semantic and syntactic cotext of the sentences containing the target words influenced listeners’ performance to a certain extent, depending both on the listeners’ L2 proficiency level, the acoustic features of the target words, and lexical frequency

Prosodic boundaries effect on segment articulation in standard Chinese: An articulatory and acoustic study

This paper presents an electropalatographic (EPG) and acoustic study of prosodic boundaries effect on the domain-initial segments in Standard Chinese. Two speech sounds, namely, the voiceless unaspirated alveolar stop /t/ and the high front vowel /i/, were studied to examine the domain-initial strengthening in both spatial and temporal dimensions. The articulatory and acoustic parameters of the speech sounds were compared in initial positions of five prosodic constituents in Standard Chinese, namely, a Syllable, a Foot, an Immediate Phrase, an Intonational Phrase, and an Utterance. The results show that: (1) the production of the domain-initial consonantal gesture was prosodically encoded. The linguopalatal contact and the seal duration varied as a function of the prosodic boundary strength. The linguopalatal contact was dependent on the seal duration in a nonlinear fashion. Of the acoustic properties of the domain-initial stop, the total voiceless interval and voicing during closure were found to be reliable acoustic correlates that mark the hierarchical structure of the prosody. (2) At the release moment of the domain-initial stop, no consistent pattern was found to support the domain-initial strengthening. The linguopalatal contact of the vowel immediately following the domain-initial consonant did not show a clear trend of domain-initial strengthening; however, the phonatory features of vowels were indicative of pitch reset at major prosodic boundaries. These indicate that the domain-initial strengthening is restricted on the segment immediately following the boundary. In conclusion Standard Chinese strengthens the phonetic features of the domain-initial segments as a function of boundary strength, which serves as an important way to mark prosodic structure in Standard Chinese.

The differential influence of vowels and palatal covering on nasalance scores.

Objective : To investigate whether nasalance scores would differ when the hard palate and soft palate were covered during speech. Design : Nasalance scores were obtained during production of sentence stimuli loaded with differing vowel content across three conditions: (1) hard and soft palate uncovered (U); (2) hard palate covered by acrylic appliance (H); (3) both hard and soft palate covered by acrylic appliance (B). Sentences were loaded with high front, low front, high back, low back, or mixed vowels. Velopharyngeal closure was verified by nasoendoscopy. Participants : Six female adults with normal speech and resonance provided the speech samples. Main Outcome Measures : Nasalance scores for each of five sentences in each of three palatal conditions. Results : Mixed and high front sentences had significantly higher mean nasalance scores in the U (P < .01) and H (P < .05) conditions but not in the B condition. For all sentence stimuli combined across palatal conditions, there was a significant difference in mean nasalance scores between H and B conditions (P < .05) but not between the U condition and either the H or B conditions (P > .05). Conclusions : Data suggest that the primary place of transpalatal transfer of acoustic energy was the soft palate but only sentences with high-front vowels were affected by this phenomenon.

Revisiting Mandarin ‘apical vowels’: An articulatory and acoustic study

The present study investigates the articulatory and acoustic properties of the unique apical segments in Mandarin Chinese that occur after dental and retroflex sibilants instead of the high front vowel [i]. An ultrasound study showed that the segments are homorganic with the preceding dental and retroflex sibilants. However, an acoustic study showed that they have a periodic waveform and clear formant structures with no inherent frication noise, indicating that they are not ‘voiced fricatives’. The results also suggest that the observed F2 pattern can only be explained with an acoustic model of a sonorant consonant, wherein F2 is attributed to the cavity behind the apical constriction. Based on this, it is argued that the segments can be best seen as ‘dental approximant []’ and ‘retroflex approximant [ɻ]’. A phonological implication of the pattern is also discussed: the co-occurrence restriction with the high front vowel eliminates a potential chance of palatalization of the dental and retroflex sibilants that may lead to neutralization of the place contrast. The tongue front gesture in the following approximants seems to provide an additional cue to the place of the preceding consonants; the low F3 of [ɻ], for example, enhances cues to the place of the preceding retroflex sibilant.

Relative distances among English front vowels produced by Korean and American speakers

This study examined the relative distances among English front vowels in a message produced by 47 Korean and American speakers from an internet speech archive in order to provide better pronunciation skills for Korean English learners. The Euclidean distances in the vowel space of F1 and F2 were measured among the front vowel pairs. The first vowel pair [i-ɛ] was set as the reference from which the relative distances of the other two vowel pairs were measured in percent in order to compare the vowel sounds among speakers of different vocal tract lengths. Results show that F1 values of the front vowels produced by the Korean and American speakers increased from the high front vowel to the low front vowel with differences among the groups. The Korean speakers generally produced the front vowels with smaller jaw openings than the American speakers did. Second, the relative distance of the high front vowel pair [i-ɪ] showed a significant difference between the Korean and American speakers while that of the low front vowel pair [ɛ-æ] showed a non-significant difference. Finally, the Korean speakers in the higher proficiency level produced the front vowels with higher F1 values than those in the lower proficiency level.