Lax Vowels Research Articles

Differential Effects of FonF and FonFS on Learning English Lax Vowels in an EFL Context

This study investigated the differential effects of focus-on-form (FonF: explicit instruction followed by focused tasks) and focus-on-forms (FonFS: explicit instruction followed by controlled exercises) on learning English lax vowels (i.e., /ɪ/, /ʊ/, /ʌ/) by Persian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. To this end, 48 learners took a voluntary 6-hour course: the experimental group (n = 17) received FonF, the comparison group (n = 16) received FonFS, and the control group (n = 15) engaged in theme-based discussions with no focus on the target vowels. Learners’ pronunciations were elicited in controlled read-aloud and spontaneous picture description tasks and acoustically measured for phonetic accuracy based on tongue positions (i.e., formant 1 [F1] for the height and formant 2 [F2] for the backness of the tongue). Results revealed that whereas both instructional types significantly improved learners’ phonetic accuracy (i.e., adjusting F1/F2 values) in the controlled task, only the FonF methodology proved effective in the spontaneous task with large effects in the delayed posttest. The control group revealed no improvement in any tasks. Overall, the results show that FonF instruction may offer substantial benefits to EFL learners to have more accurate pronunciations in EFL speech. The paper concludes with the pedagogical implications of the findings.

ESL learners’ intra-speaker variability in producing American English tense and lax vowels

Abstract Nonnative (L2) English learners are often assumed to exhibit greater speech production variability than native (L1) speakers; however, support for this assumption is primarily limited to secondary observations rather than having been the specific focus of empirical investigations. The present study examined intra-speaker variability associated with L2 English learners’ tense and lax vowel productions to determine whether they showed comparable or greater intra-speaker variability than native English speakers. First and second formants of three tense/lax vowel pairs were measured, and Coefficient of Variation was calculated for 10 native speakers of American English and 30 nonnative speakers. The L2 speakers’ vowel formants were found to be native-like approximately half of the time. Whether their formants were native-like or not, however, they seldom showed greater intra-speaker variability than the L1 speakers.

A phonetic examination of phonological ambisyllabicity: Focusing on temporal and spectral characteristics

This paper casts doubt on the existence of phonological ambisyllabicity and attempts to find its phonetic substances both temporally and spectrally. An intervocalic consonant becomes ambisyllabic when preceded by a stressed lax vowel, a theoretical apparatus to make the preceding stressed light syllable heavy by linking the intervocalic consonant to both preceding coda and following onset. In the experiment, temporal durations of ambisyllabic and non-ambisyllabic intervocalic consonants were compared, where consonants were varied with obstruents, nasals, and liquids. For a spectral measurement, lateral tokens were investigated because lateral /l/is the only consonant which shows a maximum allophonic difference between onset and coda (clear-[l] and dark-[ɫ]). Their F2-F1 values were compared among the laterals in ambisyllabic, non-ambisyllabic, word-initial onset, and word-final coda positions. Results showed that ambisyllabic and non-ambisyllabic consonants were not significantly different in duration for all three categories and that F2-F1 values of the laterals were not significantly different between ambisyllabic and non-ambisyllabic positions. This is not consistent with the phonological analysis. They were both distinctive from onset or coda laterals. This indicates that there might be a new allophony occurring in the intervocalic position where the preceding syllable is, whether its vowel is tense or lax, stressed. (University of Seoul · Korea University)

Acoustic characteristics of tense and lax vowels across sentence position in clear speech

This study examines how the inherent properties of tense and lax vowels interact with external factors, such as speech style (clear vs conversational) and position (sentence-medial vs sentence-final). Twelve speakers of American English recorded productions of the tense /i,u,ɑ/ and lax /ɪ,ɛ,æ,ʊ,ʌ/ vowels, all of which were lengthened and decentralized to a similar degree in clear speech. Furthermore, unlike tense vowels, lax vowels had a greater vowel space area in sentence-medial position, which was primarily driven by high vowels' decreased F1. Therefore, the defining properties of lax vowels (short duration and centralization) were altered by both speech style and sentential position.

Using ultrasound to examine contrastive hyperarticulation

The current paper examines the extent to which there is cross-linguistic evidence for the hyperarticulation of more phonologically contrastive vowel sounds. Hall et al. [2017, JCAA 45: 15] found that tense vowels in English are produced with more total tongue movement when in positions where they are more phonologically contrastive. This finding was established through the use of Optical Flow Analysis [Horn & Schunck 1981] on ultrasound videos of the tongue. The “more contrastive” positions were those in which the vowels could contrast with their lax vowel counterparts, while the “less contrastive” positions were those in which no such contrast was possible. While there was evidence that the degree of contrast affected the tongue movements, the data were somewhat confounded by the fact that the more contrastive positions were largely closed syllables, while the less contrastive positions were largely open syllables. In the current paper, we first replicate the original results with more tightly controlled phonetic contexts in English and then examine analogous results for Canadian French. Crucially, in Canadian French, [e] vs. [ɛ] contrast in open syllables and not in closed, such that the effects of syllable position and phonological contrast can be teased apart. [Funded by SSHRC.]The current paper examines the extent to which there is cross-linguistic evidence for the hyperarticulation of more phonologically contrastive vowel sounds. Hall et al. [2017, JCAA 45: 15] found that tense vowels in English are produced with more total tongue movement when in positions where they are more phonologically contrastive. This finding was established through the use of Optical Flow Analysis [Horn & Schunck 1981] on ultrasound videos of the tongue. The “more contrastive” positions were those in which the vowels could contrast with their lax vowel counterparts, while the “less contrastive” positions were those in which no such contrast was possible. While there was evidence that the degree of contrast affected the tongue movements, the data were somewhat confounded by the fact that the more contrastive positions were largely closed syllables, while the less contrastive positions were largely open syllables. In the current paper, we first replicate the original results with more tightly controlled...

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.

Acoustic Analysis of Intensive Language Exposure on Second Language Learners’ Cognitive Perception Pattern of American English Phonemes

This paper attempts to quantify the perception of tense vowel /i/ and lax vowel /I/ in American English by native speakers and Chinese learners and testify if Chinese learners also rely more on acoustic features than duration to differentiate the minimal pair /i/-/I/ in the phonetic system of American English. Based on the related phonetic studies in second language learners (SLLs), the perceptual assimilation model (PAM) and the speech learning model (SLM) were adopted to discuss the effect of intensive language exposures on the perception of English phonemes among Chinese learners. To quantify the effects of the ILE on the perception pattern of the SLLs, two English phonetic continuums were constructed for a tense-lax vowel contrast /i/ and /I/. Then, three groups of subjects, involving 60 English major students and 10 native speakers, received two identification tests and one discrimination test. The test results reveal that the native speakers and the SLLs relied on different acoustic cues to distinguish between /i/ and /I/. The former mainly depended on formant distribution, while the latter on duration. Besides, it is also concluded that the ILE enabled the SLLs to develop a similar perception pattern to that of the native speakers. The research sheds new light on the acquisition of second language among Chinese learners.

The phonetic specificity of contrastive hyperarticulation in natural speech

Abstract Evidence suggests that speakers hyperarticulate phonetic cues to word identity in a way that increases phonetic distance to similar competitors. However, the degree and type of phonetic similarity between competitors which induces hyperarticulation remains unclear. Here, we compared neighborhood density (as a representative of a phonetically-general type of similarity) to the existence of a phonetic cue-specific lexical minimal pair in terms of their ability to predict hyperarticulation of two different cue-types in a corpus of natural English speech. For all phonetic cues that we investigated – word-initial voiceless stop VOT, word-initial voiced stop VOT, and vowel-vowel Euclidean formant distance – cue-specific minimal pair existence significantly predicted cue hyperarticulation, while neighborhood density did not. Further, the direction of change in a phonetic cue was found not to be consistent within a given cue-type, but instead varied as a function of the phonetic relationship, creating greater phonetic distance to the competitor. For tokens of word-initial voiceless stops, existence of a voiced-stop minimal pair predicted significantly longer VOT, while for word-initial voiced stops, existence of a voiceless-stop minimal pair predicted a shorter VOT. For tokens of vowels, existence of a minimal pair defined by a nearby vowel predicted greater Euclidean distance in formant space from that vowel, rather than greater expansion of the vowel space per se. For example, lax vowels in words with a more peripheral vowel minimal pair competitor (e.g., ship ∼ sheep) were relatively centralized, while tense vowels in words with a more interior vowel minimal pair competitor (e.g., date ∼ debt) were relatively peripheralized.

영어 SMS 약어의 철자변이에 대한 음운분석

This paper considers the phonological characteristics and type frequency of spelling variation in English SMS abbreviations. We argue that spelling variation is not random but phonologically motivated. Showing that vowels are more likely to be deleted than consonants, we claim that word-intial vowel deletion is closely related to the trochaic rhythm of English, while word-medial vowel deletion is associated with word-initial prominence. We also show that word-final e is deleted only when the preceding vowel is short. Among consonants, gh and h are most frequently omitted, and r is deleted only in coda position, reflecting the /r/-deletion rule in Modern English. Meanwhile, geminate consonants are degeminated after a tense vowel, but degemination is optional after a lax vowel. We also show that ‘8’ is the most frequently used number homophone, and that only th and ks are subject to substitution. With regard to frequency, we assert that deletion (57.42%) occurs most frequently, which is followed by number homophone (13.23%), letter homophone (12.58%), substitution (9.68%) and alphanumeric homophone (1.94%) in that order. Besides, we also argue that spelling variation may result from assimilation and word-final e-insertion, though rare (1.29% each).

The Roles of Vowel Fronting, Lengthening, and Listener Variables in the Perception of Vocal Femininity.

The goal of this study was to test whether fronting and lengthening of lax vowels influence the perception of femininity in listeners whose dialect is characterized as already having relatively fronted and long lax vowels in male and female speech. Sixteen English words containing the /ɪ ɛ ʊ ɑ/ vowels were produced by a male speaker with 2 degrees of vowel fronting. Then, the vowel duration was manipulated in 3 steps. Thirty-nine listeners from the Southern United States judged how feminine each word sounded to them on an interval scale. The results of mixed-effects modeling showed that the words with more fronted and longer variants of the vowels were perceived as more feminine than the same words with less fronted and shorter variants of the vowels. These effects, however, were modulated by the vowel type, listener's area of upbringing, and gender. Fronting (except for /ʊ/) and lengthening of lax vowels make words sound more feminine for Southern listeners, which has implications for clients who wish to modify the perception of femininity invoked by their speech. The relative strength of the gender and regional associations of these vowel characteristics should be further examined across dialects.

Dynamic trajectories of tense vs. lax vowels in the American South

Regional variation in American English speech is often described in terms of vowel shifts, in which one or more sounds “move” within the X,Y plane of height and backness captured by vowels’ first and second formant values. Such shifts indicate which sounds are converging or diverging, providing predictions for language change and variation. Static characterizations of shifting, with a single pair of F1/F2 values taken near the vowels’ midpoint or intensity peak, provide an approximation of vowels’ relations, but fail to capture acoustic information during the rest of the vowels’ time course. In Southern dialects, where front tense and lax vowels may “swap places,” static measures show strong overlap between these pairs and thus predict mergers between, e.g., beet-bit, bait-bet; instead, these mergers’ clear lack of occurrence indicates the inadequacy of static methods. Using data from 64 semi-spontaneous linguistic interviews in the Digital Archive of Southern Speech, we model the shape and movement of vowels’ dynamic trajectories. Formant values taken at five locations show that tense and lax vowels have distinct beginning and endpoints, though they pass through shared acoustic space near their temporal midpoints. Sociolinguistic factors affecting trajectories’ length and shape are investigated using Generalized Additive Mixed Models.

Learning opacity in Stratal Maximum Entropy Grammar

Opaque phonological patterns are sometimes claimed to be difficult to learn; specific hypotheses have been advanced about the relative difficulty of particular kinds of opaque processes (Kiparsky 1971, 1973), and the kind of data that is helpful in learning an opaque pattern (Kiparsky 2000). In this paper, we present a computationally implemented learning theory for one grammatical theory of opacity, a Maximum Entropy version of Stratal OT (Bermúdez-Otero 1999, Kiparsky 2000), and test it on simplified versions of opaque French tense–lax vowel alternations and the opaque interaction of diphthong raising and flapping in Canadian English. We find that the difficulty of opacity can be influenced by evidence for stratal affiliation: the Canadian English case is easier if the learner encounters application of raising outside the flapping context, or non-application of raising between words (e.g. life with [ʌɪ]; lie for with [aɪ]).

The <i>loi de position</i> and the acoustics of French mid vowels

This paper reports the results of two experiments on the acoustics of French mid vowels in a variety in which close-mid vowels ([e], [ø], [o]) occur in open syllables and open-mid vowels ([ɛ], [oe], [ɔ]) in closed syllables, according to the loi de position. Open-mid allophones have consistently higher F1 realizations and more central F2 realizations than their close-mid counterparts, but are not consistently shorter. These results are problematic for accounts of the loi de position as a pattern of vowel reduction, with mid-vowel lowering and centralizing being caused by shortening. F1 and F2 distances between close-mid and open-mid allophones vary across different prosodic and consonantal contexts and these variations can be analyzed as resulting from duration-based undershoot. More broadly, the results have implications for the typology of closed-syllable vowel laxing: they suggest that tense and lax realizations cannot generally be derived from the same acoustic target via closed-syllable vowel shortening but have distinct acoustic targets.

Tense-lax merger: Bangla as a first language speakers’ pronunciation of English monophthongs

ABSTRACTNative speakers of English naturally differentiate tense–lax vowels (e.g. /i:/ in FEAST vs. /ɪ/ in FIST) in their speech. Can the speakers of Bangla, Hindi and Japanese as a first language (L1) learning and using English as a second language (L2) maintain such contrastive vowel qualities? Hence, this study investigates L1 Bangla speakers’ pronunciation of English tense–lax vowels. Data collected from recordings of a reading passage and a set of sentences by 19 speakers are analysed using Pratt, focusing on the contrast between traditionally paired English monophthongs /i:/ vs. /ɪ/, /u:/ vs. /ʊ/, /ͻ:/ vs. /ɒ/ and /ɑ:/ vs. /ʌ/ in terms of their length and high–low/front–back articulatory qualities. The findings suggest that the participants seem not to distinguish between these paired monophthongs in terms of their high–low/front–back qualities; although they mostly demonstrate maintaining their long–short features. Besides, these paired vowels appear to contrast to some extent on gender variation.

Patterns of vowel laxing and harmony in Iberian Spanish: Data from production and perception

We investigate the production and perception outcomes of sound changes involving phonological vowel harmony, and how phonetic processes (i.e., /s/ lenition and vowel laxing) bear on these outcomes. Our data come from two varieties of Iberian Spanish: Eastern Andalusian Spanish (EAS), a variety that undergoes lenition of word-final /s/, and North-Central Peninsular Spanish (NCPS), a variety that typically retains /s/. In Experiment 1 we show that EAS (but not NCPS) speakers lax the low and mid vowels /a e o/ (i.e., approximating [æ ɛ ɔ], respectively) of /as es os/-final words. In Experiment 2 we show that EAS (but not NCPS) speakers harmonize the mid vowels /e o/ when followed by laxed /a e o/. We analyze this right-to-left spreading as a phonologically-induced change, and argue that it cannot be interpreted as anticipatory coarticulation with word-final lax vowels. During Experiment 3, EAS and NCPS listeners judged the grammatical status of stimuli from the minimal pair [nene] – [nεnε] (‘boy’ – ‘boys’) in a forced-choice word identification task. While all listeners tended to associate [nene]-type stimuli as singular words, EAS listeners alone reliably associated [nεnε]-type stimuli as plural words. This suggests that EAS listeners have greater perceptual sensitivity to the /e/-/ε/ contrast than NCPS listeners. Altogether, our multifaceted approach offers insight on sound change from varied temporal perspectives: we explain what historical factors may have led to laxing and phonological harmony, and what synchronic motivations these processes may have.

Closed-syllable vowel laxing: A contrast enhancement strategy

Closed-syllable vowel laxing describes the cross-linguistic tendency for high and mid vowels to have higher F1 values and more central F2 values in closed than in open syllables. This pattern is often analyzed as resulting from vowel shortening in closed syllables. However, vowel undershoot does not generally result in an increase of F1 for mid vowels. This paper tests an alternative hypothesis according to which laxing is a strategy to enhance coda-consonant place contrasts, with lower and more central vowels providing more informative closure transitions than higher and more peripheral vowels. Two native French speakers were recorded uttering C1VC2 nonce words with C1, C2={p,t,k} and V={i,y,u,e,ø,o,ɛ,œ,ɔ,a}. 85 English and French hearers were presented with the stimuli without word-final bursts and were asked to identify the place of the word-final consonant. In accordance with the enhancement hypothesis, lowering accompanied by centralizing was found to improve [p]-[k] and [t]-[k] contrasts for front unrounded vowels and [p]-[k], [t]-[k], and [p]-[t] contrasts for back vowels. These contrasts were not systematically more distinct after front rounded vowels than after back and unrounded front vowels with similar F1 values (e.g., [y] vs. [i]/[u]), suggesting that centralizing alone is not sufficient to enhance place contrasts.

Vowel reduction of tense and lax vowels in Kermani accent

The present article aims to study tense and lax vowels in Kermani accent during the process of vowel reduction. In this study, ten participants (five men and five women with Kermani accent), were asked to pronounce 24 words and to repeat them for 3 times. The vowels of 12 words were in stressed syllables and the vowels of the others were in unstressed ones. The participants’ production was recorded using Shure microphone and was analyzed by PRAAT software (Ver. 5.2.24).Then the amount of duration, F1, F2 and F0 of vowels was measured. Results showed that tense vowels are longer in duration than lax ones, and F0 of vowels in stressed syllables is more than that in unstressed ones. Regarding F1 and F2, therefore, there is no distinguishing behaviour of the tense and lax vowels by which we could recognize them in unstressed syllables.

Word-internal “ambisyllabic” consonants are not multiply-linked in American English

There is an extensive literature on the syllabic affiliations of specific consonants that are typically referred to as ambisyllabic consonants. The standard view of such consonants is that they are multiply-linked to both the preceding and the following syllables (Gussenhoven, 1986; Hayes, 2009; Kahn, 1976, inter alia). In this article, we present the results of a production experiment probing the anticipatory nasalization patterns of nasal consonants with different syllabic affiliations in American English; we also present phonological data about obstruent devoicing patterns from Pennsylvania Dutchified English (PDE). Both lines of evidence suggest that when crucial confounds present in previous studies are removed, word-medial ambisyllabic consonants clearly pattern with word-medial codas and there is no evidence of any “intermediate” behavior. Furthermore, this is true of such consonants following both tense and lax vowels in our results.

Derived Imperfective Tensing in Kurpian

AbstractThis article discusses phonological generalizations concerning derived imperfectives in Kurpian, a dialect of Polish spoken in northern Mazovia. It is argued that, unlike Standard Polish, Kurpian has a live process that turns lax vowels into tense vowels in derived imperfectives. DI Tensing interacts with other rules of Kurpian, leading, in some cases, to Duke of York derivations. The paper is based 100% on the original fieldwork. A formal analysis of the descriptive generalizations is conducted in the framework of Optimality Theory.

Complementary length in vowel–consonant sequences: Acoustic and perceptual evidence for a sound change in progress in Bavarian German

This study is concerned with the Bavarian German dialect feature of complementary length in vowel plus consonant sequences according to which tense (long) vowels always precede lenis stops (short closure) and lax (short) vowels always precede fortis stops (long closure). The study investigates whether a vowel length contrast is developing before fortis stops due to dialect leveling. We measured vowel and consonant duration in trochaic words differing only in vowel length which were read by 40 older and younger Bavarian and Saxon (control group) German speakers. Older Bavarians distinguished tense and lax vowels by means of vowel to vowel plus consonant ratios that indicate an inverse timing pattern. Saxons and younger Bavarians signal the tense–lax distinction independently of the following stop length. A perception test showed that this sound change in progress also affects perception. We argue for a contact-induced change which is triggered by external as opposed to internal factors.