Low Vowels Research Articles

Nasometric evaluation of resonance disorders: A norm study In Turkish

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to adapt the Simplified Nasometric Assessment Procedures-Revised (SNAP-R) [1] to Turkish, gather norms from Turkish speakers, and test the sensitivity and specificity of the adapted test. Finally, this study was designed to determine if there are any differences in average nasalance scores due to age, gender, and vowel content of the passage. Methods240 children without any known speech, language or hearing disorders and 40 children with cleft palate participated in the study. Participants were divided into three groups according to their age (ages 4–7; 8–12; and 13–18). Data for this descriptive study was collected in the school settings and in a center of speech and language therapy. ResultsThis study showed a slight increase in nasalance with age, but no difference in nasalance based on gender. Furthermore, the nasalance score is determined by vowel content of the passage and that high vowels have higher nasalance than the low vowels. ConclusionThis paper offers a new test for nasometric evaluation in the Turkish language, which has relatively high specificity and sensitivity in the evaluation of hypernasality.

Perception and Acoustic Studies of Vowel Intelligibility in Dysphonic Speech

This study aimed to (1) examine the effect of dysphonia and background noise on the identifiability of vowels, and (2) evaluate the relationship between the degree of vowel intelligibility and vowel-related acoustic measurements. A speech perception experiment was conducted with speech samples collected from 10 adult females with healthy voices and 10 adult females with dysphonia. The speech material was 11 vowels of American English in /h/-vowel-/d/ format. Cafeteria noise was added to these samples at a signal-to-noise ratio of -6 dB. A total of 10 adults with normal hearing participated in a speech perception experiment, in which the vowels were presented with and without the noise. F1 and F2 frequencies of the vowels were measured, and their relationships with the vowel intelligibility were statistically evaluated. The group-level analysis showed that vowel intelligibility was lower in dysphonic speech than normal speech, both in quiet and at signal-to-noise ratio of -6 dB. The intelligibility was higher for the high vowels than the low vowels. In general, the vowel confusion pattern was similar between normal and dysphonic speech. However, data from a speaker with severe diplophonia showed a distinct confusion pattern. Voice quality ratings did not significantly correlate with the vowel intelligibility. There was a significant correlation between F2 and the vowel intelligibility in quiet. A post-hoc acoustic analysis revealed that vowels of the speakers with lower vowel intelligibility had lower acoustic energy above 1 kHz. Dysphonia negatively affects vowel intelligibility. Low vowels were more vulnerable to the effect of dysphonia than high vowels. Among different types of dysphonic voice qualities, diplophonia appears to be particularly detrimental to vowel intelligibility. F2 significantly correlated with vowel intelligibility; however, this result requires a careful interpretation. Given that the acoustic energy above 1 kHz resulted in better intelligibility in noise, a treatment strategy that targets this frequency region may help improve intelligibility in noise. Future studies should examine the generalizability of this finding to different age and gender groups, and intelligibility as a whole.

Чередование верхних и неверхних гласных в лично-притяжательных суффиксах имен существительных в сургутском диалекте хантыйского языка

Personal-possessive 1st and 2nd person singular noun affixes in the Surgut dialect of the Khanty language, as well as 1st person plural noun affixes (irregular in various dialects) with singular objects are represented by several allomorphs: 1SG.SG ‒ =əм / =эм / =ам; 2SG.SG ‒ =əн / =э (=эн) / =а; 1PL.SG ‒ (?)=əв / =эв / =ив / =ув / =ав. When the personal-possessive affixes are attached, vowel alternation occurs in several roots. The choice of specific allomorphs and the presence or absence of alternation depends on the root vowels. In roots with short vowels, there is no alternation, and affixes with lower vowels are used: =ам (1SG.SG) and =а (1SG.SG). When the personal-possessive affixes are attached to roots with long vowels, lower vowels are replaced by corresponding upper vowels. After roots with long upper vowels, =эм (1SG.SG) and =э (2SG.SG) affix variants are used, and no alternation occurs, because vowels can no longer be ‘moved’ upwards. After stems with long non-upper vowels, the =əм (1SG.SG) and =əн (2SG.SG) affixes are used, and alternation takes place in the root. This is not true for some specific cases: in roots with long middle vowels, these processes may occur according to the upper vowel model, or the lower vowel model; for example, the lexeme вӧӈ ‘son-in-law’, which contains a short vowel, can be followed by affixes with the vowel э, typical for roots with long upper vowels. Our research is based on field materials collected in the Surgut District, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, or Yugra, in 2017‒2019. The audio records were segmented and annotated in the Praat software. Acoustic analysis and further statistical analysis of our data was performed on the basis of Emu-SDMS corpus system and R language.

SOUND SYMBOLISM OF FRONT VOWELS IN ENGLISH ONOMATOPOEIC WORDS

This is a qualitative research that focuses on the meaning represented in the phoneme contained in English onomatopoeic words. Onomatopoeia is word that imitates the sounds of human, animal, things, actions, and nature in the world. Onomatopoeia exists in many reading materials such as comics, fables, tales and poetry. This research focuses on the onomatopoeic words which are contained in Oxford English Dictionary for the dictionary is regularly updated. Out of two kinds of phoneme, which are consonants and vowels, this research limits the investigation for only English front vowels. Based on the manner of articulation, English front vowels are divided into front high tense unrounded vowel /i/, front high lax unrounded vowel /ɪ/, front mid tense unrounded vowel /e/, front mid lax unrounded vowel /ɛ/, and front low lax unrounded vowel /ӕ/. This approach used in this research is called sound symbolism which is a study of relation between sound and meaning. This research applies low-level properties, a mechanism in sound symbolism that is associating the sound to the meaning based on the shared perceptual feature in both phoneme and associated stimuli. The mechanism is used as the method of the research for the researcher explores the characteristics of front vowels contained in English onomatopoeic words that are used to represent the sounds produced by human, animals, natures, machines, and other things. Based on the investigation, the result indicates that the higher vowels the more diminutive meaning it indicates, while the lower vowels the more augmentative meaning it indicates.

Highs and Lows: A Previously Unattested Tone Split from Vowel Height in Metnyo Ambel

AbstractAmbel is a tonal Austronesian (South Halmahera‐West New Guinea) language, spoken to the west of New Guinea. There are two dialects of Ambel: Metsam and Metnyo. In this paper, the segments and tones of proto‐Ambel monosyllables are reconstructed. Proto‐Ambel had two tones, *High and *Rise; toneless monosyllables are also reconstructed. The tonal phonology of Metsam Ambel is identical with the proto‐Ambel system. The tone system of Metnyo Ambel, however, has undergone two innovations: an unconditioned merger of *Rise and toneless syllables; and a primary split affecting proto‐Ambel toneless syllables. Notably, this latter change was conditioned by vowel height: toneless monosyllables with high vowel nuclei (*i or *u) remained toneless, while those with non‐high vowel nuclei (*e, *a, or *o) merged with *High tone. The diachronic development of High tone on non‐high vowels has not previously been attested. The possible mechanisms that caused this split will therefore be given special attention. Based on experimental phonetic evidence, it will be argued that the split was caused by the neutralisation, in low‐pitched contexts, of the intrinsic differences in fundamental frequency found between high and low vowels; combined with the utilisation of Intrinsic Pitch, an auditory mechanism used to compensate for intrinsic f0 differences.

Um estudo sobre o acento gráfico na aquisição da escrita: ortografia e fonologia

This paper discusses the criteria used by third and fifth graders who attend a public school, in Pelotas, RS, Brazil, regarding the function of diacritical marks in the writing system. Considering the close relationship between prosodic stress and the rules of use of diacritical marks, the study reported in this paper aimed at investigating children's hypotheses concerningthese orthographic devices. Data were collected by a controlled writing instrument, which was especially designed for this research, and by clinical interviews guided by the Piagetian method (Carraher, 1989). After completing awriting task, children were induced to explain the reasons that led them to usediacritics in their spelling. The analysis of data on their written production showed that children got the diacritical mark right, mainly in contexts in which alternation of vowel timbre could occur, that is, in medium and low medium vowels. Results of the interviews highlighted the emergence of criteria based on acoustic and graphic aspects. The analysis allowed us to define a hierarchy of acoustic criteria, i. e., vocalic timbre, vowel duration and prominence.

Intrinsic fundamental frequency of Amharic vowels

Intrinsic fundamental frequency (IF0) refers to the cross-linguistic tendency for high vowels to have a higher F0 than low vowels (Whalen and Levitt, 1995). IF0 is often thought to be a result of mechanical coupling, where tongue movement causes changes in the laryngeal structures, perturbing the F0. Ohala and Eukel (1987) propose that high vowels lead to increased vertical tension on the true vocal folds, which raises F0. In contrast, the tongue-compression hypothesis proposes that low vowels induce vocal fold slackening, which lowers F0 (Ewan, 1979). The purpose of the present study is to investigate the cause of IF0 by comparing high, mid, and low vowels in Amharic, using audio and EGG signals to measure F0 and contact quotient for different vowel heights. Amharic was chosen because it contrasts three heights of central vowels. The goals are to confirm that IF0 effects are found in Amharic and determine if voice quality changes further support either hypothesis. Discussion will focus on how F0 and contact quotient differ by vowel height, and whether the results support the tongue-pull hypothesis (where IF0 is driven by high tongue position), the tongue-compression hypothesis (where IF0 is driven by low-back tongue position), or both.

Two applications of movable mandible for physical models of the human vocal tract

The first application of a movable mandible for physical models of the human vocal tract is based on the 2017 static-model, the vocal-tract configuration of which was set to produce the vowel /a/. Two parts of the model, upper and lower jaws, are combined with a miniature robot hand unit to achieve articulatory movements for visual cues in a speech perception study. The second application is based on the 2018 dynamic-model, which is physically able to produce human-like speech sounds with a flexible material. Because portions of the articulators including the top surface of the tongue are made of a gel-type material, a user can manipulate the shape of the tongue and articulate different vowels and a certain set of consonants for educational purposes, for example. However, the mandible of the model is fixed, making it difficult to manipulate different sounds with different jaw openings, such as high versus low vowels. Therefore, a new model was developed by adding an additional mandible mechanism to the 20...

The power of online connectivity: is the future of Australia's midwifery education a flexible online learning experience?

Spontaneous nasalization is the emergence of distinctive nasalization in contexts lacking an historical etymological nasal. In Thai, low and mid-low vowels nasalize after /h/ and to a lesser degree after /ʔ/. It has been reasoned that nasalization after /h/ may occur because breathiness and nasalization are acoustically similar; both introduce higher energy at low frequencies and increase spectral tilt. Glottal consonants may generally facilitate nasalization because aerodynamically they do not require velopharyngeal closure. We investigated velopharyngeal opening (VPO) during vowels after /h/ and/ ʔ/ and measured spectral tilt (H1–H2). We measured VPO by processing oblique ultra-fast magnetic resonance images of the velopharyngeal port. Four Thai speakers exhibited a complex system of VPO that varied based on vowel height and preceding consonant. Low vowels after /h/ manifested more physiological nasalization than low vowels after /ʔ/, while the former were often produced with higher spectral tilt, which may be indicative of either increased breathiness or nasalization. While VPO is likely responsible for impressions of greater nasalization after /h/, our findings suggest that breathiness and VPO may interact in the spontaneously nasalized vowels of Thai.

Normalized gestural overlap measures and spatial properties of lingual movements in Korean non-assimilating contexts*

The current electromagnetic articulography study analyzes several articulatory measures and examines whether, and if so, how they are interconnected, with a focus on cluster types and an additional consideration of speech rates and morphosyntactic contexts. Using articulatory data on non-assimilating contexts from three Seoul-Korean speakers, we examine how speaker-dependent gestural overlap between C1 and C2 in a low vowel context (/a/-to-/a/) and their resulting intergestural coordination are realized. Examining three C1C2 sequences (/k(#)t/, /k(#)p/, and /p(#)t/), we found that three normalized gestural overlap measures (movement onset lag, constriction onset lag, and constriction plateau lag) were correlated with one another for all speakers. Limiting the scope of analysis to C1 velar stop (/k(#)t/ and /k(#)p/), the results are recapitulated as follows. First, for two speakers (K1 and K3), i) longer normalized constriction plateau lags (i.e., less gestural overlap) were observed in the pre-/t/ context, compared to the pre-/p/ (/k(#)t/>/k(#)p/), ii) the tongue dorsum at the constriction offset of C1 in the pre-/t/ contexts was more anterior, and iii) these two variables are correlated. Second, the three speakers consistently showed greater horizontal distance between the vertical tongue dorsum and the vertical tongue tip position in /k(#)t/ sequences when it was measured at the time of constriction onset of C2 (/k(#)t/>/k(#)p/): the tongue tip completed its constriction onset by extending further forward in the pre-/t/ contexts than the uncontrolled tongue tip articulator in the pre-/p/ contexts (/k(#)t/>/k(#)p/). Finally, most speakers demonstrated less variability in the horizontal distance of the lingual-lingual sequences, which were taken as the active articulators (/k(#)t/=/k(#)p/ for K1; /k(#)t/</k(#)p/ for K2 and K3). Taken together, the results suggest that biomechanical constraints be, at least partly, active: speakers can control spatio-temporal articulatory coordination in an interactive way such that greater tongue dorsum horizontal advancement is related to less gestural overlap in consecutive lingual-lingual (/k(#)t/) sequences.

The Effect of Tongue–Jaw Coupling on Phonetic Distinctiveness of Vowels in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Purpose The aim of this study was to determine the relation of tongue-jaw coupling to phonetic distinctiveness of vowels in persons at different stages (i.e., early, middle, late) of bulbar motor involvement in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and healthy controls. Method The pattern of spatial tongue-jaw coupling was derived from 11 individuals with ALS and 11 healthy controls using the parallel factor analysis. Two articulatory components, which correspond to tongue displacement independent of the jaw (iTongue) and jaw contribution to tongue displacement (cJaw), were extracted from the composite tongue-jaw displacement. These articulatory components were correlated with F1 (i.e., height) and F2-F1 (i.e., advancement) of 4 vowels (/i/, /u/, /æ/, and /ɔ/) across all participants in each group. In addition, a comprehensive index of functional tongue-jaw coupling was derived as the ratio of cJaw/(iTongue + cJaw), and an acoustic index of vowel distortion (VowelDis) was derived to quantify the overall disease-related changes in phonetic distinctiveness of vowels. Based on these indices, disease-related changes in tongue-jaw coupling and phonetic distinctiveness of vowels were examined in individuals at the early, middle, and late stages of the disease. Results For healthy controls, both iTongue and cJaw contributed to F2-F1, while only cJaw contributed to F1. For individuals with ALS, both iTongue and cJaw contributed to F1, whereas only cJaw contributed to F2-F1. Disease-related changes in tongue-jaw coupling included (a) an overall decrease of the percent contribution of the tongue to the composite tongue-jaw displacement accompanied by an increase of percent contribution of the jaw and (b) several changes in the direction of tongue and jaw displacements occurred at different stages of the disease. These disease-related changes in tongue-jaw coupling had various impacts on phonetic distinctiveness of vowels, resulting in (a) a backward shift of front vowels and reduced front-back vowel contrasts, which occurred early and throughout the disease stages; (b) raising of all vowels during the middle stage of the disease; and (c) reduced high-low vowel contrasts during the late stage of the disease. Overall, phonetic distinctiveness of vowels deteriorated progressively throughout the disease course. Conclusions Different from healthy controls who established optimal functional coupling between the tongue and the jaw during vowel productions, individuals at the early-to-middle stages of bulbar ALS showed various adaptive changes in tongue-jaw coupling in response to the disease-related biomechanical and muscular changes in the articulators (particularly in the tongue). These adaptive changes in tongue-jaw coupling were found to be partially effective in mitigating the negative effect of articulatory involvement on phonetic distinctiveness of vowels. As the disease progressed to the late stage, such adaptations appeared to be no longer evident, resulting in a substantial overall reduction of vowel contrasts.

Moraic Domains between feet and syllables: An argument from vowel reduction typology

In this paper, I propose a separate prosodic domain that regulates mora assignment in syllables: the Moraic Domain, a domain between the foot and the syllable in which only the head syllable may be moraic (see also van der Hulst & Moortgat 1980; LeSourd 1993; and Hermans & Torres-Tamarit 2014, among others, for other proposals of metrical domains between the foot and the syllable). I argue that this domain is necessary to account for the combination of two typological generalizations about vowel reduction. The first is the Ambiselectivity Generalization, according to which vowel reduction that decreases sonority (Crosswhite 1999; 2001; de Lacy 2002) may be restricted to foot-internal unstressed syllables, or to unfooted (minimal foot-external) syllables (see Martínez-Paricio 2013 for evidence). The second is the Sonority Requirement Generalization, which is derived from typological facts discovered by Crosswhite (1999; 2001); according to this generalization, a language may have at most one vowel reduction process that forces underlying low vowels to reduce to mid or high vowels.While accounts for each individual generalization may be derived from existing proposals without a Moraic Domain (Crosswhite 1999; 2001; Martínez-Paricio 2013), I show that no such account can derive both generalizations at once. In contrast, I argue that a Moraic Domain can account for both generalizations when embedded into Crosswhite’s (1999; 2001) account. This is demonstrated with a case study of Dutch semi-informal vowel reduction (Kager 1989), which cannot be derived in Crosswhite’s (1999; 2001) original approach without Moraic Domains.

The influence of coarticulatory and phonemic relations on individual compensatory formant production.

Previous auditory perturbation studies have shown that speakers are able to simultaneously use multiple compensatory strategies to produce a certain acoustic target. In the case of formant perturbation, these findings were obtained examining the compensatory production for low vowels /ɛ/ and /æ/. This raises some controversy as more recent research suggests that the contribution of the somatosensory feedback to the production of vowels might differ across phonemes. In particular, the compensatory magnitude to auditory perturbations is expected to be weaker for high vowels compared to low vowels since the former are characterized by larger linguopalatal contact. To investigate this hypothesis, this paper conducted a bidirectional auditory perturbation study in which F2 of the high central vowel /ɨ/ was perturbed in opposing directions depending on the preceding consonant (alveolar vs velar). The consonants were chosen such that speakers' usual coarticulatory patterns were either compatible or incompatible with the required compensatory strategy. The results demonstrate that speakers were able to compensate for applied perturbations even if speakers' compensatory movements resulted in unusual coarticulatory configurations. However, the results also suggest that individual compensatory patterns were influenced by additional perceptual factors attributable to the phonemic space surrounding the target vowel /ɨ/.

Examining the relationship between vowel quality and voice quality

The majority of studies on phonation types have focused on low vowels due to the minimal effects of their first formant on harmonic amplitude. In studies of multiple vowel qualities, reports on the relationship between vowel and voice quality are mixed: some show similar formant frequencies across phonation types (e.g. Abramson, Nye & Luangthongkum 2007, Khan 2012), while others show different formant frequencies depending on voice quality (e.g. Ren 1992, Kuang 2011). Results differ as to whether the degree of non-modal phonation varies (Andruski & Ratliff 2000, Kuang 2011) or does not vary (Esposito 2012, Khan 2012) across different vowel qualities. The present study draws on innovations which allow for more accurate corrections for the effects of formant frequencies on spectral measures (i.e. Hanson 1995, Iseli, Shue & Alwan 2007) to examine the relationship between vowel quality and voice quality, in eight languages – !Xóõ, Burmese, Gujarati, Jalapa de Díaz Mazatec, Mon, Santa Ana del Valle Zapotec, White Hmong, and Yi. While no significant difference in the degree of non-modal phonation due to vowel quality was found, results showed a crosslinguistic pattern in the relationship between vowel quality and voice quality: vowels with higher log(F1) and log(F2) values tended to be produced with creakier phonation, while vowels with lower log(F1) and log(F2) values tended to be produced with breathier phonation, but only on the measure H1*-H2*.

Gothic <r> and Old High German <r>: Implications from phonological patterning

This article reconstructs the archaic Germanic rhotic by examining a natural class pattern common to Gothic and Old High German (OHG). Specifically, I argue that the sounds represented by the graphemes <r> and <h> patterned as [high] segments. Due to the Obligatory Contour Principle, those [high] consonants triggered dissimilatory lowering of high vowels in Gothic. On account of the No-Crossing Constraint, the same (i.e. etymologically related) consonants blocked the OHG process known as Primary Umlaut. That is, <r> and <h> inhibited the height features of [i] and [j] from spreading regressively onto a preceding low vowel. These novel analyses not only offer insight into patterns which have been poorly understood for the better part of two centuries, but also add clarity to our understanding of the phonological and phonetic properties of Early Germanic rhotics.

Stressed /e/ Centralization into Schwa and Related Mid Vowel Developments in Catalan and Elsewhere in the Romania

AbstractThe present study seeks to throw some light on the relative chronology of the changes /e/ > [ə] and /ɛ/ > [e] in stressed position in Old Eastern Catalan by analysing in detail the development of the stressed mid front vowels in dialects of other Romance linguistic domains in which stressed /e/ has also shifted to a mid central vowel or else to a (mid) low vowel generated possibly from an earlier schwa. Data from Ladin Rhaetoromance, Occitan and perhaps Francoprovençal dialects suggests that a chain shift occurred in Old Eastern Catalan by which /ɛ/ developed into [e] in order to fill the gap left by the centralization of stressed /e/ into [ə]. The paper also holds that the centralization of stressed /e/ into schwa must have operated after the reduction of unstressed /e/ and/or /a/ into schwa given that unstressed schwa co‐occurs with stressed schwa within the same word as a general rule in the world's languages while the presence of unstressed schwa does not imply the existence of stressed schwa.

Spontaneous nasalization after glottal consonants in Thai

Spontaneous nasalization is the emergence of distinctive nasalization in contexts lacking an historical etymological nasal. In Thai, low and mid-low vowels nasalize after /h/ and to a lesser degree after /ʔ/. It has been reasoned that nasalization after /h/ may occur because breathiness and nasalization are acoustically similar; both introduce higher energy at low frequencies and increase spectral tilt. Glottal consonants may generally facilitate nasalization because aerodynamically they do not require velopharyngeal closure. We investigated velopharyngeal opening (VPO) during vowels after /h/ and/ ʔ/ and measured spectral tilt (H1–H2). We measured VPO by processing oblique ultra-fast magnetic resonance images of the velopharyngeal port. Four Thai speakers exhibited a complex system of VPO that varied based on vowel height and preceding consonant. Low vowels after /h/ manifested more physiological nasalization than low vowels after /ʔ/, while the former were often produced with higher spectral tilt, which may be indicative of either increased breathiness or nasalization. While VPO is likely responsible for impressions of greater nasalization after /h/, our findings suggest that breathiness and VPO may interact in the spontaneously nasalized vowels of Thai.

The trap–bath split in Bristol English

The pronunciation of the bath vowel is a salient feature of English varieties of the southwest of England, yet neither the status of the trap–bath split in traditional dialects nor ongoing change today is well understood. After reviewing the existing literature, we investigate the quality and length of low unrounded vowels in Bristol English on the basis of sociolinguistic interviews with twenty-five speakers. The picture suggested by these data is complex: there is evidence for a traditional length-only trap–bath split, for a length and backness split diffusing from the east and for a merger diffusing from the north. Some of these changes involve lexical diffusion, especially with loanwords and other distinctive lexical groups. Overall, the rich and contradictory data speak to the contested sociolinguistic status of these variables and to the need to examine individual patterns of variation closely to gain a full understanding of them.

Normative nasalance scores in the production of words and syllables for Brazilian Portuguese speakers

ABSTRACTThe objective of this study was to determine normative nasalance scores for non-cleft children, adolescents and adults, native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, during the production of words and syllables, for cross-linguistic comparisons in populations with and without cleft palate. Nasalance was assessed in 62 individuals, aged 6–10 years (n = 20), 11–17 years (n = 20) and 18–35 years (n = 22), using a nasometer II model 6450 (KayPENTAX), during production of one sequence of nine oral words (pipa, bis, burro, tatu, pilha, cuca, gui, fila, luz) and of sequences of isolated syllables (e.g. pa, pa, pa, pa, pa, pa) composed of plosive, fricative, liquid and nasal consonants with high and low vowels. In order to validate the new nasalance stimuli, nasalance scores for traditional oral and nasal stimuli were also obtained. Differences were analyzed at a significance level of 0.01. Mean nasalance scores (±SD) during the production of the sequence of words were 18 ± 5% (children), 18 ± 7% (adolescents) and 21 ± 5% (adults). Differences between age groups were not significant. During the production of syllables, adults had the highest mean nasalance scores (except for syllable /mi/); significant differences between age groups were observed only for /pa/ ,/sa/ and /la/. Nasalance scores were significantly higher in oral and nasal syllables with high vowels than with low vowels, and in nasal syllables than in oral syllables with high and low vowels. The nasalance scores obtained for the sentences were comparable to previously established norms. In conclusion, the nasalance scores defined for Brazilian Portuguese speakers, in different stimuli, may be adopted as normative values for local and cross-language comparisons in the identification of hypernasality related to conditions such as cleft palate, neurogenic disorders and syndromes.

Do social preferences matter in lexical retuning?

In perceiving spoken language, listeners not only recognize and comprehend the intended meaning of the speaker’s words and phrases; they also assess the social dimensions of the speaker. In the present study, we ask whether perceptual learning — a process by which listeners adapt to novel pronunciations — is modulated by listeners’ social preferences. To this end, we use a novel accent exhibiting a back vowel lowering chain shift in pleasant and unpleasant conditions in a lexically guided perceptual learning paradigm to test whether listeners adapt less to the unpleasant guise. Experiment 1 confirms that listeners disprefer the unpleasant guise. Using a lexical decision task as a measure of lexical adaptation, Experiment 2 indicates that listeners in the pleasant and unpleasant guises learned the back vowel shift compared to listeners in a control group. These results suggest that exposure to a voice with lower social prestige does not inhibit lexical adaptation.