Low Vowels Research Articles

Spectral and duration cues of English vowel identification for Chinese-native listeners

This study was to investigate how Chinese-native listeners use spectral and duration cues for English vowel identification. The first experiment was to examine whether Chinese-native listeners’ English vowel perception was related to their sensitivity to the change of vowel formant frequency that is a critical spectral cue to vowel identification. Identification of 12 isolated American English vowels was measured for 52 Chinese college students in Beijing. Thresholds of vowel formant discrimination were also examined for these students. Results showed that there was a significantly moderate correlation between Chinese college students’ English vowel identification and their thresholds of vowel formant discrimination. That is, the lower vowel formant threshold of listeners, the better vowel identification. However, the moderate correlation between vowel identification and formant discrimination suggested some other factors accounting for the individual variability in English vowel identification for Chinese-native listeners. In Experiment 2, vowel identification was measured with and without duration cues, showing that vowel identification was reduced by 5.1% when duration cue was removed. Further analysis suggested that for the listeners who depended less on duration cue, the better thresholds of formant discrimination, the higher scores of vowel identification, but no such correlation for listeners who used duration cues remarkably.

Acoustic Analysis of English Vowels Produced by Korean Speakers with Hearing Impairment : With Reference to F0, F1 and F2 Frequencies

The purpose of this paper is to examine F0, F1 and F2 frequencies of the five English vowels as produced by the HI and those of NH. Results showed that F0 was significantly higher for HI than for NH, and for females than for males. The means of F1 were significantly higher for the females than for males, and higher still for high vowels than for low vowels. By contrast, the means of F2 were significantly higher for the HI group than for NH; F2 was higher for females than for males, and higher for front vowels than back vowels. For the Euclidean distance between vowels on the F1-F2 acoustic space, significant differences for Hearing Level and Gender were found; specifically, the distance was shorter for HI than for NH, and for males than for females. In this study, F0, F2 and F2-F1, not F1, showed the distinctive acoustic characteristic between these two groups.

An Investigation of the /el/–/æl/ Merger in Australian English: A Pilot Study on Production and Perception in South-West Victoria

This exploratory study looks at evidence of merger between /el/ and /æl/ in Australian English, and the possible relationship between production and perception that might be involved in such a process. This merger appears to occur primarily in Victoria, although its regional distribution within that state still requires investigation. The phenomenon appears to be motivated by the interaction of three different phonetic processes: increasing lateral velarization; increasing vowel lowering; and misperception/misparsing of the phonetic signal. We focus here on the behaviour of a sample of native speakers from Warrnambool, a regional township in south-west Victoria. Given evidence that some speakers merge the vowels in /el/ and /æl/ while others do not, our participants are categorized as maintainers (those who keep /el/–/æl/ distinct) and combiners (those who merge /el/–/æl/), and we compare how the groups process /el/–/æl/ in perception. Overall results point to an association, according to category, between listeners' own production and perception of /el/–/æl/ in an identification task, although individual variability is also evident and needs to be understood.

Stress of English Tri-syllabic Nouns, Spellings and Low Vowel Quality

Stress of English Tri-syllabic Nouns, Spellings and Low Vowel Quality

Some Theoretical Considerations on the Merger of the Low Vowel Phonemes in American English

Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1976), pp. 350-359

Some Theoretical Considerations on the Merger of the Low Vowel Phonemes in American English

Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1976), pp. 350-359

Caracterização acústica de vogais orais na fala infantil: o falar florianopolitano

The aim of this study was to present an acoustic analysis of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) stressed oral vowels produced by children aged 10 and 11 years old, regarding F1, F2 and relative duration. In order to avoid physiological differences between male and female, data were normalized using Lobanov method. Two analyses were performed. First, normalized data of the seven oral vowels were analyzed as a function of gender. Results showed significant differences for the low vowel regarding to gender, being more centralized for male subjects. Second, due to the sample size, normalized data of the vowels [e, a, o] were analyzed as a function of stress and place of articulation. Significant differences were found regarding to stress and place of articulation for both groups, male and female.

Intrinsic fundamental frequency (F0) in American English vowels is affected by regional variation

There is a relationship between F0 values and vowel height: High vowels have higher F0 than low vowels. A long-standing debate has centered on whether this intrinsic F0 (IF0) pattern is an automatic consequence of vowel articulation or whether it represents deliberate effort to enhance vowel contrast. We provide new data from regional variation suggesting that IF0 is partly controlled by the speaker. F0 was analyzed in high, mid, and low vowels, stressed and unstressed, in 36 females representing dialects spoken in Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. A robust finding was that dialects differ in their use of IF0 in stressed vowels: IF0 differences between high and low vowels in North Carolina were significantly smaller than those in Ohio and Wisconsin for measurements at vowel onset, offset, peak F0, and overall F0. High vowels had higher IF0 than low vowels in all dialects, confirming the universal aspect of IF0. However, the magnitude of this difference was dialect-specific, which suggests a relative independence of IF0 from vowel height. The lack of correspondence between dialect-specific formant values and dialect-specific IF0 indicates that the quality of vowels and their IF0 value are two features that need to be learned separately.

The voicing of intervocalic stops in Old Tuscan and probabilistic sound change

AbstractThe article examines the dual outcome of Latin intervocalic /p t k/ in Old Tuscan. While these stops remain voiceless in most of the Tuscan lexicon, a significant number of words are voiced. The prevailing opinion is that preservation of voicelessness is the native outcome, and that the words displaying voicing were borrowed from Romance languages in which intervocalic voicing was systematic. However, a number of facts militate against this hypothesis, including the presence of voicing in Tuscan words that are unattested or maintain a voiceless stop in the supposed donor languages. The results of a corpus-based analysis of an Old Tuscan lexicon show that the distribution of the voiced outcomes is phonologically conditioned (contra the borrowing hypothesis), as they are more likely if the stop was velar, next to low(er) vowels, next to stress and if followed by a liquid consonant. These results are also an example of sound change with clear and fine-grained phonological conditioning but a non-systematic outcome; irregularity was probably caused by the allophonic nature of Old Tuscan voicing and by its interaction with another lenition process.

Bahasa dan Konstruksi Solidaritas Antaretnis Masyarakat Transmigran di Nusa Tenggara Barat

This study is aimed at identifying linguistic features, indexing ethnic identities, and inter-ethnic solidarity in transmigration contexts. Data were collected through interview, documentation and ethnography of various transmigrate communities on Sumbawa island. The data were then analyzed qualitatively with the ethnography of speaking and interaction analysis. The study found that (a) Ethnic identities in the migrant areas can be linguistically identified in four forms: orang aida (to refer to Sumbawa people), orang kalembo ade (for Bima people), dengan batur (for Sasak people) and orang beli (Balinese people). (b) These people were identifiable in the way they articulate particular sounds: orang beli (the Balinese) were identified in terms of dominant use of alveolar retroflexed, orang batur (the Sasak) were identified in the way they marked use of alveolar retroflexed, and orang kalembo ade (the Bima people) were identified through their articulation of closed central vowel as open low front vowel. It was also found that the forms had been used to construct ethnicity and interethnic solidarity between participants. The use of ana and ente in interaction indicated solidarity regardless of differences in age and social status. Key words: language and society, contextualization, ethnicity, solidarity, inter-cultural communication, transmigration

Speaking tongues are always braced

Bracing the tongue against rigid vocal tract surfaces (i.e., teeth or palate) has been suggested to be important in facilitating certain kinds of tongue movements [Stone, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, 2207–2218 (1990)]. However, previous studies have generally sought bracing in only a narrow range of phonetic contexts, resulting in a widespread view of bracing as an occasional state, peculiar to specific sounds or sound combinations. The present study uses electropalatography (EPG) as well as ultrasound imaging and electromagnetic articulometry (EMA) to describe tongue bracing in continuous speech passages, finding that the tongue is almost constantly braced against lateral surfaces during running speech. Analysis of archival data from the male and female speakers of American English in the KayPENTAX Palatometer Database (Model 4333) shows that they brace the tongue continuously, except during a small percentage of low vowels, and during a larger percentage of instances of /l/. Additional measures using all three devices, as well as biomechanical simulations using ArtiSynth (www.artisynth.org), provide further insight, indicating that the tongue also braces against the central palate and/or lower jaw, and that bracing points slide anteroposteriorly across speech sounds. These results suggest that bracing is a constant and necessary aspect of tongue motor control.

Best practices in measuring vowel merger

Vowel mergers are some of the most well-studied sound change phenomena, particularly in varieties of English. But although sociolinguists, dialectologists, and phoneticians are all interested in providing accurate and precise descriptions of an individual speaker's participation in a near-merger (or near-split), the methods for doing so vary widely, especially for researchers analyzing naturalistic corpora. In this paper, we consider four current methodological approaches to representing and assessing vowel distance and overlap: Euclidean distances between averages, Pillai-Bartlett trace (Hay et al., 2006), mixed effects regression modeling (Nycz 2013), and the spectral overlap assessment metric (Wassink 2006). We compare the advantages and disadvantages of each by applying all four methods to three separate data sets. These represent low vowel realizations by speakers from three different studies of English variation: one undergoing merger (COT and CAUGHT in San Francisco, California), one undergoing split, for the same contrast (COT and CAUGHT among Canadians in New York City), and one undergoing split, but for a different contrast (TRAP and BATH among Scots in England). By comparing the similarities and differences between the data sets themselves, as well as the differing analytic motivations for quantifying speaker-specific vowel overlap, we conclude with practical recommendations.

Reduction and frequency analyses of vowels and consonants in the Buckeye speech corpus

In a casual conversation American speakers tend to talk fast and to reduce or change sounds of phonetic symbols defined in an English dictionary which we would find in citation speech style. This study examined how much reduction of pronunciation Americans make from the dictionary prescribed symbols to the real speech ones and how frequently Americans use vowels and consonants in the Buckeye speech corpus. The corpus was recorded by 40 American male and female subjects for an hour per each subject. Results were as follows: First, the Americans produced a reduced number of vowels and consonants in daily conversation. The reduction rate from the dictionary transcriptions to the real transcriptions was around 38.2%. There was not much difference between the vowels and consonants in the reduction. Second, the Americans used more front high and back low vowels while 78.7% of the consonants accounted for stops, fricatives, and nasals. This indicates that the segmental inventory has nonlinear distribution in the speech corpus. From those results we conclude that there is a substantial reduction in the real speech from the dictionary symbols and suggest that English educators consider pronunciation education reflecting the real speech data.

영어 모음 발음 교육이 한국인 학습자의 어두 폐쇄음 발화에 미치는 영향에 대한 연구

This study investigated the influence of English vowel pronunciation training to English word-initial stop pronunciation. For that purpose, VOT values of English stops produced by twenty Korean English learners(five Youngnam dialect male speakers, five Youngnam dialect female speakers, five Kangwon dialect male speakers, and five Kangwon dialect female speakers) were measured using the Speech Analyzer and their post-training production was compared with their pre-training production. The result shows that post-training VOT values of voiced stops became closer to those of native English speakers in all four groups. Hence, it can be inferred that vowel pronunciation training is effective for correcting pronunciation of voiced vowels by analyzing the change of the quality of following vowels(especially low vowels) and the degree of giving stress.

Vowel Replacement Patterns in the Mfantse Dialect of Akan

This paper investigates synchronic vowel replacement patterns in the Mfantse dialect of Akan. Hitherto, the Akan vowel harmony system has been the only aspect of vowel replacement process that has received extensive study in the literature, albeit a variety of ways by which vowel replacement comes about in the language exists. In this paper, therefore, we have organised V-replacement into vertical and horizontal vowel shifts. The vertical vowel shift has been subcategorized into upward and downward shifts which may also be referred to as vowel raising and vowel lowering, respectively. The direction of horizontal V shifting system is also parametric whereby a trigger vowel may spread leftwards or rightwards to a target vowel on its left or right, respectively. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated in this paper that a consonant might ostensibly condition vowel replacements in Mfantse but, in reality, such replacements are often brought about by floating vowels. This does not obscure the fact that labial and labial palatalized glides in Mfantse invariably induce replacement of the vowels that precede them.

Nonce words show that Russian yer alternations are governed by the grammar

Even though vowel deletion in Russian is lexically-restricted, the identity of alternating vowels is partially predictable: only mid vowels delete, but even mid vowels cannot delete in some contexts. We report on two nonce word studies asking Russian speakers to rate paradigms in which a vowel was deleted. The ratings strongly correlated with the quality of the vowel: deletion of mid vowels was rated higher than deletion of high and low vowels. We also found that deletion in certain syllabic contexts was rated as ungrammatical: deletion cannot affect words that have a complex coda, and it cannot create clusters with a medial sonorant. Finally, deletion in disyllables was rated higher than deletion in monosyllables, reflecting the trends in the lexicon. These results suggest that even for this lexically-restricted alternation, speakers have formed a phonological generalization.

The production and perception of coronal fricatives in Seoul Korean

This article presents new data on the contrast between the two voiceless coronal fricatives of Korean, variously described as a lenis/fortis or aspirated/fortis contrast. In utterance-initial position, the fricatives were found to differ in centroid frequency; duration of frication, aspiration, and the following vowel; and several aspects of the following vowel onset, including intensity profile, spectral tilt, and F1 onset. The between-fricative differences varied across vowel contexts, however, and spectral differences in the vowel onset especially were more pronounced for /a/ than for /i, ɯ, u/. This disparity led to the hypothesis that cues in the following vowel onset would exert a weaker influence on perception for high vowels than for low vowels. Perception data provided general support for this hypothesis, indicating that while vowel onset cues had the largest impact on perception for both high- and low-vowel stimuli, this influence was weaker for high vowels. Perception was also strongly influenced by aspiration duration, with modest contributions from frication duration and f0 onset. Taken together, these findings suggest that the ‘non-fortis’ fricative is best characterized not in terms of the lenis or aspirated categories for stops, but in terms of a unique representation that is both lenis and aspirated.

The Morphology Of The Zulu Locative

AbstractThe Zulu locative has traditionally been classed as an adverb, or as a nominal in certain contexts. In other Bantu languages, like Swahili, the locative is treated as a form of noun. This paper presents a description of the locative in terms of the theory of Distributed Morphology. It proposes that the Zulu locative can best be viewed as a case of the nominal. The paper also examines two phonological alternations associated with the locative, namely vowel lowering and palatalization. Traditionally, these have been seen as phonologically conditioned, but it is argued that they are both morphologically conditioned.

Rhythmic structure effects on glottalisation: A study of different speech styles in Polish and German

AbstractThe present paper examines glottal stops and the glottalisation of word-initial vowels in Polish and German. The presence of glottal marking is studied depending on speech style (‘speech’ vs. ‘dialogue’), prominence, phrasal position, speech rate, word type, preceding segment, and following vowel height. A question is also posed about the extent to which glottal marking might be dependent on the rhythmic structure of a given language or style. We analyzed recordings of 18 Polish and German speakers. The results point to significant differences between the two languages. In German, glottal marking occurs significantly more often (63.4%) than in Polish (45%). Whereas in both languages (and both styles) the majority of prominent vowels are more often glottally marked than non-prominent vowels, in German word-initial non-prominent syllables are also marked relatively often. Regarding phrase position, glottal marking occurs significantly more often at the phrase-initial position compared to phrase-medial position in Polish, while no such difference has been found in German. In addition, it is shown that in both languages glottal marking is strongly dependent on the tongue height of the marked vowel: low vowels are more frequently glottalised than non-low vowels. Finally, glottal marking in Polish is more likely to occur when rhythmic variability shifts towards the ‘indeterminate’, strengthening the hypothesis that glottal marking facilitates perceptual grouping.

The Rime System of Proto-Tai

In this paper, I propose a new system of Proto-Tai (PT) rimes. The system features six simple vowels and three diphthongs, with length contrast. Li’s PT has nine simple vowels, forty-three dipthongs, and seven triphthongs. A velarized feature is reconstructed for several correspondences that show diphthongs in the Northern Tai (NT) branch but simple vowels in the Southern Tai (ST) branch, as well as for the difference between the NT higher vowel reflexes and ST lower vowel reflexes. A labialized feature occurs in some rimes and causes certain unrounded vowels to become rounded. Eleven endings are reconstructed, including PT *-l and *-c, which are not recognized in Li’s system.