Mid-back Vowels Research Articles

Merger in Eivissan Catalan: an acoustic analysis of the vowel systems of young native speakers

AbstractThe vowel system of Catalan has been the focus of many studies, though work on the varieties spoken on the island of Eivissa (Ibiza) are scarce, with a single mention of the possible merger of the mid back vowels /o, ɔ/ (Torres Torres, Marià. 1983. Aspectes del vocalisme tònic eivissenc.Eivissa14. 22–23). The present article provides the first acoustic analysis of the vowel inventory of 25 young native speakers of Eivissan Catalan, with a focus on the realisations of stressed /ə, ɛ/, and the back mid vowels /o, ɔ/. We employed Pillai scores (Hay, Jennifer, Paul Warren & Katie Drager. 2006. Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress.Journal of Phonetics34. 458–484) to compare the possibly merged pairs /ə, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ to the fully-contrasting neighbouring pairs /e, ɛ/ and /o, u/. Our results show that all participants had considerable overlap of stressed /ə/ and /ɛ/, and all but one had considerable overlap of the back mid vowels, while the fully contrastive pairs (/e, ɛ/ and /o, u/) showed almost no overlap.

표준 중국어 모음 체계의 음운학적 고찰

This study is about the Mandarin phonological vowel inventory. There are different opinions on how many vowels exist in Mandarin, since their standards are different according to approaches. All the surface representations are treated in phonetic approach, while phonological approach considers underlying representations as phonemes. This study focuses on the underlying representations of Mandarin vowel system, and is divided into 5 chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction, and Chapter 2 is literature review. Researchers usually show 22 Mandarin consonants, but their suggestions on the number of Mandarin vowels are various. They show as few as 5 vowels and as many as 14 vowels. Usually researchers, who analyze with phonetic approach, suggest more vowels, while researchers, using phonological perspective, suggest fewer vowels. In Chapter 3, in order to state Mandarin speakers’ intuition, this study conducted a survey, which asked Mandarin speakers’ self-cognition on the several tricky vowels. Based on the results of the survey, this study suggests 8 Mandarin vowel phonemes such as /i/, /y/, /e/, /ɨ/, /a/, /u/, /ɤ/ and /o/ in Chapter 4. High mid vowel /ɨ/ appears as [ɿ], when it comes with [ts, tsʰ, s] in a syllable, and appears as [ʅ], when it comes with [tʂ, tʂʰ, ʂ]. Mid front vowel /e/ is realized as [ɛ] behind medial vowels, and mid back vowel /ɤ/ is realized as [ə] before nasal consonants. Low vowel /a/ has [+back] before [u] and [ŋ], which has [+back]. Thus, this study shows 12 Mandarin vowels such as [i], [y], [e], [ɛ], [ɿ], [ʅ], [ə], [a], [ɑ], [u], [ɤ], and [o] as surface representations, and also provides rational analyses on the allophones with phonological rules. Lastly, Chapter 5 is the conclusion.

Perception of Portuguese Mid Vowels by Heritage Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract The main goal of this study is to investigate the perception of Portuguese mid-vowel contrasts (/ɛ/-/e/ and /ɔ/-/o/) by heritage speakers (HS s) of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) who grew up in the United States. This study shows, for instance, an asymmetry in categorization as a function of degree of language dominance for mid-back vowel contrast, but not for mid-front vowel contrast.

English Phonemic Awareness of Students with Visual Disabilities

Most of researches have reported the significance of English phonemic awareness to the success of learning English, but less discussions involving students with visual disabilities. Students with visual disabilities lacks of visual input and form a strong sensitivity to audio input, researches have reported that this condition affect their spelling ability, yet, their ability in recognizing English phonemes has been less explored especially in Indonesia. Thus, this research aims to describe the phonemic awareness of students with visual disabilities who learn English as Foreign Language. The participants of this research are students with visual disabilities whether active or passive braille user. 7 students with visual disabilities participated in an Online English Phonemic Awareness Test. Two independent raters rated the data independently. Interrater agreement was applied to ensure the objectivity of two independent interrater. The findings show that students with visual disabilities are aware of consonants Fricative alveolar, Plosive bilabial, and Plosive alveolar sounds but struggling with Fricative velar and Affricative velar sound, they are also aware of vowels Close mid front vowel, Close front long vowel sounds, Close mid back vowel and Open central vowel but struggling in identifying Open back vowel, Close mid central vowel, and Open mid back vowel. English phonemic awareness is a very important basic thing in language learning. However, it will be very challenging for ESL learners, especially those who learn are blind students because of certain obstacles that blind students have so that strategies are needed in language learning.

Sources of variation in the speech of African Americans: Perspectives from sociophonetics.

African American Language (AAL) is one of the most researched varieties of American English, yet key aspects of its development and spread remain under‐theorized. For example, regional and social variation in the speech of African Americans was initially understudied in AAL as scholars sought to demonstrate the overall systematicity of the variety, often at the expense of examining variation across and within communities. More recently, scholars have begun to address this gap by examining different sources of variation in AAL phonology. For instance, the African American Vowel System (AAVS), also called the African American Vowel Shift, describes a pattern identified within AAL, including the raising of the front lax vowels and the nonfronting of the high‐ and mid‐back vowels. Aspects of the AAVS have been found in geographically widespread varieties of AAL, suggesting that shared patterns of population movement resulting from the Great Migration and subsequent social experiences may have led to the development of this system. Other more regionally limited sound patterns suggest the role of more localized processes of variation and change. We focus on three sources of variation that have contributed to the spread and realizations of the sound system in modern AAL: migration, segregation, and place and identity. Evidence from sociophonetic analyses across these three factors provides a foundation to more thoroughly document the ways in which AAL varieties developed, spread, and vary, while allowing for a more nuanced assessment of racialization and its implications for individual differences.This article is categorized under:Linguistics > Linguistic TheoryPsychology > Language

Applying refined automatic formant measurement to determination of the orientations of vowel distributions

In order to remedy recurrent problems with false formant readings obtained with an automatic formant measurement routine, prototype-based automatic measurements were compared with manual formant measurements of the same uttered vowels. Two refinements that avoided false formants, one involving the option to skip measured formant racks and the other involving an expectation that successive formants would show successively lower amplitudes, were developed. This method was then applied to seven corpora representing diverse English dialects, with satisfactory results. The measurements of each vowel thus obtained were then subjected to principle component analysis to determine the orientation of the tokens in F1/F2 space. Most vowels exhibited distributions that apparently reflect degree of jaw opening. However, /u/ in North American varieties (with pre-/l/ and post-/j/ tokens excluded) showed mostly horizontal orientations, even when post-coronal and non-post-coronal tokens were considered separately. This pattern contrasted sharply with the vertical orientations of mid back vowels. /u/ was also the only vowel whose orientations coincided consistently with ongoing changes in the communities. We hypothesize that the factors responsible for the horizontal orientations of /u/ also lie behind its cross-linguistic tendency to shift frontward. In order to remedy recurrent problems with false formant readings obtained with an automatic formant measurement routine, prototype-based automatic measurements were compared with manual formant measurements of the same uttered vowels. Two refinements that avoided false formants, one involving the option to skip measured formant racks and the other involving an expectation that successive formants would show successively lower amplitudes, were developed. This method was then applied to seven corpora representing diverse English dialects, with satisfactory results. The measurements of each vowel thus obtained were then subjected to principle component analysis to determine the orientation of the tokens in F1/F2 space. Most vowels exhibited distributions that apparently reflect degree of jaw opening. However, /u/ in North American varieties (with pre-/l/ and post-/j/ tokens excluded) showed mostly horizontal orientations, even when post-coronal and non-post-coronal tokens were considered separately. This pa...

Ekialdeko /o/-ren igoeraren testuinguru fonologikoaren bila / Looking for the phonological context of /o/-raising in Eastern Basque

Lan honetan euskarazko /o/ erdiko atzeko bokalaren igoera aztertzen da. Hots-eredu hau batez ere zubereran eta erronkarieran garatu zen, nahiz eta ekialdeko beste euskalkietan ere aurki daitekeen. Bilakabide honen adibideak batu eta horien testuingurua zehaztu ostean, fonetikoki sudurkarituriko [õ]-ren igoera bezala deskriba daitekeela proposatuko da. Hots aldaketa hau sudurkaritasunaren berezko anbiguotasun fonetikoaren bitartez azaltzea proposatuko da, ambigutasun hau F1-en eremuan «formante sudurkariak» gehitzeak eragiten duela. Laburbilduz, lan honek deskribapen fonologikoak erraz azaltzen ez duen baina fonetikoki arazorik gabe azal daitekeen hots-eredu bat aurkezten du, fonetikaren garrantzia ikerketa historiko eta fonologikoan azpimarratzen delarik.

Drifting towards Ambiguity: A Closer Look at Palatalisation in L2 Irish

This article focuses on palatalisation in the Irish spoken by Dublin-based bilinguals for whom English is their first language. All informants had a good knowledge of both Irish and English; however, Irish was their second language, used less frequently in everyday communication. Most Dubliners start learning Irish at school; only a few informants had the opportunity to speak it at home, but even then the language was not used outside class on a regular basis. The study showed that most deviations in the distribution of palatalised and non-palatalised consonants in the speech of Dublin bilinguals were of the palatalisation absence type. Such deviations were especially frequent next to back and mid-back vowels. On the other hand, a palatalised consonant was often pronounced instead of a non-palatalised one next to a front vowel. Previous research suggests that these tendencies also apply in weak positions (Snesareva 2014a; 2014b). Consequently, even though in traditional Irish dialects palatalisation is not position-bound, in the speech of Dublin bilinguals there is correlation between the palatalisation of a consonant and the quality of its neighbouring vowel. However, such consonant distribution was not encountered in all contexts: even those informants whose speech had deviations used palatalisation properly in some contexts. This means that position-bound use of palatalisation is still a tendency rather than an entrenched feature of Dublin Irish.

Four mid back vowels in Eastern Andalusian Spanish

AbstractThe deletion of syllable-final consonants in Eastern Andalusian Spanish has been extensively documented; however, there is no consensus about its effect on neighbouring vowels. Researchers have focused on the effects of /s/ deletion on vowels to analyse how its semantic value is conveyed, while other consonants which are also deleted have been ignored. This paper examines the effects of word-final /s/, /r/, and /θ/ deletion on preceding /o/ from the point of view of production and perception. Regarding production, acoustic analyses of data from El Ejido (Eastern Andalusia), show specific changes to the F1 and F2 of /o/ depending on the underlying consonant it precedes (/s/, /r/, or /θ/). Likewise, a perception test demonstrates that Eastern Andalusian speakers can distinguish between more types of mid back vowels than previously thought.

High and Mid Back Vowel Fronting in Washington, D.c.

While high and mid back vowel (/u/ and /o/) fronting has been examined in many North American regions, no study has systematically explored /u/ and /o/ fronting in Washington, D.C. This study investigates /u/ and /o/ fronting among european American and African American speakers native to D.C. A sociophonetic analysis of the speech of 40 D.C. residents shows that the district is participating in back vowel fronting as a community, with European American speakers exhibiting greater degrees of fronting than African Americans. Although lagging behind, D.C. African American speakers do move toward greater degrees of fronting in apparent time, particularly led by African American men. One factor that affects the speech of African Americans in D.C. is the speaker's neighborhood background, with African American speakers from the Southeast (Se) neighborhoods exhibiting different vocalic characteristics from those who are from elsewhere in the city. The study also provides preliminary evidence of /o/ backing among european American speakers, whose /u/ is fronting in apparent time. A reverse pattern of fronting is observed among African American speakers from Se, whose /u/ is not fronting, but /o/ is. These findings challenge the often-made assumption that /o/ fronting is a parallel process of /u/ fronting.

Taro or Oyster? The production merger of the two mid back vowels, [o] and [ɔ], in a major dialect of Taiwan Southern Min

Abstract One of the two major dialects of Taiwaesen Southern Min [TSM] has two mid back vowels, /o/ and / ɔ/. This distinction is well documented in classic Chinese phonology and agreed upon by most TSM linguists. However, an increasing number of recent evidence-based studies have reported the falling together of these two vowels and, indeed, many non-linguists as well have noticed the loss of the distinction. Since these two vowels are so similar in nearly all phonetic features most studies carried out heretofore which concluded that the merger had in fact taken place were based on auditory criteria. The present study, however, the methodology of which has been designed to take account of the low literacy rate of TSM speakers, as well as the frequent contact which takes place between TSM dialects, investigates the status of these two vowels making use of both acoustic and statistical data. Results indicate that in TSM /o/ and / ɔ / have merged in the case of younger speakers. Both internal and external factors are proposed which have affected the merger, and the further suggestion is put forward that, though the instance of sound shift reversal in Taiwan is on record, this is not likely to occur in the case of TSM /o/ and / ɔ /.

USING SUBSTUTION DRILL TECHNIQUE TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION ABILITY

This research aimed to find out the improvement of the students’ pronunciation ability by using Substitution Drill that focused on English Consonants which consisted of dental and palato alveolar consonants and English Vowel which consisted mid-front,mid-central and mid-back vowel. The researcher applied Pre-Experimental method with one group pretest-posttest design and collected the data by giving pre-test and post-test. The sample of the research was class X IPA of SMA Negeri 1 Galesong Selatan which consisted of 33 students. The sample was taken by using the purposive technique. The research variables were teaching pronunciation by using Substitution Drill as an independent variable and dependent variable were English Consonants and English Vowel. The result of the research showed that the tenth-grade students of SMA Negeri 1 Galesong Selatan had fair score in the pre-test. After treatment, their pronunciation ability significant improved. The result of the research was the mean score obtained by the students through pre-test was 5.77 which was classified as fair classification and the mean score of the students on the post-test was 7.32 which was classified as good classification and the value of t-test was greater than t-table (16.48 > 2.037). It indicated that the alternative hypothesis (H1) was accepted and the null hypothesis (H0) was rejected. It was concluded that the use of Substitution Drill was effective to improve the students’ pronunciation ability.Keywords: improvement, pronunciation, substitution drill, dental, palato alveolar

Phonetic consequences of dynamic cross-linguistic interference in proficient bilinguals

This study investigates the production and perception of a Catalan-specific vowel contrast by a group of highly proficient, early-onset Catalan–Spanish bilinguals. Spanish has a mid-back vowel (/o/), while Catalan has two (/o/, /ɔ/). Most importantly, the study manipulates the amount of activation of the Spanish lexicon in two experimental sessions to examine the transient aspects of cross-linguistic phonetic interference. In the first (unilingual) session speakers produce words in one of their languages only, Catalan. In the second (bilingual) session bilinguals produce words in both of their languages, in random order. The acoustic analysis consists of comparing the height of Catalan [o] and [ɔ] in the two sessions, as well as verifying whether bilinguals possess separate categories for these two vowels in the first place. The results show that the presence (vs. absence) of Spanish words in the task affects the realization of the two Catalan mid-back vowels by bilinguals. In particular, the two Catalan vowels become slightly more similar to Spanish [o] when they are pronounced alongside this vowel.

Acoustic Comparison of Vowel Sounds Among Adult Females

This study consist of an experiment comparing acoustic characteristics of vowel production among females. The aim of this investigation was to explore the stability among vowels with quantification of acoustic changes in the voice related to speech production associated with an ample variety of vowel sounds. An additional goal was to establish a systematic control of variables and standardization of the data collection procedures. All data were collected in a quiet environment using the Computerized Speech Lab (CSL; Kay Elemetrics, Montvale, NJ), a computer-based system designed to measure characteristics of voice. Jitter and shimmer, measures of perturbation that reflect characteristics of voice, were applied. Two additional acoustic measures were examined: (1) noise-to-harmonic ratio (NHR), a general evaluation of presence of noise in the voice signal; and (2) voice turbulence index (VTI), related to turbulence caused by abnormal adduction of vocal folds. A systematic methodology of data collection was organized, in an effort to establish a research protocol based on relevant literature, involving (1) keeping constant fundamental frequency (F0) and intensity, (2) positioning of participants and recording equipment, and (3) environmental noise. When measured acoustic parameters of vowels were compared, results revealed that the vowel sounds had a significant effect on shimmer and VTI. Furthermore, speech sounds classified as back vowels exhibited less perturbation and noise in the acoustic signal: the high-back vowels [u] and []; and the mid-back vowels [o] and [], demonstrated most of the statistically significant reduced values of shimmer and VTI among the 12 vowels compared. Further comparisons among front and back vowels grouped in clusters associated to more and less variability led to statistically significant differences in shimmer, NHR, and VTI. Overall, speech sounds classified as back vowels exhibited less variability and noise. Based on the results of this study, back vowels of the English language should be used in voice acoustic tasks in females, given the higher stability of their acoustic signal, as compared with other vowels tested.

Production of a Catalan-Specific Vowel Contrast by Early Spanish-Catalan Bilinguals

The present study investigates the acoustics (F1 × F2) of Catalan and Spanish mid-back vowels as produced by highly proficient, early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals residing on the island of Majorca, a bilingual speech community. Majorcan Catalan has two phonemic mid-back vowels in stressed positions (/o/ and /c/) while Spanish possesses only one (/o/). Two groups of bilinguals were recruited and asked to produce materials in both languages – one group of Spanishdominant and one of Catalan-dominant speakers. It was first found that Catalan and Spanish /o/ are virtually indistinguishable. Catalan /c/ is lower and more fronted than the other two vowels. Spanish-dominant bilinguals were found to differ from Catalan-dominant ones in that they did not produce the Catalan-specific /o/-/c/ contrast in their speech; that is, they produced a single, merged Catalan mid-back vowel. A within-subjects analysis of first- and second-language mid-back vowels further suggested, for Spanish-dominant bilinguals, that they had developed a separate vowel category to accommodate their single, merged Catalan mid-back vowel; that is, they possessed a two-category mid-back vowel system, i.e. one for their Spanish /o/ and one for their merged Catalan /o/ + /c/. Potential explanations and theoretical implications are discussed.

Towards a gestural characterization of liquids: Evidence from Spanish and Russian

AbstractThe production of intervocalic liquid consonants by five speakers of Spanish and four speakers of Russian was examined using ultrasound. Liquids in both languages were found to be united by a lower susceptibility to vocalic coarticulation than coronal obstruents produced in the same environments. Tongue body articulation in the Spanish lateral resembled that of a mid-front vowel; dorsal posture in the Spanish trill resembled that of a mid-back vowel. Tongue body articulation in Russian non-palatalized laterals resembled that of a mid-back vowel, and Russian non-palatalized trills were produced with a dorsal posture resembling that of a mid-central vowel.These results are consistent with the hypothesis that coronal liquid consonants consist of a consonant-like coronal component and an intrinsic vowel-like dorsal component (Delattre and Freeman, Linguistics 44: 29– 68, 1968; Sproat and Fujimura, Journal of Phonetics 21: 291–311, 1993). Liquid segments are modeled as recurrent stable constellations in which a tongue-tip gesture is coordinated with a tongue-body gesture (Browman and Goldstein, Gestural syllable position effects in American English, AIP Press, 1995). Differences between ‘clear’ and ‘pharyngealized’ liquids are attributed to differences in dorsal target locations. Rhotic allophony is argued to result from the interaction of articulatory and aerodynamic factors. Spanish liquid vocalization is modeled as lenition of tongue tip gestures, and Slavic liquid metathesis as a change in intergestural coupling relationships.

The role of social factors in the dynamics of sound change: A case study of a Russian dialect

This article presents results of a sociolinguistic study of a Northern Russian dialect as spoken in a small rural community of Pokcha in the Western Urals, Russia. Because of a number of social influences, the dialect has been undergoing a rapid shift towards Standard Russian. The study examines two sound changes in progress: (1) a merger of unstressed mid back vowels and (2) a split of a post-alveolar fricative into two phonemes. The focus of the study is on the role of social factors—age, mobility, education, and sex—in determining the dynamics of the two rather different phonological processes.

Time-varying acoustic and articulatory characteristics of American English [ɹ]: a cross-speaker study

The present study is an attempt to discover time-varying acoustic correlates of articulatory movements of American English [ɹ] using the X-ray microbeam speech production database. American English [ɹ] is known to be variable in its articulatory postures, whereas a single acoustic correlate—a low third formant—is associated with the sound. A previous study (Westbury, Hashi, & Lindstrom (1998), Speech Communication 26, 203–226) found no relation between articulatory postures and formant frequencies at phonation onset of words beginning with the sound. The present study examined acoustic–articulatory relations in time-varying acoustic and articulatory characteristics in the transition from [ɹ] to a following low- or mid-back vowel. In intervals involving a major F3 rise, a relatively strong correlation ( r⩾0.7) was observed between the average rate of change in F3 (F3 slope) and the speed of the tongue pellet closest to the palate at the onset of the major F3 rise. Results from the study are discussed with respect to the acoustic theory of speech production.

An acoustic study of Italian unstressed mid-vowels

In Italian, the contrast between the two mid front vowels |eε| and between the two mid back vowels |o■| is neutralized in unstressed syllables, where the two pairs merge into the unstressed mid ‘‘archiphonemes’’ |EO|. In this study, an instrumental investigation of the quality of the unstressed mid-vowels is presented to see if neutralization is complete (phonetically), and to determine the nature of |EO| in different contexts. The preliminary results show that there is no statistical difference between an |E| alternating with |e|, an |E| alternating with |ε|, and an |E| that does not alternate with any stressed vowel. The same holds for the mid-back vowel series. In addition, pre-tonic |EO| are realized as mid-high vowels (their average F1 values indicate that they are slightly higher than stressed |eo|), while post-tonic |EO| are realized as mid-low vowels (their average F1 values indicate that they are very similar to stressed |ε■|). In neither case is a significant centralization effect observed. Finer grain distinctions between pre and post-tonic |EO| in different contexts will be examined further.

A report on the vowels of traditional speakers of Western Navajo and the implications for a theory of vowel dispersion

Navajo has a marked vowel space, four long and short vowel pairs with a gap in the high back area. A consistent (monodialectic), conservative (near monolingual) group of Navajo speakers were recorded in the field. Vowel formants were measured and plotted on a bark scale, statistics were performed on vowel pairs and groups. Dispersion and quantal theories predict specific tendencies which do not occur. The results showed a very marked triangular vowel space: two front vowel pairs are compacted into a small area, a high back gap is maintained. Three issues are examined: vowel quality enhancement of the long-short contrasts, distribution of vowels in the tight high front space, and the dispersion of the mid back vowels and their relation to mid front vowels. A quality enhancement is consistently reported in the literature for the high front vowel alone. While statistically reliable differences were found in the vowel pairs along the F1 axis, only the high front vowel showed differences along F1 and F2′ axis. These results imply different, possibly acoustic, targets for the long and short high front vowels while the differences in other pairs is due to undershoot. [Work supported by NIH and American Philosophical Society.]