Mid Front Research Articles

Application of melt pool profiles for parameter calibration of Goldak’s heat source model

Goldak’s ellipsoidal heat source model is widely accepted in laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process simulations. The model is dependent on three inherent flux distribution parameters and absorptivity which need to be calibrated before application. However, the uniqueness of the calibrated heat source parameters has not been established, which is crucial to accurately represent the energy density distribution in numerical studies. This paper proposed a novel parametric optimization method that can uniquely calibrate these four heat source parameters with high accuracy. Both the simulated cross-sectional (CS) profile and the mid-front (MF) profile of the melt pool were used during calibration. The differences between the experimental and simulated profiles formed the objective function of the parametric optimization problem, which was calculated by using the least power norm method on the deviations between melt pool boundary curves. A genetic algorithm (GA) with elitism selection approach was employed to optimize the heat source parameters by minimizing this single objective function value. To theoretically verify the applicability of the method, two theoretical case studies involving two distinct sets of heat source parameters were carried out. A unique solution of Goldak’s heat source parameters with less than 2 % error can be achieved within 50 generations of the optimization process. A single-track experiment was conducted to demonstrate the application of the proposed method in a real scenario. The CS and MF melt pool profiles were extracted and the calibration procedure was applied. The profiles from simulation with the calibrated heat source parameters exhibited a good agreement with experimental results. The calibrated parameters were used to simulate multi-track printing on a single layer for validation of the proposed method. The CS melt pool profiles obtained from the multi-track simulation and multi-track experiment agreed well, which validated the accuracy of the proposed calibration method and its utility in obtaining the key Goldak heat source parameters for LPBF simulation.

The effects of phonetics training on the production and perception of rhotic vowels in American English

This talk examines how the American “r” phoneme affects the production and perception of American English front vowels in pre-rhotic positions. Rhotic vowels challenge listeners in accurately identifying the phonetic quality of vowels due to r-coloring affecting formants (Chung etal., 2021; MacAllister et al., 2017). For example, the vowel in “beer” is commonly perceived as [i] by listeners, yet can be produced as either a tense or lax high front vowel. This challenge is particularly concerning to aspiring clinicians learning phonetic transcription. This study investigates speakers’ acoustic identity of pre-rhotic high and mid front vowels, and listeners’ ability to accurately perceive pre-rhotic vowel identities. This study examines a 50-speaker sample of college-age participants separated into two groups (with and without phonetics training). All participants read a 100-word wordlist and completed a 200-word four-alternative forced-choice identification (AFCI) task. Furthermore, the AFCI task presents each word twice by either a male or a female voice. Listeners select from four options (“BEAT,” “BIT,” “BATE,” “BET”) and rate their confidence level for each choice. Preliminary data, demarcated in PRAAT, processed using FAVE-extract, and analyzed using R software, indicate the mapping between production and perception to be strongest for those with previous phonetic training.

A Real-Time Trend Study of the Southern Vowel Shift in Kentuckiana

This article examines both the front and back shifts of the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) in a rural Kentuckiana (south-central Indiana) community through 50 years of real time, from the middle of the twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. Euclidean distance measurements between the pair of high front vowels /i/ and /I/ and between the pair of mid front vowels /e/ and /ε/ are subjected to analyses of variance (ANOVAs). The mid front vowels are found to be involved in the SVS and increasingly so through real time; the high front vowels, in contrast, not only are not participating in the SVS but have exhibited movements in non-SVS directions. Fronting of the back vowels is analyzed through linear mixed-effects regression analyses. Except for /℧/, which remains stable over time in this community, the other back vowels, /u/, /o/, and the nucleus of the /a℧/ diphthong all show real-time changes that are consistent with the SVS. Some of the real-time developments are at odds with profiles of change through apparent time, which underscores the value of real-time data when and where it is available.

ACCENTUAL VARIATIONS OF SASAK LANGUAGE: A STUDY ON NGENO-NGENE DIALECT OF EAST LOMBOK DISTRICT

This study is aimed at finding out the accentual variation of Sasak Ngeno-Ngene dialect in East Lombok district. It tries to describe the accentual variations and their phonological patterns, and the factors which govern the varied patterns. This research used descriptive qualitative method. The source of data was all linguistics expression spoken in four research villages including Pancor village, Kotaraja village, Rarang village, and South Masbagik village. A sample data was recorded from informants who had fulfilled some criteria. The data were collected by observing, storytelling, recording, and note taking. The result of this study shows that every village has their own unique accentual realization. Pancor variant mostly uses the back mid-high /o/sound in realizing the <a>, Kotaraja variant mostly uses the schwa /ә/ in its vocabularies, South Masbagik mostly uses the mid front /ε/ sound in its vocabularies, and Rarang variant sometimes uses the same with others but it differs significantly from another accents through its consonant choices. One accent differs from another accent due to the lexical information, meaning that the accents often vary in the phonemic form they select for lexical representation. This research also found the factors that triggered the accentual variation on ngeno-ngene dialect with regards to the dialectal evolution and social factor.

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.

Simultaneous bilingualism and speech style as predictors of variation in allophone production: Evidence from Finland-Swedish

This study investigates cross-linguistic transfer in the production of long mid front vowels [øː] and [œː] by simultaneous bilingual Finnish and Finland-Swedish speakers in Finland. In Swedish, the phoneme /ø/ can be realised as the allophones [ø] and [œ], while in Finnish, only [ø] is used. Combining approaches from sociophonetic and bilingual transfer research, the study used acoustic analysis to compare the height and fronting of [øː] and [œː] produced by bilingual and monolingual Finland-Swedish speakers in three different speech styles on a continuum of formality. The data from 115 participants are stratified according to language background, speech style, region, and age. The statistical analysis indicates increased overlap of [øː] and [œː] in the vowel spaces of bilingual speakers, particularly in informal speech. The results suggest a potential effect of Finnish transfer on the distinction of the phonetic variants in simultaneous Finland-Swedish bilinguals, as well as demonstrate the importance of considering speech style in bilingual transfer research.

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.

Bidirectionality of language contact: Spanish and Catalan vowels

The disproportionate number of studies in Barcelona and the Balearic Islands observing Spanish contact effects in Catalan production, rather than Catalan contact effects in Spanish production, is an oversight of bidirectionality and the probabilistic nature of social factors in situations of language contact. Accordingly, the present study analyzes both Catalan and Spanish mid front vowel production data from Barcelona to investigate whether Catalan contact effects occur in Spanish via a process of dissimilation, and whether such effects are strengthened in younger speakers due to the relatively recent implementation of Catalan linguistic policy in the educational and public spheres. The results are suggestive of dissimilation, where phonetic distinctions are maintained between Spanish /e/ and the two Catalan mid front vowels across both F1 and F2. Additionally, analyses of variance across F1 and F2 reveal that Spanish /e/ productions across F1 are more diffuse in younger speakers and Catalan mid front vowels across F2 are less diffuse, providing evidence of reciprocity in contact effects. These results underscore the bidirectional nature of language contact and advocate for the use of variance of F1 and F2 as a metric of phonological contact effects.

The origin and synchronic status of mid front vowels in Kazym Khanty

The origin and synchronic status of mid front vowels in Kazym Khanty

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.

Cross-modal associations and synesthesia: Categorical perception and structure in vowel\u2013color mappings in a large online sample

We report associations between vowel sounds, graphemes, and colors collected online from over 1,000 Dutch speakers. We also provide open materials, including a Python implementation of the structure measure and code for a single-page web application to run simple cross-modal tasks. We also provide a full dataset of color–vowel associations from 1,164 participants, including over 200 synesthetes identified using consistency measures. Our analysis reveals salient patterns in the cross-modal associations and introduces a novel measure of isomorphism in cross-modal mappings. We found that, while the acoustic features of vowels significantly predict certain mappings (replicating prior work), both vowel phoneme category and grapheme category are even better predictors of color choice. Phoneme category is the best predictor of color choice overall, pointing to the importance of phonological representations in addition to acoustic cues. Generally, high/front vowels are lighter, more green, and more yellow than low/back vowels. Synesthetes respond more strongly on some dimensions, choosing lighter and more yellow colors for high and mid front vowels than do nonsynesthetes. We also present a novel measure of cross-modal mappings adapted from ecology, which uses a simulated distribution of mappings to measure the extent to which participants’ actual mappings are structured isomorphically across modalities. Synesthetes have mappings that tend to be more structured than nonsynesthetes’, and more consistent color choices across trials correlate with higher structure scores. Nevertheless, the large majority (~ 70%) of participants produce structured mappings, indicating that the capacity to make isomorphically structured mappings across distinct modalities is shared to a large extent, even if the exact nature of the mappings varies across individuals. Overall, this novel structure measure suggests a distribution of structured cross-modal association in the population, with synesthetes at one extreme and participants with unstructured associations at the other.

Stressed vowel assimilation to palatal consonants in early Romance

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

The effects of prenasal raising of American English /æ/ on the identification of American English vowels by native Japanese and Korean listeners

This study attempts to investigate the effect of prenasal raising of American English /ae/ on the identification of the vowel by native Japanese and Korean listeners by comparing the identification accuracy of /ae/ in preplosive and prenasal context by these two listener groups. Native Japanese speakers generally equate /ae/ with Japanese low vowel /a/ whereas native Korean speakers identify /ae/ with Korean mid front vowel /e/, and /ae/-/ɛ/ is one of the most difficult English vowel pairs for Korean speakers to discriminate (Ingram & Park 1997, Frieda & Nozawa 2007). It was expected that Korean listeners would identify raised /ae/ in prenasal context as /ɛ/ or /eɪ/, but they mistakenly identified /ɛ/ and /eɪ/ as /ae/ far more frequently than /ae/ as /ɛ/ or /eɪ/. The results revealed that while Japanese listeners' identification accuracy of /ae/ is significantly lower in prenasal context than in preplosive context, Korean listeners' identification accuracy of /ae/ is unaffected by the raising of /ae/. Korean listene...

Vowels Development in Babbling of typically developing 6-to-12-month old Persian-learning Infants

Objectives: Pre-linguistic vocalizations including early consonants, vowels, and their combinations into syllables are considered as important predictors of the speech and language development. The purpose of this study was to examine vowel development in babblings of normally developing Persian-learning infants.Methods: Eight typically developing 6–8-month-old Persian-learning infants (3 boys and 5 girls) participated in this 4-month longitudinal descriptive-analytic study. A weekly 30–60-minute audio- and video-recording was obtained at home from the comfort state vocalizations of infants and the mother–child interactions. A total of 74:02:03 hours of vocalizations were phonetically transcribed. Seven vowels comprising /i/,/e/,/a/,/u/,/o/,/ɑ/, and /ә/ were identified in the babblings. The inter-rater reliability was obtained for 20% of vocalizations. The data were analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA and Pearson’s correlation coefficient using SPSS software version 20.Results: The results showed that two vowels /a/ (46.04) and /e/ (23.60) were produced with the highest mean frequency of occurrence, respectively. Regarding front/back dimension, the front vowels were the most prominent ones (71.87); in terms of height, low (46.78) and mid (32.45) vowels occurred maximally. A good inter-rater reliability was obtained (0.99, P < .01).Conclusion: The increased frequency of occurrence of the low and mid front vowels in the current study was consistent with previous studies on the emergence of vowels in pre-linguistic vocalization in other languages.

Effects of Lexical Competition and Dialect Exposure on Phonological Priming

A cross-modal lexical decision task was used to explore the effects of lexical competition and dialect exposure on phonological form priming. Relative to unrelated auditory primes, matching real word primes facilitated lexical decision for visual real word targets, whereas competing minimal pair primes inhibited lexical decision. These effects were robust across two English vowel pairs (mid-front and low-front) and for two listener groups (mono-dialectal and multi-dialectal). However, both the most robust facilitation and the most robust inhibition were observed for the mid-front vowel words with few phonological competitors for the mono-dialectal listener group. The mid-front vowel targets were acoustically more distinct than the low-front vowel targets, suggesting that acoustic-phonetic similarity leads to stronger lexical competition and less robust facilitation and inhibition. The multi-dialectal listeners had more prior exposure to multiple different dialects than the mono-dialectal group, suggesting that long-term exposure to linguistic variability contributes to a more flexible processing strategy in which lexical competition extends over a longer period of time, leading to less robust facilitation and inhibition.

Four mid front vowels in Western Almería

Eastern Andalusian Spanish neutralises consonants in coda, although despite the neutralisation of most coda consonants, phonemic value has only been given to vowels preceding deleted /s/. The present paper expands on this traditional view and shows a more complex reality. This study will analyse differences between word-final /e/ and /e/ preceding deleted word-final /s/, /r/, and /θ/ in Western Almería (Eastern Andalusia) to determine if the deletion of each of these consonants causes consistent changes of quality to /e/, creating a system of four mid front vowels. A perception analysis will then determine if Western Almería speakers can distinguish between each of those vowels, which will confirm whether these realisations of /e/ have allophonic or phonemic value. An analysis shows consistent F1 and F2 values depending on whether /e/ is in coda or whether it precedes word-final /s/, /r/, or /θ/ deletion. Furthermore, perception tests show an ability to distinguish between some of those four mid front vowels.

Second Language Acquisition of Spanish /e/ and /ei/ by Native English Speakers

The present article reports on the findings of a cross-sectional acoustic study of the production of the Spanish /e/-/ei/ contrast, as in pena-peina and reno-reino , by native-English intermediate and advanced learners of Spanish. The acoustic parameter that distinguishes Spanish /e/ from /ei/ is formant change—/e/ is a monophthong and /ei/ is a diphthong. English, on the other hand, has a mid front monophthong /ɛ/ ( bet, debt ) and a mid-to-high front diphthong /e ɪ / ( bait, date ). These vowels differ in both their overall place of articulation and in their dynamic characteristics. Spanish /e/ is similar to both English /ɛ/ and /e ɪ / but is not identical to any of the two vowels; Spanish /ei/ is similar, but also not identical, to English /e ɪ /. This situation creates complex inter-lingual interactions for the learners. The study addresses these interactions as they are evidenced in speech production. The findings are discussed in terms of their significance for current models of second language speech learning and provide important information regarding the paths of pronunciation development in the second-language acquisition of Spanish vowels by adult native speakers of American English.

On the Merger of Korean Mid Front Vowels: Phonetic and Phonological Evidence

This paper investigates the status of the merger between the mid front unrounded vowels ㅔ[e] and ㅐ[<TEX>${\varepsilon}$</TEX>] in contemporary Korean. Our analysis is based on a balanced corpus of production and perception data from young subjects from three dialectal areas (Seoul, Daegu and Gwangju). Except for expected gender differences, the production data display no difference in the realization of these vowels, in any of the dialects. The perception data, while mostly in line with the production results, show that Seoul females tend to better discriminate the two vowels in terms of perceived height: vowels with a lower F1 are more likely to be categorized as ㅔ by this group. We then investigate the possible causes of this merger: based on an empirical study of transcribed spoken Korean, we show that the pair of vowels ㅔ/ㅐ has a very low functional load. We argue that this factor, together with the phonetic similarity of the two vowels, may have been responsible for the observed merger.

Vowel Raising in Nkpor Dialect: A Pattern of Sound Change

This paper explores a pattern of phonological change known as vowel raising in the Nkpor dialect of the Igbo language. Using a corpus of conversational Nkpor speech collected from the respondents through tape-recording, we presented data from an authority analysis of the vowels and auditory data of vowel raising. The data support three main claims. First, the voiced palatal nasal /ɲ/ is elided. It claims that in a word consisting of two root verbs, the initial verb root contains any consonant and any vowel, and the second verb root contains the voiced palatal nasal /ɲ/ and a mid front vowel /e/, then, the voiced palatal nasal is elided. Second, after the elision, the mid vowel /e/ of the second verb is raised to a high front vowel /i/ or /ɪ/, agreeing with the vowel harmony rule. Third, Nkpor dialect goes beyond the raising of only vowels of the second verb. It further raises vowels of the first verb which are not high. The much more rapid loss of the voiced palatal nasal /ɲ/ and the consequent raising of the vowels are plausibly attributed to rapid speech, especially in construction and some sociolinguistic factors.

Kokborok: A Major Tribal Language of Tripura

Kokborok: A Major Tribal Language of Tripura