Rounded Vowels Research Articles

The Predominant Pitch of Semivowels

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2013) The predominant pitch of semivowels 1 Greg Finley University of California, Berkeley A remarkable characteristic of speech perception is that it can be active when listening to nonspeech. Numerous studies have shown speech perception operating to some degree upon nonspeech using a wide variety of stimuli and conditions (Remez & Rubin 1993, Shannon et al. 1995, Liebenthal et al. 2003, Berent et al. 2010, Iverson et al. 2011, Finley 2012), demonstrating either that nonspeech is intelligible as speech or that speech and language abilities affect the processing of nonspeech sounds. Taking a perspective that considers speech perception a cognitive process that operates on auditory input, there is evidence that the computation of linguistic outputs can be performed on a range of inputs that is not restricted to speech (Berent et al. 2010). This suggests that the effects observed in these studies are all a reflection of the same cognitive module responsible for perceiving natural speech, and that this module can be further explored, and perhaps even reverse-engineered, by observing its behavior given various types of auditory input. One exemplary case of linguistic output from obviously nonspeech input is a phenomenon known as the predominant pitch (PP) of vowels. It has long been observed that pure tones of different pitches evoke different vowel qualities for listeners. An early thorough and systematic psychophysical evaluation of this phenomenon was by Farnsworth (1937), who polled subjects hearing tones ranging in frequency from 375 to 2400 Hz as to which of 13 English vowels best matched each tone. The most common three choices were /u/, /o/, and /i/, for which the respective median pitches were 500, 550, and 1900 Hz; the back /ɔ/, /ɑ/ had medians of 700 and 825 Hz and, taken together as for speakers without that contrast, constitute the fourth most common choice. Other studies (Fant 1973, Kuhl et al. 1991) vary in exact pitch ranges but confirm the trend of the back rounded vowels on the low end and the high front at the high end. The identified pitch actually corresponds fairly well to the second vowel formant, although this is difficult to prove outright given the variance of vowel categories between speakers and the rather vague, noncategorical nature of the PP effect. Given the importance of F2 in phonetic categorization (especially for English vowels, as the distribution of rounding serves only to exaggerate the range of possible F2 values), it might not be surprising for a very sparse auditory input to be automatically attributed to this cue. If this is the case, then PP may be the very transparent application of speech perception to nonspeech auditory input, reflecting the same processes that are employed in normal speech listening. A key difference between these stimuli and speech, however—beyond the obvious spectral differences—is in the temporal dynamics of the signal. Speech perception depends on processing both steady and time-varying spectra, but natural speech overwhelmingly comprises the latter. If PP does reflect the natural recruitment of speech perception, and not some other auditory effect, then it should operate also on stimuli with temporal modulation at rates similar to speech. Auditory pure tone stimuli used previously to gauge PP could fit the bill if modified to modulate in frequency over time. Of course this would also change the prediction of what speech sound such a tone would evoke: if a steady tone evokes a vowel, then the analogous speech 1 This work was presented as a talk at the 166 th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in San Francisco, CA on December 3, 2013. The title that appears in the conference program is ‘Simple auditory elements induce perception of a phonetic feature’. This work was supported by NIH grant 1R01DC011295.

Refining bouba-kiki: Phonetic detail and object dimensionality in sound-shape correspondences

Speakers cross-linguistically associate non-words that have round vowels, such as /buba/, with round shapes, and non-words without round vowels, such as /kike/, with spiky shapes (e.g. Kohler 1947). While this link has been attributed to cognitive associations between rounded vowel sounds and images of rounded lips, stimuli have conflated vowel roundness with other phonetic features that may also contribute to the correspondence. In this study, 200 listeners matched abstract objects with nonsense words that systematically varied by vowel frontness, consonant place of articulation, and consonant voicing. Listeners are significantly more likely to select a spiky shape over a round shape when given words with voiceless consonants, alveolar consonants, and front vowels; combinations of these features strengthen the effect. These findings are corroborated in the realm of real-world objects. 102 participants were more likely to name a rounded member of a real-world object class when hearing a word containing non-front vowels than when hearing a word containing front vowels. Further, two- versus three-dimensional object roundness influences the strength of this association. This study provides an empirically and phonetically refined perspective on the paradigm, demonstrating the benefit of considering both detailed phonetic correlates and refined object properties in work on sound symbolism.

Language specific compensation for coarticulation

This paper reports an experiment testing whether compensation for coarticulation in speech perception is mediated by linguistic experience. The stimuli are a set of fricative-vowel syllables on continua from [s] to [∫] with the vowels [a], [u], and [y]. Responses from native speakers of English and French (20 in each group) were compared. Native speakers of French are familiar with the production of the rounded vowel [y] while this vowel was unfamiliar to the native English speakers. Both groups showed compensation for coarticulation (both t > 5, p < 0.01) with the vowel [u] (more “s” responses indicating that in the context of a round vowel, fricatives with a lower spectral center of gravity were labeled “s”). The French group also showed a compensation effect in the [y] environment (t[20] = 3.48, p<0.01). English listeners also showed a tendency for more subject-to-subject variation on the [y] boundary locations than did the French listeners (Levene's test of equality of variance, p < 0.1). The results thus indicate that compensation for coarticulation is a language specific effect, tied to the listener's experience with the conditioning phonetic environment.

Typological asymmetries in round vowel harmony: Support from artificial grammar learning

Providing evidence for the universal tendencies of patterns in the world's languages can be difficult, as it is impossible to sample all possible languages, and linguistic samples are subject to interpretation. However, experimental techniques, such as artificial grammar learning paradigms, make it possible to uncover the psychological reality of claimed universal tendencies. This article addresses learning of phonological patterns (systematic tendencies in the sounds in language). Specifically, I explore the role of phonetic grounding in learning round harmony, a phonological process in which words must contain either all round vowels ([o, u]) or all unround vowels ([i, e]). The phonetic precursors to round harmony are such that mid vowels ([o, e]), which receive the greatest perceptual benefit from harmony, are most likely to trigger harmony. High vowels ([i, u]), however, are cross-linguistically less likely to trigger round harmony. Adult participants were exposed to a miniature language that contained a round harmony pattern in which the harmony source triggers were either high vowels ([i, u]) (poor harmony source triggers) or mid vowels ([o, e]) (ideal harmony source triggers). Only participants who were exposed to the ideal mid vowel harmony source triggers were successfully able to generalise the harmony pattern to novel instances, suggesting that perception and phonetic naturalness play a role in learning.

Finding Values for Multi-Valued Features

In this research, multi-valued vowel systems are investigated to find optimal values for features like the advancement, height, and roundedness of vowels. For this purpose, two constraints are supposed to be satisfied: Values for the roundedness feature can discriminate, and the distance between an unrounded vowel and a corresponding rounded vowel may be small enough to show.

Perceptual coding reliability of (L)-vocalization in casual speech data

(L)-vocalization has been receiving increasing attention in sociophonetic research but is a challenging variable to measure consistently. Acoustic measures are not typically used because velarized-(L), which is the realization most likely to vocalize, is itself extremely difficult to distinguish from a back rounded vowel based only on acoustic features. Because of this, as well as the difficulty in using articulatory measures to capture spontaneous, field-based data, sociolinguists have typically relied solely on auditory coding measures. However, the level of consistency across coders is an issue of particular methodological concern when employing auditory coding, both within and across studies. The current paper presents results from a multi-listener perception survey of (L)-vocalization coding. Phonetically and sociolinguistically trained listeners evaluated a range of productions from two ethnically diverse U.S. English communities: Columbus, Ohio, and San Francisco, California. The survey investigates inter-coder consistency with respect to both phonetic environment and speech variety, with results showing that reliability is dependent on both factors. Inter-coder disagreement is also highest for tokens rated at intermediate levels of vocalization. Given our ethnically diverse speaker sample, we further ask how the coder's perception of a speaker's ethnicity interacts with their vocalization coding decisions. Our findings bear on the methodological decisions made in research that relies on auditory coding, drawing particular attention to the challenge of designing a method sensitive to patterns of variability and social meaning that are potentially both universal and community-specific.

Deg Xinag Rounding Assimilation: A case study in phonologization

AbstractAcoustic and video evidence suggest that Deg Xinag, an Athabaskan language, contains Rounding Assimilation, rounding of schwa before a stressed rounded vowel across uvular or laryngeal consonants. Although Rounding Assimilation has received no mention in previous Deg Xinag studies, it appears to be at stage II, phonologization, in the model of sound change proposed by Hyman (1976). Data from the related language Babine-Witsuwit'en is also presented, showing an absence of Rounding Assimilation in one of the contexts where it occurs in Deg Xinag. Babine-Witsuwit'en sheds light on how and why Rounding Assimilation may have developed historically in Deg Xinag.

Direct mapping of acoustics to phonology: On the lexical encoding of front rounded vowels in L1 English– L2 French acquisition

It is well known that adult US-English-speaking learners of French experience difficulties acquiring high /y/–/u/ and mid /œ/–/ɔ/ front vs. back rounded vowel contrasts in French. This study examines the acquisition of these French vowel contrasts at two levels: phonetic categorization and lexical representations. An ABX categorization task (for details, see Section IV) revealed that both advanced and intermediate learners categorized /œ/ vs. /ɔ/ and /y/ vs. /u/ differently from native speakers of French, although performance on the /y/–/u/ contrast was more accurate than on the /œ/–/ɔ/ contrast in all contexts. On a lexical decision task with repetition priming, advanced learners and native speakers produced no (spurious) response time (RT) facilitations for /y/–/u/ and /œ/–/ɔ/ minimal pairs; however, in intermediate learners, the decision for a word containing /y/ was speeded by hearing an otherwise identical word containing /u/ (and vice versa), suggesting that /u/ and /y/ are not distinguished in lexical representations. Thus, while it appears that advanced learners encoded the /y/–/u/ and /œ/–/ɔ/ contrasts in the phonological representations of lexical items, they gained no significant benefit on the categorization task. This dissociation between phonological representations and phonetic categorization challenges common assumptions about their relationship and supports a novel approach we label ‘direct mapping from acoustics to phonology’ (DMAP).

Measuring Coarticulation in Spontaneous Speech: A Preliminary Report

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2012) Measuring coarticulation in spontaneous speech: a preliminary report Melinda Fricke Keith Johnson University of California, Berkeley Introduction: why study spontaneous speech? Constantly improving processing capabilities have recently opened the door to a type of lan- guage data that was previously impossible to study: the phonetic properties of spontaneous speech. Within the past two decades in particular, studies of the acoustics of conversational speech have become more common, and more sophisticated. The present study seeks to further expand our understanding of natural speech processes by examining coarticulatory patterns in the spontaneously produced speech of adults and children. The study of spontaneous speech can shed considerable light on the workings of the language production system. In normal, everyday conversation, speakers are under quite different (and likely more stringent) pressures than in a laboratory setting. Laboratory speech is typically carefully controlled and often minimally creative; subjects often read words or sentences from a computer screen, repeating the same sentence or type of sentence many times, thus eliminating the usual need to go from concept to sentence construction to articulation. While laboratory studies have been invaluable for developing models of language production, the true testing ground for such models must be spontaneous speech, since it uniquely reveals how language production must proceed in the real world, in real time. The present study is concerned with coarticulatory patterns in particular. Coarticula- tion, the process by which any articulatory gesture affects adjacent articulatory gestures, can be anticipatory (as when knowledge of an upcoming gesture affects the realization of the gesture currently being executed) or perseverative (when an already initiated gesture carries over onto the articulatory realization of a following gesture). This study will be concerned with vowel-on-fricative coarticulation: the present research question is whether acoustic measurements can be identified that distinguish fricatives in a round vowel context from fricatives in a non-round vowel context in spontaneously produced speech. In addition to the main research question, the acoustic measurements under investigation will be ap-

Katrin Dohlus: The Role of Phonology and Phonetics in Loanword Adaptation: German and French Front Rounded Vowels in Japanese

Katrin Dohlus: The Role of Phonology and Phonetics in Loanword Adaptation: German and French Front Rounded Vowels in Japanese

Harmony is Myopic: Reply to Walker 2010

Harmony is Myopic: Reply to Walker 2010

On Comanche’s Central Mid Vowel

Comanche has six vowel qualities /i, e, a, o, u, ɨ/ (plus a length distinction), and while the literature agrees almost completely on /i, e, a, o, u/, the last vowel /ɨ/ has been problematic—described as central in some papers, back in others, and compared to both round and spread vowels of English. This paper provides an acoustic description of the Comanche vowel system based on recordings of six native speakers which suggests that Comanche /ɨ/ is actually a central mid vowel—not a high vowel. The discrepancy with the literature is attributed to three factors: a lack of prior acoustic research on Comanche, perceptual interference from the English language, and the prevalence of /ɨ/ in the literature on Numic languages. If other related languages turn out to require the reclassification of /ɨ/ as a mid vowel, this could have implications for the reconstruction of the Uto-Aztecan vowel system.

The perception of English onset glides produced by Korean speakers*

This study explores Korean learners` production of English onsets with the glide w or j by investigating native English speakers` perception of those onsets produced by Korean learners. In an experiment identifying Korean learners` production of English minimal pairs which differ in the presence or absence of the onset glide, it was found that native English speakers exhibited difficulties in perceiving Korean learners` pronunciation of the English ``w + round vowel`` and ``j + high front vowel`` sequences, which are not attested in Korean. In addition, native English speakers experienced problems perceiving Korean learners` pronunciation of the English /kw/ sequence although it occurs in Korean. It is conjectured that the combined effects of the shorter VOT with English /kw/ and w-deletion or the phonetic realization of /w/ as a secondary articulation of a preceding consonant in Korean triggered such results in our study.

The physiological, acoustic, and perceptual basis of high back vowel fronting: Evidence from German tense and lax vowels

High back rounded vowels are prone synchronically to fronting in a fronting context and diachronically they are more likely to front than high front vowels are to retract. In order to shed light on the reasons for this back–front asymmetry, tense and lax vowels produced in three place of articulation contexts by seven first-language speakers of German at two speech rates were analysed physiologically, acoustically, and perceptually. An articulographic analysis showed greater magnitudes and peak velocities of horizontal tongue dorsum movement in CV transitions for /u:, o:/ than for /e:, i:/. A second experiment showed that the difference between tense and lax vowels in the tongue dorsum's horizontal position was greater for back than front vowels. A third experiment showed /u:, ʊ/ were more likely to encroach on the /y:, ʏ/ spaces than the other way round for measurements based both on the horizontal tongue dorsum position and on spectral slope; a similar pattern of results emerged in a forced-choice perception experiment. The general conclusion is that high back vowels that are as peripheral as those in German have a high articulatory cost which may explain both the diachronic tendency for back vowels to front and why the absence of a high back vowel often contributes to asymmetric vowel distributions in the world's languages.

Individual differences in use of English fricative perceptual cues.

This study examines individual variation as a potential explanation for contradictory and inconsistent reports of English speakers’ use of acoustic cues in identification of the voiceless sibilants [s] and [∫]. While there is widespread agreement that the spectral shape of turbulent noise is key for identification of these two categories, some studies find that formant transitions to and from the noise also influence identification [Whalen, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 69, 275–282 (1981)], while others do not [Harris, Lang. Speech 1, 1–7 (1958)]. Similarly, the majority of studies investigating the effect of vowel context on fricative perception show that the presence of round vowels biases listeners toward perception of [s] [Kunisaki and Fujisaki, Ann. Bull. RILP 11, 85–91 (1977)], but others show precisely the opposite effect, where round vowels favor [∫] responses [Nittrouer and Studdert‐Kennedy, J. Speech Hear. Res. 30, 319–329 (1987)]. In this study, 30 native English speakers participated in a labeling experiment that fully crossed all three factors—spectral noise shape, formant transitions, and vocalic context—for each subject. Every pattern of cue use found in the literature is also found in one or more of the individuals, which may explain why averaged results vary so widely across reports.

Perception and production of French close and close-mid rounded vowels by Japanese-speaking learners

A series of three experiments were conducted to examine the behaviour of Japanese-speaking learners of French (JSL) concerning the perception and production of French /u/, /y/ and /o/, compared with English-speaking learners of French, in order to examine how L2 (second language) vowels which do not have phonemic and/or phonetic equivalents in L1 (native language) are acquired by learners.The results indicate that JSL tend to produce French /u/ with a high F2 (> 1000 Hz), which is heard as /o/ by native French (NF) listeners. They suggest that French /u/ is considered by JSL as phonemically similar to Japanese /u/ (as a high back vowel) and produced as such, while the phonetic realisation of French /u/ is new and different; and that /y/ is considered as both phonemically and phonetically new, and /o/ as phonemically new but phonetically (acoustically) similar. Phonemically similar but phonetically new vowels seem to be most difficult to learn to produce accurately for foreign/second language learners.

On the assimilation-discrimination relationship in American English adults’ French vowel learning

A quantitative "cross-language assimilation overlap" method for testing predictions of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) was implemented to compare results of a discrimination experiment with the listeners' previously reported assimilation data. The experiment examined discrimination of Parisian French (PF) front rounded vowels /y/ and /oe/. Three groups of American English listeners differing in their French experience (no experience [NoExp], formal experience [ModExp], and extensive formal-plus-immersion experience [HiExp]) performed discrimination of PF /y-u/, /y-o/, /oe-o/, /oe-u/, /y-i/, /y-epsilon/, /oe-epsilon/, /oe-i/, /y-oe/, /u-i/, and /a-epsilon/. Vowels were in bilabial /rabVp/ and alveolar /radVt/ contexts. More errors were found for PF front vs back rounded vowel pairs (16%) than for PF front unrounded vs rounded pairs (2%). Overall, ModExp listeners did not perform more accurately (11% errors) than NoExp listeners (13% errors). Extensive immersion experience, however, was associated with fewer errors (3%) than formal experience alone, although discrimination of PF /y-u/ remained relatively poor (12% errors) for HiExp listeners. More errors occurred on pairs involving front vs back rounded vowels in alveolar context (20% errors) than in bilabial (11% errors). Significant correlations were revealed between listeners' assimilation overlap scores and their discrimination errors, suggesting that the PAM may be extended to second-language (L2) vowel learning.

He divn’t gan tiv a college ti di that, man! A study of do (and to) in Tyneside English

Abstract The following study uses data collected as part of the Tyneside Linguistic Survey (TLS) taken in the late 1960s in Gateshead, across from Newcastle on the River Tyne in the northeast of England. The Newcastle conurbation is situated in Tyne and Wear; this county and surrounding Northumberland comprise the Northumbrian dialect area. This paper, which concentrates on Tyneside English, has, as its primary goal, to etymologize a set of salient Tyneside linguistic forms, the Tyneside equivalents of Standard English do and to . In Tyneside English, these forms emerge with [ ɪ v] intervocalically, and with [i] (with rich allophony) otherwise. The vowel is claimed to be a result of Northern Fronting; where the consonant [v] appears, it likely reflects a fortition of [u, w], the round vowel’s offglide.

Cross-language categorization of French and German vowels by naïve American listeners

American English (AE) speakers' perceptual assimilation of 14 North German (NG) and 9 Parisian French (PF) vowels was examined in two studies using citation-form disyllables (study 1) and sentences with vowels surrounded by labial and alveolar consonants in multisyllabic nonsense words (study 2). Listeners categorized multiple tokens of each NG and PF vowel as most similar to selected AE vowels and rated their category "goodness" on a nine-point Likert scale. Front, rounded vowels were assimilated primarily to back AE vowels, despite their acoustic similarity to front AE vowels. In study 1, they were considered poorer exemplars of AE vowels than were NG and PF back, rounded vowels; in study 2, front and back, rounded vowels were perceived as similar to each other. Assimilation of some front, unrounded and back, rounded NG and PF vowels varied with language, speaking style, and consonantal context. Differences in perceived similarity often could not be predicted from context-specific cross-language spectral similarities. Results suggest that listeners can access context-specific, phonetic details when listening to citation-form materials, but assimilate non-native vowels on the basis of context-independent phonological equivalence categories when processing continuous speech. Results are interpreted within the Automatic Selective Perception model of speech perception.

Perception‐production relationship in French vowel learning in adulthood.

The present study examined the extent to which perceptual performance by American English (AE) individuals predicted their accuracy in producing second‐language (L2) Parisian French (PF) vowels. Three groups of AE participants (no, moderate, and extensive French‐language experience) participated in two perceptual tasks (categorial discrimination and perceptual assimilation), and a production (repetition) task involving PF /y‐œ‐i‐a‐u/ in bilabial /rabVpa/ and alveolar /radVta/ contexts within a phrase. Results from perception tasks correctly predicted overall production difficulties and effects of language experience and consonantal context in L2 production. Paralleling their perceptual patterns, front rounded vowel productions by AE participants were mislabeled more often as back rounded vowels than as front vowels by native‐French speakers. PF /œ/ was produced more accurately with greater L2 experience. Production accuracy of /y/ was also greater with extensive experience, a finding not expected based on...