Unstressed Vowels Research Articles

Recognition of psychoneurological state of children with autism spectrum disorder by features of speech: acoustic and perceptual features

The work is devoted to studying of recognition of psychoneurological state of children aged 5–14 with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), n = 35, and typically developing (TD) children, n = 45, by adults. A perceptual analysis was carried out, in which adult native speakers of the Russian language (auditors), n = 206, took part. Test sequences (audiotests) with words and phrases of ASD and TD children selected from spontaneous speech recordings were created for perceptual research. Auditors’ task was to determine psychoneurological state of children (typical/atypical development) based on auditory perception. A spectrographic analysis of phrases of children was carried out. Phrases of ASD children in comparison with TD children are characterized by lower speech rate, fewer words, great stressed and unstressed vowel duration, great values of pitch in phrase, word, stressed and unstressed vowel.

Complete reduction of unstressed vowels in the standard russian language and its reflection in dictionaries

The article is devoted to the complete reduction of unstressed vowels in the standard Russian language. The article shows that the cases of dieresis of unstressed vowels in the dictionaries of various types are not always represented consistently. For example, in the academic “Dictionary of the Modern Standard Russian language” variants with a graphic reflection of the vowel dieresis are noted in prítolka, páportnik, zhávronok, púgvitsa, but “Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language” fixes only the variants púgvitsa, púgvichnikъ. In orthoepic sources, the corresponding pronunciation recommendations are also contradictory: in the “Dictionary of Stress and Pronunciation of Words in the Russian Language” the variants príto[lk]a and próvo[lk]a are marked as incorrect, while in the “Big Orthoepic Dictionary” these variants are recognized as the main ones. The article proposes to distinguish, on the one hand, the lexical or morphological attachment of the vowel dieresis to a specific word or morpheme, and, on the other hand, the actual lexicalization of a pronunciation without a vowel. In the first case, fixing variants with vowel dieresis in orthoepic-type dictionaries seems redundant, since the choice of pronunciation, as a rule, depends on phrasal position and occurs automatically. In the second case, the pronunciation of the words does not necessarily derive from their spelling, and therefore they require orthoepic commentary.

On the interaction between vowel confusions (<e> for /i/ and <o> for /u/) and lexical stress in Latin inscriptions from Rome (ca. 119 BCE – ca. 600 CE)

AbstractThe aim of this article is to better define how changes in the Latin vowel system evolved over time in the stressed vs. the unstressed syllables in the Latin of Rome. To this end, the cases of <e> for /i/ and <o> for /u/ in an epigraphic corpus of 6,599 inscriptions from this city have been analysed by comparing the number of epigraphic errors occurring under and out of stress in five different periods. Our results indicate that, until about the 4th cent. CE, cases of <e> for /i/ and <o> for /u/ occur mostly in the unstressed syllables in our inscriptions, which is consistent with the view that the reorganisation of the vocalic qualities in the Latin vowel system affected the unstressed vowels before it affected the stressed ones. However, the same results also indicate that the number of epigraphic deviations concerning the stressed vowels /i/ and /u/ in our corpus increases from about the 4th–5th cent. CE onwards, and that this fact should be linked to the dephonologisation of contrastive vowel quantity (in the stressed syllables).

The role of recoverability in the implementation of non-phonemic glottalization in Hawaiian

Abstract Previous research has shown that non-phonemic uses of glottalization are often prosodically determined in a variety of languages such as English, German, Polish, and Spanish. We examine the use of inserted glottalization in Hawaiian, a language that also has a phonemic glottal stop, to determine whether the distribution and realization of non-phonemic glottalization is conditioned by higher prosodic boundaries and/or prosodic prominence as found in other languages. The spontaneous speech data in this study comes from the Hawaiian-language radio program Ka Leo Hawaiʻi, which featured interviews with bilingual Hawaiian–English speakers in the 1970s and 1980s (Kimura, Larry (Producer). 2020. Ka Leo Hawaiʻi [radio program]. Kaniʻāina, the digital repository of Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani, College of Hawaiian Language, University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. Available at: https://ulukau.org/kaniaina/). Results show that non-phonemic glottalization occurs most often before an unstressed, monophthongal single-vowel grammatical marker (/a e i o/), where it is also longer, as well as before unstressed vowels and between different flanking sounds. Full closures were more likely between identical vowels, but stress does not affect realization. These results are not consistent with the use of glottalization at higher prosodic boundaries or to mark prosodic prominence. Instead, the preponderance of non-phonemic glottalization before single-vowel grammatical markers may be to ensure that these critical markers are recoverable and not perceptually subsumed by the preceding vowel.

<i>There’s Less Jakan’je Here</i> (Unstressed Vowel Systems of Two Neighbouring Tambov Dialects)

The paper deals with the unstressed vowels systems after palatalized consonants in two neighbouring Southern Russian dialects from Staroyuryev district, Tambov region (Ryazan’ group). The results obtained show that 1) the two dialects located at a distance of 5 kilometers from each other are characterized by different types of the assimilative-dissimilative jakan’je: novoselkovsky and orekhovsky; 2) there are no distinctions in this regard in male in female idiolects; 3) dialectal speakers are quite aware of those subtle differences in their speech. Meanwhile, the obtained data lead us to the conclusion that there exists a gradual transitional distinction among various “types” of assimilative-dissimilative jakan’je in South-Eastern Russian dialects rather than a strict categorial (“phonological”) boundary between them since the dialects in question show a gradual transition from prestressed [i] to [a] after palatalized consonants before stressed mid-open and mid-close vowels while there is no variability detected in the position before low and high vowels. Thus, in the system of unstressed vocalism there are both completely stable and variable components.

Optimization-based planning of speech articulation using general Tau Theory

This paper presents a model of speech articulation planning and generation based on General Tau Theory and Optimal Control Theory. Because General Tau Theory assumes that articulatory targets are always reached, the model accounts for speech variation via context-dependent articulatory targets. Targets are chosen via the optimization of a composite objective function. This function models three different task requirements: maximal intelligibility, minimal articulatory effort and minimal utterance duration. The paper shows that systematic phonetic variability can be reproduced by adjusting the weights assigned to each task requirement. Weights can be adjusted globally to simulate different speech styles, and can be adjusted locally to simulate different levels of prosodic prominence. The solution of the optimization procedure contains Tau equation parameter values for each articulatory movement, namely position of the articulator at the movement offset, movement duration, and a parameter which relates to the shape of the movement’s velocity profile. The paper presents simulations which illustrate the ability of the model to predict or reproduce several well-known characteristics of speech. These phenomena include close-to-symmetric velocity profiles for articulatory movement, variation related to speech rate, centralization of unstressed vowels, lengthening of stressed vowels, lenition of unstressed lingual stop consonants, and coarticulation of stop consonants.

Редукция на неударените гласни в съвременния български книжовен език: съпоставка на общоприети възгледи с корпусни данни

Bulgarian is often cited in phonological work for its vowel reduction, with the assumption that the six-vowel stressed inventory, /ɛ, a, ɔ, i, ɤ, u/, shrinks to a sub-inventory of three contrastive vowels in unstressed position, /i, ɤ, u/, by virtue of /ɛ, a, ɔ/ raising and merging with /i, ɤ, u/, respectively. The literature in Bulgarian, on the other hand, maintains that /ɛ–i/ do not merge in Standard Bulgarian; that unstressed vowels are more open in immediately pretonic syllables than elsewhere; that unstressed high vowels are lowered, while nonhigh vowels are raised; and that reduction is strongest in /a/. These claims have been challenged in recent work, and we present a new investigation based on 11 615 vowel tokens from 140 speakers in the BulPhonC speech corpus. MANOVA and LMM results provide clear evidence that there is no unstressed high-vowel lowering, no difference between pretonic vs other unstressed vowels, and that unstressed /a–ɤ/ and /ɔ–u/ merge completely through the raising of /a/ and /ɔ/ to [ɤ] and [u], respective-ly. At the same time, unstressed /ɛ–i/ remain spectrally distinct.

The acoustics of Contemporary Standard Bulgarian vowels: A corpus study.

A comprehensive examination of the acoustics of Contemporary Standard Bulgarian vowels is lacking to date, and this article aims to fill that gap. Six acoustic variables-the first three formant frequencies, duration, mean f0, and mean intensity-of 11 615 vowel tokens from 140 speakers were analysed using linear mixed models, multivariate analysis of variance, and linear discriminant analysis. The vowel system, which comprises six phonemes in stressed position, [ε a ɔ i ɤ u], was examined from four angles. First, vowels in pretonic syllables were compared to other unstressed vowels, and no spectral or durational differences were found, contrary to an oft-repeated claim that pretonic vowels reduce less. Second, comparisons of stressed and unstressed vowels revealed significant differences in all six variables for the non-high vowels [ε a ɔ]. No spectral or durational differences were found in [i ɤ u], which disproves another received view that high vowels are lowered when unstressed. Third, non-high vowels were compared with their high counterparts; the height contrast was completely neutralized in unstressed [a-ɤ] and [ɔ-u] while [ε-i] remained distinct. Last, the acoustic correlates of vowel contrasts were examined, and it was demonstrated that only F1, F2 frequencies and duration were systematically employed in differentiating vowel phonemes.

The effect of aging on vowel production in Western Canadian English

Aging influences many aspects of speech production. For example, a speaker’s fundamental frequency or formant space has been reported to change as they age. However, this research has largely focused on careful or prepared speech, with a few notable exceptions in the longitudinal research literature. There is limited knowledge of the relationship between aging and vowel reduction in spontaneously produced speech. It is important to investigate how spontaneous everyday speech is influenced by the aging process. In the present investigation, we work with a corpus of Western Canadian English containing spontaneous conversational speech produced by 18 younger (17–31) and 13 older speakers (64–79). The data was force-aligned and then acoustic measures were extracted from the aligned data. In this presentation, we report on the differences in formant space for stressed and unstressed vowels. The results of this study will be used to better inform our understanding of the role of vowel centralization and aging in spontaneous speech. They will further support the understanding of reduction in spontaneous speech.

Characteristics of Lexical Stress in Hebrew-Speaking Children With Childhood Apraxia of Speech.

The purpose of the present study was to explore the ability of Hebrew-speaking children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) to produce lexical stress. A total of 36 children aged between 4 and 7 years, 18 children with CAS, and 18 typically developing (TD) children participated in the study. All children completed language and speech assessments. The children imitated 20 weak-strong and strong-weak target words within short sentences and in isolation. Acoustic analysis of the vowels in the stressed and unstressed syllables of the target words and perceptual judgment of the words by six speech-language pathologists were conducted. The acoustic analysis showed significant differences in duration, fundamental frequency, and amplitude between stressed and unstressed vowels in weak-strong and strong-weak words and in both groups of children. The total duration for both the stressed and weak syllables was longer in children with CAS compared to TD children. Rated on a Likert scale of 1-5, where 5 indicates correct production, the productions of lexical stress in the CAS group were judged as above 4 on average but were significantly worse compared to the TD group. The target productions of children with CAS were judged as including excessive, equal, or misplaced stress in 10.8% of the productions, whereas 5.8% of the target productions of the TD children were judged as having inappropriate stress. The present findings suggest that Hebrew-speaking children with CAS produce the acoustic characteristics of lexical stress similarly to their peers, and their productions are perceived as having relatively good lexical stress (above 4), although not as good as TD children.

Proto-Nivkh Accent System

Abstract The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the Proto-Nivkh accent system and vocalism with the help of loanword analysis and internal reconstruction. It is shown that the place of the Proto-Nivkh accent depended on vowel height and syllable structure. The paper also argues that the unstressed vowel loss, which led to a radical change in Nivkh phonotactics, consonant system and morphophonology, occurred after the breakup of the last common ancestor of modern Nivkh varieties.

Examining recording quality from two methods of remote data collection in a study of vowel reduction

Remote recording quality of speech data varies significantly by recording devices, formats, and platforms, and past work has asserted that fine-grained sociolinguistic work should not be conducted remotely, while broad questions, such as analyses of the relative position of phonemes in the vowel space, may be amendable to remote data collection. In this study, lossless offline remote recordings taken via smartphone and lossy web-based recording performed over Gorilla are compared to traditional laboratory recordings in order to determine how accurately the remote options replicate a study of English vowel reduction. Four measures of reduction are examined: Relative duration, Euclidean distance, Pillai scores, and normalized formant values of stressed and unstressed vowels. Temporal analyses and Pillai scores were unaffected by recording method, while Euclidean distance and formant values exhibited some statistically significant changes but remained largely in line with laboratory data. These findings indicate that remote offline recording via smartphone or Gorilla may hold promise for studying vowel reduction and other phenomena requiring a similar degree of precision in formant analysis, but researchers should be aware of the specific distortions likely to be incurred with each method, with smartphone recordings having a stronger impact than Gorilla on low and back vowels.

Acoustics of stress and weight in Central Alaskan Yup’ik

In Central Alaskan Yup’ik, syllables with long vowels are always stressed, light syllables alternate stress, but only certain closed syllables are stressed. The acoustic correlates of stress, however, have only been the subject of one small-scale preliminary study so far. Moreover, there are divergent accounts of how phonological phenomena such as gemination and syllable closure affect weight. This article presents an acoustic investigation of gemination, stress, and phonemic length. Six Yup’ik recordings were annotated, resulting in a dataset of 2,602 syllable onsets and 2,282 vowels, which were then modelled using linear mixed-effects models. The first part of the study, examining the distribution of gemination as a metrical-adjacent phenomenon, revealed that singleton onsets were shorter than geminated onsets both within feet and across foot boundaries. The main study showed that stressed vowels were longer, louder, and, for short vowels only, higher in f0 than unstressed vowels, while long vowels were longer, louder, and featured greater f0 falls than short vowels. These results corroborate the literature that asserts that long, short unstressed, and short stressed vowels are all produced distinctively, and moreover, that vowel duration is affected by iambic lengthening and syllable closure. The identification of stress correlates and other metrical behaviors examined here set the stage for future prosodic work on Yup’ik.

Tra contatto e mutamento: fenomeni di variazione fonetica di una parlata alloglotta

This paper investigates the retention of palatal laterals [ʎ] and the reduction of final unstressed vowels in the Occitan variety of Guardia Piemontese, in Calabria. These features were considered of particular interest because they are still attested in some Piedmontese Occitan varieties. Through the analysis of a linguistic corpus and the methodology of sociolinguistic analysis, the study has a twofold objective: (i) to test whether prolonged contact with the Italo-Romance variety has led to an expansion of linguistic variants in terms of specific phonetic features; (ii) whether and how certain types of realization of a linguistic variable are able to direct linguistic change.

El español del qahal qadoš de Pisa (siglo XVII). Aspectos gráficos e implicaciones fónicas

Abstract This paper focuses on the analysis of unpublished documents from volume number 0457 of the Archivio Storico della Comunità Ebrea of Pisa (Italy), the oldest atti civili mammotrect preserved (1660‒1691). In the first critical approach to this corpus, Ariza (2015) studied the letters and their possible phonetic implications, but his work considered the linguistic features of the Pisa book in overall terms. This contribution focuses on the study of the letters from the comparison of different documents, once their 16 authors have been identified. The study is structured in five sections corresponding to the most frequent phenomena, namely, vacillation of unstressed vowels, especially between e / i; the loss of /h/ < Lat. f-, reflected in the lack of the letter h; the merger of voiced bilabials as proof of the use of b for v; and the confusion between /s/ and /θ/ [i.e. seseo]; finally, the merger of /r/ and /ɲ/, two innovations in Judeo-Spanish (Penny 2000). The main goal is to explain to what extent the preserved texts reflect the phonetic variation of the Hebrew community of Pisa in the second half of the 17th century.

Vowel Deletion as Grammatically Controlled Gestural Overlap in Uspanteko

Abstract: Uspanteko is an endangered Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. Unstressed vowels in Uspanteko often delete, though deletion is variable within and across speakers. Deletion appears to be phonological: it is sensitive to foot structure, morphology, and certain phonotactics, and it occurs in slow, careful speech. But deletion also has characteristics more typical of a phonetic process: it is intertwined with a pattern of gradient vowel reduction and is insensitive to most phonotactics. Electroglottography data shows that even 'deleted' vowels may contribute voicing to [inline-graphic 01] intervals when flanked by voiceless consonants. This suggests that 'deleted' vowels are represented in the input to speech production, even when they are acoustically masked by articulatory overlap with adjacent segments. We conclude that vowel deletion is grammatically controlled gestural overlap, consistent with the claim that phonological representations encode information about the relative timing and coordination of articulatory gestures (e.g. Browman & Goldstein 1986, Gafos 2002). At a minimum, language-specific phonetic processes must have access to more fine-grained, abstract grammatical information than is usually assumed.

Phonetic characteristics of German unstressed vowels: The case of opa vs Oper.

Kohler [Einführung in die Phonetik des Deutschen (Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 1995)] stated that German [ɐ] and [a] in unstressed syllables are merging. The present study tested this hypothesis. The contrast was found intact word-internally and word-finally. Neighborhood density enhanced its phonetic characteristics, but no effects of frequency and conditional probability were found.

Conjugation II verbs: the diachronic and comparative aspects

The article proposes an approach to defining verbal conjugations which is based, in my opinion, on the essential features of this grammatical phenomenon. These include diachrony, the concept of two stems of the verb, and the material of foreign Slavic languages. Of all verbal lexemes, only verbs with the non-root thematic vowels -i-, -eand -а-(-ya-) before -t’ undergoing syncope in the stem of the present (future simple) tense but only in one class with each final belong to the second conjugation. From the diachronic perspective, all these verbs originated from the Proto- Slavic thematic *-ī stem verbs. I consider the verbs shave (brit’), endure (terpet’), twirl (vertet’), offend (obidet’), depend (zaviset’), hate (nenavidet’), see (videt’), look (smotret’), hear (slyshat’), breathe (dyshat’), hold (derzhat’) not as exceptions, but as ordinary verbs belonging to corresponding classes with unstressed vowel endings verified by stress. Each verb class of conjugation II has systemic correspondences in foreign Slavic languages. The study relies on comparative-typological, structural, and diachronic analysis.

The Phonetic and Morphosyntactic Dimensions of Grammatical Gender in Spanish Heritage Language Acquisition

Abstract Previous studies disagree as to whether heritage bilinguals demonstrate loss of knowledge of Spanish grammatical gender. As phonetic variability is known to affect the acquisition of certain grammatical markers, we examine whether bilinguals’ gender difficulties relate to bilingual contact-induced phonetic variability, namely, reduction in the inventory of word-final unstressed vowels. We analyzed narratives from children in the United States (n = 49, ages 4–12). All NP s (n = 1415) were analyzed for structure, noun class, and morphology. Word-final vowels were sub-selected for acoustic analyses. Morpho-syntactically, group results show high accuracy with gender (95%), but with wide individual variation (44%–100%). Speakers also show individual variability and substantive numbers of vowel misclassifications (6%–33%) with higher variability for /a/ and /o/. We found bilingual effects in both domains but no association between phonetics and gender accuracy. These findings have implications for the relationship between phonetics and grammar, and for the morphosyntax of Spanish gender.

Acoustic analysis of lexical stress in Greek preschool children

Lexical stress carries significant functional load in Greek; there are several pairs and even triplets of words that are differentiated only by stress position. Greek stressed vowels are longer and have a greater amplitude compared to their unstressed counterparts. Lexical stress is also indirectly signalled by pitch movement (Arvaniti, 2007). The trajectory of lexical stress development has received little attention, both in Greek and in the international literature, especially regarding the acoustic analysis of prominence. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the acoustic realisation of stress during Greek acquisition. To that end, 24 typically developing children aged 4;7 to 6;4 (years;months), and 24 adults aged 20 to 25, carried out a word repetition task involving 20 minimal stress pairs (15 real words and five non-words). Duration, intensity and F0 variation, indices of the relative prominence of stressed to unstressed vowels, were calculated. Overall, although the use of the intensity cue for lexical stress did not differ significantly between the two groups, children tended to use the vowel duration cue to a lesser extent than adults to signal lexical stress position. On the other hand, F0 variation indices were significantly higher in the children’s data. Additionally, the acoustic analysis indicated that children utilized the pattern of devoicing unstressed vowels, a specific type of vowel reduction optionally applied in Greek, much more extensively than adults. Finally, although for the most part the word productions carried unequivocal and correct lexical stress, in a few cases children, contrary to adults, had difficulties signalling lexical stress position in a perceptually transparent manner. This study is one of the few attempts to describe the acoustic characteristics of lexical stress in Greek typical development.