Vowel Clusters Research Articles

Native speakers and syllable structure

Abstract Benjamin Macaulay advises us not to diagnose syllable structure, more specifically the distinction between vowel + vowel clusters and diphthongs in the Taiwanese language Budai Rukai, on the basis of speaker judgements. I fully endorse his approach, since much of current work in phonology unwarrantedly takes syllabification for granted, without arguing for its necessity.

ANALISIS SISTEM FONOLOGI BAHASA TOLAKI DIALEK KONAWE RAGAM BIASA

<p><em>This study aims to analyze the phonological system of Tolaki language in Konawi dialect of ordinary variety. The research technique was conducted by collecting data through informant interviews from Konawi, Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi. The initial data for the interview material were 200 basic Swadesh vocabularies, which later in the interview process developed into 238 vocabularies. The data was collected using note-taking and recording techniques. The results showed that the Tolaki language in the Konawe dialect has 28 letter sounds consisting of 12 vowel phonemes and 16 consonant phonemes. However, the letters are not phonemic. After going through the minimal pairing process, 9 vowel phonemes were found, namely /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/, /O/, /a:/, /i: /, and /u:/, and 15 consonant phonemes, namely /b/, /d/, /g/, /h/, /k/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /r/, /s/, /t/, /w/, /N/, and /Ɂ/. In terms of phonemes, the language lacks allophones and diphthongs (vowel clusters). In addition, the Konawe dialect of Tolaki has relatively more vowel phoneme sequences than consonant phoneme sequences. The syllable patterns formed are V, KV, KVK, KKV, and VK.</em></p><p> </p><p><strong><em>Keywords: The phonological system, the Tolaki language, the Konawi dialect.</em></strong></p>

The realisation and phonetic features of the glottal stop in Bahdini Kurdish


 
 
 In Bahdini Kurdish (henceforth, BK), the realisation and the phonetic features of the glottal stop (GS) has not been extensively investigated and there is a debate about its phonemic status. In one hand, it is considered a phoneme that occurs only in a word-initial position. On the other hand, it is not con- sidered a phoneme but optionally produced at the beginning of vowel-initial words and does not affect meaning. The study aims at identifying the realisation of this sound experimentally, analyses its acous- tic features and whether it is affected by parameters such as vowel type, vowel position in the word and stress. The study is based on read speech produced by 10 BK native speakers. Then it is analysed phonetically using Praat to identify the presence/absence of the GS. Then the number of occurrences of the GSs are compared across vowel types, vowel position and stress. The results show that the GS is an epenthetic sound in BK that is inserted by the speakers to avoid onsetless syllables and to avoid vowel clusters. Different phonetic variations of the sound are realized in BK: A clear closure of the glottal stop, intermittent vocal folds vibrations during the GS closure, vocal folds vibrations start sim- ultaneously with the GS release. It appears not to be affected by stress but by position, as it is found more medially in V+V contexts than initially, and vowel quality as it is produced more before low vowels than non-low vowels.
 
 

English Spelling of the Glottal Stop and Voiced Pharyngeal Fricative in Arabic Personal Names by Educated Arabs on Facebook

A sample of 560 Arab Facebook users consisting of students, faculty, schoolteachers, and other professionals with different proficiency levels in English was selected. The study analyzed how Arabic personal names on Facebook to find out how names with the glottal stop (hamza) [ʔ] and/or voiced pharyngeal fricative [ʕ] in initial, medial and final positions, with different Arabic short and long vowels before and after them are spelled; whether there are variations in their spelling; causes of spelling variations, and the spelling strategies used. Results showed that 63% of the names have an initial hamza; 10% have a medial hamza; 24% have a final hamza. 65% have one variant and 29% have two variants. Names with the highest occurrences are Eman (26); Ibrahim (18); Alaa & Ismail (17) each; and Asma (16). In some names there is a cluster of 2-3 vowels (Waeel, Ismaiel, Ismaeel, Ismaeil, Doaa Duaa). The voiced pharyngeal fricative [ʕ] in all names was substituted by a vowel as this phoneme/grapheme does not exist in English. Thus both [ʔ] and [ʕ] are represented by vowels and pronounced the same in English. 64.5% have an initial [ʕ], 30% have a medial [ʕ] and 5% have a final [ʕ]. 85% of the names with [ʕ] have one variant and 13.5% have two variants. اسماعيل has the highest number of variants (Esmail/Ismail, Ismael, Esmaiel/Ismaeil, Ismaeel) because [ʕ] ع is preceded and followed by long vowels. Some names with final [ʔ] and [ʕ] and followed by a long vowel were spelled with a single -a or double -aa. In Asma, Wafa, Haifa and Sana, [ʕ] was deleted because the spelling matches how the name is pronounced in the local dialect. In Abduh, Amro Enayah Waed, transferred the Arabic spelling system was transferred to English. [ʕ] was deleted is some names (Menem, Yakoub, Gomma) and the vowel was retained to facilitate pronunciation. An apostrophe was added in Ro’aa, Asma’a to split the vowel cluster. The study gives recommendations to help EFL students spell names with phonemes/graphemes that do not exist in English accurately and to help English speakers pronounce the English version correctly.

Investigating the Effect of Mother Tongue on the Iraqi Undergraduates’ Use of English Segmentals and Syllables

This study investigates the effect of mother tongue on the Iraqi undergraduates’ use of English segmentals and Syllables. English segmentals and Syllables are two basic topics that are studied under the domains of phonetics and phonology. Those Iraqi undergraduates consist of Iraqi EFL learners (the two terms are used interchangeably in this study). English segmentals and Syllables involve consonants, vowels, diphthongs, consonant clusters and vowel clusters. The problem of the study is that EFL Iraqi students have no capacity to recognize English consonants and syllables. However, the following questions are focused upon in this study:1) What are the English consonants and vowels which are not recognized by Iraqi undergraduates under the effect of their mother tongue?2) What are the types of consonant and vowel clusters which are not recognized by Iraqi undergraduates under the effect of their mother tongue?The aims of the study include investigating the effect of learners’ mother tongue on their recognition of English segmentals and syllables, knowing whether Iraqi learners at the university level face difficulties in the recognition of consonants and vowels, ensuring whether EFL Iraqi students have difficulties in the recognition of consonant clusters and vowel clusters, and determining whether the difficulties faced by Iraqi EFL learners are caused by the learners’ mother tongue.It is hypothesized that Iraqi EFL undergraduates do not recognize some English consonants, English vowels, diphthongs, some types of consonant clusters and vowel clusters. In addition, it is hypothesized that the incorrect answers of Iraqi learners’ recognition of consonants, simple vowels, diphthongs, consonant clusters and vowel clusters are more than the correct ones.To achieve its aims and verify its hypotheses, the study adopts a quantitative method of investigation. The study chooses a sample for the present study, designs the test containing items concerned with consonants, vowels, and consonant clusters and vowel clusters. It includes only a recognition question. After applying the test on 100 undergraduate students of fourth stage/Department of English/College of Education for Humanities/University of Thi-Qar, the study arrives at some conclusions, some of which include that most Iraqi EFL learners find difficulty in recognizing some consonants, they appeared to be efficient in recognizing some simple vowels and diphthongs, they have the capacity to distinguish only some consonants but they are unable to recognize other consonant clusters and they appeared to be also inefficient in recognizing all vowel clusters.

Overview of clusters and diphthongs in the discourse of Rahovec and its district

The paper aims to reflect the state of clusters and diphthongs in the discourse of Rahovec and its district. The study methodology has been done through unstructured interviews and free conversations with the subjects. Whereas, the results show these types of clusters and diphthongs: vowel cluster ue, vowel cluster ye, cluster ie and je, cluster ae and oe as well as the transition of the group vo to va. Based on the findings of the study, we can come to the conclusion that the discourse of Rahovec with its district has an old origin from the Indo-European and Latin languages.

Acoustic analysis of vowel production in children with childhood apraxia of speech

Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a complex neurological subtype of speech sound disorder (SSD), involving impaired speech motor planning and programming. Speech characteristics of CAS include difficulty in sequencing speech movements in the absence of muscle weakness resulting in segmental (e.g., vowel/consonant distortions) and suprasegmental (e.g., inappropriate lexical stress) speech deficits. Acoustic analysis offers a robust objective diagnostic measurement of CAS for lexical stress and consonant accuracy/consistency. However, other reported CAS features, such as vowel errors and distortions, have yet to be extensively validated using acoustic analyses. This study will acoustically analyze vowel errors and inconsistencies for corner vowels (/i, u, æ, ɑ/) in children with CAS (aged 8;0 to 15;11) compared to peers with SSD and typical development (TD). Vowel space measures (e.g., vowel space area and formant centralization ratio) and consistency (e.g., vowel cluster distribution) will be assessed in 24 children (CAS = 4, SSD = 10, and TD = 10) across various phonetic contexts (e.g., syllable sequencing between anterior to posterior voiced/voiceless stops of increasing syllable length). It is predicted that children with CAS will demonstrate (1) greater vowel inconsistencies as context complexity increases and (2) a neutralized vowel space based on the corner vowels relative to children with SSD and TD.

Consonant and vowel transposition effects during reading development: A study on Italian children and adults.

Recently, Colombo, Spinelli, and Lupker, using a masked transposed letter (TL) priming paradigm, investigated whether consonant/vowel (CV) status is important early in orthographic processing. In four experiments with Italian and English adults, they found equivalent TL priming effects for CC, CV, and VC transpositions. Here, we investigated that question with younger readers (aged 7-10) and adults, as well as whether masked TL priming effects might have a phonological basis. That is, because young children are likely to use phonological recoding in reading, the question was whether they would show TL priming that is affected by CV status. In Experiment 1, target words were preceded by primes in which two letters (either CV, VC, or CC) were transposed versus substituted (SL). We found significant TL priming effects, with an increasing developmental trend but, again, no letter type by priming interaction. In Experiment 2, the transpositions/substitutions involved only pairs of vowels with those vowels having either diphthong or hiatus status. The difference between these two types of vowel clusters is only phonological; thus, the question was, "Would TL priming interact with this factor?" TL priming was again found with an increasing trend with age, but there was no vowel cluster by priming interaction. There was, however, an overall vowel cluster effect (slower responding to words with hiatuses) which decreased with age. The results suggest that TL priming only taps the orthographic level, and that CV status only becomes important at a later phonological level.

Vowel Elision in Ikhin, an Edoid Language in South-south Nigeria

In this paper, attention is on the basic factors that come into force in determining whether or not vowel will elide and which of the V1 and V2 in a sequence should disappear in any environment. This paper also examines the phonological, morphological and syntactic reasons behind vowel elision as a syllable structure process in Ikhin language. As in the case of related African languages that have been previously described by various scholars, this paper presents how vowel elision works in Ikhin and the problems arising from its analysis. In this study, the focus is on the explanation and analysis of factors such as boundary, morpheme structure and vowel quality which actually determine whether or not elision should take place in Ikhin. Apart from factors such as vowel quality and boundary, one other factor with respect to elision or glide formation is the syllable structure of the verbs and nouns in Ikhin. Ikhin nouns are either disyllabic i.e. V(C)V or trisyllabic, etc. It is argued that the operation of vowel elision is blocked in disyllabic nouns as /i/, /o/ and /u/ form glides when either of them occurs as V1 whereas vowel elision rather than glide formation takes place in trisyllabic nouns. The study concludes based on data not previously discussed in the language that elision is driven by syllable-based and syntactic-based analyses and that a major strategy of discouraging vowel cluster in Ikhin is vowel elision because the syllable structure of the language prohibits cluster of vowels within word or across word boundary.

What causes the greater perceived similarity of consonant-transposed nonwords?

Nonwords created by transposing two non-adjacent orthographic consonants (CONDISER) have been reported to produce more priming for their baseword (CONSIDER), and to be classified as a nonword less readily than nonwords created by transposing two orthographic vowels (CINSODER). We investigate the origin of this difference and its relevance for theories of letter position coding. In the unprimed versions of the lexical decision and same–different tasks, a consonant–vowel difference was found in the transposition condition, not when those letters are substituted (Experiment 1). We found that when transpositions involved the disruption of a consonant cluster (OPMITAL), reaction times were slowed compared to when transpositions involved only letters that are separated (CHOLOCATE; Experiment 2). As transpositions more frequently disrupt in consonant clusters than vowel clusters, this introduces a confound in studies investigating consonant and vowel transposition effects. Consistent with the idea that letter order is harder to resolve in clusters, the difference between consonants and vowels was eliminated when transpositions involve singleton consonants or vowels rather than those in clusters (Experiment 3). These results suggest that the precision of position coding does not differ between consonants and vowels, but that consonant–vowel status plays a role in structuring orthographic representations.

Glide Insertion And Dialectal Variation In Kurdish

One of the strategies used as a hiatus resolution is glide insertion. Previous Kurdish phonological works involve only a description of glide insertion in one dialect neglecting the segmental context. This study provides an analysis of glide insertion in word-medial vowel clusters in Kurdish and it is the first attempt to analyse the effects of dialect and segmental context. The speech material includes a set of words consisting of a stem plus a suffix with different vowel sequences at their boundaries. It is produced by four native speakers from four Kurdish speaking areas. The data analysis involves word transcription, their segmentation and the comparison of vowel sequences within and across the subdialects. The results indicate that glide insertion is not the only strategy used as word medial hiatus resolution, but it depends on the segmental context and dialect. Generally, the vowel hiatus is resolved by /j/ insertion. Vowel deletion is also used obligatorily in some segmental contexts when the second vowel in a sequence is /i/ and also when there are identical vowels in a sequences. Dialectal variations are observed in some vowel sequences in which /j/ insertion and vowel deletion both are used and when the first vowels in the sequence are the high back vowels in that /j/ and /w/ insertions are used. The findings suggests that /j/ insertion is the default strategy to resolve word-medial vowel clusters in Kurdish, the insertion of /w/ or vowel deletion are other strategies which are limited to some dialects and vowel sequences.

Effect of consonant/vowel letter organisation on the syllable counting task: evidence from English

ABSTRACTRecent studies in alphabetic writing systems have investigated whether the status of letters as consonants or vowels influences the perception and processing of written words. Here, we examined to what extent the organisation of consonants and vowels within words affects performance in a syllable counting task in English. Participants were asked to judge the number of syllables in written words that were matched for the number of spoken syllables but comprised either 1 orthographic vowel cluster less than the number of syllables (hiatus words, e.g., triumph) or as many vowel clusters as syllables (e.g., pudding). In 3 experiments, we found that readers were slower and less accurate on hiatus than control words, even when phonological complexity (Experiment 1), number of reduced vowels (Experiment 2), and number of letters (Experiment 3) were taken into account. Interestingly, for words with or without the same number of vowel clusters and syllables, participants’ errors were more likely to underestimate the number of syllables than to overestimate it. Results are discussed in a cross-linguistic perspective.

Organização temporal de encontros vocálicos no Português Brasileiro e a relação entre Fonética e Fonologia

Phonologists have been discussing for a long time the difference between hiatus and diphthongs in Brazilian Portuguese, but until now there are no phonetic analyses for these vowel clusters in BP. Nevertheless, such analyses are crucial in a scenario, triggered by Laboratory Phonology, where phonetic data play a special role to phonological analysis: Incorporating phonetic data can yield more adequate and parsimonious phonological explanations for facts of the speech chain. Departing from a brief overview on phonological analyses on vocalic clusters in BP, this paper presents a preliminary acoustic description for diphthongs and hiatus in BP. The description points to a distinct temporal organization among the acoustic events that constitute the clusters. The findings, then, suggest timing is crucial for the organization of the speech chain. This argument leads to the proposition of a phonological analysis that incorporates phonetic data, based on the temporal organization of speech units.

Effect of the Consonant–Vowel Structure of Written Words in Italian

Surprisingly little is known about the nature of intermediary sublexical units in visual word recognition in Italian, a language with a highly consistent print-to-sound mapping, which should enhance reliance on grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences. In the present study, we examined whether Italian readers are sensitive to large orthographic units defined by the consonant-vowel (CV) pattern of words and that do not directly map onto linguistic constituents. Participants had to judge the number of syllables in written words matched for the number of spoken syllables but comprising either one orthographic vowel cluster less than the number of syllables (hiatus words, e.g., teatro) or as many vowel clusters as syllables (e.g., agosto). Relative to control words, readers were slower and less accurate for hiatus words, for which they underestimated the number of syllables. This underestimation bias demonstrates that Italian readers are sensitive to large orthographic units stemming from a parsing process based on the CV pattern-that is, the arrangement of consonant and vowel letters.

The role of consonant/vowel organization in perceptual discrimination.

According to a recent hypothesis, the CV pattern (i.e., the arrangement of consonant and vowel letters) constrains the mental representation of letter strings, with each vowel or vowel cluster being the core of a unit. Six experiments with the same/different task were conducted to test whether this structure is extracted prelexically. In the mismatching trials, the targets were pseudowords built by the transposition of 2 adjacent letters from base words. In one condition, the pseudowords had the same number of vowel clusters as the base word, whereas in another condition, the transposition modified the number of vowel clusters (e.g., poirver: 2 vowel clusters vs. povirer: 3 vowel clusters, from POIVRER: 2 vowel clusters). In Experiment 1, pseudowords with a different number of vowel clusters were more quickly processed than pseudowords preserving the CV structure of their base word. Experiment 2 further showed that this effect was not due to changes in syllabic structure. In Experiment 3, the pattern of results was also replicated when the category (consonant or vowel) of the transposed letters was strictly equated between conditions. Experiments 4 and 5 confirmed that the effects were not attributable to lexical processing, to differences in letter identity, or to the position of transpositions. The results suggest that the orthographic representation of letter strings is influenced by the CV pattern at an early, prelexical processing stage.

Orthographic and morphemic effects in the written syllable counting task.

According to a recent hypothesis, the organization of letters into groups of successive consonants and vowels (i.e., CV pattern) constrains the orthographic structure of words. Here, we examined to what extent the morphological structure of words modifies the influence of the CV pattern in a syllable counting task. Participants were presented with written words matched for the number of syllables and comprising either one vowel cluster less than the number of syllables (hiatus words, e.g., création) or the same number of vowel clusters (control words, e.g., crépiter). Participants were slower and less accurate for hiatus than control stimuli, be it words (Experiments 1, 3) or pseudowords (Experiment 2). More importantly, this hiatus effect was present even when the stimuli had a morphemic boundary falling within the hiatus (e.g., ré-agir). The results suggest that the CV pattern of items more strongly influences performance in the syllable counting task than the morphological structure.

POLISH LANGUAGE IN REZEKNE TODAY. PHONETICS

POLISH LANGUAGE IN REZEKNE TODAY. PHONETICS

Feature conditioned resolution of hiatus in Chichewa

This article examines the morphophonological environments in which vowel sequences occur in Chichewa and explains the synchronic hiatus resolution strategies that are employed in this language to remove these dispreferred vowel cluster configurations. This investigation demonstrates that the major motivation for resolving hiatal configurations in Chichewa, like in many other Bantu languages, is to maintain the preferred canonical consonant-vowel (CV) syllable structure. The analysis of data used in this study is mainly couched within the theoretical explications of Optimality Theory (OT) as enunciated by Prince and Smolensky (1991, 1993), McCarthy and Prince (1999), Archaengeli and Langendoen (1997), and Kager (1999); Distinctive Feature Theory as discussed by Chomsky and Halle (1968) as well as the generative CV-phonology model of syllable structure as discussed by Clements and Keyser (1983). This article argues for vowel-feature sensitive repair of hiatal configuration in Chichewa. Observing such a vowel-feature sensitive based repair of hiatal configuration analysis, which this article argues to be largely ONSET motivated/triggered and the featural properties of the phonological structures of the language under study, the language's reactions to such dispreferred vowel clusters and its phonotactics are here examined. Repair strategies for such hiatus configurations are discussed, including glide formation, consonantal and/or glide insertions, vowel deletion and coalescence. The analysis adopted here implies that the resolution hiatus arises from incompatibilities in the features of the vowels straddling a word boundary. It argues that these repair strategies are largely motivated by language internal constraint ranking systems which in many Bantu languages seem to largely prefer the preservation of [−] features over [+] features, i.e. the ranking [−F’]≫[+F’].

The internal structure of chaos: Letter category determines visual word perceptual units

The processes and the cues determining the orthographic structure of polysyllabic words remain far from clear. In the present study, we investigated the role of letter category (consonant vs. vowels) in the perceptual organization of letter strings. In the syllabic counting task, participants were presented with written words matched for the number of spoken syllables and comprising either one vowel cluster less than the number of syllables (hiatus words, e.g., pharaon) or the same number of vowel clusters (e.g., parodie). Relative to control words, readers were slower and less accurate for hiatus words, for which they systematically underestimated the number of syllables (Experiment 1). The effect was stronger when the instructions emphasized response speed (Experiment 2) and when concurrent articulation was used (Experiment 3), and the effect did not stem from phonological structure (Experiment 4). Furthermore, hiatus words were more slowly and less accurately pronounced than control ones (Experiment 5). Finally, in lexical decision, opposite effects occurred as a function of word length, with shorter words producing a facilitatory effect and longer words showing interference (Experiment 6). Taken together, the results show that perceptual units extracted from visual letter strings are influenced by the orthographic status of letters. We discuss the implications of such findings in view of current theories of visual word recognition.

Improved representation of variance in measures of vowel merger.

Current measures of vowel merger, such as the Euclidean distance between averages, have only been able to capture some of the variability between two given vowel clusters. Reliance on averages obscures the amount of variability within a given vowel class, while other techniques, such as calculating distance between minimal pairs, rely on few tokens per speaker. Hay et al. (2006) introduced an alternative approach that accounts for the variability between two vowel clusters, taking formant values as input, rather than averages. The measure is the Pillai-Bartlett statistic [Baayen (2008)], an output of a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), which represents the proportion of one variance that can be predicted by another variance. A higher Pillai value indicates a lower degree of overlap between two vowel clusters in F1/F2 space. Since the value is derived from a MANOVA, Pillais can account for known internal factors influencing the production of merger, such as phonological environment, thereby reducing the need to obtain minimal pair lists. This talk argues for using Pillais as measures of merger by comparing results from low back merger in California English [Hall-Lew (2009)] with the analysis of front vowel merger by Hay et al. (2006).