Vowel Duration Research Articles

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TEMPORAL PROSODIC PARAMETERS IN THE SPEECH OF FOREIGN STUDENTS LEARNING THE BULGARIAN LANGUAGE

The work examines the prosodic realization of the Bulgarian word stress in the speech of Chinese Mandarin speakers, with the aim of outlining the parameters that make the comprehensibility of their speech difficult. Instrumental phonetics methods are used and recordings of read speech are analyzed with the speech signal processing program Praat. The research is focused on the duration of the vowels as one of the acoustic ques of the word stress. To minimize the "inconsistency" of the binary division of stressed and unstressed units in connected speech (discussed in the literature), taking into account the fact that the acoustic keys of stress are subject to intonational shaping by tonal accents and boundary tones, we separately compare the duration of stressed vowels, the unstressed non-final and the unstressed final. The results show that the characteristic ratio of stressed and unstressed non-final vowels for Bulgarian language, in which the former outweigh the latter by about one and a half times, is not reached among Chinese speakers. Therefore, it is difficult to determine which vowel/syllable is stressed in their speech. The unstressed final vowels are longer than the stressed ones in both groups, which is an expected result due to the final lengthening before pause.

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.

A longitudinal investigation of the acoustic properties of infant-directed speech from 6 to 18 months.

Caregivers often modulate their speech when interacting with infants, adapting a register that has been suggested to have attentional, affective and didactic purposes. The present preregistered study examined the longitudinal trajectories of a diverse range of acoustic features of infant-directed speech (IDS) and compared these with adult-directed speech (ADS), in Norwegian parents of 6- to 18-month-old infants. Sixty-nine families participated. Throughout five laboratory visits across one year, parents were recorded reading a picture-book to their infant (IDS) and an experimenter (ADS). The book was designed to tightly control for the linguistic content and context of speech between participants, timepoints and registers. Analyses of a total of 54 594 vowels and 22 958 phrases revealed, first, an overall effect of register: parents used higher pitch, wider pitch range, slower articulation rate, longer vowel duration and more variable and less distinct vowels in IDS than in ADS. Second, significant register-by-age interactions indicated that parents' IDS, compared with their ADS, featured wider pitch range, larger vowel space and shorter vowel duration in older as compared with younger infants, while pitch, articulation rate and vowel variability and distinctiveness remained relatively stable with age. Results are discussed in the context of the proposed functions of IDS.

Spectral and temporal acoustic differences between English and Dutch vowels

This study aims to compare the acoustic characteristics of English and Dutch vowels and to model the perception of Dutch vowels by English speakers on the basis of crosslinguistic acoustic similarity. The first three formant frequencies and the duration of vowels were extracted from the output of 20 native English and 20 native Dutch speakers. A linear discriminant analysis (LDA) algorithm was trained on the productions of English speakers and the Dutch productions were later supplied to the model to provide a predicted proportion of how each nonnative vowel would be classified in terms of the speakers’ L1 categories. The results of LDA demonstrated that all but one Dutch vowel were classified as above-chance responses in terms of two or more English categories. Due to the large and complex vowel system of English, completely overlapping contrasts were absent, while there was a large number of partially overlapping contrasts, which are predicted to exhibit moderate-to-good discrimination. The results of crosslinguistic acoustic similarity are largely consistent with those involving other English listeners of Dutch, potentially highlighting the importance of acoustic cues in estimating listeners’ speech perception patterns.

The acoustic characteristics of Swedish vowels.

The Swedish vowel space is relatively densely populated with 21 categories that differ in quality and quantity. Existing descriptions of the entire space rest on recordings made in the late 1990s or earlier, while recent work in general has focused on subsets of the space. The present paper reports on static and dynamic acoustic analyses of the entire vowel space using a recently released database of h-VOWEL-d words (SwehVd). The results highlight the importance of static and dynamic spectral and temporal cues for Swedish vowel category distinction. The first two formants and vowel duration are the primary acoustic cues to vowel identity, however, the third formant contributes to increased category separability for neighboring contrasts presumed to differ in lip-rounding. In addition, even though all long-short vowel pairs differ systematically in duration, they also display considerable spectral differences, suggesting that quantity distinctions are not separate from quality distinctions in Swedish. The dynamic analysis further suggests formant movements in both long and short vowels, with [e:] and [o:] displaying clearer patterns of diphthongization.

Divided Attention Has Limited Effects on Speech Sensorimotor Control.

When vowel formants are externally perturbed, speakers change their production to oppose that perturbation both during the ongoing production (compensation) and in future productions (adaptation). To date, attempts to explain the large variability across individuals in these responses have focused on trait-based characteristics such as auditory acuity, but evidence from other motor domains suggests that attention may modulate the motor response to sensory perturbations. Here, we test the extent to which divided attention impacts sensorimotor control for supralaryngeal articulation. Neurobiologically healthy speakers were exposed to random (Experiment 1) or consistent (Experiment 2) real-time auditory perturbation of vowel formants to measure online compensation and trial-to-trial adaptation, respectively. In both experiments, participants completed two conditions: one with a simultaneous visual distractor task to divide attention and one without this secondary task. Divided visual attention slightly reduced online compensation, but only starting > 300 ms after vowel onset, well beyond the typical duration of vowels in speech. Divided attention had no effect on adaptation. The results from both experiments suggest that the use of sensory feedback in typical speech motor control is a largely automatic process unaffected by divided visual attention, suggesting that the source of cross-speaker variability in response to formant perturbations likely lies within the speech production system rather than in higher-level cognitive processes. Methodologically, these results suggest that compensation for formant perturbations should be measured prior to 300 ms after vowel onset to avoid any potential impact of attention or other higher-order cognitive factors.

Developmental Aspects of Greek Vowel Reduction in Different Prosodic Positions

This study investigates the development of Greek vowel reduction across different prosodic positions (stressed, pre-stressed, post-stressed), examining normative data from 72 participants aged 3 years to adulthood and balanced for gender. Participants performed a delayed repetition task, producing real trisyllabic words with the vowels [i, ε, ɐ, o, u] examined in the second syllable. Measurements included relative vowel duration, normalized acoustic vowel space areas, and Euclidean distances of vowels from the centroid of the acoustic space. Our findings show that changes in speech motor control, system stiffness, and stress marking with age, along with children’s prosody sensitivity, contributed to several developmental milestones: the completion of the developmental trajectory of relative vowel duration and temporal vowel reduction at early adolescence; the attainment of adult-like spatial vowel characteristics and their reduction at preschool age; and the early acquisition of the prosodic strength of the stress conditions, leading to vowel reduction from the stressed to pre-stressed to post-stressed conditions. The correlation strength between temporal and spatial vowel reduction across ages revealed age-related differences in spatiotemporal speech organization, with significant gender-related differences observed only in vowel space areas, where females exhibited larger areas possibly related to sociophonetic factors. Intrinsic vowel duration appeared from age 3.

Production of English vowel duration by multilingual speakers of Namibian English

Production of English vowel duration by multilingual speakers of Namibian English

Effect of ‘Be Clear’ Treatment on Intelligibility in Adults with Post-Stroke Dysarthria: Acoustic-Perceptual Consequences

Dysarthria is significantly prevalent in individuals with post-stroke etiology. Behavioral treatment remains the foundation of dysarthria treatment approaches. Clear speech is one recent compensatory treatment approach that has gained traction. The present study aimed to determine whether the ‘Be Clear’ treatment significantly improved speech intelligibility, formant centralization ratio (FCR), slopes of second formant transitions (F2 slope), vowel duration, speaking rates, and articulation rates in adults with post-stroke dysarthria. Ten Kannada-speaking participants in the age range of 30 to 66 years of age with post-stroke dysarthria were recruited for the present study. ‘Be Clear’ treatment was practiced over the duration of 16 one-hour sessions across 4 weeks. Participants demonstrated statistically significant improvements in word intelligibility and sentence intelligibility, FCR, F2 slope, vowel duration, speaking rates, and articulation rates following ‘Be Clear’ treatment. Future research could include other acoustic and perceptual measures to evaluate the efficacy of this treatment program on a larger sample size.

Acoustic measurements and intelligibility of English vowels produced by Thai speakers

Effective English communication across different languages and cultures has become increasingly important in a globalised world. To gain a deeper understanding of the segmental features of Thai speakers of English, this study aims to investigate the production of English monophthongs and diphthongs by Thai speakers and examine how intelligible their pronunciations are to others. Data were collected through two tasks: a production task and a listening task. For the production task, three Thai female speakers were chosen as the participants. They were recorded reading a passage consisting of all targeted vowels, and a total of 180 English tokens were analysed. For the listening task, thirty Malaysian listeners were asked to evaluate the speech intelligibility of the English sounds produced by the three speakers. The duration and formant frequencies of English vowels produced were measured to investigate the characteristics of the monophthongs and diphthongs. The findings show that there were significant differences in the durations between long and short vowels of the monophthongs, but there were no significant differences in the vowel quality produced. The ROC (rate of change) of formant frequencies (F1 and F2) indicates that there was no formant movement for the diphthongs /eɪ/, /əʊ/, and /eə/. The three diphthongs showed similar characteristics as other ASEAN Englishes that are monophthongal as /e:/, /o:/, and /ɛ:/, respectively. These findings confirm that speakers’ L1 influences English vowel production. Although there were vowel variations in the characteristics of the vowels produced by the speakers, the intelligibility scores were high.

Acoustic characteristics of infant- and foreigner-directed speech with Mandarin as the target language.

The quality of speech input influences the efficiency of L1 and L2 acquisition. This study examined modifications in infant-directed speech (IDS) and foreigner-directed speech (FDS) in Standard Mandarin-a tonal language-and explored how IDS and FDS features were manifested in disyllabic words and a longer discourse. The study aimed to determine which characteristics of IDS and FDS were enhanced in comparison with adult-directed speech (ADS), and how IDS and FDS differed when measured in a common set of acoustic parameters. For words, it was found that tone-bearing vowel duration, mean and range of fundamental frequency (F0), and the lexical tone contours were enhanced in IDS and FDS relative to ADS, except for the dipping Tone 3 that exhibited an unexpected lowering in FDS, but no modification in IDS when compared with ADS. For the discourse, different aspects of temporal and F0 enhancements were emphasized in IDS and FDS: the mean F0 was higher in IDS whereas the total discourse duration was greater in FDS. These findings add to the growing literature on L1 and L2 speech input characteristics and their role in language acquisition.

One-day listen-and-repeat training of a non-native vowel duration contrast for speakers of Namibian languages

Abstract Listen-and-repeat training has previously been successfully used to train the perception and production of non-native vowel quality and duration contrasts. This study used a one-day listen-and-repeat training paradigm for the production of a non-native vowel duration contrast, /tite – tiːte/ with no feedback or other instructions. Learning results were assessed by acoustic analysis of the produced durations, and identification of the productions by listeners with quantity contrasts in their native Finnish language. Training participants were 18 Namibian speakers of various Bantu and Khoe languages. The results showed that the majority of the speakers did not produce a consistent acoustic duration contrast between the target words. In the identification task, the listeners’ performance was at essentially chance level for almost all of the speakers. The results are discussed in terms of earlier results using the same stimuli, training design and language background.

THE ROLE OF L1 PROSODY IN L2 VOWEL DURATION PRODUCTION: EVIDENCE FROM ASIAN LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

The pre-fortis clipping pattern refers to vowels being shorter before voiceless consonants compared to vowels before voiced consonants. This study examined whether first-language (L1) prosodic properties affect the production of this vowel duration pattern in second-language (L2) English speech. Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese with varying English proficiency participated in a production experiment. Results showed that while speakers exhibited some pre-fortis clipping, there were no significant vowel lengthening patterns. Additional analysis revealed subtle differences based on the L1 prosody type. Native Mandarin and Vietnamese speakers, with lexical tone, had similar duration ratios. However, native Korean speakers, with no tone, showed less distinction in vowel duration by consonant voicing. Japanese speakers, with pitch accents, fell in the middle. The findings provide limited evidence that L1 prosody affects L2 vowel duration production. The results have implications for theories of L2 speech acquisition as well as pedagogical techniques when teaching English vowels.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0711/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

The Lombard effect in children with cochlear implants: suprasegmental aspects

ABSTRACT Children with cochlear implants (CI) communicate in noisy environments, such as in classrooms, where multiple talkers and reverberation are present. Speakers compensate for noise via the ‘Lombard effect’. The present study examined the Lombard effect on the intensity and duration of stressed vowels in the speech of children with Cochlear Implants (CIs) as compared to children with Normal Hearing (NH), focusing on the effects of speech-shaped noise (SSN) and speech-shaped noise with reverberation (SSN+Reverberation). The sample consisted of 7 children with CIs and 7 children with NH, aged 7–12 years. Regarding intensity, a) children with CIs produced stressed vowels with an overall greater intensity across acoustic conditions as compared to NH peers, b) both groups increased their stressed vowel intensity for all vowels from Quiet to both noise conditions, and c) children with NH further increased their intensity when reverberation was added to SSN, esp. for the vowel /u/. Regarding duration, longer stressed vowels were produced by children with CIs as compared to NH in Quiet and SSN conditions but the effect was retained only for the vowels /i/, /o/ and /u/ when reverberation was added to noise. The SSN+Reverberation condition induced systematic lengthening in stressed vowels for children with NH. Furthermore, although greater intensity and duration ratios of stressed/unstressed syllables were observed for children with NH as compared to CIs in Quiet condition, they diminished with noise. The differences observed across groups have implications for speaking in classroom noise.

Rhythm Is a Marker of Ethnicity in Modern Hebrew: Evidence from a Perception Study and Actors' Ethnicized Portrayals.

In Modern Hebrew, only three segmental markers are typically acknowledged as ethnically conditioned, and usage of these markers has significantly decreased in second and third generation speakers. Yet the sociolinguistic situation of diverging language backgrounds of first generation speakers, compounded with ethnic segregation in housing and the workforce, seems like a fertile ground for social identification from speech. We report two studies on prosodic variation in Modern Hebrew: a perception study and a "matched-pairs" corpus study. The results of the first illustrate that even in the absence of the known segmental markers, ethnicity perception of young native speakers may still diverge between two major ethnic identities, Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) and Ashkenazi (European). The main acoustic correlate was rhythm, measured as the proportional duration of vowels in the utterance. In the second study, actors' speech rhythm was found to be modulated by their portrayed ethnic identity in the same direction, suggesting that this variable is socially salient-and for some speakers, controllable-enough to be involved in style shifting. This study joins a growing body of work illustrating that relatively mild rhythmic variation can contribute to social identification, and in the current case, also for ethnicity portrayal.

Acoustic, phonetic, and phonological features of Drehu vowels.

This study presents an acoustic investigation of the vowel inventory of Drehu (Southern Oceanic Linkage), spoken in New Caledonia. Reportedly, Drehu has a 14 vowel system distinguishing seven vowel qualities and an additional length distinction. Previous phonological descriptions were based on impressionistic accounts showing divergent proposals for two out of seven reported vowel qualities. This study presents the first phonetic investigation of Drehu vowels based on acoustic data from eight speakers. To examine the phonetic correlates of the proposed phonological vowel inventory, multi-point acoustic analyses were used, and vowel inherent spectral change (VISC) was investigated (F1, F2, and F3). Additionally, vowel duration was measured. Contrary to reports from other studies on VISC in monophthongs, we find that monophthongs in Drehu are mostly steady state. We propose a revised vowel inventory and focus on the acoustic description of open-mid /ɛ/ and the central vowel /ə/, whose status was previously unclear. Additionally, we find that vowel quality stands orthogonal to vowel quantity by demonstrating that the phonological vowel length distinction is primarily based on a duration cue rather than formant structure. Finally, we report the acoustic properties of the seven vowel qualities that were identified.

Classification of Manners of the Prevocalic Alveolar Consonants in Machine Learning Using Dynamic Formant Transitions of Vowels in Korean Spontaneous Speech

The present study tried to classify the prevocalic manners of alveolar consonants using the formant transitions of the vowel in a Korean spontaneous speech corpus. Random forest and neural network models were trained and tested on selections of F1, F2, and F3 samples taken at the vowel onset and target of the vowel. It was found that prevocalic manners could not be manifested properly by the samples of any one or two formants, taken singly at the vowel onset or doubly at the vowel onset and target. Rather, both models trained on all the F1, F2, and F3 measurements taken doubly at the vowel onset and target, manifested the prevocalic manners robustly, though the random forest model outperformed the neural network model. The former model was further trained on additional predictors. Vowel identity facilitated model classification substan- tially more than F0, gender, speaking rate, and vowel duration. The contribution of the latter predictors was rather marginal.

Acoustic Effects of Speaker Sex, Speech Sample, and Mandarin Tone on Vowel Production of Poststroke Spastic Dysarthria

Plain Language SummaryMandarin speakers with poststroke spastic dysarthria often have vowel production deficits that affect articulation and speech intelligibility. Vowel production is influenced by many factors. This study explored the acoustic effects of speaker sex, tones, and speech samples and their interactions on vowel production in Mandarin speakers with poststroke spastic dysarthria and confirmed the existence of these effects. We found that regardless of the speech samples or tones, there were the reduced range of articulatory movements, centralized vowel production, and prolonged vowel duration in dysarthria compared to healthy people. The most sensitive and useful analysis measures were the vowel articulation index and vowel duration. Specific influencing factors (speaker sex, speech sample, and tone) of vowel production need to be taken seriously by speech and language pathologists and considered in the assessment and rehabilitation.

„Das klingt echt schwul“ – Eine soziophonetische Untersuchung zum stereotypen schwulen Sprechen im Deutschen

Abstract This article examines stereotypical gay speaking using a performative and speaker-centered approach. For this, the default and staged gay ways of speaking of four speakers were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed and compared with each other, supplemented by a perception test. It is argued that stereotypical gay pronunciation can refer to a particular gay persona (i. e., an affected, diva-like extroverted gay man) by analysing which characteristics the speakers used in which way to construct this persona. The results show general usage patterns and the selective use of variants, more specifically an increase in (1) mean pitch, (2) vowel duration, (3) first and second formant of /ɛ/, and (4) intensity as well as de-/nasality and enhanced precision of articulation. The constructions of a persona occur locally, i. e., in a specific context and in combination with other linguistic features. Based on this study’s approach and results, this article contributes to previous studies on the connection between language and sexuality in German speakers.

Acoustic Characteristics of Greek Vowels Produced by Adult Heritage Speakers of Albanian

Investigating heritage language (HL)-contact effects on the dominant language has received limited attention despite its importance in understanding the dynamic interplay between linguistic systems in situations of bilingualism. This study compares the acoustic characteristics of Greek vowels produced by heritage speakers (HSs) of Albanian and monolingual Greek speakers, aiming to identify potential differences and explain them. The participants were adult second-generation HSs of Albanian with Greek as their dominant language, born and raised in Greece. A control group of age-matched monolingual Greek speakers was included for comparison purposes. All participants engaged in a controlled speech production task, with the data segmented to extract acoustic values pertaining to the first three formants and the duration of Greek vowels. Bayesian regression models were employed for the subsequent statistical analysis. The results demonstrated differences in the first three formants of certain vowels and the duration of all vowels. These differences can be attributed to the crosslinguistic effect of HL on the dominant language, as well as the interplay between the dynamic and internalized language system of the speakers and the complex effect of the sociophonetic context. These outcomes contribute to the hypothesis positing the emergence of deflected phonetic categories among a distinctive group of bilinguals, namely HSs. Furthermore, this study underscores the significance of a comprehensive exploration of the sociophonetic context of HSs for a nuanced understanding of their phonetic patterns.