Lax Vowels Research Articles

Acoustic analysis of English tense and lax vowels: Comparing the production between Mandarin Chinese learners and native English speakers.

This study investigated how 40 Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL learners) differed from 40 native English speakers in the production of four English tense-lax contrasts, /i-ɪ/, /u-ʊ/, /ɑ-ʌ/, and /æ-ε/, by examining the acoustic measurements of duration, the first three formant frequencies, and the slope of the first formant movement (F1 slope). The dynamic formant trajectory was modeled using discrete cosine transform coefficients to demonstrate the time-varying properties of formant trajectories. A discriminant analysis was employed to illustrate the extent to which Chinese EFL learners relied on different acoustic parameters. This study found that: (1) Chinese EFL learners overemphasized durational differences and weakened spectral differences for the /i-ɪ/, /u-ʊ/, and /ɑ-ʌ/ pairs, although they maintained sufficient spectral differences for /æ-ε/. In contrast, native English speakers predominantly used spectral differences across all four pairs; (2) in non-low tense-lax contrasts, unlike native English speakers, Chinese EFL learners failed to exhibit different F1 slope values, indicating a non-nativelike tongue-root placement during the articulatory process. The findings underscore the contribution of dynamic spectral patterns to the differentiation between English tense and lax vowels, and reveal the influence of precise articulatory gestures on the realization of the tense-lax contrast.

Tense and lax vowels in the Lahu dialect of Yunshan: A laboratory phonological study

Tense and lax vowels in the Lahu dialect of Yunshan: A laboratory phonological study

Tense and Lax Vowels in the Lahu Dialect of Yunshan: A Laboratory Phonological Study

A controversy exists regarding whether there are tense-lax vowels in Lahu and whether tense-lax phonation should be accorded phonological status, an issue that is closely related to the physiological movement of the larynx. This study presents an experimental analysis of the acoustic features of the Lahu dialect of Yunshan, using electroglottography to collect acoustic and physiological data and employing VoiceSauce and Eggworks to extract glottal features to explore laryngeal mode of motion. The study demonstrates a distinct tense-lax phonation contrast in Yunshan Lahu, which is characterized by multiple types of phonation, differences between front and back parts of tense vowels, and equal importance of tense-lax contrast and vowel length. To contribute to a systematic description of Tibeto-Burman language, this paper proposes to treat tense-lax contrast as the main feature in phonological induction, using length as its accompanying feature for explanation. From the perspective of the path of historical evolution, tenseness comes from the loss of plosive codas, and is also closely related to voiced, aspirated initials. In the process of transforming tense-lax features to tones, tense vowels retained their features of tenseness as a result of falling tones.

Speech adaptation in conversation: Effects of segment cue-weighting strategy for non-native speakers

Research has investigated how speakers make phonetic adaptations by adjusting their speech sounds to either converge to or diverge from their interlocutor’s. Less is known about the dynamic adaptive strategies non-native speakers use to improve intelligibility when interacting with native speakers, particularly how their strategies change over the course of spontaneous conversations. The current study examines phonetic adaptations in English words contrasting tense and lax vowels (e.g., sheep-ship) in unscripted conversations between non-native Japanese English and native English speakers during an engaging computer game task. Japanese speakers have previously been found to rely on temporal cues (vowel length) for tensity distinctions due to their L1 cue-weighting strategy rather than spectral cues (vowel quality) that are predominantly used in English. Acoustic analyses are conducted to examine changes in non-native vowel productions before, during and after the conversation task. We predict that, in an attempt to overcome miscommunication, non-native speakers may initially lengthen the tense vowels to distinguish them from their lax counterparts. As the conversation progresses, non-native speakers may adapt to a more native-like cue-weighting pattern by shifting to spectral distinctions. Results are discussed in terms of adaptations to cue-weighting strategies for intelligibility gains by interlocutors of different linguistic backgrounds.

The correlation between acoustic and articulatory variation in Laurentian French high vowels

This study explores the relationship between acoustic and articulatory variation in Laurentian French (LF) high vowels. LF /i/, /y/, /u/ undergo laxing before a consonant other than a voiced fricative. While several studies have characterized LF vowel laxing acoustically, limited work has described it articulatorily. This study investigates the alignment between ultrasound tongue imaging data and acoustic realization in LF vowels. Using data from Burness et al. (2022b), seven native LF speakers participated in a study collecting ultrasound tongue imaging and audio while producing 52 French words with target vowels /i/, /y/, /u/. We chose the ultrasound frame for each token that aligns with the vowel midpoint. From these, we obtained x (tongue backness) and y (tongue height) values. Linear mixed-effect models were employed to assess the relationship between acoustic parameters (F1, F2) and articulatory measures. Findings reveal a varied but generally related pattern between acoustics and articulation. F1 relates significantly to tongue height for /u/ and /y/, while F2 aligns significantly with tongue backness across all three vowels. However, substantial unaccounted variation suggests factors like vocal tract physiology, the non-linearity between articulation and acoustics, and specific choice of articulatory measures might contribute to this variability. Future research will explore these factors to better comprehend this intricate link between acoustics and articulation.

The Role of Temporal and Spectral Cues in Non-native Speech Production:

This study investigated the role of durational and spectral cues in second language tense and lax vowel contrasts produced by non-native speakers. To test previous claims that speakers primarily rely on durational cues over spectral cues to distinguish L2 tense and lax vowel pairs, citation style speech data were collected from 16 native speakers of Bangla; participants were all undergraduate students. The data were collected via a shadowing task where participants listened to a carefully constructed list of English words in random order and repeated each word immediately after they heard them. The utterances were recorded via a Zoom H1n voice recorder. Collected speech data were annotated and processed using the phonetic analysis software Praat and the semi-automatic annotation toolkit DARLA; statistical analyses were performed using R statistical computing software. Results indicate that Bangla speakers do not emphasize on durational cues to differentiate English tense-lax vowel pairs, contrary to the general patterns reported from other languages; rather, they prefer the spectral cues over the durational cues.

ALTERNATIONS OF INDONESIAN SOUNDS IN SAMBAS MALAY

Indonesian is derived from Standard Malay, while Sambas Malay (SM), a language-code spoken by indigenous people mostly living in Sambas Regency, West Kalimantan, becomes one of Malay dialects; and SIL (2006) also explains it becomes one of standard variations of Malay. Therefore, the two language codes are assumed to be derived from the same ancestral language, i.e., Proto-Austronesian language. Consequently, Indonesian and SM share sameness which is shown by identical cognates of the two language codes. There are other cognates which show sound alternations. The sound alternations comprise changes, additions, deletions, and syllabic movements of segments and sound clusters. The data corpora are the phonological forms of the cognates of Indonesian and SM. The phonological forms of SM cognates are obtained from and/or based on a previous study on phonological aspects of SM lexical items conducted by Firman et al. (1998). Meanwhile, Indonesian cognates are Indonesian lexical items which are available in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (the Main Dictionary of Indonesian) and become the equivalents for SM lexical items afore-mentioned; and the phonological forms of Indonesian cognates are determined by referring to the rules of grapheme-phoneme correspondences in Indonesian proposed by Fauzi (2015). Sound alternations show morphophonemic alternations like consonant weakening, consonant strengthening, lenition, fortition, nasalization, de-nasalization, glottalization, de-glottalization, vowel laxing, vowel tensing, diphthongization, sound deletion, sound addition, gemination or consonant doubling, sound fusion, sound fission, metatheses, assimilation, dissimilation, word lengthening, word shortening, and de-reduplication. Certain findings show certain phonotactics in SM. The result of the discussion also shows the distribution of segments in both of two language codes.

Study on auditory perception of tense and lax vowels of English as a FL by learners with Spanish as L1

Different studies in the field of perception of second-language sounds (L2) suggest that English learners with Spanish as their mother tongue language (L1) are influenced by the sounds of their L1 to perceive the sounds in the L2. As a result, learners are not able to perceive speech sounds as they are in English, because they assimilate the sounds of the foreign language (FL) based on their L1 (Best & Tyler, 2007; Gibson & Gibson, 1955). The objective of this research is to explore the capacity of perception of tense and lax vowels of English (Standard British accent) in 8 high school students from two subsidised schools in Chillán and San Carlos, Chile. The age of the participants range from 15 to 18 years old. One auditory perception test was used: An Identification Test was applied to measure the capacity of the participants to perceive lax and tense vowels: /i:/, /ɪ/, /æ/ and /^/.

Boomer Peak or Gen X Cliff? From SVS to LBMS in Georgia English

AbstractThe late twentieth century in the United States marks the decline of regional vowel systems like the Northern Cities Shift and the Southern Vowel Shift, replaced by supralocal systems like the Low-Back-Merger Shift. We chart such change in acoustic data from seven generations of White speakers (n = 135) in the Southeastern state of Georgia. We analyze front vowels affected by both the SVS and LBMS (dress, trap), plus price and face, known respectively to monophthongize and centralize in the SVS, and LBMS-implicated lot/thought. The SVS is most advanced among Georgians born in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in face-centralization. In Generation X, retraction of front lax vowels begins, leading toward the LBMS. These results, which hold across genders and education levels, support findings that regional vowel systems declined precipitously following a Gen X “cliff,” raising questions about how such language changes are rooted in demographic transformations of that time period.

Community and lifespan changes in music: Sociophonetic variation in Laurentian French

Previous studies on English have highlighted various instances where individual singers or small groups change which dialectal features appear in their music (e.g. Trudgill 1997; Beal 2009; Coupland 2011; Eberhardt & Freeman 2015; Lyon 2019). Whereas corpus studies on music have the option between real-time or apparent-time analyses, most previous research on music has largely been conducted via case studies on change across a singer or group’s career (see Gibson in press a). Focusing on Laurentian French (also known as Quebec French or Canadian French), multiple singers may moderate dialectal traits in music due to their albums being released internationally, where the dialect faces stigma (Szlezák 2015). We further hypothesize that pop singers are especially sensitive to international norms and stigma because they are more likely to market abroad due to pop music’s greater international appeal (Grenier 1993). We examine non-lengthened high vowel laxing in closed final syllables (e.g. /vit/ [vɪt] vite ‘fast’; Dumas 1983), a process characteristic of Laurentian French that is categorical (Côté 2012) and nonstigmatized (Lappin 1982; Paradis & Dolbec 1998; Reinke et al. 2006) within the dialect. We expand the study of dialectal traits in music beyond English by using a new corpus of 20 Québécois singers who sing in French and are of the Laurentian French dialect. Additionally, we analyze the patterning of groups of singers across their careers, rather than the patterning of a single singer, and analyze real-time change of groups as opposed to individuals

Examining vowel fronting and lengthening as indicators of feminine voices in Southern English speech

Fronting and lengthening of lax vowels /ɪ ɛ ɑ/ but not /ʊ/ was found to make words sound more feminine for Southern U.S. listeners (Shport, 2018). This study examined whether /ɪ ɛ ɑ/ are more fronted and are longer in female than male speech. Fifty speakers from Louisiana (27 Black, 23 White, 31 females, 19 males) participated in a word-reading task (4 vowels × 3 words × 4 repetitions). The effects of gender and ethnicity on Lobanov-normalized F2 and duration values were examined using generalized linear modeling. For duration, only /ɛ/ was significantly longer in female than in male productions. For F2, significant differences were found only in productions of the back vowels: /ɑ/ was fronted more by male than female speakers (the gender difference was larger in White speakers); /ʊ/ was fronted more by female than male speakers (and more so by White than Black speakers). These results suggest that Southerners’ perception of relatively fronted and longer variants of /ɪ ɛ ɑ/ as sounding more feminine is not firmly grounded in the acoustic characteristics of these vowels in Southern female as compared to male speech. Possible influences of formant normalization and ethnolectal variation on result interpretation are discussed.

The perception of nasal coarticulatory variation in face-masked speech.

This study investigates the impact of wearing a face mask on the production and perception of coarticulatory vowel nasalization. Speakers produced monosyllabic American English words with oral and nasal codas (i.e., CVC and CVN) in face-masked and un-face-masked conditions to a real human interlocutor. The vowel was either tense or lax. Acoustic analyses indicate that speakers produced greater coarticulatory vowel nasality in CVN items when wearing a face mask, particularly, when the vowel is lax, suggesting targeted enhancement of the oral-nasalized contrast in this condition. This enhancement is not observed for tense vowels. In a perception study, participants heard CV syllables excised from the recorded words and performed coda identifications. For lax vowels, listeners were more accurate at identifying the coda in the face-masked condition, indicating that they benefited from the speakers' production adjustments. Overall, the results indicate that speakers adapt their speech in specific contexts when wearing a face mask, and these speaker adjustments have an influence on listeners' abilities to identify words in the speech signal.

THE PRODUCTION OF HIGH BACK VOWELS: A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH AND STANDARD SERBIAN

This paper reports on the findings of a contrastive study of American English high back vowels /u, ʊ/ and Serbian vowel /u/ produced by ten male native speakers of Serbian. Previous research (Marković 2009a; Bjekić, Čubrović 2021; Čubrović 2019, 2017; Dančetović, Nešić 2017) has indicated that the differences in quality between the English high back vowels /u/ and /ʊ/ are often poorly detected by Serbian speakers. Therefore, the overall aim of the present research is to observe the acoustic properties of high back vowels in the given languages, so as to determine whether or not our subjects can adequately produce the L2 vowels with respect to both quality and quantity, and whether they can differentiate them from their L1 categories. The research subjects were first instructed to read a set of 13 monosyllabic English words representing the high back vowels /u, ʊ/ in different phonetic environments. The second task called for the subjects to read a set of 13 Serbian words representing the vowel /u/ in short and long stressed syllables. The collected speech samples were then analyzed acoustically using Praat, version 6.2.13 (Boersma, Weenink 2022). The statistical analysis of the acoustic measurements was performed using R, version 4.2.1 (R Development Core Team 2022). The results suggest that, in terms of quantity, in the speech of Serbian students, the lax vowel, in particular, bears more resemblance to the subjects’ L1 category, rather than the targeted vowel. The analysis of the formant data indicates that, although our subjects’ L2 categories differ from those of native speakers, the quality of GA high back vowels our subjects produce does not reflect the quality of their L1 categories.

Vowel height and velum position in German: Insights from a real-time magnetic resonance imaging study.

Velum position was analysed as a function of vowel height in German tense and lax vowels preceding a nasal or oral consonant. Findings from previous research suggest an interdependence between vowel height and the degree of velum lowering, with a higher velum during high vowels and a more lowered velum during low vowels. In the current study, data were presented from 33 native speakers of Standard German who were measured via non-invasive high quality real-time magnetic resonance imaging. The focus was on exploring the spatiotemporal extent of velum lowering in tense and lax /a, i, o, ø/, which was done by analysing velum movement trajectories over the course of VN and VC sequences in CVNV and CVCV sequences by means of functional principal component analysis. Analyses focused on the impact of the vowel category and vowel tenseness. Data indicated that not only the position of the velum was affected by these factors but also the timing of velum closure. Moreover, it is argued that the effect of vowel height was to be better interpreted in terms of the physiological constriction location of vowels, i.e., the specific tongue position rather than phonetic vowel height.

The role of sensorimotor mechanisms in phonetic and phonological learning

Phonetic and phonological learning was reported to be enhanced in bilinguals; however, the underlying mechanisms remain understudied. Prior work suggests a bilingual advantage in articulatory skill and auditory sensory memory, raising the question of the involvement of sensorimotor functions in phonetic and phonological learning. To explore this relationship, we compare the performance of English monolinguals and English-Spanish bilinguals on three tasks:(1) Articulatory skill, using a novel sound learning task with articulatory complex sounds not present in our participants' inventory.(2) Auditory sensory memory, measured via an adaptive digit span task. (3) Phonetic and phonological learning, using an artificial accent of English displaying diphthongization of mid-front lax vowels and tapping of intervocalic liquids. All tasks were conducted online 1-on-1 via Zoom. Tasks 1 and 3 were scored based on four listeners' perceptual judgments. For Task 2, we obtained response accuracy and input-output similarity scores. While data analysis is currently underway, preliminary findings replicate the previously observed bilingual advantage in phonological learning and auditory sensory memory and reveal a correlation between them. Bringing together motor, sensory, and acquisitional components and investigating the ways in which they are related adds to lesser explored mechanisms potentially underlying the bilingual advantage.

The effect of listener dialect experience on generalization of a novel vowel shift

When adapting to novel dialects, listeners rely on the systematicity of novel variants across vowel categories, even when only part of the novel vowel system is presented. I examined how a listener’s dialect experience with components of a novel front lax vowel shift impacts perceptual adaptation and generalization. Three listener groups were exposed to different portions of a novel English dialect with front lax vowel backing. Listener groups varied in their dialect experience: Westerners were experienced with /ɪ ɛ æ/ backing in the California Vowel Shift, Southerners were experienced with parallel movements of /ɪ ɛ/ in the Southern Vowel Shift, and New Englanders were minimally experienced with parallel front lax vowel shifts. Listeners were exposed to either no front lax vowels, /ɪ/, /ɪ æ/, or /ɪ ɛ æ/. Then, listeners completed a lexical decision task for items with /ɪ ɛ æ/, requiring variable amounts of adaptation and generalization by condition. Westerners and New Englanders endorsed more words in the /ɪ æ/ exposure condition than in the /ɪ/ exposure condition, but Southerners endorsed fewer. Southerners’ unfamiliarity with /æ/ shifting may have inhibited adaptation and generalization. A listener’s dialect experience can affect perceptual adaptation to and generalization of a novel dialect.

On the influence of the first language on orthographic competences in German as a second language: a comparative analysis

Abstract This article presents an empirical study on selected aspects of the orthographic performance of mono- and bilingual students in German. Particular attention is paid to the question whether a connection can be drawn between the orthographic performance of the bilingual students in German and their first language. For this purpose, a corpus is analyzed with data from approx. 800 test students. One group is monolingual in German, one is bilingual German–Turkish and one is bilingual German–Russian. A highly significant influence of Russian resp. Turkish on the performance to differentiate between tense and lax vowels is found. This corresponds to expectations insofar as in opposition to German, neither in Turkish nor in Russian, tense and lax vowels are distinguished phonologically. In other areas of orthography, this influence of the first language is not measurable or not to the same extent.

The time course of first formant movement in normal and loud speech

Louder speech tends to be slower than typical speech. For some vowels (viz., low and lax ones), louder speech may also be associated with higher first formant frequencies (F1s) at vowel midpoint. Possibly, increased duration allows speakers more time to reach a lower jaw position, thus a higher value of F1, in loud speech. In earlier work, we found that some loudness differences appeared at 25% and 75% of vowel durations, i.e., they were seen for much of the vowel. The current study presents data from 11 German-speaking women producing naturally elicited typical and loud speech. Target words included high, low, tense, and lax vowels with surrounding consonantal place controlled. We will present full vowel trajectories, i.e., from preceding to following consonants, to assess the time course of F1 differences across vowel types and loudness conditions. F1 will also be considered within normalized time intervals to control for durational differences between conditions. We expect that F1 formant trajectories will show minimal loudness differences throughout the vowel for high tense vowels, but time-varying differences will be more apparent for low and lax vowels, and appear rather early in the vowel.

Interaction between Phrasal Structure and Vowel Tenseness in German: An Acoustic and Articulatory Study.

Phrase-final lengthening affects the segments preceding a prosodic boundary. This prosodic variation is generally assumed to be independent of the phonemic identity. We refer to this as the 'uniform lengthening hypothesis' (ULH). However, in German, lax vowels do not undergo lengthening for word stress or shortening for increased speech rate, indicating that temporal properties might interact with phonemic identity. We test the ULH by comparing the effect of the boundary on acoustic and kinematic measures for tense and lax vowels and several coda consonants. We further examine if the boundary effect decreases with distance from the boundary. Ten native speakers of German were recorded by means of electromagnetic articulography (EMA) while reading sentences that contained six minimal pairs varying in vowel tenseness and boundary type. In line with the ULH, the results show that the acoustic durations of lax vowels are lengthened phrase-finally, similarly to tense vowels. We find that acoustic lengthening is stronger the closer the segments are to the boundary. Articulatory parameters of the closing movements toward the post-vocalic consonants are affected by both phrasal position and identity of the preceding vowel. The results are discussed with regard to the interaction between prosodic structure and vowel tenseness.

The Influence of Dialect on the Perception and Production of Lax-Tense Vowel Distinction in English Learning

This acoustic experimental study investigates the influence of dialectal background on the perception and production of lax-tense vowel distinction in English learning from the theoretical standpoint of language transfer. Previous studies usually regard the first language as a source of transfer, with few considering the influence of dialect in the process of transfer, while this study has taken account of participants’ dialects and biological genders and look at whether and how Chinese dialectal knowledge is transferred in English learning. A perception and a production experiment are conducted with two groups of participants -- Cantonese Chinese speakers and Mandarin Chinese speakers -- to respectively analyze their perception and production strategy for English lax-tense vowel pairs [I]/[i:] and [ʊ]/[u:]. The study finds out that dialect and gender cause statistically significant difference. The result shows that Cantonese speakers can effectively leverage spectral cues to differentiate English tense vowels from lax vowels, while Mandarin speakers rely heavily on durational cues. The two lingual groups have disparate production result, but no one group is overall better than the other in producing lax-tense vowels. Mandarin and Cantonese participants only differ in the F2 of the [u:] production. Moreover, when gender is considered, Mandarin females can produce native-like [ʊ]; Cantonese males and females can produce native-like [I], Cantonese females native-like [i:] and Cantonese males native-like [u:]. This study confirms that dialect should be considered in transfer study, and further points out that both dialect and gender are significant variables of the transfer mechanism in foreign language acquisition.