Vowel Quality Research Articles

Checked Syllables, Checked Tones, and Tone Sandhi in Xiapu Min

A “checked” syllable usually refers to one with a short vowel and an oral or glottal coda, which results impressionistically in a “short” and “abrupt” quality. Although common in languages of the world, it is unclear how to characterize checked syllables phonetically. In this study, we investigated the acoustic features of checked syllables in citation and sandhi forms in Xiapu Min, an under-documented language from China. We conducted a production experiment and analyzed the F0, phonatory quality, vowel duration, and vowel quality in checked syllables. The results show that, in citation tones, checked syllables are realized with distinct F0 contours from unchecked syllables, along with glottalization in the end and a shorter duration overall. In sandhi tones, checked syllables lose their distinct F0 contours and become less glottalized. However, the shorter duration of checked syllables is retained in sandhi forms. This study lays out the acoustic properties that tend to be associated with checked syllables and can be used when testing checked syllables in other language varieties. The fact that in Xiapu Min sandhi checked tones become less glottalized but preserve their shorter duration suggests that, when checked syllables become unchecked diachronically, glottalization might be lost prior to duration lengthening.

Vowel quality in intermediate L2 Spanish learners: a study of lexical, linguistic, and individual variables

ABSTRACT The current study analyzes vowel quality production across the lexical factors of cognate status and timing of word introduction, the linguistic factor of vowel position (pre-tonic, tonic, or post-tonic), and individual factors including age of acquisition of Spanish and length of study abroad. Participants were 29 intermediate second language Spanish learners who completed an oral text reading task. Results found that learners pronounced vowels differently in early as compared to later introduced words and in tonic (stressed) position compared to unstressed (pre-tonic/post-tonic) position. However, cognate status and individual factors were in general not statistically significant. These results lead us to suggest that pronunciation instruction should ideally begin early in the acquisition process and include explanations of vowel production in unstressed syllables.

On the Notion of “Vowel” and “Consonant” in Chinese Linguistic Tradition

The present article seeks to investigate the notion of vowels and consonants in the Chinese linguistic tradition, which developed independently of Western linguistic traditions, despite being influenced by the phonetic science of India. In particular, this study seeks to discuss the questions of (1) how traditional phonologists in China had split the syllable into smaller units, (2) what was the nature of the units, and (3) whether Chinese phonologists had already been aware of the existence of vowels and consonants. This study also discusses the question of whether the Four Grades of traditional rime tables were actually related to the quality of vowels, and the presence of medial glides. It is concluded that vowels were probably understood as sounds that may have been pronounced alone, whereas consonants were interpreted as sounds which should be attached to a vowel. Occasionally, a comparison with Western linguistic tradition is also offered.

An optimality-theoretic account of syllable restructuring in Early Bislama

The paper looks at syllable restructuring in Early Bislama. The analysis is couched in the framework of Optimality Theory. The empirical evidence considered is from a corpus of pre-World War II records of Early Bislama, covering a period ranging from 1867 to 1935. It is shown that Early Bislama tends to disallow complex syllable margins and employs mostly vowel epenthesis and, to a lesser extent, consonant deletion as repair strategies for the resolution of etymological onset and coda clusters. Also discussed are the quality of the epenthetic vowels (minimally marked vs. contextually coloured), and the relevance of Early Bislama to the transformations undergone by otherwise stable features of English syllable structure.

O sistema vocálico do Proto-Tupi: uma nova proposta reconstrutiva

Abstract This contribution is concerned with the reconstruction of the vowel qualities of Proto-Tupian, the ancestral language of the Tupian language family. The study is grounded in a bottom-up application of the comparative method and seeks to offer a more balanced reconstruction that avoids an overreliance on the Tupí-Guaraní branch. It is first shown that the height opposition traditionally reconstructed for the rounded vowel series (*o vs. *u) is best interpreted as an opposition between an unrounded vowel and a rounded one (*ə vs. *o). It is also argued that multiple instances of *e in the traditional reconstruction should be rather attributed to *ə. Finally, it is shown that two vowels (symbolized as *ɨ and *ɯ) must be reconstructed in lieu of the traditional *ɨ. The resulting proposal has consequences for the subgrouping of the Tupian family.

Shared Vowels in English Loanwords in Arabic: Variation in Similarity-Based Adaptation

This paper investigates vowel adaptation in English-based loanwords by a group of Saudi Arabic speakers, concentrating exclusively on shared vowels between the two languages. It examines 5 long vowels shared by the two vowel systems in terms of vowel quality and vowel duration in loanword productions by 22 participants and checks them against the properties of the same vowels in native words. To this end, the study performs an acoustic analysis of 660 tokens (loan and native vowel sounds) through Praat to measure the first two formants (F1: vowel height and F2: vowel advancement) of each vowel sound at two temporal points of time (T1: the vowel onset and T2: the peak of the vowel) as well as a durational analysis to examine vowel length. It reports that measurements of the first two formants of vowels in native words appear to be stable during the two temporal points while values of the same vowel sounds occurring in loanwords are fluctuating from T1 to T2 and that durational differences exist between loanword vowels in comparison with vowels of native words in such a way that vowels in native words are longer in duration than the same vowels appearing in loanwords..

Acoustic Analysis of Kachchi Vowel Sounds: A Descriptive Study of Kachchi Vowels

Kachchi is one of the six dialects of Sindhi spoken widely in India and in the Sindh region of Pakistan. This study aims to analyze the acoustic realization of ten Kachchi vowel sounds. The study is based on ten Kachchi words from ten native Kachchi speakers residing in Sindh, Pakistan. A total of (10×10×3=300) voice samples were analyzed, each recording had all ten Kachchi words recorded by native Kachchi speakers. Each word had three utterances. The data consist of ten Kachchi-Sindhi vowels /i:/, /ɑ/, /ɔ/, /u/, /e/, /ɛ/, /o/, /ɪ/, /ə/, and /ʊ/, were recorded by ten native Kachchi speakers (5 males and 5 females). For the collection of data, convenience sampling was done. Four parameters were considered for the acoustic analysis of Kachchi-Sindhi vowels i.e., vowel quality (F1-F2), fundamental frequency (F0), duration, and stop closure. Vowel quality, durational values of vowels, and stop closures are acoustically described in the study. The acoustic examination further revealed that F0 value was relatively higher amongst females than males. Finally, vowel quality (F1-F2) was analyzed and vowel space of Kachchi-Sindhi vowel sounds was formed. Among the two stop consonants, voiced alveolar /d/ had the highest durational value than voiceless velar /k/.

Yes-no questions in whispered speech

Intonative profiles are key to the identification of yes-no questions in many languages. Therefore, its absence in whispered speech makes it necessary to look for other features transmitting that information. Regarding other languages, f1 and f2 have been pointed as responsible of prosodic information in absence of f0, through a rise in those points where a rise of pitch would take place. It has also been related to intensity and duration.
 The quality of vowels in Spanish is very stable, so we have chosen to analyse formants in three utterances, each one pronounced by three informants in phonation as well as in whispered speech, and both in declarative and interrogative modalities. Although results do show a prevalence of the final rise of both formants in interrogative utterances, all exceptions could be identified as interrogative too. This suggests other features are involved, probably tension of the vocal cords.

Voicing and register in Ngãi Giao Chrau: Production and perception studies

Chrau, a South Bahnaric language of the Austroasiatic family spoken in South Vietnam, has been described as having a voicing contrast in onset stops. However, a production experiment reveals that rather than a voicing contrast, Chrau, like many other Austroasiatic languages, has register, a two-way contrast realized on syllables through a bundle of phonetic properties including phonation type, vowel quality, and pitch differences. Stop voicing is marginally present in some speakers but seems to be an optional property of register. The results of a perception study on register further suggest that speakers roughly employ the same phonetic properties in perception as in production. Individual variation is observed in both production and perception, but there is not a straightforward correlation between the two modes at the individual level—an indication that listeners’ perception is flexible enough to accommodate variation in production. Our results raise questions about the diachronic scenarios proposed to account for the transphonologization of onset voicing into register and tone in Mainland Southeast Asian languages.

Persian Vowel Production in Hearing-Impaired Children With Cochlear Implants: The Influence of the Implantation Age

Background and Objectives: Speech intelligibility is affected by vowel quality. Auditory feedback is an essential factor in vowel quality. The purpose of the current study was to compare vowel space and formant frequencies in Normal-Hearing (NH) and Cochlear-Implanted (CI) Persian-speaking children aged 4 to 6 years. Methods: The participants were 10 CI children (5 girls and 5 boys) aged 4 to 6 years. All children had congenital hearing loss and received a multichannel CI before 2 years of age. The control group comprised 20 NH children (10 girls and 10 boys) aged 4 to 6 years. The two groups were matched by age. The participants were asked to produce six Persian vowels (/u/, /o/, /a/, /i/, /e/, /æ/) in /ChVCd/ context and then the average of formant frequencies (F1, F2,) was measured using Praat analysis software (Version: 5, 3, 27). The Independent samples t-test was conducted to assess the differences in F1 and F2 values between the two groups using SPSS 16. Results: The mean values of F1 and F2 of all 6 Persian vowels were not significantly different between CI and NH children (P>0.05). Conclusion: Findings of the present study implied that children who were implanted CI under 2 years of age are likely to produce Persian vowels similar to normal-hearing children.

Interesting Pausal Forms in the Speech of Muslims and Christians in Kufᵘr-Kanna

The aim of this paper is to describe the system of vocalic variants in pause pertaining to speakers of Arabic in Kufᵘr-Kanna (AKK) and in this regard to determine the features that characterize the AKK. As in Nazareth, the incidence of pauses in AKK varies and depends on the content, the listener and the speaker’s intentions. In AKK I detected pausal forms in the speech of middle-aged and elderly Muslims and elderly Christians. In addition to changes in consonants and vowel quality in their speech, in pausal position final syllables also undergo other modifications as compared to the contextual forms.
 Unlike in Nazareth, four further types were identified in AKK: (1) lengthening of short vowels in final position: ‑Cv > ‑Cv̄#, -CvC > -Cv̄C#; lengthening of normal and anaptyctic short vowels in final closed syllables: -CvC#; (2) devoicing of voiced consonants in word-final position; (3) glottalization after con­sonants and vowels in word-final position; and (4) aspiration: addition of (h) in pausal position where the word ends in long vowels.
 Key words: Arabic dialects – Pausal forms – Syllables – Long vowels – Short vowels – Christians and Muslims.

Newborns’ neural processing of native vowels reveals directional asymmetries

Prenatal learning of speech rhythm and melody is well documented. Much less is known about the earliest acquisition of segmental speech categories. We tested whether newborn infants perceive native vowels, but not nonspeech sounds, through some existing (proto-)categories, and whether they do so more robustly for some vowels than for others. Sensory event-related potentials (ERP), and mismatch responses (MMR), were obtained from 104 neonates acquiring Czech. The ERPs elicited by vowels were larger than the ERPs to nonspeech sounds, and reflected the differences between the individual vowel categories. The MMRs to changes in vowels but not in nonspeech sounds revealed left-lateralized asymmetrical processing patterns: a change from a focal [a] to a nonfocal [ɛ], and the change from short [ɛ] to long [ɛ:] elicited more negative MMR responses than reverse changes. Contrary to predictions, we did not find evidence of a developmental advantage for vowel length contrasts (supposedly most readily available in utero) over vowel quality contrasts (supposedly less salient in utero). An explanation for these asymmetries in terms of differential degree of prior phonetic warping of speech sounds is proposed. Future studies with newborns with different language backgrounds should test whether the prenatal learning scenario proposed here is plausible.

How are words with diacritical vowels represented in the mental lexicon? Evidence from Spanish and German

ABSTRACT Recent research has shown that the omission of diacritics in words does not affect the initial contact with the lexical entries, as measured by masked priming. In the present study, we directly examined whether diacritics’ omission slows down lexical access using a single-presentation semantic categorisation task (“is the word an animal name?”). We did so in a language in which diacritics reflect lexical stress but not vowel quality (Spanish; e.g. ratón [mouse] vs. raton; Experiment 1) and in a language in which diacritics reflect vowel quality but not lexical stress (German; e.g. Kröte vs. Krote; Experiment 2). In Spanish, word response times were similar for words with diacritics that were either present or omitted. In contrast, German words were responded more slowly when the words’ diacritics were omitted. Thus, the function of diacritics in each language determines how words with diacritics are represented in the mental lexicon.

Gradual Vowel Epenthesis in Urban Hijazi Arabic

In this paper, vowel epenthesis in Urban Hijazi Arabic is analysed as a process of gradual structural build-up. Harmonic Serialism, a derivational framework of Optimality Theory, provides the theoretical foundation to illustrate the arguments. Rather than epenthesising an entire vowel all at once, featural structure progressively increases in successive steps. This accumulation continues until the required vowel quality is achieved. Specifically, the constraint hierarchy predicts high epenthetic vowels to occur in closed syllables and the low epenthetic vowel in open syllables. The same constraint hierarchy, however, is also expected to predict both gradual epenthesis and gradual deletion. In that regard, a seemingly paradoxical situation is created when the very same intermediate vowel quality is achieved through accumulation or attrition of featural structure. This particular vowel quality, in exactly the same environment, will have to continue gaining internal structure towards epenthesis or continue losing internal structure towards deletion. Eventually, identifying the path that the derivation takes to reach a certain vowel will help to resolve the issue.

Commentary: “Vowel Quality and Direction of Stress Shift in a Predictive Model Explaining the Varying Impact of Misplaced Word Stress: Evidence From English” and “Exploring the Complexity of the L2 Intonation System: An Acoustic and Eye-Tracking Study”

Commentary: “Vowel Quality and Direction of Stress Shift in a Predictive Model Explaining the Varying Impact of Misplaced Word Stress: Evidence From English” and “Exploring the Complexity of the L2 Intonation System: An Acoustic and Eye-Tracking Study”

Voice onset time and vowel quality in Madurese

Abstract Madurese exhibits a three-way laryngeal contrast in its plosive inventory, distinguishing voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless aspirated plosives. Previous studies have investigated some acoustic characteristics of the contrast but have not examined possible dialectal variation in this contrast. The present study aims to discuss the contrast by examining Voice Onset Time (VOT) and vowel quality (F1). Twenty participants (10 Western Madurese speakers and 10 Eastern Madurese speakers) were recruited and instructed to read 150 Madurese words containing plosives. The results showed that an interaction of dialect and gender were significantly correlated with VOT: male Western Madurese speakers produced shorter VOT for voiced and voiceless aspirated plosives than their Eastern counterparts. There was also variation in F1 between gender across dialects: male Western Madurese speakers produced [ə] with a lower F1 than their Eastern counterparts. It was suggested that the variation was possibly due to language contact with Javanese.

Perceptual weighting of acoustic cues for word stress in normal hearing listeners and cochlear implant users

Accurate perception of word stress is key to segmenting and understanding speech. We examined perception of four acoustic cues to word stress in English—vowel quality (VQ), pitch, syllable duration, and intensity—and how perception of these cues is affected by specific kinds of signal degradation. Cochlear implants (CIs) severely degrade VQ and pitch, which could demand different relative reliance on these cues. We tested NH listeners in unprocessed, vocoded, and simulated bimodal (unprocessed low frequencies, vocoded high frequencies) conditions as well as CI users. Stimuli included stress-contrastive word pairs (DESert versus dessERT, SUBject versus subJECT) with orthogonal manipulations of each cue. For both NH and CI listeners, there were strikingly different patterns of cue weighting between these word pairs, highlighting how stress cue weighting is flexible across words rather than being absolute. Vocoding the stimuli led to a downweighting of VQ and pitch cues and a compensatory upweighting of duration and intensity; perception of pitch and VQ were largely restored in the bimodal conditions with 250 and 800 Hz bands preserved, respectively. CI users relied on duration more than the NH controls in any condition, while also showing a surprising ability to use VQ and pitch cues.

Effects of uvular consonants on vowel quality in Lushootseed

Although the influence of uvular consonants on vowel quality has been studied in Interior Salish languages (Bessell, 1992; 1998; Flemming et al., 2008), it has not been studied in Coast Salish languages. This study investigates the effect of uvular consonants on vowel quality in Lushootseed, a Coast Salish language spoken in the Puget Sound region of the Pacific Northwest, which has uvular stops and fricatives. Archival recordings (Burke Museum, 2015) of a native speaker were examined. A study was performed to analyze the effects of uvular consonants on formants of adjacent vowels. F1 and F2 were measured for vowels adjacent to uvular consonants that were positioned pre- and post-vocalically. These measures were compared with vowels adjacent to non-uvular consonants. The results reveal that there was an increase in F1 and a decrease in F2 for all vowels. The effects were greater for F1 than F2. These results are in contrast with those of Bessell (1992; 1998), who observed two effects: (i) only non-low vowels were affected, and (ii) F2 showed a greater effect than F1. These findings provide further implications on acoustic phonetic research for Coast Salish languages.

The temporal unfolding of register reveals distinct mechanisms at play: A case study of Western Khmer

Register distinctions are a type of suprasegmental contrasts manifested in several acoustic dimensions, e.g., pitch, vowel quality, and voice quality. However, several aspects of register production remain unclear (Brunelle & Kirby, 2016). In this paper, we focus on whether a target laryngeal configuration may be responsible for the multiplicity of acoustic cues to register. We approach this question through a production study of Western Khmer, an Austronesian language spoken in Chanthaburi, Thailand. Data were collected from 19 speakers producing words with modal or breathy register in a carrier sentence. The measurements we took are trajectories of F0, F1, H1*-H2*, and H1*-A1*. Our results show that all cues are significant in distinguishing the two registers, confirming static measurement results in the previous literature (Wayland, 2001). However, a dynamic study of these register cues reveals a dissociation in their temporal alignment. The F1 transitions that mark changes in vowel quality are not aligned with the transitions of H1*-H2* and H1*-A1* that mark changes in voice quality. These findings suggest that separate asynchronous mechanisms may be responsible for the voice quality and vowel quality components of register production.

A cross-linguistic investigation of acoustic voice spaces

This study examines the extent to which the phonological structure of a language impacts acoustic variation in voice spaces for individuals and populations of speakers. Our recent work on two typologically different languages, American English and Seoul Korean, showed striking similarities in the acoustic spaces derived from Korean and English voices, but also notable differences in the importance of F0 and variability in vowel quality that were related to phrasal intonation patterns present in the Seoul dialect, but not in English. The present study examined eight speakers (5F) of Hmong, a language with tone and phonation contrasts. We performed principal component analysis on scaled values of F0, formants, spectral noise, source spectral shape, and their variability, measured from vowels, and compared results to Korean and English (which lack tone and phonation contrasts). Results revealed both substantial similarities and differences across languages. F0 commonly emerged only for Hmong and Korean voices, and H1-H2 (correlated with phonation) accounted for substantial variation only in Hmong voices. Our findings suggest that both biologically and phonologically relevant factors shape acoustic voice spaces, and point to a potential mechanism for the “own language” advantage in speaker perception. [Work supported by NIH/NSF.]