Size Of Vowel Space Research Articles

The vowel space of multiethnolectal (Stuttgart) German.

The emergence of multiethnolects, i.e.specific speaking styles or varieties associated with second and third generation speakers from immigrant backgrounds, has been observed and studied in several major cities in Europe and elsewhere in theworld. The multiethnolect that is the focus of this study is one such variety of colloquial German. Most previous research on multiethnolectal German has focused on grammatical features. This paper reports on the first comprehensive study of the vowel system (vowel quality and global vowel space size) of multiethnolectal German, based on data from Stuttgart. The results show that the vowel space of multiethnolectal speakers is in generally more centralized than that of a comparison group. A more detailed analysis reveals that the linguistic background plays an important role, as speakers with a Turkish or South Slavonic language background are responsible for this effect.

The Acoustics of Gender in Indian English: Toward Forensic Profiling in a Multilingual Context

The present study is an acoustic analysis of Indian English, specifically examining the speech patterns and characteristics of three different groups with different native languages. This study investigates fundamental frequency (fo), fo range, fo variance, formant frequencies, and vowel space size in 42 native male and female speakers of Odia, Bangla, and Hindi. Furthermore, it investigated the potential correlation between fundamental frequency and vowel space, examining whether variations in vowel space size could be influenced by gender-specific perceptual factors. The paper emphasizes that in a multilingual context, gender identification can be efficiently correlated with both fo and formant frequencies. To measure a range of acoustic characteristics, speech samples were collected from the recording task. Analysis was done on PRAAT. The study revealed significant differences between genders for the examined acoustic characteristics. Results indicate differences in the size of gender-specific variations among the language groups, with females exhibiting more significant differences in fo, formant frequencies, and vowel space than males. The findings show no significant correlation between fo and vowel space area, indicating that other features are responsible for large vowel space for females. These findings display significant potential towardcreating a robust empirical framework for gender profiling that can be utilized in a wide range of forensic linguistics investigations.

Learning transfer from singing to speech: Insights from vowel analyses in aging amateur singers and non-singers

PurposeTask-independent (e.g., Ballard et al., 2003) and task-dependent models (e.g., Ziegler, 2003) differ in their predictions regarding the learning transfer from non-speech activities to speech. We argue that singing is a musical and essentially oral motor activity that differs from speech on several fundamental aspects. Building upon existing evidence on the benefits of vocal training on speech, this study aimed to examine whether amateur singing practice had a protective effect on vowel acoustic identity (speech) in aging speakers. Method75 healthy non-singers (mean age 55.52 ± 20.32; 20–98 years, 39 females) and 71 healthy singers (mean age 55.34 ± 19.34; 21–87 years, 44 females), all native Quebec French speakers, were recruited. Participants were asked to read aloud a standardized passage (“La bise et le soleil”). Vowel duration as well as the F1 and F2 values for the oral vowels /a, i, e, ɛ, o, ɔ, u, y, œ / were extracted from the recordings. A multiparametric assessment of spectral and temporal vowel features was carried out. ResultsThe results revealed that spectral characteristics of vowels—such as the size of vowel space and vowel distinctiveness—were overall well preserved across the lifespan, while temporal characteristics—such as speech rate—declined. Singing practice was associated with the size of vowel space in female speakers but not with vowel clarity in either female or male speakers . ConclusionsContrary to our hypotheses, amateur singing had little effect on vowel articulation in read speech, likely because vowel quality was not substantially altered by the aging process in this context. Overall, our findings provide support to the task-dependent account of nonspeech-to-speech learning transfer and suggest that complementary analyses of articulatory and linguistic aspects of vowel characteristics may provide relevant insights on potential targets of change.

Effects of Gender, Parental Role, and Time on Infant- and Adult-Directed Read and Spontaneous Speech.

Purpose The study sets out to investigate inter- and intraspeaker variation in German infant-directed speech (IDS) and considers the potential impact that the factors gender, parental involvement, and speech material (read vs. spontaneous speech) may have. In addition, we analyze data from 3 time points prior to and after the birth of the child to examine potential changes in the features of IDS and, particularly also, of adult-directed speech (ADS). Here, the gender identity of a speaker is considered as an additional factor. Method IDS and ADS data from 34 participants (15 mothers, 19 fathers) is gathered by means of a reading and a picture description task. For IDS, 2 recordings were made when the baby was approximately 6 and 9 months old, respectively. For ADS, an additional recording was made before the baby was born. Phonetic analyses comprise mean fundamental frequency (f0), variation in f0, the 1st 2 formants measured in /i: ɛ a u:/, and the vowel space size. Moreover, social and behavioral data were gathered regarding parental involvement and gender identity. Results German IDS is characterized by an increase in mean f0, a larger variation in f0, vowel- and formant-specific differences, and a larger acoustic vowel space. No effect of gender or parental involvement was found. Also, the phonetic features of IDS were found in both spontaneous and read speech. Regarding ADS, changes in vowel space size in some of the fathers and in mean f0 in mothers were found. Conclusion Phonetic features of German IDS are robust with respect to the factors gender, parental involvement, speech material (read vs. spontaneous speech), and time. Some phonetic features of ADS changed within the child's first year depending on gender and parental involvement/gender identity. Thus, further research on IDS needs to address also potential changes in ADS.

Compression in the California Vowel Shift: Tracking generational sound change in California's Central Valley

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the California Vowel Shift, previously characterized as a chain shift, in communities across California's Central Valley. An incremental apparent time analysis of 72 Californians’ vowel spaces provides no clear evidence of a gradual chain shift; that is, changes have not unfolded in an order that reflects an implicational chain in chronological time. Instead, we see contemporaneous movements of vowels that work against the phonological tendency of maximal dispersion typically invoked in describing chain shifts. By analyzing change in the size and dispersion of the entire vowel space, we find that ongoing sound change is instead characterized by a holistic compression of the vowel space. This suggests that, in these California communities, the shift's unfolding was driven by articulatory and social, rather than purely phonological, factors. We propose that the analysis of the size and spread of holistic vowel space can help characterize the nature and motivations for vocalic changes.

Do Sound Segments Contribute to Sounding Charismatic? Evidence from a Case Study of Steve Jobs' and Mark Zuckerberg's Vowel Spaces

The paper presents a case study of two popular US American CEOs. It compares the acoustic vowel space sizes of the more charismatic speaker Steve Jobs and those of the less charismatic speaker Mark Zuckerberg, as part of an initial acoustic step to examine a traditional claim of rhetoric that clearer speech makes a speaker sound more charismatic. Analysing about 2,000 long and short vowel tokens from representative keynote speech excerpts of the two speakers shows that Jobs’ vowel space is, across various segmental and prosodic context factors, significantly larger than that of Zuckerberg, whose vowel space is strongly reduced particularly when addressing investors. The differences in vowel-space size are consistent with the claim of rhetoric that a clear articulation is a key characteristic of a charismatic speaker. The discussion of the results describes further experimental steps required to back up the link between clear pronunciation and speaker charisma.

Gender identity is indexed and perceived in speech.

This study investigates a possible relationship between perceived and self-ascribed gender identity and the respective acoustic correlates in a group of young heterosexual adult speakers. For the production study, a sample of 37 German speaking subjects (20 males, 17 females) filled out a questionnaire to assess their self-ascribed masculinity/femininity on two scales. A range of acoustic parameters (acoustic vowel space size, fundamental frequency, sibilant spectral characteristics) were measured in speech collected from a picture describing task. Results show that male speakers judging themselves to be less masculine exhibited larger vowel spaces and higher average fundamental frequency.For the perception experiment, a group of 21 listeners (11 males, 10 females) judged masculinity of single word male stimuli drawn from the collected speech sample. A significant correlation between speakers’ self-ascribed and listeners’ attributed gender identity was found with a stronger relationship for female listeners. Acoustic parameters used by listeners to attribute gender identity include those used by speakers to index masculinity/femininity.The investigation demonstrates the importance of including self-ascribed gender identity as a potential source of inter-speaker variation in speech production and perception even in a sample of heterosexual adult speakers.

Acoustic analysis of the speech of patients with oral cancer: A methodological investigation comparing speech stimuli derived from different clinical outcome measures

Background: Oral cavity cancer and its treatment reduce the quality of speech. Clinicians often utilize a variety of outcomes measures to assess speech function of patients with oral cavity cancer reducing the comparability of formant results due to differences in linguistics and phonetic contexts. Objective: To evaluate the degree of agreement in vowel space size in a F1-F2 plane, when comparing speech stimuli selected from a controlled environment (i.e., /hVd/ context) to speech stimuli segmented from two clinically available speech outcome measures in patients treated for cancer of the oral tongue. Methods: Voice recordings of nine patients treated with primary surgery for cancer of the oral cavity who attended functional assessment appointments (pre-operatively, and at 1-, 6-, and 12-months post-operatively) were analyzed. Agreement between vowel space size obtained from /hVd/ phrases and other speech assessments were compared using linear correlations and t-tests. Results: Vowel space size derived from /hVd/ phrases correlates strongly with corresponding estimates from other speech tasks (r = 0.72 to 0.82, p <0.0001). The other tasks had significantly reduced vowel space sizes compared to /hVd/ (t = 4.7 to 5, p<0.0001). Conclusion: Vowel space size estimates based on different speech tasks are mutually comparable and may offer insight to oral cancer speech production acoustics.

Cross-linguistic differences in the size of the infant vowel space

This study examined the effects of linguistic environmental input on babbling in cross-linguistic investigations of vowel space. Speech samples were collected from 10- to 18-month-old infants learning Arabic (N = 31). First (F1) and second (F2) formant frequencies were identified in the selected vowels and used to calculate the compact-diffuse (F2 − F1) and grave-acute ([F2 + F1]/2) values for each vowel and the size of the vowel space was calculated for each infant’s vowel space. These vowel space statistics were compared to similar data derived from vowels produced by English-learning infants (N = 20) and French-learning infants (N = 23) as previously described in Rvachew, Mattock, Polka, and Menard (2006). It was found that Arabic infants appeared to achieve a larger vowel space at a younger age compared to the English and French infants, which we attribute to the benefit of a less crowded vowel space in Arabic input compared to English and French input. Expansion of the vowel space toward the diffuse and grave corners was common to all three language groups, but the developmental trajectories for the mean F1 and mean F2 varied with language input. These findings suggest that the development of infant babbling is influenced by a complex interaction of endogenous and exogenous processes, which include the biological development of the vocal tract and language input from the ambient environment.

Dimensions of Segmental Variability: Interaction of Prosody and Surprisal in Six Languages

Contextual predictability variation affects phonological and phonetic structure. Reduction and expansion of acoustic-phonetic features is also characteristic of prosodic variability. In this study, we assess the impact of surprisal and prosodic structure on phonetic encoding, both independently of each other and in interaction. We model segmental duration, vowel space size and spectral characteristics of vowels and consonants as a function of surprisal as well as of syllable prominence, phrase boundary, and speech rate. Correlates of phonetic encoding density are extracted from a subset of the BonnTempo corpus for six languages: American English, Czech, Finnish, French, German, and Polish. Surprisal is estimated from segmental n-gram language models trained on large text corpora. Our findings are generally compatible with a weak version of Aylett and Turk's Smooth Signal Redundancy hypothesis, suggesting that prosodic structure mediates between the requirements of efficient communication and the speech signal. However, this mediation is not perfect, as we found evidence for additional, direct effects of changes in surprisal on the phonetic structure of utterances. These effects appear to be stable across different speech rates.

Differences in acoustic vowel space and the perception of speech tempo

Despite various studies describing longer segment durations and slower speaking rates in females than males, there appears to be a stereotype of women speaking faster than men. To investigate the mismatch between empirical evidence and this widespread stereotype, listening experiments were conducted to test whether a relationship between perceived tempo and acoustic vowel space size might exists. If a speaker traverses a larger acoustic vowel space than another speaker within the same time then this speaker might be perceived as speaking faster. To test this, two listening experiments with either exclusively female or male speakers but with varying vowel space sizes were conducted. Listeners were asked to rate the perceived speech tempo of same-sex speaker pairs. The stimuli were manipulated to have the same segment durations and f0 contour. Results indicate that a positive correlation between acoustic vowel space size and perceived speech tempo exists. Since females exhibit on average a larger acoustic vowel space than males, it is suggested that the stereotype of faster speaking women might arise from this.

Masculine Men Articulate Less Clearly

In previous research, acoustic characteristics of the male voice have been shown to signal various aspects of mate quality and threat potential. But the human voice is also a medium of linguistic communication. The present study explores whether physical and vocal indicators of male mate quality and threat potential are linked to effective communicative behaviors such as vowel differentiation and use of more salient phonetic variants of consonants. We show that physical and vocal indicators of male threat potential, height and formant position, are negatively linked to vowel space size, and that height and levels of circulating testosterone are negatively linked to the use of the aspirated variant of the alveolar stop consonant /t/. Thus, taller, more masculine men display less clarity in their speech and prefer phonetic variants that may be associated with masculine attributes such as toughness. These findings suggest that vocal signals of men's mate quality and/or dominance are not confined to the realm of voice acoustics but extend to other aspects of communicative behavior, even if this means a trade-off with speech patterns that are considered communicatively advantageous, such as clarity and indexical cues to higher social class.

Investigating the relationship between average speaker fundamental frequency and acoustic vowel space size

The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential relationship between speaking fundamental frequency and acoustic vowel space size, thus testing a possible perceptual source of sex-specific differences in acoustic vowel space size based on the greater inter-harmonic spacing and a poorer definition of the spectral envelope of higher pitched voices. Average fundamental frequencies and acoustic vowel spaces of 56 female German speakers are analyzed. Several parameters are used to quantify the size and shape of the vowel space defined by /iː ε aː [symbol: see text] uː/ such as the area of the polygon spanned by the five vowels, the absolute difference in F1 or F2 between /iː/ and /uː/ or /aː/, and the Euclidian distance between /iː/ and /aː/. In addition, the potential impact of nasality on the vowel space size is examined. Results reveal no significant correlation between fundamental frequency and vowel space size suggesting other factors must be responsible for the larger female acoustic vowel space.

Acoustic vowel space size and perceived speech tempo

Females speak faster than males. Although several studies have proved this stereotype to be wrong (Byrd 1994), it is still a widespread belief in many languages and within both genders. The interesting question is why. Two findings are particularly relevant regarding this stereotype: First, females reveal a greater acoustic vowel space than males (Hillenbrand et al. 1995). Second, a stimulus with a moving f0-contour is perceived as faster than the same stimulus with a monotonous contour (Lehiste 1976). From that, we might propose that if a dynamic f0 contour triggers the perception of a faster speaking rate, then a larger acoustic vowel space might have the same effect. The reason for female speakers being perceived as speaking at a faster tempo, then, is that they traverse on average a larger acoustic vowel space within the same time-frame than male speakers do. Furthermore, we could also expect a relationship between vowel space size and perceived speech tempo within the same gender. A perception test was conducted with temporally aligned stimuli from 56 female speakers who vary in their vowel space sizes. Results reveal a significant positive correlation between vowel space size and perceived tempo (r = .36, p < .001).

Developmental aspects of American English diphthong trajectories in the formant space

Formant trajectories of five American English diphthongs embedded in the target words BAIT (/EY/), BITE (/AY/), POUT (/AW/), BOAT (/OU/), BOYS (/OY/) are investigated in the first two formant space as a function of age and gender. Age range considered is from 5 to 18 years. In this report, the focus is given on the differences in position between the start/end points of diphthongs and nine monophthongs. Averaged formant data across subjects in each age group are examined for this purpose. Two findings are worth mentioning. First, across all age groups, the start and end positions of diphthongs hardly match with the monophthongs that are typically used to transcribe the diphthongs across all age groups [cf. Holbrook and Fairbanks (1962)]. For instance, the start position of /EY/ is closer to /I/ than to /e/, and the end points of /EY, AY, OY/ are significantly different with respect to each other. Second, in addition to the larger size of vowel space, an overshoot trend toward the nominal end points of diphthongs is the most prominent developmental trend. That is, formant values of diphthongs produced by younger age children are closer to the nominal monophthongs used to transcribe the diphthongs.

Effects of Speaker Gender on Vowel Space Size and Vowel Changes in Korean.

Effects of Speaker Gender on Vowel Space Size and Vowel Changes in Korean.

Phonological neighborhood density and vowel production in children and adults

Previous studies have shown that vowels in words with high phonological neighborhood densities (ND) are produced closer to the periphery of the vowel space than are vowels in low-ND words (Munson &amp; Solomon, 2004; Scarborough, 2010; Wright, 2003). Different explanations for this phenomenon have been proposed. One hypothesis is that they reflect a speaker's attempt to maintain acoustic distinctiveness among similar-sounding words. If this were true, then we might expect that the effect of ND on vowel production would be smaller in children than in adults, given that children have overall smaller-sized lexicons than adults. To evaluate this, we examined the effect of ND on vowel production in children and adults. The productions were taken from the paidologos corpus (Edwards &amp; Beckman, 2008). Preliminary analyses of the productions of 8 high-ND and 8 low-ND words by 10 2-year-olds, 10 5-year-olds and 20 adults have been completed. There are no effects of ND on vowel-space size or vowel duration for either group of children. There were strong, statistically significant effects found the group of adults. These were in the opposite than predicted direction: low-ND words were produced with more-expanded vowel spaces than high-ND words. Analysis of a larger group of participants is ongoing [support: NIDCD 02932.]

The Mid and Low Vowel Systems of Korean-English Bilingual Speakers

This study investigates the structure of the mid and low vowel systems of bilingual speakers of Korean and English, and considers how some current theories of phonetics learning would model their bilingual vowel system. Nine native speakers of Seoul Korean, nine native speakers of American English, and seven early bilingual speakers of Korean and English participated in this study. The native speakers of Korean also served as late of English. Five monophthong mid and low vowels of Korean and English were read in carrier phrases, and their F1 and F2 frequency values were measured. The early bilinguals exhibited native-like F1 and F2 values for most of the Korean and English vowel categories. Also, the Korean vowels [e] and [?], and English vowels [?] and [?] were realized as merged forms in their speech, just as in that of the native speakers of each language. On the other hand, the late did not achieve native-like values for most of the English vowel categories. The vowel space size of the late learners English was larger than that of the native speakers of English and similar to that of their Korean. These results demonstrate that the age of learning effect can be modeled in terms of the Speech Learning Model (e.g., Flege 1995) and Exemplar-based Model (e.g., Foulkes & Docherty 2006), both of which emphasize the role of linguistic experience in phonetics learning. Finally, there were no clear indications of a reorganization of the phonemes of the two languages within a unified bilingual phonetic system.

Acoustic characteristics of vowels and plosives/affricates of Mandarin-speaking hearing-impaired children

This article presents the results of an acoustic analysis of vowels and plosives/affricates produced by 45 Mandarin-speaking children with hearing impairment. Vowel production is represented and categorized into three groups by vowel space size calculated with normalized F1 and F2 values of corner vowels. The correlation between speech intelligibility and language abilities assessed by the level of word comprehension and the complexity of sentence structure is statistically significant. Vowel space grouping is correlated with speech intelligibility and spike percentage of plosives/affricates production. The generalized linear model analysis also shows that the level of word comprehension and the degree of hearing loss are the two most significant factors in predicting speech intelligibility. The statistical results suggest that the interplay of acoustic characteristic and speech ability is complex.

A comparison of algorithms to automatically extract vowel formants and nasal poles from tagged vowels in PRAAT.

The goal of the present research was to develop an easy-to-use PRAAT script yielding robust measurements of acoustic correlates of vowel quality and vowel nasality. Several algorithms were scripted in PRAAT and evaluated on two corpora. The first was the Hillenbrand corpus, containing /hVd/ words in isolation, spoken by 50 men, 50 women, 29 boys, and 21 girls, where vowels have been hand-tagged by experts. The best performing algorithm yielded extremely high correlations with the expert-measured F1 and F2 frequencies (r&amp;gt;0.95). The second corpus consisted of spontaneous speech by American English and Canadian French women, addressing either their infant or an adult, and where several types of vowels had been hand-tagged (including point vowels /i,a,u/, frequently used to assess vowel space size; and contrasts of vowel tenseness, likely involving F1 and F2 frequencies; and vowel nasality, correlated with F1 bandwidth, as well as its amplitude in relation to the nasal poles P0 and P1). Although, even the best algorithm yielded spurious F2 values for infant-directed /u/'s, measures were robust indicators of vowel quality and nasality in non-back vowels across the different speakers, languages, and registers. Thus, this script may be useful, particularly for non-specialists, since it only requires vowel-tagging.