Vowel Research Articles

СТАТУС СОЕДИНИТЕЛЬНЫХ ГЛАСНЫХ О/Е В СЛОВЕ

СТАТУС СОЕДИНИТЕЛЬНЫХ ГЛАСНЫХ О/Е В СЛОВЕ

INTERFERENSI FONOLOGI PADA PEMBELAJAR BIPA ASAL EROPA DI BALI

This study aimed to determine phonological interference that occurs on BIPA learners from Europe in Bali. Oraland written data are used in this research that were obtained from learners' speeches and writings when learning Indonesian in the class. This research was guided by interference theory according to Weinreich (1953). Oral data were collected using proficient inversion techniques (SLC), skillful in-flight listening techniques (SBLC), recording techniques, and note taking. Writing data were collected by the test method. The data analyzed and presented in formal and informal forms. The results of data analysis showed that phonological interference that occurred in BIPA learners from Europe in Bali, namely in the form of vocal noise interference (occurred in vowels [a], [u], and [ə]), consonant sound interference (occurred in consonants [h] , [r], [g], [ŋ], [t], [g], and [ɲ]), interference in the form of sound addition (occurred in the sounds [ŋ] and [ɲ]), and interference in the form of sound removal ( occurred in consonants [r], vowel series [e] and [a], and consonants [h]). This interference occurred because of differences in vowel and consonant sounds in Indonesian and English. In addition, this interference was also caused by the different pronunciation of a vowel sound or consonant sound in both languages.

Speaking and listening proficiency of AB English students: basis for instructional material development

This descriptive study sought to find the listening and speaking proficiency levels of the selected AB English students when their scores were taken as a whole and when categorized according to specific listening and speaking microskills. It also aimed to find out particular microskills the students needed to improve on. The research made use of listening and speaking tests patterned from Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). Results showed that when taken as a whole, the students had Advanced speaking skills. When categorized according to specific microskill, their proficiency level in recognizing and producing vowel and consonant sounds was High Advanced, and Low Advanced in controlled and free speaking tests. Improvements may focus on specific microskills: (1) recognizing and producing consonant sounds, (2) employing appropriate vocal variety in rate, pitch and intensity, (3) selecting appropriate organizational pattern according to the topic, context, and purpose, (4) formulating substantial thesis statements supported by well-thought details, and (5) delivering the message in a clear, fluent manner using appropriate nonverbal behavior. In their listening skills, students exhibited Advanced Level of Proficiency when their scores were taken as a whole. When categorized according to specific microskills, their proficiency levels are as follows: Literal level- High Advanced, Inferential level– Low Advanced, and Evaluative level–Low Advanced. These results imply that review, planning, implementation of classroom activities and seminars must be carefully re-examined to polish the students’ listening and speaking skills. A well-designed instructional material should be planned out for this purpose.

Pronunciation Errors and Repair Strategies made by Northern Upper Egypt EFL Learners: A Case Study of the Production of English Sound Segments by First Year English Department Students in Beni-Suef University

مستخلص علي الرغم من أن النطق هو أحد العوامل الرئيسة التي تساعد علي نجاح عملية التواصل، فإنه لم يتم البحث فيه علي نطاق واسع. لذا، فإن الهدف الأساسي لهذا البحث هو دراسة أخطاء النطق. بشکل أکثر دقة، تهدف الدراسة إلي التعرف علي أنواع الأخطاء في نطق أصوات اللغة الإنجليزية بواسطة طلاب شمال صعيد مصر. ترکز الدراسة أيضا علي دراسة استراتيجيات الإصلاح التي يستخدمها الدارسون لتجنب استخدام أصوات اللغة الثانية. تستخدم الدراسة طلاب قسم اللغة الانجليزية بکلية الآداب جامعة بني سويف کعينة بحث. يتم دراسة منطقة النطق فقط الخاصة ببعض الأصوات الساکنة والمتحرکة في اللغة الإنجليزية. لذا، فان الدراسة تتم علي مستوي المقطع فقط. يتم هذا من خلال تسجيل نطق الطلاب أثناء قراءة مقاطع بالإنجليزية متضمنة الأصوات المختبرة کافة. يتم بغد ذلک التعرف علي أخطاء النطق، تصنيفها، تحليلها علي المستوي الوصفي والإحصائي. لذلک تعرض نتائج الدراسة الأصوات التي يواجه الطلاب مشکلات في نطقها والتي بدورها تشکل عائقا في عملية التواصل. تقدم الدراسة في النهاية بعض المقترحات للتغلب علي عقبات نطق اللغة الإنجليزية لدي الطلاب المصريين. Abstract The objective of the present study is to investigate the errors made in the field of pronunciation. It explores Egyptian EFL learners’ production of 37 English monophthongs including 25 consonant sounds and 12 pure vowel sounds. So, it is related to the segmental level. English diphthongs and consonant clusters are excluded from the study. It also focuses on the repair strategies employed by students to avoid the use of the target language sounds. The participants are ten first year students in the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Beni-Suef University in the academic year 2016/2017. The method adopted in the research is reading aloud English extracts encompassing all the sounds under examination. For each of the 37 tested sounds, the frequency and percentage of correct production for each of the selected words representing the sound are calculated. In addition, the total frequency and percentage of correct pronunciation for each of the tested sounds are calculated. The findings of the study revealed that fourteen English sounds constitute a source of difficulty for learners including the nine consonants; /v/, /ʒ/, /dʒ/, /ŋ/, /tʃ/, /θ/, /p/, dark /l/ and /ð/, and the six vowel sounds /ʌ/, /ɔ:/, /ɜ:/, /ə/, /ʊ/ and /e/. The study tries to relate the outcome pronunciation errors to the learners’ mother tongue or to the effect of negative transfer. Index Terms: Pronunciation errors, Egyptian EFL learners, English consonants, English vowels, Repair strategies, Transfer

Current change in the loanword tonology of North Kyungsang Korean

Previous studies on the loanword tonology of North Kyungsang (NK) Korean have asserted that vowel length has a close relationship with tone...

Computational complexity and learnability of two vowel harmony patterns with neutral vowels

This paper investigates the relationship between the complexity of a phonological pattern and its learnability. The Complexity Hypothesis refers to...

Spelling Acquisition in Spanish: Using Error Analyses to Examine Individual Differences in Phonological and Orthographic Processing

ABSTRACT This study examined Spanish spelling errors among 166 native Spanish-speaking students from Kindergarten to Grade 3 based on a spelling-to-diction task. Fifteen types of spelling errors were analyzed in a latent class analysis. Results suggested three phases of spellers: Phase 1 students had a high chance of committing almost all types of errors. Phase 2 students had a lower chance of committing vowel-based phonological errors, but still had a high chance of committing consonant-based phonological errors. Phase 3 students had some difficulty differentiating distinct but similar consonant sounds for spelling (e.g., spelling reptile [reptile] as rebtil; Diente [tooth] as viente). Among the word-context factors, syllable complexity and orthography difficulty were the best predictors of phonological and orthographic errors in more proficient spellers, respectively. We suggest that awareness of Spanish vowel and consonant sounds may not grow in tandem, and future research should incorporate word-context features into spelling error analysis.

Changes of orofacial somatosensory attenuation during speech production

Modulation of auditory activity occurs before and during voluntary speech movement. However, it is unknown whether orofacial somatosensory input is modulated in the same manner. The current study examined whether or not the somatosensory event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to facial skin stretch are changed during speech and nonspeech production tasks. Specifically, we compared ERP changes to somatosensory stimulation for different orofacial postures and speech utterances. Participants produced three different vowel sounds (voicing) or non-speech oral tasks in which participants maintained a similar posture without voicing. ERP’s were recorded from 64 scalp sites in response to the somatosensory stimulation under six task conditions (three vowels × voicing/posture) and compared to a resting baseline condition. The first negative peak for the vowel /u/ was reliably reduced from the baseline in both the voicing and posturing tasks, but the other conditions did not differ. The second positive peak was reduced for all voicing tasks compared to the posturing tasks. The results suggest that the sensitivity of somatosensory ERP to facial skin deformation is modulated by the task and that somatosensory processing during speaking may be modulated differently relative to phonetic identity.

The Most Difficult Vowel Sound Pronunciation among Three Different Semester Students at UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya: An Acoustic Analysis

Speaking language involves different skills like grammar, instruction, vocabulary and pronunciation. in contrast, the researcher only focuses on the students ‘errors on six English vowel quality: /ɪ/, /æ/, /ʌ/, /ɔ:/, /ʊ/, /ɜ:/ made by three different semesters at English Literature, UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya based on the acoustic analysis. The purposes are to know the result of the formant frequencies, so it appears the percentage of the most difficult vowel. This research used descriptive qualitative method. The result of this research shows that the most difficult vowel or vowel error made by three different semesters are vowel /æ/, the total of incorrect vowel quality is 75. The average of the students made those errors was about 28.4%. Based on the data it conducted that the common source of student’s errors on vowels was because of voice happened, knowledge of pronunciation, phonetic symbols and habituation of speaking English.

Evaluation of mismatch negativity as a marker for language impairment in autism spectrum disorder

BackgroundThe identification of an early and objective marker of language impairment in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has the potential to lead to earlier language intervention for affected children. The mismatch negativity (MMN), a passive auditory evoked potential, offers insight into the brain’s ability to direct attention to novel sounds. Since exposure to speech is necessary for learning to map meaning onto phonemes, we predicted slower MMN responses to speech sounds would indicate presence of language impairment in ASD. MethodsWe explored the relationship between MMN latency in children ages 5–10 with ASD plus language impairment (ASD + LI), ASD minus language impairment (ASD–LI), and typically developing children (TD) during an auditory oddball experiment presenting speech and pure tone sounds. ResultsContrary to our prediction, children with ASD + LI demonstrated decreased MMN latency in the left hemisphere in response to novel vowel sounds compared to children with ASD–LI and TD controls. Parent responses to the Sensory Experiences Questionnaire revealed that all participating individuals with ASD were hypersensitive to sounds. ConclusionsOur results lend support to the theory that some children with ASD + LI have increased connectivity in primary sensory cortices at the expense of connectivity to association areas of the brain. This may account for faster speech sound processing despite low language scores in these children. Future studies should focus on individuals with language impairment and hyper-or hyposensitivity to sounds.

Un primer acercamiento a la caracterización acústica del habla de niños costarricenses

A medida que la interacción de las personas con las computadoras se hace más extendida, se vuelve más importante el desarrollo de tecnologías para el reconocimiento automático de la voz, la síntesis de voz, así como otras tecnologías relacionadas, considerando a personas de todas las edades, acentos y condiciones. Uno de los grupos humanos que representan desafíos más grandes es el de los niños, debido a las dificultades para grabar suficientes recursos de habla, y la falta de caracterización de su forma de hablar, la cual es particular de cada idioma y acento. Este artículo presenta una primera aproximación para el análisis acústico de niños costarricenses de entre seis y doce años. Estos análisis tienen como objetivo lograr una mejor comprensión de las características del habla producida por este grupo en particular, en términos de propiciar el desarrollo y mejora de los reconocedores automáticos del habla y los sistemas de identificación del hablante.
 Para este propósito realizamos grabaciones de habla de tres niños, las cuales consistieron en palabras aisladas, y comparamos los resultados con tres adultos en términos de los formantes de las vocales. Los formantes proporcionan información sobre el tracto vocal del hablante, y es un parámetro importante para establecer un primer análisis de estas señales. Los resultados muestran diferencias notables entre los niños y los adultos y pueden brindar información útil para futuros estudios en términos de adaptar y desarrollar las tecnologías del habla para esta población.

GRAPHIC AND SPELLING FEATURES OF THE GOSPEL OF 1821 IN THE HILL MARI LANGUAGE

The article deals with some graphic and spelling features of the translation of the gospel, published in 1821 in the Hill Mari language. In this regard, the specificity of fixation and other distinctive vowel and consonant sounds of the Hill Mari language is analyzed, orthographic features of the written monument are identified. Graphics of the considered work is mainly characterized by inconsistency in the use of alphabetic characters. A certain difficulty for interpreters was the transmission of specific hillmari sounds - for writing of the same vowel in the text, several letters are used, and in some words they are simply omitted. The uniform spelling of other sounds of hillmari is not observed. Spelling, on the contrary, in general, is different in sequential fixation of words and individual morphemes. The interpreters tried to follow the rules of Russian spelling of that time, as evidenced by the use of the letter ъ (ер) at the end or in the middle of a word, the letter ї before the subsequent consonant й, etc. However, the lack of uniform rules of mari spelling led to some spelling disagreement. There is inconsistency in the spelling of some words and phrases, the use of morphemes is not typical for the language in the monument of writing.

Optimisation of phonetic aware speech recognition through multi-objective evolutionary algorithms

Recent advances in the availability of computational resources allow for more sophisticated approaches to speech recognition than ever before. This study considers Artificial Neural Network and Hidden Markov Model methods of classification for Human Speech Recognition through Diphthong Vowel sounds in the English Phonetic Alphabet rather than the classical approach of the classification of whole words and phrases, with a specific focus on both single and multi-objective evolutionary optimisation of bioinspired classification methods. A set of audio clips are recorded by subjects from the United Kingdom and Mexico and the recordings are transformed into a static dataset of statistics by way of their Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) at sliding window length of 200ms as well as a reshaped MFCC timeseries format for forecast-based models. An deep neural network with evolutionary optimised topology achieves 90.77% phoneme classification accuracy in comparison to the best HMM that achieves 86.23% accuracy with 150 hidden units, when only accuracy is considered in a single-objective optimisation approach. The obtained solutions are far more complex than the HMM taking around 248 seconds to train on powerful hardware versus 160 for the HMM. A multi-objective approach is explored due to this. In the multi-objective approaches of scalarisation presented, within which real-time resource usage is also considered towards solution fitness, far more optimal solutions are produced which train far quicker than the forecast approach (69 seconds) with classification ability retained (86.73%). Weightings towards either maximising accuracy or reducing resource usage from 0.1 to 0.9 are suggested depending on the resources available, since many future IoT devices and autonomous robots may have limited access to cloud resources at a premium in comparison to the GPU used in this experiment.

Top-Down Inhibitory Mechanisms Underlying Auditory-Motor Integration for Voice Control: Evidence by TMS.

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has been implicated in auditory-motor integration for accurate control of vocal production, but its precise role in this feedback-based process remains largely unknown. To this end, the present event-related potential study applied a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) protocol, continuous theta-burst stimulation (c-TBS), to disrupt cortical activity in the left DLPFC as young adults vocalized vowel sounds while hearing their voice unexpectedly shifted upwards in pitch. The results showed that, as compared to the sham condition, c-TBS over left DLPFC led to significantly larger vocal compensations for pitch perturbations that were accompanied by significantly smaller cortical P2 responses. Source localization analyses revealed that this brain activity pattern was the result of reduced activation in the left superior frontal gyrus and right inferior parietal lobule (supramarginal gyrus). These findings demonstrate c-TBS-induced modulatory effects of DLPFC on the neurobehavioral processing of vocal pitch regulation, suggesting that disrupting prefrontal function may impair top-down inhibitory control mechanisms that prevent speech production from being excessively influenced by auditory feedback, resulting in enhanced vocal compensations for feedback perturbations. This is the first study that provides direct evidence for a causal role of the left DLPFC in auditory feedback control of vocal production.

Brownian dynamics for the vowel sounds of human language

The authors explore the long-standing question of how languages select their vowels. Viewing words as particles, with interactions derived from established models of vowel sound learning, the work explains the formation and dynamics of vowel systems using the mathematical tools of physics

A genetic model for acoustic and phonetic decoding of standard arabic vowels in continuous speech

This paper presents an Acoustic and Phonetic Decoding Model (APDM) for automatic recognition Standard Arab (S.A) plain (pure) and emphatic vowels sounds of continuous naturally spoken speech, using Genetic Algorithms (G.As). SA vowels were selected since they are the most difficult phonemes to recognize. We have used GAs because of their advantages in resolving complicated optimization problems and because the results are obtained more rapidly than in the classical methods. In addition, the computational cost is greatly reduced. Our Genetic APDM performs automatically and in parallel, the operation of concatenations of short-term parametric vectors during the speech continuum segmentation stage, and the classification of the acoustic segments of continuous and natural speech into different vowel classes. In order to perform our task, we have used both the Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coding (MFCC) and the Linear Prediction Coding (LPC) methods to extract vocal tract parametric coefficients from the speech signal successfully. Among a set of classifiers we have used the distance one. This paper explains how we have used the Manhattan distance as decision rule the GA evaluation to classify the discriminate parameters vectors. The analysed corpus contains hundreds of sentences composed of the all types of SA vowels in different contexts and recorded by several Algerian male and female speakers, in quite noisy environment. The Corpus phonemes were classified successfully with an overall average rate of 98.02%.

Sensorimotor adaptation across the speech production workspace in response to a palatal perturbation.

Talkers have been shown to adapt the production of multiple vowel sounds simultaneously in response to altered auditory feedback. The present study extends this work by exploring the adaptation of speech production to a physical alteration of the vocal tract involving a palatal prosthesis that impacts both somatosensory and auditory feedback during the production of a range of consonants and vowels. Acoustic and kinematic measures of the tongue were used to examine the impact of the physical perturbation across the various speech sounds, and to assess learned changes following 20 min of speech practice involving the production of complex, variable sentences. As in prior studies, acoustic analyses showed perturbation and adaptation effects primarily for sounds directly involving interaction with the palate. Analyses of tongue kinematics, however, revealed systematic, robust effects of the perturbation and subsequent motor learning across the full range of speech sounds. The results indicate that speakers are able to reconfigure oral motor patterns during the production of multiple speech sounds spanning the articulatory workspace following a physical alteration of the vocal tract.

Cross-Modal Correspondence Between Speech Sound and Visual Shape Influencing Perceptual Representation of Shape: the Role of Articulation and Pitch.

Cross-modal correspondence is the tendency to systematically map stimulus features across sensory modalities. The current study explored cross-modal correspondence between speech sound and shape (Experiment 1), and whether such association can influence shape representation (Experiment 2). For the purpose of closely examining the role of the two factors - articulation and pitch - combined in speech acoustics, we generated two sets of 25 vowel stimuli - pitch-varying and pitch-constant sets. Both sets were generated by manipulating articulation - frontness and height of the tongue body's positions - but differed in terms of whether pitch varied among the sounds within the same set. In Experiment 1, participants made a forced choice between a round and a spiky shape to indicate the shape better associated with each sound. Results showed that shape choice was modulated according to both articulation and pitch, and we therefore concluded that both factors play significant roles in sound-shape correspondence. In Experiment 2, participants reported their subjective experience of shape accompanied by vowel sounds by adjusting an ambiguous shape in the response display. We found that sound-shape correspondence exerts an effect on shape representation by modulating audiovisual interaction, but only in the case of pitch-varying sounds. Therefore, pitch information within vowel acoustics plays the leading role in sound-shape correspondence influencing shape representation. Taken together, our results suggest the importance of teasing apart the roles of articulation and pitch for understanding sound-shape correspondence.

MENNYIRE ÁTLÁTSZÓ AZ i?

A magyar magánhangzó-harmónia korábbi leírásai szerint az i mind a tőben, mind a toldalékolásban átlátszóan viselkedik. Cikkünkben egy olyan vizsgálatot mutatunk be, mely azt a hipotézisünket kívánja alátámasztani, hogy bizonyos esetekben a tőbeli i nem kötelezően, hanem fakultatívan átlátszó, illetve hogy az ilyen ingadozó tövek után álló toldalékbeli i tovább növelheti a palatális toldalékolás esélyét.

Modeling dynamic trajectories of front vowels in the American South

Regional variation in American English speech is often described in terms of shifts, indicating which vowel sounds are converging or diverging. In the U.S. South, the Southern vowel shift (SVS) and African American vowel shift (AAVS) affect not only vowels' relative positions but also their formant dynamics. Static characterizations of shifting, with a single pair of first and second formant values taken near vowels' midpoint, fail to capture this vowel-inherent spectral change, which can indicate dialect-specific diphthongization or monophthongization. Vowel-inherent spectral change is directly modeled to investigate how trajectories of front vowels /i eɪ ɪ ɛ/ differ across social groups in the 64-speaker Digital Archive of Southern Speech. Generalized additive mixed models are used to test the effects of two social factors, sex and ethnicity, on trajectory shape. All vowels studied show significant differences between men, women, African American and European American speakers. Results show strong overlap between the trajectories of /eɪ, ɛ/ particularly among European American women, consistent with the SVS, and greater vowel-inherent raising of /ɪ/ among African American speakers, indicating how that lax vowel is affected by the AAVS. Model predictions of duration additionally indicate that across groups, trajectories become more peripheral as vowel duration increases.