Journal articles on the topic 'Vowels'
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1
Stern, Nathaniel Ziv, and Jonathan North Washington. "A phonetic study of length and duration in Kyrgyz vowels." Proceedings of the Workshop on Turkic and Languages in Contact with Turkic 4, no. 1 (October 7, 2019): 119. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/ptu.v4i1.4577.
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This paper examines the phonetic correlates of the (phonological) vowel length contrast in Kyrgyz to address a range of questions about the nature of this contrast, and also explores factors that affect (phonetic) duration in short vowels. Measurement and analysis of the vowels confirms that there is indeed a significant duration distinction between the Kyrgyz vowel categories referred to as short and long vowels. Preliminary midpoint formant measurements show that there may be some accompanying spectral component to the length contrast for certain vowels, but findings are not conclusive. A comparison of F0 dynamics and spectral dynamics through long and short vowels does not yield evidence that some long vowels may in fact be two heterosyllabic short vowels. Analysis shows that duration is associated with a vowel’s presence in word-edge syllables in Kyrgyz, as anticipated based on descriptions of word-final stress and initial prominence. However, high vowels and non-high vowels are found to consistently exhibit opposite durational effects. Specifically, high vowels in word-edge syllables are longer than high vowels in medial syllables, while non-high vowels in word-edge syllables are shorter than non-high vowels in medial syllables. This suggests either a phenomenon of durational neutralisation at word edges or the exaggeration of durational differences word-medially, and is not taken as a case of word-edge strengthening. Proposals for how to select from between these hypotheses in future work are discussed.
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Sarmış, Elif Esra, and Stefano Canalis. "High vowel weakening in Turkish." Proceedings of the Workshop on Turkic and Languages in Contact with Turkic 6, no. 1 (December 19, 2021): 5060. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/ptu.v6i1.5060.
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High vowel weakening is a common phenomenon that usually depends on purely phonetic factors. This study aims to present the findings of an experiment we have conducted on a total of 14 native speakers to see if Turkish has high vowel weakening and if yes, to figure out whether it is phonological or phonetic. Our data show a large amount of variation and little correlation between a vowel’s F1 and its duration within the high ([+high], /i, u, y, ɯ/) and non-high ([-high], /a, e, o, ø/) categories in all environments (stressed and unstressed, in open and closed syllables, in all consonantal environments). On the other hand, comparing the duration of [+high] and [-high] vowels reveals that non-high vowels are rarely as short as, or shorter than, high vowels. However, this shortening process is not a purely phonetic phenomenon. What matters for this process to apply is the phonological category of the vowel. All [+high] vowels are shortened, largely irrespective of variation in their F1; conversely, [-high] vowels are not shortened, largely irrespective of variation in their F1.
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Syarfina, Tengku Syarfina, T. Thrhaya Zein, and Muhammad Yusuf. "The Exploration of Deli Malay Language Vowels: An Acoustic Phonetic Analysis." JURNAL ARBITRER 11, no. 1 (April 1, 2024): 39–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.25077/ar.11.1.39-48.2024.
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This study aims to discuss the acoustic profile of Deli Malay Language (Bahasa Melayu Deli) vowels from phonetics. In collecting data, the research will involve 15 DML native speakers. The speakers involved were between 20-40 years old. The data was obtained by recording the speaker’s voice in a quiet room with a consistent microphone distance of about 30 centimeters from the lips. Teak speakers will read syllable words containing target vowels in sentences with DML vowels. The pronunciation target vowel is placed on the first syllable. This study found that Deli Malay has seven vowels, namely vowels /i/, /e/, /ə/, /a/, /o/, /u/ and /ↄ/. DML vowel positions /i/ and /e/are high and medium front vowels. While the vowels /o/, /u/ and /ↄ/ are high and medium back vowels. Meanwhile, the vowels /a/ and / ə / are mid and low mid vowels. Later, this acoustic study calculated approximate vowel measurements based on F1 and F2 from the spectrogram at Praat. The measurement of the sound quality of forman vowels in Malay deli vowels is vowel /a/ F1 = 876 Hz and F2 = 1701 Hz vowel /i/ F1 = 533 Hz and F2 = 2328 Hz, vowel /e/ F1 = 689 Hz and F2 = 2204 Hz, vowels / ə/ F1= 692 Hz and F2= 1686 Hz, vowels /o/ F1= 650 Hz and F2= 1459 Hz, /ↄ/ F1= 658 Hz and F2= 1373 Hz, and /u/ F1= 524 Hz and F2 = 1383 Hz. This study provides a detailed analysis of the acoustic properties of Deli Malay vowels, contributing to a deeper understanding of the phonetic characteristics of the language. This can be valuable for linguists and researchers studying Malay languages and their phonetic systems.
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Yang, Jing, and Robert A. Fox. "Acoustic development of vowel production in native Mandarin-speaking children." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 49, no. 1 (July 12, 2017): 33–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100317000196.
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The present study aims to document the developmental profile of static and dynamic acoustic features of vowel productions in monolingual Mandarin-speaking children aged between three and six years in comparison to adults. Twenty-nine monolingual Mandarin children and 12 native Mandarin adults were recorded producing ten Mandarin disyllabic words containing five monophthongal vowel phonemes /a i u yɤ/. F1 and F2 values were measured at five equidistant temporal locations (the 20–35–50–65–80% points of the vowel's duration) and normalized. Scatter plots showed clear separations between vowel categories although the size of individual vowel categories exhibited a decreasing trend as the age increased. This indicates that speakers as young as three years old could separate these five Mandarin vowels in the acoustic space but they were still refining the acoustic properties of their vowel production as they matured. Although the tested vowels were monophthongs, they were still characterized by distinctive formant movement patterns. Mandarin children generally demonstrated formant movement patterns comparable to those of adult speakers. However, children still showed positional variation and differed from adults in the magnitudes of spectral change for certain vowels. This indicates that vowel development is a long-term process which extends beyond three years of age.
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Nadeu, Marianna. "Phonetic and phonological vowel reduction in Central Catalan." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 46, no. 1 (December 7, 2015): 33–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s002510031500016x.
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In Central Catalan, phonological vowel reduction causes the stressed seven-vowel system to reduce in number in unstressed position, where only the three reduced vowels [iəu] can occur. Exceptionally, full vowels (typically expected in a stressed syllable only) can appear in unstressed syllables in certain contexts. This study explores the acoustic characteristics of phonologically unreduced vowels found exceptionally in unstressed position in Central Catalan and compares them to stressed full vowels and corresponding unstressed (phonologically reduced) vowels. Results show that, contrary to traditional descriptions, presumably phonologically unreduced vowels in verb + noun compounds sporadically undergo phonological vowel reduction. When they do not, they are shorter than stressed vowels and more centralized in the F1*F2 vowel space. In addition, stressed full vowels do not differ in accented vs. unaccented contexts in duration or vowel quality, indicating that vowels are hyperarticulated under lexical stress, but not when they receive intonational pitch accent. The findings contribute to a body of cross-linguistic research dealing with the influence of prosody at the segmental level.
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Garellek, Marc, and James White. "Phonetics of Tongan stress." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45, no. 1 (March 30, 2015): 13–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100314000206.
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In this study, we determine the acoustic correlates of primary and secondary stress in Tongan. Vowels with primary stress show differences in f0, intensity, duration, F1, and spectral measures compared to unstressed vowels, but a linear discriminant analysis suggests f0 and duration are the best cues for discriminating vowels with primary stress from unstressed vowels. Vowels with secondary stress are mainly marked by differences in f0 relative to unstressed vowels. With regard to the effects of stress on the vowel space, we find that all five Tongan vowels are higher in the vowel space (have lower F1) when unstressed. Moreover, there is no reduction in the overall size of the vowel space. We interpret this pattern as evidence that unstressed vowels in Tongan are not prone to centralization, vowel reduction, or undershoot. The results, however, are consistent with a sonority expansion account (Beckman, Edwards & Fletcher 1992), whereby stressed vowels are lowered to enhance sonority.
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Reilly, Kevin J., and Chelsea Pettibone. "Vowel generalization and its relation to adaptation during perturbations of auditory feedback." Journal of Neurophysiology 118, no. 5 (November 1, 2017): 2925–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1152/jn.00702.2016.
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Repeated perturbations of auditory feedback during vowel production elicit changes not only in the production of the perturbed vowel (adaptation) but also in the production of nearby vowels that were not perturbed (generalization). The finding that adaptation generalizes to other, nonperturbed vowels suggests that sensorimotor representations for vowels are not independent; instead, the goals for producing any one vowel may depend in part on the goals for other vowels. The present study investigated the dependence or independence of vowel representations by evaluating adaptation and generalization in two groups of speakers exposed to auditory perturbations of their first formant (F1) during different vowels. The speakers in both groups who adapted to the perturbation exhibited generalization in two nonperturbed vowels that were produced under masking noise. Correlation testing was performed to evaluate the relations between adaptation and generalization as well as between the generalization in the two nonperturbed vowels. These tests identified significant coupling between the F1 changes of adjacent vowels but not nonadjacent vowels. The pattern of correlation findings indicates that generalization was due in part to feedforward representations that are partly shared across adjacent vowels, possibly to maintain their acoustic contrast. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Speech adaptations to alterations, or perturbations, of auditory feedback have provided important insights into sensorimotor representations underlying speech. One finding from these studies that is yet to be accounted for is vowel generalization, which describes the effects of repeated perturbations to one vowel on the production of other vowels that were not perturbed. The present study used correlation testing to quantify the effects of changes in a perturbed vowel on neighboring (i.e., similar) nonperturbed vowels. The results identified significant correlations between the changes of adjacent, but not nonadjacent, vowel pairs. This finding suggests that generalization is partly a response to adaptation and not solely due to the auditory perturbation.
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Azura Fazira, Dinda Gustiana, and Yani Lubis. "English vowels." Jurnal Pendidikan dan Sastra Inggris 3, no. 2 (June 23, 2023): 111–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.55606/jupensi.v3i2.2007.
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Vowels in English are pronounced with the mouth open, they can be sung. Also, vowels in English can be long vowels and short short vowels. The number of short vowels is seven long: five diphthongs and eight diphthongs. Diphthongs: Combinations of two vowels in a syllable. In English it is very important to respect the abbreviations and the length of the vowels, as the length of a sound can depend on the meaning of the word. For example: boat - sheep The first word of the sound i is short, and in the second vowel combination it is a sound that I owe only i. Translation of the first word - ship and the second - sheep. English short vowel – truncated stressed vowel. Vowel length in English or monophthong. They recite a fixed articulation. The first diphthong resonates, creating a surprising syllable. And the second - just a quick point. English has short and long vowels. There are 6 short vowels, some say 7, including the sound schwa [ə], as in "go, still, cinema, etc.". The six short vowels are [ʌ], [æ], [e], [ɪ ] , [ɒ] and [ʊ] with examples /cup/, /black/, /yes/, /sit/, /rock/ and /pull/ each has 5, namely H. [u:], [i: ] , [ɑ:], [ɔ:] and [ɜ:] with examples of each word: /food/, /look/, /dark/,/call/ and /wallet.
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Ritchart, Amanda, and Sharon Rose. "Moro vowel harmony: implications for transparency and representations." Phonology 34, no. 1 (May 2017): 163–200. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0952675717000069.
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This paper describes and analyses the vowel-harmony system of the Kordofanian language Moro. Moro has a cross-height dominant-recessive raising harmony system in which high vowels and a central mid vowel trigger harmony, while peripheral mid vowels and a central low vowel are harmony targets. Schwas can co-occur with any of the vowels, appearing inert to harmony. Yet when schwas occur alone in a morpheme, some trigger harmony and some do not. We suggest that an original ATR-harmony system shifted to a height system via merger and centralisation, producing two distinct central vowels, rather than a single schwa. One vowel patterns with the higher vowels in triggering harmony, and the other patterns with the lower vowels. We also propose that a particle-based representation offers the best characterisation of the groupings of target and trigger vowels in the language.
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Yoon, Tae-Jin, and Seunghee Ha. "Adults’ Perception of Children’s Vowel Production." Children 9, no. 11 (November 3, 2022): 1690. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children9111690.
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The study examined the link between Korean-speaking children’s vowel production and its perception by inexperienced adults and also observed whether ongoing vowel changes in mid-back vowels affect adults’ perceptions when the vowels are produced by children. This study analyzed vowels in monosyllabic words produced by 20 children, ranging from 2 to 6 years old, with a focus on gender distinction, and used them as perceptual stimuli for word perception by 20 inexperienced adult listeners. Acoustic analyses indicated that F0 was not a reliable cue for distinguishing gender, but the first two formants served as reliable cues for gender distinction. The results confirmed that the spacing of the two low formants is linguistically and para-linguistically important in identifying vowel types and gender. However, a pair of non-low back vowels caused difficulties in correct vowel identification. Proximal distance between the vowels could be interpreted to result in the highest mismatch between children’s production and adults’ perception of the two non-low back vowels in the Korean language. We attribute the source of the highest mismatch of the two non-low back vowels to the ongoing sound change observed in high and mid-back vowels in adult speech. The ongoing vowel change is also observed in the children’s vowel space, which may well be shaped after the caregivers whose non-low back vowels are close to each other.
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Ramli, Izzad, Nursuriati Jamil, and Norizah Ardi. "Formant characteristics of Malay vowels." International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education (IJERE) 9, no. 1 (March 1, 2020): 144. http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v9i1.20421.
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The purpose of this study was to investigate and examined the eight vowels formant characteristic of Malay language. Previous research of Malay language only investigated six basic vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /ə/. The vowels /ɔ/, /ε/ that usually exist in a dialect were not included in the previous investigations. In this study, the vowels sound were collected from five men and four women producing the vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /ə/, /ɔ/, /ε/ from different regions and dialects in Malaysia. Formant contours, F1 until F4 of the vowels were measured using interactive editing tool called Praat. Analysis of the formant data showed numerous differences between vowels in terms of average frequencies of F1 and F2, and the degree of overlap among adjacent vowels. When compared with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), most pronunciation of the Malay vowels were at the same position but the vowel /ε/ seen more likely to become a front vowel instead of a central vowel. Consequently, vowel features of the two Malay allophones /ɔ/ and /ε/ were documented and added to the IPA vowel chart. The findings form the fundamental basis for further research of speech synthesis, speech rehabilitation and speech reproduction of the Malay language.
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Hu, Wei, Sha Tao, Mingshuang Li, and Chang Liu. "Distinctiveness and Assimilation in Vowel Perception in a Second Language." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 62, no. 12 (December 18, 2019): 4534–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2019_jslhr-h-19-0074.
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Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate how the distinctive establishment of 2nd language (L2) vowel categories (e.g., how distinctively an L2 vowel is established from nearby L2 vowels and from the native language counterpart in the 1st formant [F1] × 2nd formant [F2] vowel space) affected L2 vowel perception. Method Identification of 12 natural English monophthongs, and categorization and rating of synthetic English vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ in the F1 × F2 space were measured for Chinese-native (CN) and English-native (EN) listeners. CN listeners were also examined with categorization and rating of Chinese vowels in the F1 × F2 space. Results As expected, EN listeners significantly outperformed CN listeners in English vowel identification. Whereas EN listeners showed distinctive establishment of 2 English vowels, CN listeners had multiple patterns of L2 vowel establishment: both, 1, or neither established. Moreover, CN listeners' English vowel perception was significantly related to the perceptual distance between the English vowel and its Chinese counterpart, and the perceptual distance between the adjacent English vowels. Conclusions L2 vowel perception relied on listeners' capacity to distinctively establish L2 vowel categories that were distant from the nearby L2 vowels.
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Hantgan, Abie, and Stuart Davis. "Bondu-so vowel harmony: A descriptive analysis with theoretical implications." Studies in African Linguistics 41, no. 2 (June 15, 2012): 2–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v41i2.107276.
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This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the [ATR] vowel harmony system of Bondu-so (Dogon, Mali), a previously undocumented language. Data come from fieldwork and have not yet been published. While Bondu-so has seven surface vowels, namely, two [+ATR, +high] vowels ([i], [u]), a [–ATR +low] vowel [a] and a [±ATR] contrast in the mid vowels with front [e]/[ɛ] and back [o]/[ɔ], there is evidence for a more abstract vowel system phonologically consisting of ten vowels with [±ATR] contrasts with all vowel heights. Further, the language shows a three-way contrast with respect to the feature [ATR] on suffixal vowels: some suffixal vowels act as [+ATR] dominant, spreading their [+ATR] feature onto the root; other suffixes act as [–ATR] dominant, spreading [–ATR] onto the root, and still other suffixes have vowels unspecified for [ATR] receiving their [±ATR] feature by rightward spreading of the [±ATR] value of the root vowel. We offer an autosegmental analysis and then discuss the theoretical implications of such an analysis. These implications include the ternary use of [ATR], the issue of phonological versus morphological harmony, the relationship between vowel inventories and [ATR] harmony systems, and the question of abstractness in phonology.
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Yusuf, Yunisrina Qismullah, Muhammad Alfata, Tgk Maya Silviyanti, Denni Iskandar, and Ika Apriani Fata. "Acoustic measurements of the Indonesian oral monophthongs produced by Acehnese speakers." Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics 10, no. 2 (June 28, 2024): 3–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.18413/2313-8912-2024-10-2-0-1.
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This study explores the characteristics of Indonesian oral monophthong vowels produced by male and female language consultants in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, as their first language. Using purposive sampling, ten Acehnese males and ten Acehnese females were selected to articulate eight target vowels: /i/, /e/, /ɛ/, /ә/, /a/, /u/, /o/, and /ɔ/. Vowel measurements were obtained through recorded word elicitation, using a word list containing the target vowels. F1 and F2 frequencies in Hertz were determined and analyzed using Praat software to assess vowel qualities and subsequently converted to the Bark scale. Vowels were plotted on the F1/F2 formant space. The findings illustrate the distinct measurements of each Indonesian monophthong vowel by male and female consultants, represented in the vowel space. Male vowels generally exhibit higher and more centralized positioning, while female vowels appear more dispersed and lower. This research contributes valuable insights for comparing vowel systems across various languages and dialects spoken in multilingual Indonesia.
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Oakley, Madeleine. "Dynamic targets in second language vowel articulations." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 151, no. 4 (April 2022): A65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0010675.
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This study examines L1 English-L2 French vowel productions, with the goal of exploring whether representing vowel targets as dynamic rather than “steady-state” better predict L2 production patterns. It is hypothesized that learners will transfer L1 vowel dynamic information to produce L2 vowels if the two are perceived as “similar,” but it is unclear whether learners will transfer dynamic vowel information to “new” L2. As such, six L1 English-L2 French learners completed production tasks in English and French with the target vowels /i, u, e, o/ and /y, ø/ in real words. Participants were recorded using a stabilization headset attached to an ultrasound probe and microphone. F1 and F2 measurements and tongue contours were extracted at three timepoints throughout the vowel duration. Results shows that while learners produce L2 French vowels /i, e, u, o/ with a similar amount of formant and gestural movement to L1 vowels, they do not transfer midpoint F1-F2 values. Learners do produce new L2 vowels /y, ø/ with similar formant and gestural movements to English vowels. The results of this study indicate that learners transfer dynamic acoustic information and articulatory gestures from their L1 to produce L2 vowels, which has implications for the representation of vowels.
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Paillereau, Nikola Maurova. "“Identical” vowels in L1 and L2? Criteria and implications for L2 phonetics teaching and learning." EUROSLA Yearbook 16 (August 10, 2016): 144–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.16.06pai.
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Researchers in the field of the teaching and learning of phonetics agree that learners of a foreign/second language (L2) acquire identical vowels by positive transfer from their first language (L1). This statement prompted us to examine whether the French and Czech languages, differing in the size of their vowel inventories, possess any identical vowels that could thus be omitted from French as a Foreign Language (FFL) phonetic curricula intended for Czech learners. The quantification of the vowels’ phonetic similarity is based on the comparison of their (1) phonetic symbols, (2) formant values (F-patterns), and (3) perceptual characteristics. The combined results show that strictly identical vowels between the two languages do not exist, but some French vowels can be defined as highly similar to some Czech vowels. Different coarticulatory effects of vowels produced in isolation and in labial, dental and palato-velar symmetrical environments point to a very strong influence of phonetic contexts on vowel similarity. Indeed, no French vowel is highly similar to any Czech vowel in all of the contexts studied. The findings suggest that phonetic exercises designed for Czech learners should focus on allophonic variations of all French vowels.
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Teeranon, Phanintra. "Initial Consanant Voicing Perturbation of the Fundamental Frequency of Oral Vowels and Nasal Vowels: A Controversial Case from Ban Doi Pwo Karen." MANUSYA 15, no. 2 (2012): 39–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/26659077-01502003.
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This paper aims to analyze the acoustic characteristics of initial consonant voicing perturbation of the fundamental frequency of oral vowels and nasal vowels of Ban Doi Pwo Karen. Three age groups of informants were selected: over-sixty years old (>60), middle aged (35-45), and under-twenty years old (<20). The acoustic analysis method was employed to analyze the mean vowel duration (msec), mean vowel amplitude (dB), and mean vowel fundamental frequency (Hz). The results show that voiceless initial consonants tend to cause a lower fundamental frequency than that of the voiced initial consonants. This has excited controversy concerning the tonogenesis theory of initial voicing perturbation on vowels. However, it was later found that the vowels followed by voiceless initial consonants were breathy and it was the voice register of vowels that caused the low fundamental frequency values. In contrast to other studies, the nasal vowels were not always higher in fundamental frequency when compared to oral vowels. In all age groups, nasal vowels following either voiceless or voiced consonants were found to be higher in fundamental frequency than oral vowels, except in the younger age group where the fundamental frequency of nasal vowels following voiced consonants was lower than that of the oral vowels following voiced consonants.
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Alammar, Ammar. "Instrumental Analysis of English Vowels Produced by Male and Female Zilfaawi Arabic Speakers." World Journal of English Language 13, no. 7 (July 25, 2023): 206. http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v13n7p206.
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Arab and non-Arab English as a foreign language (EFL) students continue to have difficulty pronouncing English vowels accurately. To examine this, our study analyzes how male and female Saudi EFL students pronounce English monophthongs when compared to native speakers assessed in previous research. Gender-related variations between male and female Arab English speakers are also explored. Formant frequencies (F1 and F2) are employed to evaluate vowel quality, with vowel duration measured to investigate vowel length. Learners’ pronunciations of English words containing vowels of interest are used to collect data. Five male and five female EFL learners produced English monophthongs in the /hVd/ context. We then compare the results with previous data on native English speakers and conduct acoustic analysis. Regarding duration, male non-native English speakers’ data are compared with previous results for male native speakers, revealing that the vowels of Saudi learners are shorter than those of native English speakers, and those of non-native men are longer than those of non-native women. Moreover, the low vowels produced by Saudi and native men are longer than their non-low vowels. Regarding vowel quality, men produce lower vowels than native speakers. Women, however, produce lower and more front vowels than native women. Statistically, this study reveals significant differences between male and female Saudi EFL learners in producing English vowels. Saudi men’s vowel space is more centralized than Saudi women’s space. Both men and women overlap low vowels. Saudi learners’ mispronunciations of English vowels indicate that L1 interference is not the only cause of mispronunciations.
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Heeringa, Wilbert, and Hans Van de Velde. "Visible Vowels as a Tool for the Study of Language Transfer." Languages 9, no. 2 (January 23, 2024): 35. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/languages9020035.
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In this paper, we demonstrate the use of Visible Vowels to detect formant and durational differences between L2 and L1 speakers. We used a dataset that contains vowel measures from L1 speakers of French and from L2 learners of French, with Italian, Spanish and English as L1. We found that vowels that are not part of the L1 phonological system are often pronounced differently by L2 speakers. Inspired by the Native Language Magnet Theory which was introduced by Patricia Kuhl in 2000, we introduced magnet plots that relate vowels shared by the French phonological system and the learners’ phonological system—the magnet vowels—to the vowels found only in the French phonological system. At a glance, it can be seen which vowels are attracted to the magnets and which vowels become further away from the magnets. When comparing vowel spaces, we found that the shape of the French vowel space of the English learners differed most from the shape of L1 speakers’ vowel space. Finally, it was found that the vowel durations of the L2 speakers are greater than that of the L1 speakers of French, especially those of the English learners of French.
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Lee, Jimin, Heejin Kim, and Yong Jung. "Patterns of Misidentified Vowels in Individuals With Dysarthria Secondary to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 63, no. 8 (August 10, 2020): 2649–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2020_jslhr-19-00237.
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Purpose The current study examines the pattern of misidentified vowels produced by individuals with dysarthria secondary to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Method Twenty-three individuals with ALS and 22 typical individuals produced 10 monophthongs in an /h/-vowel-/d/ context. One hundred thirty-five listeners completed a forced-choice vowel identification test. Misidentified vowels were examined in terms of the target vowel categories (front–back; low–mid–high) and the direction of misidentification (the directional pattern when the target vowel was misidentified, e.g., misidentification “to a lower vowel”). In addition, acoustic predictors of vowel misidentifications were tested based on log first formant (F1), log second formant, log F1 vowel inherent spectral change, log second formant vowel inherent spectral change, and vowel duration. Results First, high and mid vowels were more frequently misidentified than low vowels for all speaker groups. Second, front and back vowels were misidentified at a similar rate for both the Mild and Severe groups, whereas back vowels were more frequently misidentified than front vowels in typical individuals. Regarding the direction of vowel misidentification, vowel errors were mostly made within the same backness (front–back) category for all groups. In addition, more errors were found toward a lower vowel category than toward a higher vowel category in the Severe group, but not in the Mild group. Overall, log F1 difference was identified as a consistent acoustic predictor of the main vowel misidentification pattern. Conclusion Frequent misidentifications in the vowel height dimension and the acoustic predictor, F1, suggest that limited tongue height control is the major articulatory dysfunction in individuals with ALS. Clinical implications regarding this finding are discussed.
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Andersen, Torben. "[ATR] reversal in Jumjum." Diachronica 23, no. 1 (June 29, 2006): 3–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/dia.23.1.03and.
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Jumjum, a Western Nilotic language, has an eight-vowel system divided into two sets by the feature [ATR] (Advanced Tongue Root), which is the basis of vowel harmony. A comparison with other Western Nilotic languages shows that (i) this vowel system goes back to a ten-vowel system in Proto-Western Nilotic (PWN), (ii) PWN high [−ATR] vowels have become high [+ATR] vowels in Jumjum, and (iii) conversely, PWN high [+ATR] vowels have become high [−ATR] vowels in Jumjum. The sequence of changes that resulted in this [ATR] reversal in Jumjum relative to PWN provides a historical explanation of synchronically odd, grammatically conditioned vowel-quality alternations in this language.
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Yu Chan, May Pik, and Youngah Do. "Vowel Modification (Aggiustamento) in Soprano Voices." Music & Science 4 (January 2021): 205920432110551. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/20592043211055168.
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Singers convey meaning via both text and music. As sopranos balance tone quality and diction, vowel intelligibility is often compromised at high pitches. This study examines how sopranos modify their vowels against an increasing fundamental, and in turn how such vowel modification affects vowel intelligibility. We examine the vowel modification process of three non-central vowels in Cantonese ([a], [ɛ] and [ɔ]) using the spectral centroid. Acoustic results suggest that overall vowel modification is conditioned by vowel height in mid-ranges and by vowel frontness in higher ranges. In a following perception task, listeners identified and discriminated vowels at pitches spanning an octave from A4 (nominally 440 Hz) to G♯5 (nominally 831 Hz). Results showed that perceptual accuracy rates of the three vowels’ match their acoustic patterns. The overall results suggest that vowels are not modified in a unified way in sopranos’ voices, implying that research on sopranos’ singing strategies should consider vocalic differences.
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Lekli, Lenida. "A Comparative Analysis of the Albanian and British English Vowel System." European Journal of Language and Literature 5, no. 2 (May 31, 2019): 53. http://dx.doi.org/10.26417/ejls-2019.v5i2-201.
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Analyzing the complexity of the articulatory process of the vowels in Albanian and English language is of crucial importance in distinguishing their unique phonetic and phonological properties. The standard Albanian vocalic system includes seven vowels, unlike the standard British English vowel system which consists of five vowels. Drawing points of similarity and differentiation between the vowel systems of the two languages requires detailed analysis regarding the degree of opening and the position of the tongue in the vowel tract. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to highlight differences and similarities of the vowel system (monophthongs) between standard Albanian language and British English. The seven Albanian vowels considerably differ from their five English counterparts, not only by their degree of opening but even by their placement concerning the horizontal movement of the tongue, which can be observed by examining the two vowel charts of both languages. The Albanian vowel system is displayed through a triangle, meanwhile the English vowel system is a schematic arrangement of vowels into a quadrilateral.Thus analyzing their properties by using a comparative approach regarding vowels articulation in both languages would help in generating a clear picture of their common and distinguishing characteristics.
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KEHOE, MARGARET M., and CONXITA LLEÓ. "The acquisition of nuclei: a longitudinal analysis of phonological vowel length in three German-speaking children." Journal of Child Language 30, no. 3 (August 2003): 527–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s030500090300566x.
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Studies of vowel length acquisition indicate an initial stage in which phonological vowel length is random followed by a stage in which either long vowels (without codas) or short vowels and codas are produced. To determine whether this sequence of acquisition applies to a group of German-speaking children (three children aged 1;3–2;6), monosyllabic and disyllabic words were transcribed and acoustically analysed. The results did not support a stage in which vowel length was totally random. At the first time period (onset of word production to 1;7), one child's monosyllabic productions were governed by a bipositional constraint such that either long vowels, or short vowels and codas were produced. At the second (1;10 to 2;0) and third time periods (2;3 to 2;6), all three children produced target long vowels significantly longer than target short vowels. Transcription results indicated that children experienced more difficulty producing target long than short vowels. In the discussion, the findings are interpreted in terms of the representation of vowel length in children's grammars.
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Andersen, Torben. "Vowel harmony and vowel alternation in Mayak." Studies in African Linguistics 28, no. 1 (June 1, 1999): 1–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v28i1.107377.
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Like several other Western Nilotic languages, the Mayak variety of Northern Burun has two sets of vowels distinguished by the feature [ATR], the [-ATR] vowels [I, E, a, i, u] and the [+ATR] vowels [i, e, A, 0, u]. However, the mid [+ATR] vowels [e] and [o] are variants of the mid [-ATR] vowels /e/ and /i/ conditioned by a following high I+ATR] vowel. This allophony is the effect of one of four general vowel harmony processes. In addition, [-ATR) root vowels exhibit grammatically conditioned alternation which affects either [ATR] or height. The mixed character of this alternation invites the hypothesis that original mid [+ATR] vowels have merged with the high [-ATR] vowels, and this hypothesis is confirmed by a comparison of Mayak with other Western Nilotic languages.
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Koshkareva, Natalya B., Timofey V. Timkin, and Polina I. Li. "Alternation of upper and non-upper vowels in personal-possessive noun affixes in the Surgut dialect of the Khanty language." Philology 18, no. 9 (2020): 78–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.25205/1818-7919-2019-18-9-78-101.
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Personal-possessive 1st and 2nd person singular noun affixes in the Surgut dialect of the Khanty language, as well as 1st person plural noun affixes (irregular in various dialects) with singular objects are represented by several allomorphs: 1SG.SG ‒ =əм / =эм / =ам; 2SG.SG ‒ =əн / =э (=эн) / =а; 1PL.SG ‒ (?)=əв / =эв / =ив / =ув / =ав. When the personal-possessive affixes are attached, vowel alternation occurs in several roots. The choice of specific allomorphs and the presence or absence of alternation depends on the root vowels. In roots with short vowels, there is no alternation, and affixes with lower vowels are used: =ам (1SG.SG) and =а (1SG.SG). When the personal-possessive affixes are attached to roots with long vowels, lower vowels are replaced by corresponding upper vowels. After roots with long upper vowels, =эм (1SG.SG) and =э (2SG.SG) affix variants are used, and no alternation occurs, because vowels can no longer be ‘moved’ upwards. After stems with long non-upper vowels, the =əм (1SG.SG) and =əн (2SG.SG) affixes are used, and alternation takes place in the root. This is not true for some specific cases: in roots with long middle vowels, these processes may occur according to the upper vowel model, or the lower vowel model; for example, the lexeme вӧӈ ‘son-in-law’, which contains a short vowel, can be followed by affixes with the vowel э, typical for roots with long upper vowels. Our research is based on field materials collected in the Surgut District, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, or Yugra, in 2017‒2019. The audio records were segmented and annotated in the Praat software. Acoustic analysis and further statistical analysis of our data was performed on the basis of Emu-SDMS corpus system and R language.
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Scarborough, Rebecca, Georgia Zellou, Armik Mirzayan, and David S. Rood. "Phonetic and phonological patterns of nasality in Lakota vowels." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45, no. 3 (December 2015): 289–309. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100315000171.
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Lakota (Siouan) has both contrastive and coarticulatory vowel nasality, and both nasal and oral vowels can occur before or after a nasal consonant. This study examines the timing and degree patterns of acoustic vowel nasality across contrastive and coarticulatory contexts in Lakota, based on data from six Lakota native speakers. There is clear evidence of both anticipatory and carryover nasal coarticulation across oral and nasal vowels, with a greater degree of carryover than anticipatory nasalization. Nasality in carryover contexts is nonetheless restricted: the oral–nasal contrast is neutralized for high back vowels in this context and realized for three of the six speakers in low vowels. In the absence of nasal consonant context, contrastive vowel nasalization is generally greatest late in the vowel. Low nasal vowels in carryover contexts parallel this pattern (despite the location of the nasal consonantbeforethe vowel), and low nasal vowels in anticipatory contexts are most nasal at the start of the vowel. We relate the synchronic patterns of coarticulation in Lakota to both its system of contrast and diachronic processes in the evolution of nasality in Lakota. These data reflect that coarticulatory patterns, as well as contrastive patterns, are grammatical and controlled by speakers.
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Sarvasy, Hannah, Weicong Li, Jaydene Elvin, and Paola Escudero. "Brazilian Portuguese vowel discrimination by Nungon and Tashelhit speakers." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 154, no. 4_supplement (October 1, 2023): A39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0022728.
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The vowel system of speakers’ native languages are known to affect perception of vowels in foreign languages (Elvin et al., 2021). In a field-based behavioral experiment, we tested the perception of Brazilian Portuguese vowels (seven-vowel system) by speakers of the Papuan language Nungon (six-vowel system) and the Berber language Tashelhit (three-vowel system). 60 native speakers of Nungon and 38 native speakers of Tashelhit participated. The acoustics of Nungon vowels were previously analyzed using a 30-point analysis technique (Sarvasy et al., 2020). For the present study, we also analyzed Tashelhit vowels using the same technique. We then used discriminant analysis to analyze the relationship between speakers’ performance on the Brazilian Portuguese vowel discrimination task and the acoustics of vowels in their native languages. We present preliminary results of these analyses, and address their possible contributions to four areas: (a) description of the acoustics of under-described languages, (b) the relationship between native vowel systems and perception of foreign vowels, (c) methods for undertaking rigorous acoustic and experimental research in noisy, field environments, and (d) theoretical frameworks for phonetic learning such as the L2LP model (Escudero, 2005; van Leussen and Escudero, 2015).
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Yani Lubis, Ade Suriyani Nasution, and Liyundzira Fikroh Gani. "A Comprehensive Literature Review on English Vowels." Jurnal Pendidikan dan Sastra Inggris 3, no. 2 (June 15, 2023): 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.55606/jupensi.v3i2.1915.
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This literature review provides a comprehensive examination of English vowels, their definition, pedagogical approaches for teaching them, and the benefits of learning them. The analysis explores that there are front vowel, central vowel, and back vowel. This research identifies the effectiveness of explicit instruction, auditory training, and visual aids in improving learners' pronunciation and perception of English vowels. Understanding and mastering English vowels contribute to enhanced pronunciation, listening skills, speaking fluency, reading ability, and overall language acquisition. Furthermore, learning English vowels promotes cultural integration and facilitates cross-cultural communication. The findings from this review offer valuable insights for language educators in designing effective instructional strategies for teaching English vowels and empowering learners to excel in English-speaking environments.
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Sabev, Mitko, and Bistra Andreeva. "The acoustics of Contemporary Standard Bulgarian vowels: A corpus study." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 155, no. 3 (March 1, 2024): 2128–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0025293.
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A comprehensive examination of the acoustics of Contemporary Standard Bulgarian vowels is lacking to date, and this article aims to fill that gap. Six acoustic variables—the first three formant frequencies, duration, mean f0, and mean intensity—of 11 615 vowel tokens from 140 speakers were analysed using linear mixed models, multivariate analysis of variance, and linear discriminant analysis. The vowel system, which comprises six phonemes in stressed position, [ε a ɔ i ɤ u], was examined from four angles. First, vowels in pretonic syllables were compared to other unstressed vowels, and no spectral or durational differences were found, contrary to an oft-repeated claim that pretonic vowels reduce less. Second, comparisons of stressed and unstressed vowels revealed significant differences in all six variables for the non-high vowels [ε a ɔ]. No spectral or durational differences were found in [i ɤ u], which disproves another received view that high vowels are lowered when unstressed. Third, non-high vowels were compared with their high counterparts; the height contrast was completely neutralized in unstressed [a-ɤ] and [ɔ-u] while [ε-i] remained distinct. Last, the acoustic correlates of vowel contrasts were examined, and it was demonstrated that only F1, F2 frequencies and duration were systematically employed in differentiating vowel phonemes.
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Fejes, László. "Erzya stem-internal vowel-consonant harmony: A new approach." Acta Linguistica Academica 68, no. 1-2 (July 24, 2021): 158–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/2062.2021.00466.
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AbstractAlthough Erzya harmony is discussed as a kind of vowel harmony traditionally, suffix alternations show that there is a close interaction between consonants and vowels, therefore we should speak about a consonant-vowel harmony. This paper demonstrates that the palatalizedness of the consonants and the frontness of the vowels are also strongly connected inside stems: first syllable front vowels are quite rare after word-initial non-palatalized dentals but are dominant after palatalized ones; first syllable back vowels are dominantly followed by non-palatalized dentals, while the latter are very rare after front vowels.
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Al-Jarf, Reima. "Absence of Vowels in the English Spelling of Arabic Personal Names on Social Media." International Journal of English Language Studies 5, no. 4 (October 27, 2023): 88–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.32996/ijels.2023.5.4.7.
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Many users of social media from different countries and speaking different languages that use non-Latin orthography such as Arabic choose to transliterate their first name and surname in Romanized script, vis English. Due to the differences between the user’s native language and English in vowels and consonants and how they are pronounced, some people make vowel and consonant errors in the English spelling of their names due to the user’s proficiency level in English and their awareness level of the grapheme-phoneme correspondences in their native as well as English language. This study aims to investigate vowel omissions in the English spelling of Arabic personal names, what kind of vowels are omitted, location of the missing vowels, why educated Arabs omit vowels in the English spelling of their names, whether vowel omissions are attributed to transfer from the native language (Arabic) or lack of competence in English spelling. Analysis of a sample of Arabic personal names with missing vowels in their English spelling showed that in the vast majority of misspelled names, one short vowel is missing. In most cases, the missing short vowel is fatha /a/ in the first syllable of the name. It seems that educated Arabs transfer the Arabic vowel system to English. The Arabic orthographic system has 3 long vowels represented by written letters ا و ي /a:, i:, u:/ and 3 short vowels that are represented by diacritics which are pronounced but not shown in the written form of Arabic words. In addition, omission of short vowels in the English spelling of Arabic names may be attributed to how the name is pronounced in the dialect of the Arabic speaker, not how it is pronounced in Standard Arabic, especially when the vowel is in the initial syllable of some surnames. Vowel deletion may also be due to insufficient proficiency in English and lack of contrastive knowledge of the Arabic and English vowel and spelling systems. Examples of transliterated personal names with missing vowels, explanations, causes, and recommendations for more accurate spelling in English are given.
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Morozova, Olga N., Svetlana V. Androsova, and Semyon V. Kolesnikov. "VOWELS DURATION IN THE EVENKI LANGUAGE." Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, no. 1 (2019): 88–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.22250/24107190_2019_5_1_88_100.
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The present article focuses upon phonological length realization patterns of Selemdzha Evenki vowels. The material of 90 words pronounced in isolation was obtained from 4 subjects, native fluent speakers of Evenki (1 male and 3 females, aged 54-70). They were asked to read each word 3 times to imitate 3 positions in the utterance: initial, medial, and final. As a result of the acoustic analysis, it was found that phonologically long vowels possessed more than 2 times longer duration than that of short vowels. In the group of long vowels, the direct correlation was noted between vowel openness degree and their duration: the more closed the vowel was, the larger duration it had. In the group of short vowels, no dependence of that sort was found: the longest vowels turned out to be the ones of the main triangle /i-a-u/. Vowels /ɜ:-ɜ/ were characterized by the smallest duration in both groups. Comparison of vowel duration in different positions of the Evenki word suggests that, on average, the longest vowel is the one in the final syllable (before a pause), regardless of the number of syllables in the word.
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Iwasaki, Rion, Kevin D. Roon, Jason A. Shaw, Mark Tiede, and D. H. Whalen. "Retention of devoiced vowels in Tokyo Japanese: Evidence from lip articulation." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 152, no. 4 (October 2022): A287. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0016299.
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In Tokyo Japanese, high vowels /i/ and /u/ are frequently devoiced when they are surrounded by voiceless obstruents. Controversy remains over whether vowel gestures in devoiced vowels are retained or instead deleted. Both static (Iwasaki et al., 2020) and dynamic (Iwasaki et al., 2022) ultrasound data have indicated that vowel-specific lingual gestures can persist even when vowels are devoiced. This study focuses on the lip articulation of devoiced vowels by examining lateral lip aperture, where lower values index a greater degree of the rounding of vowels. Native speakers of Tokyo Japanese produced nonce word pairs with the form of /C1VC2V2toko/. V1 was either /i/ or /u/. C1 and C2 were either voiced or voiceless, which determined the voicing of V1. Lateral lip aperture during the first mora was calculated by identifying facial landmarks using OpenFace 2.0 (Baltrusaitis et al., 2018), and compared across vowel quality (/i/ vs./u/) and vowel voicing (devoiced vs. voiced). Preliminary results show that lateral lip aperture is larger for /i/ than for /u/ in both devoiced and voiced environments, indicating that these vowels maintain their labial specifications even when devoiced, providing additional evidence that devoiced vowels can retain their articulatory gestures.
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McMicken, Betty, Shelley Von Berg, and Khalil Iskarous. "Acoustic and Perceptual Description of Vowels in a Speaker With Congenital Aglossia." Communication Disorders Quarterly 34, no. 1 (March 19, 2012): 38–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1525740111435114.
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The goals of this study were to (a) compare the vowel space produced by a person with congenital aglossia (PWCA) with a typical vowel space; (b) investigate listeners’ intelligibility for single vowels produced by the PWCA, with and without visual information; and (c) determine whether there is a correlation between scores of speech intelligibility of PWCA speech and the acoustic properties of those speech samples. The main objective of this study was to determine whether a PWCA was able to compensate for the lack of tongue and whether listeners were able to compensate perceptually for the possible atypical acoustics of the PWCA. Cineradiography for this article was limited to observation of gross function of the tongue base and mylohyoid. An audiovisual recording of the PWCA speaker’s output was obtained for a series of isolated vowels, diphthongized vowels, and vowels in monosyllables. Production of vowels was analyzed acoustically and perceptually. Vowels were presented to listeners under two conditions: audiovisual and audio only. Paired differences sample tests revealed no statistical differences in intelligibility for the audio versus audiovisual conditions. Mean intelligibility for vowels was 78.5% overall. Intelligibility was a function of vowel position, with the front vowels revealing the least intelligibility and the back vowels revealing the greatest intelligibility. Quantitative analysis of F1–F2 formant data revealed that the speaker’s front vowels showed greater distances from the back vowels when compared with the F1–F2 means of normative data.
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Kuo, Jennifer, and Noah Elkins. "Phonetic realization of vowel length and glottalization in Todos Santos Mam." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 151, no. 4 (April 2022): A188. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0011056.
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Mam (Guatemala: Mayan) is described as having a vowel length contrast, as well as a laryngeal contrast between glottalized and modal vowels [England 32–36 (1983)]. Glottalized vowels are described as having a falling pitch contour and being longer relative to their modal counterparts ( ibid.). However, there are no phonetic studies explicitly confirming this. In particular, the Todos Santos dialect has received almost no phonetic investigation, and the presence and realization of the length and laryngeal contrasts is not well-established. This study is one of the first phonetic studies of vowel length and glottalization in Todos Santos Mam. The authors collected data of one native speaker reading a list of words varying in vowel quality. We find evidence for both a length contrast and laryngeal contrast. For the length contrast, short vowels are significantly shorter in duration and lowered relative to long vowels. For the laryngeal contrast, glottalized vowels are found to have a falling pitch contour, while modal vowels have level/rising pitch. In addition, a lengthening effect was found such that short glottalized vowels are longer than their modal counterparts, but it is unclear whether the same effect is present for long glottalized vowels.
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Rong, Panying. "The Effect of Tongue–Jaw Coupling on Phonetic Distinctiveness of Vowels in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 62, no. 9 (September 20, 2019): 3248–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2019_jslhr-s-19-0058.
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Purpose The aim of this study was to determine the relation of tongue–jaw coupling to phonetic distinctiveness of vowels in persons at different stages (i.e., early, middle, late) of bulbar motor involvement in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and healthy controls. Method The pattern of spatial tongue–jaw coupling was derived from 11 individuals with ALS and 11 healthy controls using the parallel factor analysis. Two articulatory components, which correspond to tongue displacement independent of the jaw (iTongue) and jaw contribution to tongue displacement (cJaw), were extracted from the composite tongue–jaw displacement. These articulatory components were correlated with F1 (i.e., height) and F2–F1 (i.e., advancement) of 4 vowels (/i/, /u/, /æ/, and /ɔ/) across all participants in each group. In addition, a comprehensive index of functional tongue–jaw coupling was derived as the ratio of cJaw/(iTongue + cJaw), and an acoustic index of vowel distortion (VowelDis) was derived to quantify the overall disease-related changes in phonetic distinctiveness of vowels. Based on these indices, disease-related changes in tongue–jaw coupling and phonetic distinctiveness of vowels were examined in individuals at the early, middle, and late stages of the disease. Results For healthy controls, both iTongue and cJaw contributed to F2–F1, while only cJaw contributed to F1. For individuals with ALS, both iTongue and cJaw contributed to F1, whereas only cJaw contributed to F2–F1. Disease-related changes in tongue–jaw coupling included (a) an overall decrease of the percent contribution of the tongue to the composite tongue–jaw displacement accompanied by an increase of percent contribution of the jaw and (b) several changes in the direction of tongue and jaw displacements occurred at different stages of the disease. These disease-related changes in tongue–jaw coupling had various impacts on phonetic distinctiveness of vowels, resulting in (a) a backward shift of front vowels and reduced front–back vowel contrasts, which occurred early and throughout the disease stages; (b) raising of all vowels during the middle stage of the disease; and (c) reduced high–low vowel contrasts during the late stage of the disease. Overall, phonetic distinctiveness of vowels deteriorated progressively throughout the disease course. Conclusions Different from healthy controls who established optimal functional coupling between the tongue and the jaw during vowel productions, individuals at the early-to-middle stages of bulbar ALS showed various adaptive changes in tongue–jaw coupling in response to the disease-related biomechanical and muscular changes in the articulators (particularly in the tongue). These adaptive changes in tongue–jaw coupling were found to be partially effective in mitigating the negative effect of articulatory involvement on phonetic distinctiveness of vowels. As the disease progressed to the late stage, such adaptations appeared to be no longer evident, resulting in a substantial overall reduction of vowel contrasts.
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Hamid, Twana Saadi, and Shabang Sardar Salih. "The Perception of English Vowels by Kurdish EFL Learners." Journal of University of Human Development 8, no. 3 (August 11, 2022): 131–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.21928/juhd.v8n3y2022.pp131-139.
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This paper investigates English vowel perception in a formal classroom setting by Central Kurdish (CK) learners of English (i.e. EFL learners at university level in The Kurdistan Region of Iraq). Ten English vowels were used as stimuli: five monophthongs with similar qualities but different quantities. The participants included 30 first year English majors. They were tested while performing a discrimination task. The task to discriminate 50 pairs of RP English vowel contrasts was an AX style task. The RP vowels differed from the CK vowels in both quality and quantity. As stated by the Perceptual Assimilation Model L2, the results demonstrated a variety of assimilation types (PAM-L2). It was more difficult to distinguish between two sets of similar vowels. Furthermore, closer vowel contrasts in the vowel space were more difficult to distinguish. To the best of our knowledge, no previous research has looked into Kurdish EFL students' perceptions of English vowels. The perception of English vowels by these Kurdish English learners mostly agreed with PAM's predictions, and the results of the discrimination task ranged from excellent to poor.
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Akinlabi, Akinbiyi. "Neutral vowels in Lokaa harmony." Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 54, no. 2 (July 2009): 197–228. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008413100001237.
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AbstractThis paper discusses the four neutral vowels in Lokaa harmony, [i, u, ə, a]. Crosslinguistically, neutral segments are either transparent or opaque. Lokaa harmony is important in three crucial respects. First, languages with both transparent and opaque vowels are not common; Lokaa has both. Secondly, though Lokaa has an eight-vowel inventory the vowels [a] and [ə] have not “re-paired”. Thirdly, the historic ATR contrast found in Benue-Congo high vowels shows up when high vowel stems take mid-vowel prefixes, though the high vowels can only be [+ATR] on the surface; the ATR merger of high vowels in Lokaa is not complete. I show that the analytic framework of “headed span” theory accounts for a system with both transparent and opaque vowels. More importantly, I propose that within the headed span approach to harmony, both co-occurrence constraints and ASSOCIATEHEAD are crucial. Co-occurrence constraints control the language inventory, and the different rankings of the ASSOCIATEHEAD constraints indicate whether or not a feature will form part of an harmonic span.
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Irawan, Yusup. "AN ACOUSTICAL CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF SUNDANESE CENTRAL VOWELS." Sirok Bastra 1, no. 2 (April 20, 2018): 161–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.37671/sb.v1i2.19.
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The first, this research is intended to identify acoustic profiles of the two central vowels in Sundanese, viz /ə/ and /ö/. The second, this research is intended to searches the acoustic contrasts between the two vowels. Experimental method was applied in this research. The result shows that vowel /ə/ has higher first fromant (F1) than vowel /ö/ both at opened syllable and at closed syllable. However, for the other acoustic properties—the second formant (F2), fundamental frequency (Fo), duration (ms), and intensity (dB)—vowel /ö/ has higher acoustic values than vowel /ə/. In correlation with the second research objective, viz to search acoustic properties which contrast the two central vowels, it’s found that all acoustic properties (F1, F2, Fo, duration and intensity) contrast the two Sundanese central vowels. All statistical tests which were applied show the results that there are significant differences of the acoustic properties between both central vowels.
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Almoabdi, Rahaf Bandar. "Vowel Blindness and Gender: The Case of ESL Learners at the University of Jeddah." English Language and Literature Studies 13, no. 3 (August 28, 2023): 59. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ells.v13n3p59.
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Because vocabulary knowledge is considered the building block of language learning, any difficulties concerned with vocabulary can harm the overall vocabulary acquisition process. Literature suggests that native Arabic speakers struggle to notice vowels while reading English texts. This can result from the differences between L1 and L2 linguistic systems or the negative transfer of L1 processing routines to the L2 in their attempt to process the L2 forms. This study investigates this problem and whether gender affects this phenomenon or not. It used a test on Twenty-eight participants to examine the effect of gender on vowel blindness, which type of vowels (short or long vowels) are more problematic, and the kinds of vowel spelling errors that are easily noticed when processing vowels. The results showed that gender does not affect vowel blindness in a significant way. In other words, the overall results showed that the role of gender cannot be considered to have a significant effect. Thus, male and female students both struggled to deal with short vowels equally. However, males also showed difficulties regarding the long vowels. The research also revealed that missing vowel spelling errors are salient and more likely to be noticed while processing vowels for both genders.
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Kautzsch, Alexander. "Exploring L1 Transfer in German Learners of English: High Front Vowels, High Back Vowels and the BED/BAD Distinction." Research in Language 8 (October 19, 2010): 63–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/v10015-010-0003-8.
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Since the vowel systems of German and English are similar to some extent, German learners of English can be expected to transfer a considerable part of their German vowels to their L2 English. This paper traces the extent and source of positive and negative L1 transfer in two groups of university students from different German L1 backgrounds. To this end, acoustical analyses of three areas of vowel space are provided: high front vowels, high back vowels and mid/low front vowels. While positive transfer widely persists with high front vowels, learners refrain from consistently transferring high back vowels, probably owing to variability both in L1 German and in L2 English. In the case of mid/low front vowels negative transfer is reduced due to exposure to native English, and even more so due to formal instruction, which appears to accelerate the acquisition process
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Prica, Biljana, and Sinisa Ilic. "Recognition of vowels in continuous speech by using formants." Facta universitatis - series: Electronics and Energetics 23, no. 3 (2010): 379–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/fuee1003379p.
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Speech consists of acoustic pressure waves created by the voluntary movements of anatomical structures in the human speech production system. These waveforms are broadly classified into voiced and unvoiced speech. Voiced sounds (vowels for example), produce quasi-periodic pulses of air which are acoustically filtered as they propagate through the vocal tract. The main distinction between vowels and consonants is that vowels resonate in the throat. Formants are exactly the resonant frequencies of a vocal tract when pronouncing a vowel. In this paper we attempt to carry out Vowel Recognition through Formant Analysis in Serbian language, wherein we detect which of the five Serbian vowels is spoken by the Speaker. Here we describe a standard approach for classification of vowels in continuous speech based on three formants: F1, F2 and F3. We have investigated the correlations between formants in each vowel and developed the algorithm to reduce the overlap of different vowels in F1-F2 and F2-F3 planes.
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Zajdó, Kristina. "Vowel Acquisition in Hungarian: A First Look at Developmental Data." Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 28, no. 1 (August 14, 2002): 363. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/bls.v28i1.3851.
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Vowel acquisition in children is a poorly researched area of speech development. Studies of phonological acquisition and theories of phonological development assumed that vowels develop early. Until recently, vowels were no more than the "poor relations of consonants" (Ball and Gibbon 2002:xi). Phonological assessments of children with typical and atypical speech development routinely ignored to mention the status of vowel production. However, recent investigations have revealed that the path from the emergence of quasi-vowels in babbling to more adult-like vowel production capabilities of older children requires an awareness of the underlying vowel system of the target language as well as articulatory learning. While the age at which vowels are fully acquired is unknown, data suggest that the major steps of vowel development occur during the first six years of life.
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Sandoval, Steven, Rene L. Utianski, and Heike Lehnert-LeHouillier. "Average Formant Trajectories." Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups 4, no. 4 (August 15, 2019): 719–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2019_pers-sig19-2019-0002.
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Purpose The use and study of formant frequencies for the description of vowels is commonplace in acoustic phonetics and in attempts to understand results of speech perception studies. Numerous studies have shown that listeners are better able to distinguish vowels when the acoustic parameters are based on spectral information extracted at multiple time points during the duration of the vowel, rather than at a single point in time. The purpose of this study was to validate an automated method for extracting formant trajectories, using information across the time course of production, and subsequently characterize the formant trajectories of vowels using a large, diverse corpus of speech samples. Method Using software tools, we automatically extract the 1st 2 formant frequencies (F1/F2) at 10 equally spaced points over a vowel's duration. Then, we compute the average trajectory for each vowel token. The 1,600 vowel observations in the Hillenbrand database and the more than 50,000 vowel observations in the TIMIT database are analyzed. Results First, we validate the automated method by comparing against the manually obtained values in the Hillenbrand database. Analyses reveal a strong correlation between the automated and manual formant estimates. Then, we use the automated method on the 630 speakers in the TIMIT database to compute average formant trajectories. We noted that phonemes that have close F1 and F2 values at the temporal midpoint often exhibit formant trajectories progressing in different directions, hence highlighting the importance of formant trajectory progression. Conclusions The results of this study support the importance of formant trajectories over single-point measurements for the successful discrimination of vowels. Furthermore, this study provides a baseline for the formant trajectories for men and women across a broad range of dialects of Standard American English.
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Holliday, Nicole, and Sean Martin. "Vowel categories and allophonic lowering among Bolivian Quechua–Spanish bilinguals." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 48, no. 2 (November 23, 2017): 199–222. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100317000512.
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This paper is an acoustic study describing the vowel spaces of bilingual Quechua–Spanish speakers in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with a particular focus on the height of mid and high vowels, in order to explore longstanding questions about the nature of Quechua vowel categories. South Bolivian Quechua is generally described as phonemically trivocalic with high-vowel lowering in presence of uvular consonants, but there has been little acoustic study of vowel formant characteristics (Cerrón-Palomino 1987, Laime Ajacopa, Cazazola & Pairumani 2007). The current study quantifies previous impressionistic observations of the vowel system and describes the acoustic properties of the Quechua vowels. Eleven bilingual speakers of South Bolivian Quechua and Spanish were recorded in a Quechua translation task and a Spanish list-reading task. Results of Bayesian models indicate that Quechua high vowels do appear to undergo systematic lowering following uvular consonants, supporting earlier descriptions. The results also demonstrate that lowering is consistent throughout the duration of the vowels, challenging a purely coarticulatory motivation for the observed lowering pattern. The allophonic mid-vowels of Quechua and the phonemic high and mid vowels of Spanish also have formant characteristics that may differ from one another, providing evidence for the hypothesis that these bilingual speakers could potentially command two separate vowel systems with different bases of articulation. These findings are also relevant for questions related to the nature of three-vowel systems, and whether or not they may contain true mid-vowel allophones.
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Abolhasanizadeh, Vahide, and Anis Masoumi. "Vowel reduction of tense and lax vowels in Kermani accent." New Trends and Issues Proceedings on Humanities and Social Sciences 2, no. 9 (April 6, 2017): 18–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.18844/gjhss.v2i9.1081.
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Mooshammer, Christine, and Christian Geng. "Acoustic and articulatory manifestations of vowel reduction in German." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 38, no. 2 (July 22, 2008): 117–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100308003435.
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Recent phonological approaches incorporate phonetic principles in the motivation of phonological regularities, e.g. vowel reduction and neutralization in unstressed position by target undershoot. So far, evidence for this hypothesis is based on impressionistic and acoustic data but not on articulatory data. The major goal of this study is to compare formant spaces and lingual positions during the production of German vowels for combined effects of stress, accent and corrective contrast. In order to identify strategies for vowel reduction independent of speaker-specific vocal-tract anatomies and individual biomechanical properties, an approach similar to the Generalized Procrustes Analysis was applied to formant spaces and lingual vowel target positions. The data basis consists of the German stressed and unstressed full vowels /iù ɪ yù ʏ eù ɛ ɛùφùœaù a où ɔ uù ʊ/ from seven speakers recorded by means of electromagnetic midsagittal articulography (EMMA). Speaker normalized articulatory and formant spaces gave evidence for a greater degree of coarticulation with the consonant context for unstressed vowels as compared to stressed vowels. However, only for tense vowels could spatial reduction patterns be attributed to vowel shortening, whereas lax vowels were reduced without shortening. The results are discussed in the light of current theories of vowel reduction, i.e. target undershoot, Adaptive Dispersion Theory and Prominence Alignment.
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Al Abdely, Ammar A., and Mariam J. Ali. "Acoustic Analysis of Iraqi Arabic Simple Vowels." Dirasat: Human and Social Sciences 50, no. 5 (September 30, 2023): 421–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.35516/hum.v50i5.545.
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Objectives: The study aimed at mapping IBA simple vowels as they are produced by Iraqi speakers. The study also aimed to identify the effect of gender on the pronunciation of Iraqi Arabic simple vowels. The study attempted to compare between the vowel chart proposed in this study and other Iraqi and Arabic vowel charts proposed in the literature. Methods: A quantitative method was adopted in this study. Thus, 10 Iraqis were asked to read stimuli, and their voices were recorded using high quality smart phones. The recordings were analyzed via PRAAT, and the frequencies obtained were descriptively and statistically processed. Results: The chart showed a clear tense-lax dichotomy where each short vowel has a long counterpart except for /ee/. Moreover, the results showed significant differences in vowel formants based on gender variable. Female speakers tend to produce vowels at higher levels, while males tend to produce vowels in more front positions. The results also revealed differences between Iraqi variant in one hand, and Maslawi and other Arabic varieties on the other hand. Conclusions: Iraqi speakers showed a good ability to map vowels in distinct places. Biological differences in male and female vocal apparatuses are behind differences in the pronunciation of vowels. It is recommended that the vowel chart offered here can be used as a reference for teachers of English pronunciation at various levels as it indicates to difficulties Iraqi EFL leaners encounter in the pronunciation of English vowels that are mostly resulting from L1 transfer.
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Kent, Ray D., and Carrie Rountrey. "What Acoustic Studies Tell Us About Vowels in Developing and Disordered Speech." American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 29, no. 3 (August 4, 2020): 1749–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2020_ajslp-19-00178.
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Purpose Literature was reviewed on the development of vowels in children's speech and on vowel disorders in children and adults, with an emphasis on studies using acoustic methods. Method Searches were conducted with PubMed/MEDLINE, Google Scholar, CINAHL, HighWire Press, and legacy sources in retrieved articles. The primary search items included, but were not limited to, vowels, vowel development, vowel disorders, vowel formants, vowel therapy, vowel inherent spectral change, speech rhythm, and prosody. Results/Discussion The main conclusions reached in this review are that vowels are (a) important to speech intelligibility; (b) intrinsically dynamic; (c) refined in both perceptual and productive aspects beyond the age typically given for their phonetic mastery; (d) produced to compensate for articulatory and auditory perturbations; (e) influenced by language and dialect even in early childhood; (f) affected by a variety of speech, language, and hearing disorders in children and adults; (g) inadequately assessed by standardized articulation tests; and (h) characterized by at least three factors—articulatory configuration, extrinsic and intrinsic regulation of duration, and role in speech rhythm and prosody. Also discussed are stages in typical vowel ontogeny, acoustic characterization of rhotic vowels, a sensory-motor perspective on vowel production, and implications for clinical assessment of vowels.