Perceptual cues to vowel quantity: Evidence from Swedish and Japanese (original) (raw)

Duration and F0 as perceptual cues to Japanese vowel quantity

Vowel duration and local fundamental frequency changes are investigated as acoustical cues to vowel quantity identification by Japanese listeners. To examine the role of these factors, a perception experiment was carried out. The results indicate that, even though vowel duration serves as a dominant perceptual cue, when vowel quantity cannot be adequately cued by vowel duration alone, the F0 information within the vowel can be used to identify vowel quantity in Japanese.

Perceived vowel quantity in Swedish: Effects of postvocalic voicing

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1998

This study examines the perceptual weight of vowel duration and FI-F2 frequencies when distinguishing phonologically long and short Swedish vowels before a voiceless consonant and before a voiced consonant. Results sugggest that vowel quantity is primarily cued by vowel duration, but when the duration of a vowel is already relatively long, due to factors such as inherent vowel duration or postvocalic voicing, vowel quantity is less Iikely to be cued by vowel duration alone.

DURATION AFFECTS VOWEL PERCEPTION IN ESTONIAN AND FINNISH

Identification of vowels in quantity languages is usually considered to be independent of vowel duration since duration is used to realise the quantity oppositions and thus supposed to not be available as a cue for other features. To test the role of microdurational variations in vowel category perception in Estonian and Finnish listening experiments with synthetic stimuli were carried out, involving five vowel pairs along the close-open axis. The results show that in the case of high-mid vowel pairs vowel openness correlates positively with stimulus duration; in mid-low vowel pairs such correlation was only found for some of the Finnish subjects. We explain the observed difference between high-mid and mid-low pairs with the hypothesis that in case of shorter perceptual distances in vowel quality (high-mid area of vowel space) intrinsic duration plays the role of a secondary feature to enhance perceptual contrast between vowels, whereas in case of mid-low oppositions the perceptual distance is large enough to guarantee the necessary perceptual contrast by spectral features alone and vowel intrinsic duration as an additional cue is not needed.

Transference or Desensitization? – A study of vowel spectra and duration

Some differences in speech perception by native and nonnative listeners can be accounted for as transference from a native language. Other differences appear to result from universal preferences. argues, more specifically, that non-native perceivers will prefer using some acoustic cues (e.g., duration), independent of whether they are used in the perceiver´s native language. In the case of second language (L2) vowel perception, duration may be used to categorize vowels when, from the non-native listener´s perspective, inadequate spectral cues are available. A testing ground for these accounts is found in the sound systems of American English and Norwegian, which have phonetically similar vowels which are qualitative contrasts in American English and quantitative contrasts in Norwegian. Results from two experiments support the desensitization hypothesis and suggest that vowel duration, perhaps as a universally preferred acoustic cue, may override the influence of native language transference.

Development of vowel quantity perception in late childhood

… European Conference on …, 2001

A distinction in vowel quantity is typically realized acoustically by vowel duration. Research on the perception of Swedish vowel quantity by adult native speakers supports this. It further suggests that when the duration of a vowel is relatively long (due, e.g., to inherent duration), listeners may also make use of vowel spectra t o distinguish vowel quantities.