Vowel category perception affected by microdurational variations (original) (raw)
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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.
Short vs. Long Category Perception Affected by Vowel Quality
The paper studies the impact of intrinsic vowel duration on category perception in boundary conditions by examining the short vs. long category boundary perception in Estonian. Since the intrinsic duration of a close vowel /i/ is about 10-15 ms shorter than that of an open vowel /a/, we hypothesize that the short vs. long category boundary in /i/ occurs at a shorter duration than in the case of /a/.
The effect of duration on vowel categorization and perceptual prototypes in a quantity language
2012
According to the identity group interpretation of the quantity opposition in Finnish, long vowels are perceived as two successive short vowels of the same spectral quality. Some recent studies, however, challenge this general view. To investigate this, 16 listeners were first asked to categorize four sets of 19 synthesized stimuli, each set representing the Finnish vowel continuum /y/-/i/ at one of the following stimulus durations: 50 ms, 100 ms, 250 ms, and 500 ms, which cover the reported durational variations of short and long Finnish vowels. The stimuli on the /y/-/i/ continuum varied for the second formant (F2) in steps of 30 mel. Large individual variation was found in the categorization, but the category boundary F2 value and the boundary width were independent of duration in the group level, suggesting that quantity does not affect the category formation between /y/ and /i/. Normalized reaction times showed that the categorization was most difficult at 100 ms, that is, a duration that falls between a typical short and long Finnish vowel. Following the categorization task, in order to find the prototypical /i/, the same listeners were asked to evaluate the goodness of those vowels they had individually identified as /i/. The goodness rating scores and F2 frequencies of the /i/ prototypes thus found were essentially the same at all durations, suggesting that phoneme prototypes are not demonstrably dependent on the phonological quantity opposition.
Production and perception of Estonian vowels by native and non-native speakers
2011
The paper studies the production and perception of Estonian quantity oppositions by native Estonians (L1 subjects) and non-native speakers with Russian-language background (L2 subjects). Estonian quantity system involves three contrastive prosodic patterns referred to as short (Q1), long (Q2) and overlong (Q3) quantity degrees. These phonological contrasts are manifested by a complex interaction of durational and tonal cues in a disyllabic foot. For L2 subjects the Estonian quantity contrasts constitute a difficult issue in both perception and production since there are no similar patterns in Russian to rely on.
Journal of Phonetics, 2011
This paper studies the perception of Estonian duration-based phonological oppositions by native Estonians and non-native speakers with Russian-language background. The short/long category boundary was examined by varying the duration of a vowel in three contexts involving isolated vowels (V vs. VV), one-syllable nonsense words (CVC vs. CVVC), and two-syllable real words (CVCV vs. CVVCV). Since vowel duration serves to distinguish lexical minimal pairs in Estonian but not in Russian, L1 and L2 subjects are expected to employ different perceptual strategies in a short/long categorization task. In particular, location and width of category boundaries as well as consistency of categorization are likely to vary between the groups. The results showed that L2 subjects were quite successful in distinguishing the Estonian short/long categories despite the non-categorical use of the duration cue in their native language. As a rule, the L2 subjects demonstrated (1) category boundaries at longer durations, (2) larger width of category boundaries, and (3) lower consistency of responses compared to those of the L1 group. The perceptual strategies of L2 subjects might be based on the continuous auditory perception of the salient duration cue, or on the variable duration patterns associated with word stress in their L1, or on a combination of both strategies.
Perception of temporal and spectral information in French vowels
Language and speech
and phonological structure of French suggests that duration might be a less important perceptual property in French than in languages like American English. Three lO-step /kot/-/bt/ continua were synthesized by systematically varying frequencies of the first two formants of the vowel nuclei. The three continua differed in vowel duration (140, 180, and 220 ms). Two perceptual tests, identification and 5-choice category rating, were presented to three listener groups: native French, native American English who had studied French, and native American English who did not know French. For both native American English groups, spectrally ambiguous vowels were identified and rated more often as /0/ when these vowels were long and as /;)/ when short, thereby showing a trading relation between temporal and spectral information. In contrast, native French listeners showed little effect of duration in either perceptual task. Despite this perceptual insensitivity to duration, acoustic measurements showed that these French subjects' productions of /0/ and /;)/ consistently maintained a duration difference. Results are interpreted to support the view that perceptual integration of the acoustic properties relevant to a phonemic contrast depends not only on covariation of the properties in the production of that contrast, but also on the prominence of this covariation in the language's phonological system.
Perceptual cues to vowel quantity evidence from Swedish and Japanese.
Proc. Of the Swedish Phonetics …, 1999
The vowel systems of some languages are described as having contrastive vowel quantities. Vowel quantity refers to the phonological distinction of a vowel relative to one or more other vowels of similar timbre in the language. Contrasts in vowel quantity are often acoustically ...