Intrinsic Fundamental Frequency in Igbo (original) (raw)

Fundamental frequency as cue to intonation: Focus on Ika Igbo and English rising intonation patterns

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2013

This paper shows that fundamental frequency, Fo, can be a cue to type of intonation. The work centers on three main intonation patterns in Ika Igbo and English. Ika Igbo is a language that manifests intonation in addition to lexical tone. These intonation patterns are Low Rise (LR), High Rise (HR) and Fall Rise (FR). The Fos of these intonation patterns were analyzed acoustically in utterances with similar phonemes and tunes in both languages. Eighteen utterances were used for the study. The analyses show that the Fos of LR and FR intonation were generally lower than those of HR. Hence it can be concluded that high intonation has high Fo while low intonation has low Fo. It can therefore be concluded that Fo is a cue to type of intonation.

Consonant Types and Pitch of Tone in the Igbo Language: An Acoustic Analysis

This work sets out to analyze the pitch of tone in lexemes in the Igbo language to find out the effect of consonant types occurring before vowels on the pitch of the tone of the vowels. The data are collected from two males and two females from each dialect using structured personal interview and the data recorded electronically. In the findings the pitch of the vowels following plosives are higher than those following other classes of consonants. Also the tone of the vowel does not affect the F0 of the tone. Finally the downstepped high tone does not have influence on the pitch of the vowel. We therefore conclude that the downstepped high tone in the Igbo language in line with what is found in the literature, consonant types do have effect on the pitch of tone of following vowels.

The Phonetic Interpretation of Tone in Igbo

Phonetica, 1993

This article presents a preliminary study of the phonetic interpretation of tone in Igbo, a Kwa language of southeastern Nigeria. The experimental method varies the speaker’s pitch range orthogonally with variation in tonal material, and fits a model to measurements of maxima and minima in the resulting Fo contour. A new interpretation of downstep is proposed as a result.

Tone languages and the universality of intrinsic F 0: evidence from Africa

Journal of Phonetics, 2002

A correlation between vowel height and fundamental frequency, whereby high vowels have higher F 0 than low vowels, is said to be universal. The available evidence suggests that this intrinsic F 0 (IF0) extends even to tone languages, which might be expected to control or constrain F 0. Little work, however, has been done on IF0 in tone languages of Africa, where the tone systems are in certain respects more complex than those found elsewhere. This paper presents new research on four African tone languages which permits several questions concerning IF0 in these languages to be addressed. The central question, whether tone inventory size is a constraining factor on IF0, presupposes that IF0 does indeed exist in tone languages. Reports in the literature that IF0 is reduced or neutralized for Low tone suggest that there may be an IF0 gradient with respect to tone height. Results confirm the existence of IF0 for three of the four languages studied, but also suggest that it may be constrained in some tone languages. Tone inventory size alone, however, does not account for this; rather, the nature of the tone system, and in particular the degree of F 0 modulation used in producing tonal contrasts appears to the primary factor. While IF0 is generally reduced for Low tone, not all of these four languages show the postulated gradient. This finding fits with research suggesting that a different physiological mechanism may be associated with the production of low rangeF 0.

Tone in Abankaleke Igbo: An Acoustic Analysis

2014

There have been speculations among scholars in the past on the reason for the perceptible difference in the tonal pattern of the Abankeleke Igbo. Prominent among these is that there is a feature of the upstep tone in this dialect group especially in Izii and Ezaa dialects that is absent in most other Igbo dialects. This paper therefore sets out to investigate the truth or otherwise of this claim in Izii and Ezaa dialects by analyzing the tone levels operational in these dialects and in the Standard Igbo and to compare them with those of the Standard Igbo. The data are collected through personal interview. Three respondents are randomly selected; one for Izii, Ezaa and Standard Igbo respectively. An adapted version of the Ibadan wordlist of 400 Basic Items was used and the data were recorded electronically. The data were transcribed and analyzed electronically using the Speech Tools Analyzer version 3, 0.1 (1996-2007) and the Phonology Assistant version 2.2 (1995-2005) software packa...

Harmonics - to - Noise Ratio in Ika Igbo and English Utterances: Implications and Inferences

Sixteen utterances comprising eight Ika Igbo utterances and eight English utterances were produced and fed into the computer. The cross - correlation method of analysis was used to obtain their harmonics - to - noise ratios. Literature on Ika Igbo does not provide about harmonics - to - noise ratio. This study gives this information and compares the harmonics - to - noise ratio (degree of acoustic periodicity) of Ika Igbo and English. The comparison is necessitated by the existence of similar intonation patterns in both languages. The analysis revealed that generally, English utterances have higher harmonicity values than those of Ika Igbo, with the difference being more marked in some intonation patterns than others. Furthermore, the only Ika Igbo utterance with higher harmonicity value had more nasal sounds than its English counterpart. It is evidently clear from this research that English generally has higher degree of periodicity than Ika Igbo and that nasality increases periodi...

Consonant types, vowel height and tone in Yoruba

1976

Consonant types perturbate pitch in Yoruba, as they have been shown to do in non-tone languages. Such perturbations may serve as one source of "tone-splitting" in languages which already have tone. Average fundamental frequency of a given tone in Yoruba varies according to vowel height. The fact that average pitch differences for vowels bearing low tone is smaller than for those bearing high tone is evidence against a simple-minded version of the "tongue pull 11 theory as an explanation for the correlation of tongue and pitch height. Tonogenesis and tone-splitting would not be expected to arise from the vowel height/ fundamental frequency correlation since this "steady state" correlation lacks the perceptual saliency of the perturbations caused by consonant types.

Vowel systems in Nigerian languages: Genetic typology vs areal characteristics

Pushing the boundaries: Selected papers from the 51-52 Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 2024

Nigerian languages display an impressive variety of vowel systems, ranging from those with ten basic phonemic vowel qualities to those that have been analysed with just a single vowel. Although certain systems like the symmetrical seven or nine vowel systems are fairly common, a variety of less common systems are also found, like the one, two or three vowel systems of certain Central Chadic languages, or the various asymmetric six and seven vowel systems with different numbers of front and back vowels. This paper presents the findings of a survey of 247 Nigerian vowel systems, including dozens of minority languages that have little or no previous documentation. It covers languages from 25 different sub-families, and reveals 45 different basic vowel inventories. Matthew Harley. 2024. Vowel systems in Nigerian languages: Genetic typology vs areal characteristics.

On the vowels of Imilike Dialect of the Igbo language

UJAH: Unizik Journal of Arts and Humanities, 2015

Gerald Okechukwu Nweya Department of Linguistics and African Languages University of Ibadan, Nigeria Abstract This is a study of the vowels of Imilike dialect, a variety of Northern Igbo dialect. Its specific objectives include identifying the vowels of the dialect, determine their phonemic status, distributional pattern and phonotactic constraints and as well compare them with those displayed by the standard Igbo. Data for the study were collected using unstructured interview and observation. Data were analysed in the framework of generative phonology. Minimal pair test was conducted to identify the vowels of the dialect. The study reveals that the dialect displays eleven vowels including the open mid front unrounded vowel /ε/ and the central vowels, [ə] and [ə̣]. All except the central vowels are phonemic in the dialect. The central vowels are in free variation with other vowels in the dialect. All the vowels occur in word initial, word medial and word final positions except the c...

Eleven vowels of Imilike Igbo including ATR and RTR schwa

Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2023

In this paper, we examine the acoustics of vowels in the Imilike [-m-l-ke$ ] dialect of Igbo (Igboid, Niger-Congo), which has not previously been done. While Standard Igbo has eight vowels, previous auditorily-based research has identified eleven vowels in Imilike. Like Standard Igbo, Imilike contrasts vowels in Advanced/Retracted Tongue Root (ATR vs. RTR). We find that there are eleven vowels, distinguished most reliably by F1, B1, energy (dB) of voiced sound below 500Hz and duration. The results of this study also suggest that RTR vowels in Imilike might involve the laryngeal constriction and movement that accompany pharyngealization. The ATR and RTR schwas have similar phonological distribution and acoustic patterns as the other ATR and RTR vowels in the language.