ON THE ACOUSTIC AND PERCEPTUAL CHARACTERIZATION OF REFERENCE VOWELS IN A CROSS-LANGUAGE PERSPECTIVE (original) (raw)
Related papers
Variability in the production of quantal vowels revisited
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1995
Articulatory and acoustic variability in the production of five American English vowels was examined. The data were movement records for selected fleshpoints on the midsagittal tongue surface, recorded using the x-ray microbeam. An algorithm for nonlinearly transfo]ming fleshpoint positions to a new Cartesian space in which the x and y axes represent, respectively, the distance of the fleshpoint along the opposing vocal tract wall and the distance perpendicular t• the tract wall, is described. The transformation facilitates a test of Quantal Theory in which variability in the two dimensions is compared over many productions of a given vowel type. The data provide some support for the theory. For fleshpoints near "quantal" constriction sites, the primary variability was in the x dimension (constriction location). The y-dimension values were more tightly constrained, and the formant frequencies were more significantly correlated with the y values than with the x values. The greater variability in constriction location than in degree was not an artifact of the greater distances traversed in the x dimension between the vowel and constrictions,. in neighboring consonants, since the pattern was preserved when pellet values were translated to t•tke into account a "context-free" vowel target (the average values in the context of preceding and following labial consonants). Moreover, the observed correlations between formant values and pellet positions in the two dimensions for [i] and [u] were duplicated in an articulatory-to-acoustic modeling test using values for constriction length and cross-sectional area estimated from the data. The model showed smaller second formant variability in the x dimension than in the y dimension for equal-sized excursions near the constriction sites for these close vowels, in keeping with the interpretation that speakers exercise less precise control in just the dimensions and regions where quantal stability is available. However, the articulatory pattern was seen not just in vowels which clearly have consonantlike constrictions (the quantal vowels [i], [u], and [a]), but also in nonquantal vowels such
Acoustic Properties of Japanese and English Vowels: Effects of Phonetic and Prosodic Context
search has documented large differences in the phonetic realization of American English (AE) vowels as a function of phonetic context and prosodic context Strange et al., submitted). Less research has been published on the allophonic and prosodic variation of Japanese (J) vowels. Thus, the goal of the present study was to compare the allophonic and prosodic variation in spectral and temporal structure of J and AE vowels, using acoustical analysis of corpora in which the phonetic and prosodic context was varied systematically. To the extent that the type and amount of phonetic variation differs across the two languages, we would expect that cross-language perceptual similarity might also vary with contextual variables.
2010
The first and major part of this thesis deals with spectral features of vowels and with the distinction of phonetic information from personal and transmittal information also conveyed to listeners by speech sounds. The results of perceptual experiments with synthetic vowels whose fundamental and first formant were varied in frequency suggested that the smaller tonotopical distances between formants « 6 Bark) are invariant in phonetically identical vowels. This was also confirmed by an analysis of formant frequency data of vowels produced by male and female speakers of several languages. It is further investigated how partials are resolved in the process of timbre perception. Previous experiments by other researchers suggest an effective bandwidth close to three Bark. In similar experiments, though using different stimuli, this result could not be replicated. A re-analysis of some other experimental results gave, among other details, effective bandwidths roughly propor tional to fre...
A Phonetic Description of Etulo Vowels
Etulo belongs to the Idomoid group of the West Benue Congo family of Languages spoken by the Etulo people in the (Middle Belt) Central Nigerian States of Benue and Taraba. A descriptive survey using the One Thousand Seven Hundred SIL Comparative African Wordlist (SILCAWL) administered on Etulo informants who were born and bred within Etulo locality was made. Nine simple phonetic oral vowels [i ɪ e ɛ a o ͻ ʊ u] and their nasal counterparts alongside sixteen complex phonetic vowel sequences (phonetic diphthongs) [aɪɪaiauaʊaieoeueiouoiɛuɛʊɛɪɔɪʊʊɔ] were identified. Using articulatory, auditory and acoustic parameters, the phonetic description of Etulo vowels were made. In describing the vowels of Etulo, the nine simple oral vowels of Etulo were classified using articulatory and auditory parameters. For authenticity, these nine oral phonetic vowels were further subjected to instrumental (acoustic) analysis. In other words, a spectrographic analysis using the audacity and Praat software was made to reveal the vowel quality. In general, the auditory (figure 4.1) and acoustic (figure 4.6) vowel charts correspond with little discrepancies with the vowel [a] which is represented as a central vowel but analysed as back using the acoustic parameter. Furthermore, while the vowel chart plotted in figure 4.1 using the auditory parameter revealed the back and the front vowels; it did not reveal the degree of backness or frontness of these vowels, a situation evident using the acoustic parameter as seen in the formant chart of table 4.1.Etulo nine nasal vowels and the complex phonetic sequences are considered as doubtful segments and so further studiesanalysing these doubtful segments would reveal their phonological status.
Vowels of the world’s languages
Journal of Phonetics, 1990
Many of the vowels of the world's languages can be described simply by reference to the three traditional dimensions high-low, backfront, and rounded-unrounded, with the first two of these being considered as names for auditory dimensions. There may be up to five contrasting vowel heights. Some languages contrast otherwise similar front , central and back vowels. There are also two kinds of rounding: protrusion and labial compression. Minor vowel features include: nasalization, other tongue body features (advanced tongue root, pharyngealization, stridency, rhotacization, fricative), different phonation types (voiceless, breathy, laryngealized, creaky) and dynamic properties (long, diphthongal).
On the natural phonology of vowels
1979
Thus; whereas the .American .child everttually overcomes her substi-_tut.ion of Co.:! for C'PJ, the Nupe chiid confronts no foJ in his mother tongue, and the (Q.J-substitution manifests, itself wheen, in the inf'lex:.;. ibility of ~dulthood, be enc_ounters (:,J in :a foreign vord. ') If one could collect all the_sound-subst;ituticins of children, the dfacbr_onist Grammont (1965} _said, one would hf.I.Ye a. sort of grammar of all the possible sound-changes. The synchronist Baudouin de Courtenay {1895} would have added, also all the possible phonological alt_erna.-tic>ns. And, as the panchronist Jakobson argued in his monumental Child Lan@ase, Aphasia 1 and Phonological Universals (1968}, _also all the• • possible phoneme systems. Such systems are determined, a.s Greenberg (1966) concluded in his study of phonological universals, by the collective effect of phonological processes (particularly the 'unconditioned' processes vhich, since they affect a. sound)n all its oc,currences, thereby affect the inventory as well a.s the distribution of phonemes). But, pace Greenberg, such processes are not mere historical events: they are the living expression of the phonetic capacity of the individual. This dissertation presents my explorations in the world of vowels. Although I have occasion to mention aesimilatory processes, my focus is on those processes traditionall.y labeled 'unconditioned I or 1 sponta.-' neous 1-the ones pessimistically cWed unexplainable because they apply to segments regardless of their contexts (or worse, in dissimila:.;. tion, despite their contexts), and because, as is implied by their classification as 'strengthening' processes, they seem to defy the law of least effort. These are processes which, in the earliest speech of a child, ca.n scramble all his vowels into one, and yet can, in a language like Faroese, Juggle two dozen vowels with hardly a merger. A full account of the nature, operation, and causality of these processes is not in sight, Thorough and useful descriptions are unavailable for many languages: the brief phonemic sketches of vowel systems that appear in many surveys and in some monographs often fail to provide sufficient phonetic information on vowel quality; and conversely, some descriptions vhich do provide such phonetic information lack the phonological data that is crucial to the sort of analysis that the study of processes requires. For many little-know languages, historical studies, which provide much usef'ul data, are unavailable-and indeed impossible, given linguists' current knowledge of such languages. ' (Corresponding to this difference in the nature of processes and rules is a difference in the order of application in speech proce~sing: processes apply after the applications of secret-1anguage rules, and after unintentional slips of the tongue (Stampe 1973a:45; Donegan and Stampe 1978a, Sec. 2. 5). • (1,7) For example, the process that palatalizes [kJ to [cJ before a palatal vowel applies after the secret-language 9 Another way :irt ~hich children: •sometimes limit the surface effects of a process is by constrairting its natural iterative application (Stampe 1973,: 59-68). The fUnction of each process is to Efubstitute •. a'iess difficult class of sounds or sound-sequences for a ~ore difficult cla.ss~ But once a process has applied~ sveeping away~. as it vere, a.• certain class 'or difficulties, another process may (subsequently or simultaneously), in removing some entirely different difficulty, create new me~ rs of the very class the fir~t process got rid of. /' (1.14) For example, for a child who substitutes zero for CJJ, this CJJ-deletion eliminates a difficult segment. But suppose another process-delateralization, as in (1,10)-simultaneously substitutes CJJ !or CIJ. Unless the first process is alloved to apply again, the child vill have to produce CJJ's-for ti l's. If each process is to accomplish its function on the surface forms (the forms that are actually pronounced), then the (JJ-to-¢ process should apply again, after the CIJ-to-[JJ process, and again after any other process that creates [JJ's. Such absence of ordering restrictions-unconstrained iteration-is the natural state of process application. But there is a catch to this free-handed elimination of difficulties: the processes thus applied merge, in actual pronunciation, the distinction between between /1/ and /j/ in the child's underlying representations (corresponding to adult tlJ and CjJ); both become zero, so that e.g. less and yes would both be pronounced [€SJ. One way for the child to maintain a distinction without having to suppress either process is to restrict the iteration of [JJ-to-¢,.so that it may not apply again after [IJ-to-(JJ. Thus the child says [€SJ for~ but [JESJ for less-not the underlying or adult distinction, to be sure, but a distinction nevertheless. This seems to be the situation which holds vith children who initially substitute zero for both (jJ and ti] but who later produce zero for [JJ and (JJ for.ti] (cf, Jakobson 1968:15, and Donegan and Stampe 1978a, Sec. 3.3), Such apparently paradoxical sets of substitutions, described by Jakobson as 'sound shifts', may persist into adulthood. Thus, such constraints may account for some of the peculiar situations in language in which a speaker cannot pronounce a segm~nt or sequence when he tries to produce it, but produces that very segment or sequence when he is trying to pronounce something else. (1.15) For exe.mple, many speakers of English find it difficult or impos'sible to produce the seq'l,lence ta.9J in phrases like How now, brown cow? or in bo!rowed or foreign words like He.usfrau or Laut (cf, (1.6)). Instead they substitute Cais!J quite automatically. But many or the same speakers in whom the ta.2J-to-(6!12J process is active also make a substitution which produces the phonetic sequence Ca2J: de.rk, syllable-final C:lJ optionally becomes tyJ"'[S?J so that doll, Sol, etc. a.re pronounced (dC1.2J, Isa.2J, etc.