Phonetic and phonological vowel reduction in Central Catalan

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianna Nadeu
Keyword(s):  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Vowel Reduction ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Noun Compounds

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.

scholarly journals Acoustic Characteristics of Pakistani English Vowel Sounds

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Abdul Abbasi ◽  
Mansoor Channa ◽  
Masood Memon ◽  
Stephen John ◽  
Irtaza Ahmed ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Visual Inspection ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Formant Frequency ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Esl Learners ◽  
The Voice

The purpose of this investigation was to document acoustic characteristics of Pakistani English (PaKE) vowel sounds. The experiment was designed to examine the properties of ten vowels produced by Pakistani ESL learners. The analysis is based on the voice samples of recorded 50 CVC words. Total 5000 (10  10  50=5000) voiced samples were analyzed. The data consisted of 50 words of ten English vowel sounds [i: ɪ e ɔ: æ ə ɑ: u: ɒ ʊ]. Ten ESL speakers recorded their voice samples on Praat speech processing tool installed on laptop. Three parameters were considered i.e., fundamental frequency (F0), vowel quality (F1-F2) and duration. Formant patterns were judged manually by visual inspection on Praat Speech Processing Tool. Analysis of formant frequency shows numerous differences between male and female of F1 and F2, fundamental frequency and duration of English vowels. The voice samples provide evidence for higher and lower frequency of vowel sounds. Additionally, the data analysis illustrates that there were statistical differences in the values of short and long vowels coupled with vowel space plot showing explicit differences in locating the production of vowels of male & female vowel space acoustic realizations.

scholarly journals The acoustic characteristics of non-native American English vowels

Linguistica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Biljana Čubrović
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Language Background ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Native Speech

This study aims at discussing the phonetic property of vowel quality in English, as exercised by both native speakers of General American English (AE) and non-native speakers of General American English of Serbian language background, all residents of the United States. Ten Serbian male speakers and four native male speakers of AE are recorded in separate experiments and their speech analyzed acoustically for any significant phonetic differences, looking into a set of monosyllabic English words representing nine vowels of AE. The general aim of the experiments is to evaluate the phonetic characteristics of AE vowels, with particular attention to F1 and F2 values, investigate which vowels differ most in the two groups of participants, and provide some explanations for these variations. A single most important observation that is the result of this vowel study is an evident merger of three pairs of vowels in the non-native speech: /i ɪ/, /u ʊ/, and /ɛ æ/.

scholarly journals The level of awareness and production of English lexical stress among English language teacher trainees in Malaysia

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernie Adnan ◽  
Stefanie Pillai ◽  
Poh Shin Chiew
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
English Language ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Intermediate Level ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
Systematic Pattern ◽  
Second Language Teacher

The realisation of lexical stress among Malaysian speakers of English is likely to be different from other varieties of English. In spite of this, there is a preference for a native pronunciation model in the teaching of English in Malaysia. In relation to this issue, this paper focuses on lexical stress among a group of Teaching of English as a Second Language teacher trainees. The objectives of this paper are to assess the overall level of awareness of lexical stress among them, to examine their production of lexical stress, and to determine the link between their level of awareness and production. The method used to elicit data for the first objective was a Lexical Stress Awareness Test (LSAT), completed by 104 teacher trainees. Data for the second objective were obtained by recording the trainees reading sentences containing test words. The findings from the LSAT indicate that most of the trainees have an intermediate level of awareness of English lexical stress. They were generally unable to describe the characteristics of a stressed syllable. In addition, the findings from the acoustic analysis of the recordings suggest that they did not have a systematic pattern of stressing syllables with the main correlate of stress being vowel lengthening. In contrast, most of them chose ‘higher pitch’ as the characteristic of a stressed syllable. Hence, there is an inconsistency between their awareness and production of lexical stress in English. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to the teaching of pronunciation in the classroom and the effect of lexical stress placement on intelligibility. Our general conclusion is that more attention needs to be given in teacher education to how lexical stress is used in English, and also to the characteristics of stress in the Malaysian variety of English.

Bitonal pitch accent and phonological alignment in Sardinian

Probus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miran Kim ◽  
Lori Repetti
Keyword(s):  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Romance Language ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Landing Sites ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
As Stress

Abstract This study presents new data on pitch accent alignment in Sardinian, a Romance language spoken in Italy. We propose that what has been described as “stress shift” in encliticization processes is not a change in the word level stress, but variation in the association of the pitch accent. Our claim is that word level stress remains in situ, and the falling tune which our data exhibit can be interpreted as a bitonal pitch accent (HL*) associated with the entire verb + enclitic unit: the starred tone is associated with the rightmost metrically prominent syllable, and the leading tone is associated with the word-level stressed syllable. The research questions we address are twofold: (i) how are the landing sites of the two tonal targets phonetically identified; (ii) how are the phonetic facts reconciled with prosodic structure.

The scope of boundary lengthening as a function of lexical stress and pitch accent

2014 ◽  
Vol 135 (4) ◽  
pp. 2195-2196
Author(s):  
Argyro Katsika ◽  
Jelena Krivokapić ◽  
Christine Mooshammer ◽  
Mark Tiede ◽  
Louis Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Lexical Stress

scholarly journals Prosodically-conditioned Syllable Structure in English

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Orzechowska ◽  
Janina Mołczanow ◽  
Michał Jankowski
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Consonant Clusters ◽  
Metrical Structure ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Main Stress ◽  
Unstressed Syllable

Abstract This paper investigates the interplay between the metrical structure and phonotactic complexity in English, a language with lexical stress and an elaborate inventory of consonant clusters. The analysis of a dictionary- and corpus-based list of polysyllabic words leads to two major observations. First, there is a tendency for onsetful syllables to attract stress, and for onsetless syllables to repel it. Second, the stressed syllable embraces a greater array of consonant clusters than unstressed syllables. Moreover, the farther form the main stress, the less likely the unstressed syllable is to contain a complex onset. This finding indicates that the ability of a position to license complex onsets is related to its distance from the prosodic head.

scholarly journals Automatic Speech Segmentation in French / Segmentação automática da fala em francês

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 1551
Author(s):  
Philippe Martin
Keyword(s):  
Speech Rate ◽  
Silent Reading ◽  
Content Word ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Speech Segmentation ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Computer Algorithm ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Slow Speech

Abstract: Whether we read aloud or silently, we segment speech not in words, but in accent phrases, i.e. sequences containing only one stressed syllable (excluding emphatic stress). In lexically stressed languages such as Italian or English, the location of stress in a noun, an adverb, a verb or an adjective (content words) is defined in the lexicon, and accent phrases include one single content word together with its associated grammatical words. In French, a language deprived from lexical stress, accent phrases are defined by the time it takes to read or pronounce them. Therefore, actual phrasing, i.e. the segmentation into accent phrases, depends strongly on the speech rate chosen by the speaker or the reader, whether in oral or silent reading mode. With a slow speech rate, all content words form accent phrases whose final syllables are stressed, whereas a fast speech rate could merge up to 10 or 11 syllables together in a single accent phrase with more than one content word. Based on this observation, and on other properties of stressed syllables, a computer algorithm for automatic phrasing, operating in a top-down fashion, is presented and applied to two examples of read and spontaneous speech.Keywords: accent phrase; French; phrasing; stress location; boundary detection.Resumo: Quando lemos em voz alta ou silenciosamente, segmentamos a fala em palavras, mas em grupos acentuais, i.e., sequências contendo uma única sílaba acentuada (excluindo-se acento enfático). Em línguas lexicalmente acentuadas como o italiano ou o inglês, a localização do acento em um substantivo, um advérbio, um verbo ou em um adjetivo (palavras lexicais) é definida no léxico, e sintagmas acentuais incluem uma única palavra lexical, acompanhada das palavras gramaticais a ela associadas. Em francês, uma língua que não possui acento lexical, sintagmas acentuais são definidos pelo tempo que se leva para lê-los ou pronunciá-los. Assim, os constituintes concretos, i.e., a segmentação em grupos acentuais, depende fortemente da velocidade de fala escolhida pelo falante ou leitor, tanto na fala como na leitura silenciosa. Com uma velocidade de fala baixa, todas as palavras lexicais formam grupos acentuais cujas sílabas finais são acentuadas, enquanto o ritmo de fala rápido poderia juntar de 10 a 11 sílabas em um mesmo grupo acentual contendo mais de uma palavra lexical. Com base nessa observação e em outras propriedades das sílabas acentuadas, um algoritmo computacional para segmentação automática, atuando de maneira top-down é apresentado e aplicado a dois exemplos de leitura e fala espontânea.Palavras-chave: grupo acentual; francês; segmentação; posição do acento; detecção de fronteira.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document