scholarly journals The acoustics of word-initial and word-internal voiced stops in Somali

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Sabrina Bendjaballah ◽  
David Le Gac
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Phonological Representation ◽  
Burst Duration ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Prosodic Word ◽  
Acoustic Correlates ◽  
Closure Duration ◽  
Production Experiment

This article seeks to determine the acoustic correlates of gemination in Standard Somali (Afroasiatic, Cushitic), in particular whether closure duration is the primary acoustic correlate distinguishing singleton and geminate stops, with immediate consequences for the analysis of word-initial strengthening. We provide an acoustic analysis of word-initial and word-internal voiced singletons as well as of their geminate counterparts on the basis of a production experiment conducted with four native speakers. Three temporal and four non-temporal acoustic properties of /b d ɡ/ and /bb dd ɡɡ/ are examined and systematically compared (closure duration, release burst duration, vowel duration; and closure amplitude, release amplitude, presence of a release burst, (de)voicing). We argue that the opposition between singleton and geminate voiced stops is primarily realized as the manner contrast approximant [β̞ ð̞ ɣ̞] vs. stop [b d ɡ]. Word-initially, Somali exhibits various peculiarities that are reminiscent of the cross-linguistically attested phenomenon of domain-initial strengthening. This article provides the first study of this phenomenon in Somali. We establish that word-initial /b d ɡ/ and word-medial /bb dd ɡɡ/ share the same closure duration, release burst duration, and vowel duration within the Prosodic Word. They also have a similar closure amplitude, and voicing properties. Moreover, the acoustic properties of word-initial /b d ɡ/ remain constant, and do not depend on their position in the prosodic hierarchy. On the basis of these results, the article also aims at providing new insights in the phonological representation of Somali geminates and word boundaries, and thus contributes to the understanding of word-initial strengthening in Somali.

scholarly journals ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF PITCH ACCENT AS A REGIONAL FORENSIC MARKER IN SERBIAN

2021 ◽  
pp. 235
Author(s):  
Kristina Tomić
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Acoustic Correlates ◽  
Forensic Phonetics ◽  
Novi Sad ◽  
Frequency Ratios ◽  
Forensic Markers

The current research compares the acoustic correlates of pitch accent of two urban dialects of spoken Serbian, urban Niš and Novi Sad. We analyzed spontaneous speech of nineteen native speakers of Serbian with regard to vowel duration and fundamental frequency ratios. It was shown that the tone between the stressed and post-stressed vowel is generally falling in the speech of Niš, while in the speech of Novi Sad it reflects the tone of the expected pitch accent in that particular word. The same is true of the interval between the end of the stressed and the beginning of the post-stressed vowel, which is always rising in the speech of Niš. In Niš, speakers tend to produce vowels in words with falling accents as longer than in words with rising accents. On average, vowels are longer in the speech of Novi Sad. Bearing in mind that regional variations provide important forensic markers (Kašić and Đorđević 2009), this research aims to contribute to the discipline of forensic phonetics, in particular to speaker profiling. Its significance also lies in the fact that it examines spontaneous speech, and is thus relevant for forensic casework (Rose 2002; Nolan, de Jong, and McDougall 2006).

scholarly journals Temporal acoustic correlates of the voicing contrast in European Portuguese stops

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa Lousada ◽  
Luis M. T. Jesus ◽  
Andreia Hall
Keyword(s):  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Temporal Analysis ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Language Therapy ◽  
Acoustic Correlates ◽  
Voicing Contrast ◽  
European Portuguese ◽  
Closure Duration

This study focuses on the temporal analysis of stops /p b t d k ɡ/ and devoicing analysis of voiced stops /b d ɡ/ produced in different word positions by six native speakers of European Portuguese. The study explores acoustic properties related to voicing. The following acoustic properties were measured: voice onset time (VOT), stop duration, closure duration, release duration, voicing into closure duration, duration of the preceding vowel and duration of the following vowel. Results suggested that when [b d ɡ] were devoiced, the acoustic properties stop duration, closure duration, duration of the following vowel, duration of the preceding vowel and duration of voicing into closure were relevant for the voicing distinction. Implications for research and practice in speech and language therapy are discussed. Further investigation is needed to find how the productions analysed in the present study were perceived by listeners, specifically productions of devoiced stops.

Non-durational acoustic correlates of word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay: The potential roles of amplitude and f0

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-60
Author(s):  
Mohd Hilmi Hamzah ◽  
John Hajek ◽  
Janet Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Acoustic Parameters ◽  
Rare Word ◽  
Acoustic Correlates ◽  
Closure Duration ◽  
Disyllabic Words ◽  
Consonant Gemination ◽  
Manner Of Articulation ◽  
Magnitude Difference

This study reports on non-durational acoustic correlates of typologically rare word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay (KM) by focusing on two acoustic parameters – amplitude and f0. Given the unusual characteristics of the word-initial consonant contrast and its potential maintenance in domain-initial environments, this study sets to examine the extent to which amplitude and f0 can potentially characterise such a contrast in KM in addition to the cross-linguistically established acoustic correlate of closure duration. The production data involved elicited materials from sixteen KM native speakers. RMS and f0 values were measured at the start of the vowel following stops and sonorants produced in isolation (i.e. utterance-initial position) and in a carrier sentence (i.e. utterance-medial position). Results indicate that the consonant contrast is reflected in systematic differences in (i) vowel onset amplitude and f0 following the target consonant and (ii) the ratios of amplitude and f0 across two syllables of disyllabic words. There are also effects of utterance position, manner of articulation and voicing type on the magnitude of contrast between singletons and geminates with utterance-initial voiceless stops generally showing the greatest magnitude difference. The conclusion is drawn that the KM word-initial singleton/geminate consonant contrast can be associated with a set of acoustic parameters alongside closure duration.

scholarly journals CIRI-CIRI AKUSTIK KONTRAS PENYUARAAN BUNYI FRIKATIF ARAB BERASASKAN PARAMETER TEMPOH FRIKASI

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-168
Author(s):  
Shahidi A. Hamid ◽  
Majdan Paharal Radzi ◽  
Rahim Aman ◽  
Mumad CheLaeh ◽  
Anwar Omar Din
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Word List ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Voicing Contrast ◽  
Fricative Voicing ◽  
Islamic Civilization

Latar Belakang dan Tujuan: Makalah ini bertujuan menyerlahkan perbezaan penyuaraan bunyi frikatif Arab bersuara dan tak bersuara yang dihasilkan oleh penutur Melayu. Kajian lepas membuktikan bahawa penutur Melayu sering melakukan kesalahan pertuturan faringealisasi Arab.   Metodologi: Analisis ciri-ciri akustik bunyi frikatif Melayu dan Arab di awal kata menggunakan parameter tempoh frikasi, justeru, dilaksanakan bagi menyerlahkan persamaan dan perbezaan bunyi konsonan berkenaan. Kaedah analisis spektrograf menerusi perisian Praat dimanfaatkan bagi membolehkan pengkaji memindahkan data rakaman ujaran dalam bentuk spektrogram dan melakukan penelitian akustik. Hasil dapatan analisis akustik dimanipulasikan menerusi SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Data spektogram sebanyak 2960 diperoleh daripada rakaman ujaran subjek kajian seramai 24 orang pelajar ijazah Sarjana Muda Pengajian Bahasa Arab dan Tamadun Islam Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Proses rakaman terlebih dahulu dijalankan di studio rakaman Fakulti Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan, UKM menggunakan alat perakam TASCAM MP3/WAV. Senarai perkataan mengandungi bunyi frikatif di awal kata bagi kedua-dua bahasa dibaca oleh subjek kajian dengan keadaan tahap pertuturan yang selesa, iaitu tidak terlalu perlahan dan tidak terlalu laju. Subjek diminta mengulangi perkataan tersebut sebanyak lima kali.   Dapatan Kajian: Hasil kajian ini mendapati bahawa bunyi frikatif tak bersuara /s/ adalah lebih panjang berbanding bunyi bersuara /z/. Dapatan kajian juga menunjukkan bahawa tiada hubungan signifikan antara bunyi /س/ dan /sˤ/ dan /ز/ dan /zˤ/. Secara khususnya, kajian ini mengesahkan bahawa tidak semua bunyi faringealisasi Arab dipengaruhi bahasa ibunda. Bunyi ini mampu juga dikuasai oleh bukan penutur natif Arab.   Implikasi: Kajian ini memberi implikasi signifikan terhadap pembelajaran bahasa Arab sebagai bahasa kedua di Malaysia serta perkembangan ilmu fonetik akustik di Malaysia khususnya bagi menambah baik sebutan frikatif Arab dalam kalangan penutur natif Melayu.   Kata kunci: Akustik, bahasa Arab, gangguan bahasa, pemindahan bahasa, tempoh frikasi.   Abstract   Background and Purpose: This paper aims to highlight the voicing contrast of Arabic and Malay fricatives produced by Malay native speakers. Previous studies show that Malay speakers often make mistakes on Arabic pharyngealisation.   Methodology: This study, thus, analysed the frication duration characteristics of Malay and Arabic fricatives in initial word position and highlight their similarities and differences. The spectrographic analysis method via Praat software was utilized to enable the researcher to transfer speech recording data into a spectrogram and analysed acoustically. A total of 2960 spectrograms was obtained from the recording of 24 subjects’ utterences. The subjects are undergraduate students of Arabic Studies and Islamic Civilization of the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The recording process was performed in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, UKM recording studio using TASCAM MP3 / WAV recorder. A word list that contains the fricative sound at the beginning of each word in both languages was ​​read by subjects with comfortable speech level, i.e. neither slow nor too fast. Subjects were asked to repeat the word five times.   Findings: The result of the acoustic analysis was manipulated using Statistical Package for Social Sciences. This study found that the fricative sound / s / is longer than the sound / z / for both languages. The findings also show that there is no significant relationship between sound / س / and / sˤ / and / ز / and / zˤ /. In particular, this study confirms that not all Arabic pharyngealisation are influenced by their native language. It can be mastered also by non-native speakers of Arabic.   Contributions: This study provides significant implications for learning Arabic as a second language in Malaysia as well as the development of acoustic phonetics, particularly, in improving the fricative pronunciation of Arabic among native speakers of Malay.   Keywords: Acoustic, Arabic, frication duration, language interference, language transfer.   Cite as: Shahidi A. H., Radzi, M. P., Aman, R., CheLaeh, M., & Anwar, O. D. (2020). Ciri-ciri akustik kontras penyuaraan bunyi frikatif Arab berasaskan parameter tempoh frikasi [The acoustic properties of Arabic fricative voicing contrast based on the frication duration parameter]. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 5(1), 143-168. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol5iss1pp143-168

Acoustic properties of vowels in Upper Necaxa Totonac

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Michelle García-Vega ◽  
Benjamin V. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Acoustic Data ◽  
Formant Frequencies ◽  
Second Formant

Upper Necaxa Totonac is a Totonacan language spoken in the Necaxa River valley in the Sierra Norte of Puebla State, Mexico. While the Totonacan languages historically have three phonemic vowel qualities, the Upper Necaxa system consists of five vowels that contrast length and laryngealization. With acoustic data from six native speakers from the Totonacan communities of Patla and Chicontla, we explore the phonetic properties of vowels with respect to the first and second formant frequencies, quantity (duration), vowel phonation (modal vs. laryngeal), and stress. The data indicate that long, short, modal and laryngeal vowels occupy a similar formant space and that duration is the primary phonetic correlate of phonemic vowel length. A shift in vowel quality and an increase in duration and pitch were shown to be the acoustic characteristics of stress. The study provides a first acoustic analysis of vowels in Upper Necaxa, and contributes to typological descriptions of the properties of vowels connected with quality, quantity, stress, and phonation.

scholarly journals Acoustic Analysis of Obstruents in Some Igbo Dialects

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1510
Author(s):  
Benita Nneka Anyasi ◽  
Olusanmi Babarinde ◽  
George Iloene
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
High Precision ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Acoustic Structure

The study examines two dialects of the Igbo language, namely Aro and Mgbo, and analyses the acoustic structure of its obstruents as spoken by native speakers. This study sets out to, among other things, identify the obstruents which occur in the dialects, characterise these obstruents, analyse the acoustic properties, and find out the manner of relatedness of the obstruents in the two dialects. Four adult respondents (two for each dialect) aged between 60-80 years who are native speakers of the dialects were randomly selected. The data were recorded electronically using a high precision Sony ICD-UX560 recorder and transferred into the computer via Praat speech analyzer software. The data analysis was carried out with the SIL Speech Analyzer version 3.0.1 (1996-2007) and Praat. These were used in transcribing recorded tokens, cutting portions of tokens and analyzing the data. The measurement of the pitch, intensity and duration reveal some significant differences within the two dialects. In most Northern Igbo (Waawa) dialects, back rounded vowels are weakened as is evinced in [nɣɔkə] and [ŋkɔ]. Although the vowels are evident in the syllable structure, the final vowels are so weak that they are not phonetically interpretable.

scholarly journals The importance of word-final vowel duration for non-native portuguese speaker identification by means of Support Vector Machines

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 689-714
Author(s):  
Suzanne Franks ◽  
Rommel Barbosa
Keyword(s):  
Support Vector Machines ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Speaker Identification ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Vector Machines

This article studies the acoustic characteristics of some oral vowels in tonic syllables of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and which acoustic features are important for classifying native versus non-native speakers of BP. We recorded native and non-native speakers of BP for the purpose of the acoustic analysis of the vowels [a], [i], and [u] in tonic syllables. We analyzed the acoustic parameters of each segment using the Support Vector Machines algorithm to identify to which group, native or non-native, a new speaker belongs. When all of the variables were considered, a precision of 91% was obtained. The two most important acoustic cues to determine if a speaker is native or non-native were the durations of [i] and [u] in a word-final position. These findings can contribute to BP speaker identification as well as to the teaching of the pronunciation of Portuguese as a foreign language.

scholarly journals An Acoustic Analysis of Cantonese Lexical Tones by Chinese Youths in Seremban, Malaysia

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chan Huey Jien
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Lexical Tones ◽  
Monosyllabic Words ◽  
Malaysian Chinese

Cantonese is widely spoken among the Malaysian Chinese community. Cantonese speakers are not only native speakers, but also non-native speakers. One of the difficult parts of Cantonese learning is lexical tones. In view of this, this study provides an acoustic analysis of Cantonese lexical tones produced by Chinese youths in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan. This study investigates the acoustic characteristics of Cantonese lexical tones by analysing the length features and pitch features of monosyllabic words. Six female speakers participated in this study. Three of them are native Cantonese speakers, while the other three are non-native Cantonese speakers. Data analysis was conducted by using Praat. In terms of length features, T2 and T6 are the shortest smooth tones, and T7 is the shortest checked tone. In terms of pitch features, T3 and T4 had greater changes compared to the previous study. All lexical tones produced by non-native speakers, with the exception of T2, are level tones. Moreover, in both groups, the vowel duration and pitch value of T2 are relatively the same as T6, and there is a trend of combination.

scholarly journals An acoustic analysis of Pahari oral vowels

2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-39
Author(s):  
Abdul Qadir Khan
Keyword(s):  
Spectral Analysis ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Short Vowels

Abstract The aim of the current study is to present an acoustic account of the twelve oral vowels of Pahari by analyzing their formant pattern (F1 and F2) and duration. T o achieve this aim, an experiment was conducted. T em native speakers of Pahari participated in the study and were given a list of 12 oral vowels in CVC context for recording, where V is the target vowel. T he recorded material was analyzed by using Praat software. T he spectral analysis (F1 and F2) show that Pahari has four close, six mid and two open vowels. T he results also show that in term of duration these vowels occur in the form of long-short pairs that differ significantly quantatively (vowel duration).The study further exhibits that the short vowels are centralized as compared to their long counterpart

scholarly journals Acoustic Analysis of English Long Vowels Produced by Pashto Speakers

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-229
Author(s):  
Adnan Ahad ◽  
Ghani Rahman ◽  
Abdul Hamid
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Tape Recorder ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Formant Frequencies ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Proper Training ◽  
Correct Pronunciation ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

The present study investigates the acoustic properties of English long vowels produced by Pashto speakers by highlighting the problematic areas for Pashto speakers learning English. The data was collected from ten Pashtun learners of English through tape recorder. The data was analyzed using PRAAT software. The spectrograms produced by the software helped us in specifying the acoustic values (formant frequencies of F1 and F2) of target vowels compared with the production of the same vowels by native speakers of English. The analysis of the collected data revealed the problematic areas of English long vowels for Pashtun learners of English. The study proved that English long vowels like /I:/ and /a:/ were more problematic for Pashtun learners. A significant difference was seen in both the height and backness of the target English vowels produced by the subjects. The English vowels like /e:/ and /o:/ produced by subjects were like those produced by the native speakers. Similarly, target vowel like /u:/ was pronounced by subjects like native speakers of English. The study recommends that Pashto speakers should be given proper training for acquiring correct pronunciation of English.

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