Vowel Production in Prelingually Deafened Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 664-682
Author(s):  
Jing Yang ◽  
Li Xu
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Average Length ◽  
Vowel Production ◽  
Long Duration ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Acoustic Profile ◽  
Vowel Recognition ◽  
Vowel Categories ◽  
Mandarin Vowels

Purpose The purpose of this study was to characterize the acoustic profile and to evaluate the intelligibility of vowel productions in prelingually deafened, Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs). Method Twenty-five children with CIs and 20 age-matched children with normal hearing (NH) were recorded producing a list of Mandarin disyllabic and trisyllabic words containing 20 Mandarin vowels [a, i, u, y, ɤ, ɿ, ʅ, ai, ei, ia, ie, ye, ua, uo, au, ou, iau, iou, uai, uei] located in the first consonant–vowel syllable. The children with CIs were all prelingually deafened and received unilateral implantation before 7 years of age with an average length of CI use of 4.54 years. In the acoustic analysis, the first two formants (F1 and F2) were extracted at seven equidistant time locations for the tested vowels. The durational and spectral features were compared between the CI and NH groups. In the vowel intelligibility task, the extracted vowel portions in both NH and CI children were presented to six Mandarin-speaking, NH adult listeners for identification. Results The acoustic analysis revealed that the children with CIs deviated from the NH controls in the acoustic features for both single vowels and compound vowels. The acoustic deviations were reflected in longer duration, more scattered vowel categories, smaller vowel space area, and distinct formant trajectories in the children with CIs in comparison to NH controls. The vowel intelligibility results showed that the recognition accuracy of the vowels produced by the children with CIs was significantly lower than that of the NH children. The confusion pattern of vowel recognition in the children with CIs generally followed that in the NH children. Conclusion Our data suggested that the prelingually deafened children with CIs, with a relatively long duration of CI experience, still showed measurable acoustic deviations and lower intelligibility in vowel productions in comparison to the NH children.

Vowel Production in Winnipeg

2006 ◽  
Vol 51 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 127-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hagiwara
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
Similar Data ◽  
Low Back ◽  
Canadian English ◽  
Vowel Production ◽  
Acoustic Study ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Precise Characterization

AbstractGeneral properties of the Canadian English vowel space are derived from an experimental-acoustic study of vowel production underway in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Comparing the preliminary Winnipeg results with similar data from General American English confirms previously described generalizations for Canadian English: the merger of low-back vowels, the relative retraction of /æ/, and the relative advancement of /u/ and /Ʊ/. However, a similar comparison of the Winnipeg sample with comparable Southern California data disputes the accuracy of the claim that Canadian Shift (Clarke et al. 1995) is a feature of ‘general’ Canadian and Californian English. An acoustic analysis uncovers subtle phonetic distinctions that make possible a more precise characterization of Canadian Raising: rather than only adjusting the height of the nucleus, Winnipeg speakers produce a directional shift in both the nucleus and offglide of the diphthongs /aɪ, aƱ/; this process applies to all three diphthongs (including /oɪ/).

scholarly journals Parents’ hyper-pitch and vowel category compactness in infant-directed speech are associated with 18-month-old toddlers’ expressive vocabulary

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audun Rosslund ◽  
Julien Mayor ◽  
Gabriella Óturai ◽  
Natalia Kartushina
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Vowel Production ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Pitch Range ◽  
Northern Norway ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Space Expansion ◽  
Vowel Categories

The present study examines the acoustic properties of infant-directed speech (IDS) as compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) in Norwegian parents of 18-month-old toddlers, and whether these properties relate to toddlers’ expressive vocabulary size. Twenty-one parent- toddler dyads from Tromsø, Northern Norway participated in the study. Parents (16 mothers, 5 fathers), speaking a Northern Norwegian dialect, were recorded in the lab reading a storybook to their toddler (IDS register), and to an experimenter (ADS register). The storybook was designed for the purpose of the study, ensuring identical linguistic contexts across speakers and registers, and multiple representations of each of the nine Norwegian long vowels. We examined both traditionally reported measures of IDS: pitch, pitch range, vowel duration and vowel space expansion, but also novel measures: vowel category compactness and vowel category distinctiveness. Our results showed that Norwegian IDS, as compared to ADS, had similar characteristics as in other languages: higher pitch, wider pitch range, longer vowel duration, and expanded vowel space area; in addition, it had less compact vowel categories. Further, parents’ hyper-pitch, that is, the within-parent increase in pitch in IDS as compared to ADS, and vowel category compactness in IDS itself, were positively related to toddlers' vocabulary. Our results point towards potentially facilitating roles of parents’ increase in pitch when talking to their toddler and of consistency in vowel production in early word learning.

Acoustic development of vowel production in native Mandarin-speaking children

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-51
Author(s):  
Jing Yang ◽  
Robert A. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Movement Patterns ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Vowel Production ◽  
Positional Variation ◽  
Scatter Plots ◽  
Disyllabic Words ◽  
Acoustic Space ◽  
Vowel Categories ◽  
Mandarin Vowels

The present study aims to document the developmental profile of static and dynamic acoustic features of vowel productions in monolingual Mandarin-speaking children aged between three and six years in comparison to adults. Twenty-nine monolingual Mandarin children and 12 native Mandarin adults were recorded producing ten Mandarin disyllabic words containing five monophthongal vowel phonemes /a i u yɤ/. F1 and F2 values were measured at five equidistant temporal locations (the 20–35–50–65–80% points of the vowel's duration) and normalized. Scatter plots showed clear separations between vowel categories although the size of individual vowel categories exhibited a decreasing trend as the age increased. This indicates that speakers as young as three years old could separate these five Mandarin vowels in the acoustic space but they were still refining the acoustic properties of their vowel production as they matured. Although the tested vowels were monophthongs, they were still characterized by distinctive formant movement patterns. Mandarin children generally demonstrated formant movement patterns comparable to those of adult speakers. However, children still showed positional variation and differed from adults in the magnitudes of spectral change for certain vowels. This indicates that vowel development is a long-term process which extends beyond three years of age.

Standard German vowel productions by monolingual and trilingual speakers

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-156
Author(s):  
Heike E Schoormann ◽  
Wilbert Heeringa ◽  
Jörg Peters
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Spectral Features ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Vowel Production ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Vowel Systems ◽  
Bilingual Communities ◽  
The Individual

Aims and Objectives: Studies on vowel productions of speakers from bilingual communities report not only interactions between the first and second language, but also monolingual-like realizations. The present study expands a prior acoustic investigation of Saterland trilinguals by studying the substrate effect of Saterland Frisian and Low German on the trilinguals’ standard language Northern Standard German. The research aim is to test whether the Northern Standard German vowel productions of the Saterland trilinguals approach the productions of monolingual speakers in terms of durational and spectral features. Design: We elicited three repetitions per speaker of the complete inventory of stressed Northern Standard German monophthongs in /hVt/ context to compare the realizations of Northern Standard German vowels in trilingual speakers from Saterland and in monolingual speakers from Hanover, whose variety of Northern Standard German is representative of the larger speech community. Data and analysis: In an acoustic analysis, we compared the durational and spectral features using linear mixed effects models. The findings are interpreted with reference to the cross-linguistic vowel productions of the trilingual speakers. Findings: For the larger part, the Northern Standard German vowel productions of the trilinguals approach the productions of the monolingual speakers in terms of both durational and spectral features. In addition, the vowel productions of the trilingual speakers suggest a bidirectional interaction between the vowel systems of the trilinguals’ three languages. Originality: This investigation is the first to study phonetic interference in vowel production in a situation of long-term language contact involving regional trilingualism and an endangered minority language. Implications: Our findings show an orientation towards the larger speech community in the realization of vowel categories in the trilinguals’ standard language. Our study also suggests that the complete inventory needs to be studied to understand the functional constraints by which the multilingual vowel space is organized. It further suggests that a comparison of multilingual with monolingual speakers is necessary to draw conclusions on the mutual subphonemic influence of the individual vowel systems.

Distinctiveness and Assimilation in Vowel Perception in a Second Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (12) ◽  
pp. 4534-4543
Author(s):  
Wei Hu ◽  
Sha Tao ◽  
Mingshuang Li ◽  
Chang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Vowel Identification ◽  
Vowel Perception ◽  
Perceptual Distance ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Chinese Counterpart ◽  
Vowel Categories

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate how the distinctive establishment of 2nd language (L2) vowel categories (e.g., how distinctively an L2 vowel is established from nearby L2 vowels and from the native language counterpart in the 1st formant [F1] × 2nd formant [F2] vowel space) affected L2 vowel perception. Method Identification of 12 natural English monophthongs, and categorization and rating of synthetic English vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ in the F1 × F2 space were measured for Chinese-native (CN) and English-native (EN) listeners. CN listeners were also examined with categorization and rating of Chinese vowels in the F1 × F2 space. Results As expected, EN listeners significantly outperformed CN listeners in English vowel identification. Whereas EN listeners showed distinctive establishment of 2 English vowels, CN listeners had multiple patterns of L2 vowel establishment: both, 1, or neither established. Moreover, CN listeners' English vowel perception was significantly related to the perceptual distance between the English vowel and its Chinese counterpart, and the perceptual distance between the adjacent English vowels. Conclusions L2 vowel perception relied on listeners' capacity to distinctively establish L2 vowel categories that were distant from the nearby L2 vowels.

Effects of Long-Term Tracheostomy on Spectral Characteristics of Vowel Production

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 1057-1065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Saletsky Kamen ◽  
Ben C. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Tract ◽  
Spectral Characteristics ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Vowel Production ◽  
Formant Frequency ◽  
Motor Patterns ◽  
Spectral Parameters ◽  
Oral Motor ◽  
Vowel Space

This study investigated the effects of long-term tracheostomy on the development of speech. Eight children who underwent tracheotomy during the prelingual period were compared to matched controls on selected spectral parameters of the speech acoustic signal and standard measures of oral-motor, phonologic, and articulatory proficiency. Analysis of formant frequency values revealed significant between-group differences. Children with histories of long-term tracheostomy showed reduced acoustic vowel space, as defined by group formant frequency values. This suggests that these children were limited in their ability to produce extreme vocal tract configurations for vowels /a,i,u/ postdecannulation. Oral motor patterns were less mature, and sound substitutions were not only more variable for this group, but also reflected a persistent overlay of maladaptive compensations developed during cannulation.

Vowel production in Swedish children with cochlear implants

2006 ◽  
Vol 120 (5) ◽  
pp. 3349-3349
Author(s):  
Tina Ibertsson ◽  
Birgitta Sahlen ◽  
Anders Lofqvist
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Vowel Production

Covariation of Cochlear Implant Users' Perception and Production of Vowel Contrasts and Their Identification by Listeners With Normal Hearing

2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 1257-1267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennell C. Vick ◽  
Harlan Lane ◽  
Joseph S. Perkell ◽  
Melanie L. Matthies ◽  
John Gould ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Enhanced Production ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Masking Noise ◽  
Perceptual Contrast ◽  
Acoustic Space ◽  
Vowel Contrast ◽  
Phoneme Identification

This study investigates covariation of perception and production of vowel contrasts in speakers who use cochlear implants and identification of those contrasts by listeners with normal hearing. Formant measures were made of seven vowel pairs whose members are neighboring in acoustic space. The vowels were produced in carrier phrases by 8 postlingually deafened adults, before and after they received their cochlear implants (CI). Improvements in a speaker's production and perception of a given vowel contrast and normally hearing listeners' identification of that contrast in masking noise tended to occur together. Specifically, speakers who produced vowel pairs with reduced contrast in the pre-CI condition (measured by separation in the acoustic vowel space) and who showed improvement in their perception of these contrasts post-CI (measured with a phoneme identification test) were found to have enhanced production contrasts post-CI in many cases. These enhanced production contrasts were associated, in turn, with enhanced masked word recognition, as measured from responses of a group of 10 normally hearing listeners. The results support the view that restoring self-hearing allows a speaker to adjust articulatory routines to ensure sufficient perceptual contrast for listeners.

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