scholarly journals Vowel Quantity and Quality in Neo-Punic and Latin Inscriptions from Africa and Sardinia

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-54
Author(s):  
Robert Samuel David Crellin ◽  
Lucia Tamponi
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Linguistic Development ◽  
Vowel Quantity

The article by Robert Crellin and Lucia Tamponi elucidates the vowel quality and quantity of Neo-Punic and Latin from North Africa and Sardinia. An important innovation presented in the article is the investigation not only of the representation of vowels in Neo-Punic by means of matres lectionis, but also of zero-representation and its relation to representation by matres lectionis. This sheds light on the degree of sensitivity of writers of Neo-Punic inscriptions to vowel length in Latin. The examination of the representation of vowel length and vowel quality further reveals that in both North Africa and Sardinia the distinction between /i, eː/ and /u, oː/ was retained despite the merger of these phonemes in Common Romance. The authors convincingly suggest that this is due to ties between North Africa and Sardinia. The article thus adds to our understanding of the linguistic development of both Romance and Punic in North Africa and Sardinia and to the relations between those two communities.

The Perception of Cantonese Vowel Length Contrast by Mandarin Speakers

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-659
Author(s):  
Jingxin Luo ◽  
Vivian Guo Li ◽  
Peggy Pik Ki Mok
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Speech Acquisition ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Phonological Knowledge ◽  
Mandarin Speakers

The study investigates the perception of vowel length contrasts in Cantonese by native Mandarin speakers with varying degrees of experience in Cantonese: naïve listeners (no exposure), inexperienced learners (~1 year), and experienced learners (~5 years). While vowel length contrasts do not exist in Mandarin, they are, to some extent, exploited in English, the second language (L2) of all the participants. Using an AXB discrimination task, we investigate how native and L2 phonological knowledge affects the acquisition of vowel length contrasts in a third language (L3). The results revealed that all participant groups could discriminate three contrastive vowel pairs (/aː/–/ɐ/, /ɛː/–/e/, /ɔː/–/o/), but their performance was influenced by the degree of Cantonese exposure, particularly for learners in the early stage of acquisition. In addition to vowel quality differences, durational differences were proposed to explain the perceptual patterns. Furthermore, L2 English perception of the participants was found to modulate the perception of L3 Cantonese vowel length contrasts. Our findings demonstrate the bi-directional interaction between languages acquired at different stages, and provide concrete data to evaluate some speech acquisition models.

scholarly journals Shared Vowels in English Loanwords in Arabic: Variation in Similarity-Based Adaptation

2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Vowel Sound ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Vowel Systems ◽  
Saudi Arabic ◽  
Vowel Height

This paper investigates vowel adaptation in English-based loanwords by a group of Saudi Arabic speakers, concentrating exclusively on shared vowels between the two languages. It examines 5 long vowels shared by the two vowel systems in terms of vowel quality and vowel duration in loanword productions by 22 participants and checks them against the properties of the same vowels in native words. To this end, the study performs an acoustic analysis of 660 tokens (loan and native vowel sounds) through Praat to measure the first two formants (F1: vowel height and F2: vowel advancement) of each vowel sound at two temporal points of time (T1: the vowel onset and T2: the peak of the vowel) as well as a durational analysis to examine vowel length. It reports that measurements of the first two formants of vowels in native words appear to be stable during the two temporal points while values of the same vowel sounds occurring in loanwords are fluctuating from T1 to T2 and that durational differences exist between loanword vowels in comparison with vowels of native words in such a way that vowels in native words are longer in duration than the same vowels appearing in loanwords.

scholarly journals Effects of Surprisal and Entropy on Vowel Duration in Japanese

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason A. Shaw ◽  
Shigeto Kawahara
Keyword(s):  
Shannon Entropy ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Short Vowels ◽  
Word Duration ◽  
Communicative Efficiency ◽  
Linguistic Units ◽  
Positive Effect

Research on English and other languages has shown that syllables and words that contain more information tend to be produced with longer duration. This research is evolving into a general thesis that speakers articulate linguistic units with more information more robustly. While this hypothesis seems plausible from the perspective of communicative efficiency, previous support for it has come mainly from English and some other Indo-European languages. Moreover, most previous studies focus on global effects, such as the interaction of word duration and sentential/semantic predictability. The current study is focused at the level of phonotactics, exploring the effects of local predictability on vowel duration in Japanese, using the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese. To examine gradient consonant-vowel phonotactics within a consonant–vowel-mora, consonant-conditioned Surprisal and Shannon Entropy were calculated, and their effects on vowel duration were examined, together with other linguistic factors that are known from previous research to affect vowel duration. Results show significant effects of both Surprisal and Entropy, as well as notable interactions with vowel length and vowel quality. The effect of Entropy is stronger on peripheral vowels than on central vowels. Surprisal has a stronger positive effect on short vowels than on long vowels. We interpret the main patterns and the interactions by conceptualizing Surprisal as an index of motor fluency and Entropy as an index of competition in vowel selection.

Vowels

2020 ◽  
pp. 100-144
Author(s):  
Warren Maguire
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Considerable Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Vowel Quantity

This chapter examines the vowels of MUE from a historical perspective. Following an overview of the vowel system of the dialect compared to those of the input and neighbouring varieties, it concentrates on three topics which give a detailed insight into the history of the dialect: vowel quality; vowel quantity; the lexical distribution of vowel phonemes. It finds that although the lexical distribution of vowel phonemes is mostly of English origin, their quality and, especially, quantity show considerable evidence of input from Scots.

Sociolinguistic problems of immigrants: foreign workers and their children in Germany (a review article)

1981 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol W. Pfaff
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Review Article ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Foreign Workers ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Linguistic Development ◽  
Mediterranean Countries ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Recent Immigration

This paper reviews the work on sociolinguistic aspects of the recent immigration of foreign workers and their families from Southern Europe and the Mediterranean countries of the Middle East and North Africa to West Germany. The continued presence of these foreigners presents almost laboratory conditions for the investigation of the initial and subsequent stages of contact-induced linguistic development in adults and children. The situation is particularly interesting here because many of the languages involved (Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese) are typologically different from each other and from German.

scholarly journals Ternary vowel length in Shilluk

Phonology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-125
Author(s):  
Bert Remijsen ◽  
Otto Gwado Ayoker ◽  
Signe Jørgensen
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
The Other ◽  
Supporting Evidence ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Mean Values ◽  
Acoustic Study ◽  
The Mean

Ternary or three-level vowel length is typologically rare, and supporting evidence is limited. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the hypothesised case of this configuration in Shilluk. We first describe the role of vowel length in Shilluk phonology and morphology, and then report on an acoustic study in which minimal sets for vowel length (short, long, overlong) are measured for vowel duration, coda duration, vowel quality and fundamental frequency. Short, long and overlong vowels differ significantly and substantially in terms of vowel duration: 96% of the items can be classified successfully for vowel length on the basis of this measurement alone. Of the other measurements, only vowel quality is significant, and this effect is considerably smaller. The mean values for vowel duration – 68, 111 and 150 ms for short, long and overlong vowels respectively – are similar to those reported for ternary vowel length in Dinka.

Acute accents as graphic markers of vowel quantity in two Late Old English manuscripts

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOMASZ MOKROWIECKI
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Quantitative Changes ◽  
English Manuscript ◽  
Vowel Quantity

The available standard accounts of Old and Middle English usually assert that scribes paid very little or no attention to vowel quantity. However, a great deal of what has been said so far about quantitative changes in Late Old and Early Middle English is based either on purely theoretical models, or on extremely questionable Modern English data. Surprisingly, except for a few more detailed studies on the peculiar orthography of The Ormulum, little has been done so far to analyse other orthographic systems from this perspective. Furthermore, as has already been shown in earlier studies, vowel quantity of Old and Middle English can be reconstructed to some extent on the basis of orthographic evidence from some manuscripts. Since use of the accent mark by some scribes is often associated with vowel length, the primary aim of the present study is to assess the reliability of the accent marks used in MSS Gg. 3.28 (Homilies of Ælfric) and William H. Scheide (The Blickling Homilies) as potential orthographic indicators of vowel quantity. The results of the analysis clearly show that the accent mark is one of those orthographic notations that can be extremely helpful in establishing vowel quantity in a Late Old English manuscript.

scholarly journals Syllable cut and energy contour in vowels: a comparative study on German and Hungarian

2005 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 197-217
Author(s):  
Katalin Mády ◽  
Krisztián Tronka ◽  
Uwe D. Reichel
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Strongly Connected ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Energy Contour ◽  
Vowel Quantity

Syllable cut is said to be a phonologically distinctive feature in some languages where the difference in vowel quantity is accompanied by a difference in vowel quality like in German. There have been several attempts to find the corresponding phonetic correlates for syllable cut, from which the energy measurements of vowels by Spiekermann (2000) proved appropriate for explaining the difference between long, i.e. smoothly, and short, i.e. abruptly cut, vowels: in smoothly cut vowels, a larger number of peaks was counted in the energy contour which were located further back than in abruptly cut segments, and the overall energy was more constant throughout the entire nucleus. On this basis, we intended to compare German as a syllable cut language and Hungarian where the feature was not expected to be relevant. However, the phonetic correlates of syllable cut found in this study do not entirely confirm Spiekermann's results. It seems that the energy features of vowels are more strongly connected to their duration than to their quality.  

scholarly journals The Phonological Analysis of Russian Accent in the Way Back Movie by Peter Weir

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-55
Author(s):  
Ahmad Zulfikar Adi Darma ◽  
Siti Nurani
Keyword(s):  
Research Method ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Software Analysis ◽  
International Language ◽  
Russian Speaker ◽  
The World ◽  
Vowel Quantity ◽  
The Way

Many speakers around the world have their own way in pronouncing English words as International language. The unique way in pronouncing English words is called accent. This research aims at analyzing the deviances on segmental vowel quality and quantity made by the Russian speaker in The Way Back movie by Peter Weir regarding to English short and long vowels in Russian accent. The research method was descriptive qualitative method. The research data was collected from converted audio of The Way Back Movie by Peter Weir. The data was then trimmed, selected and extracted by Praat software analysis. The results show that the Russian speaker makes deviances in pronouncing English vowel quality and vowel quantity. The total amount of deviances is 169 deviances which are divided into three classifications; those are segmental vowel quality, combinatorial quality and segmental vowel quantity deviances. The deviance that is mostly made by the Russian speaker is segmental vowel quality deviance, whereas the deviance that is rarely made by the Russian speaker is combinatorial vowel quality. 

Vowel Length And Vowel Quality In Khasi

1967 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 564-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugénie J. A. Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Vowel Length

One of the most striking phonetic characteristics of languages of the Austroasiatic family such as Mon, Khmer, and Vietnamese is the great variety of vowel qualities that appear to be kept apart by native speakers despite the fact that some of them differ from each other so slightly that it is hard for the foreign observer to believe that they can be functionally distinct in practice. Accompanying these minute quality distinctions there are frequently puzzling and seemingly non-systematic variations in the length of vowels and in their distribution.

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