Food for /θɔt/ or /θɑt/?

The English low back vowel merger, where words like caught and cot are pronounced identically, is a well-studied phenomenon. Generally, these studies focus on mergers within given regions, comparing vowels of non-mobile individuals. My research differs in exploring the effects of relocation. I examine pronunciation differences of vowels in differently gendered twins from England who moved to Canada as children. Despite growing up in similar environments, their vowel patterns differ: there is some evidence of merger in the female’s but not the male’s vowels. This suggests that mobility and exposure to a new dialect may affect pronunciation changes but are not the sole factors.

Back Vowel Dynamics and Distinctions in Southern American English

Southern American English is spoken in a large geographic region in the United States. Its characteristics include back-vowel fronting (e.g., in goose, foot, and goat), which has been ongoing since the mid-nineteenth century; meanwhile, the low back vowels (in lot and thought) have recently merged in some areas. We investigate these five vowels in the Digital Archive of Southern Speech, a legacy corpus of linguistic interviews with sixty-four speakers born 1886-1956. We extracted 89,367 vowel tokens and used generalized additive mixed-effects models to test for socially-driven changes to both their relative phonetic placements and the shapes of their formant trajectories. Our results reinforce previous descriptions of Southern vowels while contributing additional phonetic detail about their trajectories. Goose-fronting is a change in progress, with greatest fronting after coronal consonants. Goat is quite dynamic; it lowers and fronts in apparent time. Generally, women have more fronted realizations than men. Foot is largely monophthongal, and stable across time. Lot and thought are distinct and unmerged, occupying different regions of the vowel space. While their relative positions change across generations, all five vowels show a remarkable consistency in formant trajectory shapes across time. This study’s results reveal social and phonetic details about the back vowels of Southerners born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: goose-fronting was well underway, goat-fronting was beginning, but foot remained backed, and the low back vowels were unmerged.

Final – ww in the Late Egyptian Orthography: A Linguistic Assessment

Summary Various words in Late Egyptian texts present a final sequence –ww that is absent in earlier attestations and does not have any obvious etymological justification. No systematic discussion of these –ww, and not explanation for their use, has been offered so far. The present paper aims at filling this gap through a systematic reassessment of the phonological characteristics of a comprehensive corpus of words displaying this marker –ww. The results suggest that this marker is related in function with the so called spacefillers discussed in Kilani 2017; in particular it appears to be added at the end of words characterized by a stressed back vowel adjacent to a labial consonant w, b, p, f or m, and possibly ˓. Some considerations about the possible underlying linguistic reality and the rational for the use of this marker are added at the end of the article. One instance of the marker –ww in a magic spell of P. BM EA 9997 IV, and its possible role in clarifying a potentially ambiguous pronunciation of the associated verb, is discussed in a final Addendum. An appendix with the reconstruction of the vocalization for the words that survive in Coptic is provided here. A second appendix with the whole corpus is provided as online supplement.

A Study of the Vowel Context Effect on Initial Stops of Mandarin Produced by Native and Nonnative Speakers

This study, based on corpus materials, investigates the “voice onset time” (VOT) of Mandarin word-initial stops in isolated syllables according to the effect of vowel contexts produced by native and nonnative speakers. Here, 1250 monosyllables of word-initial plosives /p/, /t/, /k/, /p[Formula: see text]/, /t[Formula: see text]/, and /k[Formula: see text]/ were uttered in combination with the vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ in four tone contexts except /ki/ and /k[Formula: see text]i/ that are phonetically illegal in Mandarin by 20 participants (10 native Chinese speakers and 10 Urdu learners of Chinese). Results show that for native Chinese speakers, the VOTs of aspirated stops followed by the high vowels /i/ and /u/ are significantly longer than those followed by the low vowel /a/, and unaspirated stops followed only by the high back vowel /u/ are significantly longer than those followed by the low vowel /a/. For native Urdu speakers, the mean VOTs of word-initial stops in Mandarin monosyllables have no significant effect for both aspirated and unaspirated ones in combination with different vowels. Understanding the results of this study will be of assistance to second language learning and teaching.

Acoustic Characteristics of Pre- and Post-vocalic /l/: Patterns from One Southern White Vernacular English

This study examined acoustic characteristics of the phoneme /l/ produced by young female and male adult speakers of Southern White Vernacular English (SWVE) from Louisiana. F1, F2, and F2-F1 values extracted at the /l/ midpoint were analyzed by word position (pre- vs. post-vocalic) and vowel contexts (/i, ɪ/ vs. /ɔ, a/). Descriptive analysis showed that SWVE /l/ exhibited characteristics of the dark /l/ variant. The formant patterns of /l/, however, differed significantly by word position and vowel context, with pre-vocalic /l/ showing significantly higher F2-F1 values than post-vocalic /l/, and /l/ in the high front vowel context showing significantly higher F2-F1 values than those in the low back vowel context. Individual variation in the effects of word position and vowel contexts on /l/ pattern was also observed. Overall, the findings of the current study showed a gradient nature of SWVE /l/ variants whose F2-F1 patterns generally fell into the range of the dark /l/ variant, while varying by word position and vowel context.

Perception of Portuguese Mid Vowels by Heritage Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese

The main goal of this study is to investigate the perception of Portuguese mid-vowel contrasts (/ɛ/-/e/ and /ɔ/-/o/) by heritage speakers (HS s) of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) who grew up in the United States. This study shows, for instance, an asymmetry in categorization as a function of degree of language dominance for mid-back vowel contrast, but not for mid-front vowel contrast.

SISTEM FONOLOGI BAHASA LIMOLA/PHONOLOGY SYSTEM IN LIMOLA LANGUAGE

AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan mengonservasi sistem fonologi bahasa Limola. Data dikumpulkan melalui instrumen berisikan 200 kosakata swadesh dan 200 kosakata budaya. Kosakata tersebut berbahasa Indonesia dan diterjemahkan dalam bahasa Limola berdasarkan kebutuhan data. Analisis data dilakukan dengan mentranskripsikan data dalam bentuk fonetis. Setelah data ditranskripsikan, dilakukan pembuktian klasifikasi dan distribusi fonem. Selanjutnya menelaah penyukuan dan perubahan bunyi dalam bahasa Limola. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa bahasa Limola memiliki lima buah fonem vokal dasar dan tiga belas vokal variasi, sehingga secara keseluruhan terdapat delapan belas vokal yang berfungsi sebagai pembeda makna. Lima vokal dasar bahasa Limola adalah /i/, /e/, /a/, /u/, /o/ dan tiga belas vokal variasi atau alofon dari lima vokal dasar, yaitu adalah /i/ = [i:], [ii], [I]; /e/= [e:], [ɛ], {ɛ:]; /a/= [a:], [aa]; /o/= [o:], [oo], [ɔ]; dan /u/=[u:], [uu]. Uniknya, bahasa Limola selain memiliki diftong, seperti [ia], [ea], [ai], [oɛ], [ua] dan lainnya, juga memiliki diftong yang disebut sebagai diftong kembar atau identik yang terdapat pada bunyi vokal tertentu, yakni bunyi /ii/, /aa/, /oo/, dan /uu/. Keempat bunyi tersebut merupakan bunyi vokal depan /aa/ dan /ii/ dan vokal belakang /oo/ dan /uu/. Selanjutnya, fonem konsonan bahasa Limola terdiri atas tujuh belas konsonan dan ada enam fonem yang tidak ditemukan di dalam bahasa Limola, yaitu, /f/, /h/, /x/, /z/, /q/, dan /v/. Penyukuan bahasa Limola adalah V, VK, KV, KVK, KVV. Selanjutnya, perubahan bunyi bahasa Limola berdasarkan pada proses fonologis melalui asimilasi, diftongisasi, monoftongisasi, anaptiksis, protesis, epentesisi, paragoge, dan zeroisasi. Kata kunci: konservasi, fonologi, bahasa Limola AbstractThe research aims to conserve the phonology system of the Limola language. The data collected using an instrument containing 200 words of Swadesh and 200 words of culture. The words in the Indonesian language were translated into the Limola language based on the data needs. Data analysis was conducted by transcribing data in phonetic form. After the data transcribed, it was proving the classification and distribution of phonemes. Next, the researchers examined the syllable and sound changes that occurred in the Limola language. The results show that the Limola language has five basic vowel phonemes and thirteen vowels of variation, thus in total, eighteen Limola vowels function as distinctive meaning. The five basic vowels are /i/, /e/, /a/, /u/, /o/ and the thirteen vowels are /i/ = [i:], [ii], [I]; /e/= [e:], [ɛ], {ɛ:]; /a/= [a:], [aa]; /o/= [o:], [oo], [ɔ]; and /u/=[u:], [uu]. Apart from diphthongs such as [ia], [ea], [ai], [o], [ua], and others, the Limola language also has diphthongs known as twin or identical diphthongs, which are found in some vowels, i.e., [ii], [aa], [oo], and [uu]. The four sounds are the front vowel, namely [aa] and [ii], and the back vowel, namely [oo] and [uu]. Furthermore, the Limola consonant phoneme consists of seventeen consonants and there are six phonemes that are not found in the Limola language, namely, /f/, /h/, /x/, /z/, /q/, and /v/. The syllables of the Limola language are V, VK, KV, KVK, KVV. Then, the phonological process of assimilation, diphthongization, monophthongization, anaptyxis, prosthesis, epenthesis, paragoge, and zeroization is being used to demonstrate the sound changes throughout the Limola language. Keywords: conservation, phonology, the Limola language

On the Palatal Transcription of ш (ayb) in Armeno-Kipchak Texts: A Comparative Orthographic Study of Armeno-Kipchak and Modern Turkic Languages

Not having a unanimous transcription model for Armeno-Kipchak texts has left the exactness of certain Armenian graphemes obscure, one of which is ³ (ayb). This letter is consistently utilised for back low vowel in Armenian. Given this, in early studies ayb occurring aft er palatal syllables was considered non-harmonic, and thus left as is. Some scholars have doubted whether it might have indicated a palatal vowel, yet have kept rendering it as a back vowel. In this paper, I will try to shed light on the issue, by making an orthographic comparison between Armeno-Kipchak texts and those modern Turkic languages whose orthographies distinguish e vowels.

English Phonemic Awareness of Students with Visual Disabilities

Most of researches have reported the significance of English phonemic awareness to the success of learning English, but less discussions involving students with visual disabilities. Students with visual disabilities lacks of visual input and form a strong sensitivity to audio input, researches have reported that this condition affect their spelling ability, yet, their ability in recognizing English phonemes has been less explored especially in Indonesia. Thus, this research aims to describe the phonemic awareness of students with visual disabilities who learn English as Foreign Language. The participants of this research are students with visual disabilities whether active or passive braille user. 7 students with visual disabilities participated in an Online English Phonemic Awareness Test. Two independent raters rated the data independently. Interrater agreement was applied to ensure the objectivity of two independent interrater. The findings show that students with visual disabilities are aware of consonants Fricative alveolar, Plosive bilabial, and Plosive alveolar sounds but struggling with Fricative velar and Affricative velar sound, they are also aware of vowels Close mid front vowel, Close front long vowel sounds, Close mid back vowel and Open central vowel but struggling in identifying Open back vowel, Close mid central vowel, and Open mid back vowel. English phonemic awareness is a very important basic thing in language learning. However, it will be very challenging for ESL learners, especially those who learn are blind students because of certain obstacles that blind students have so that strategies are needed in language learning.