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Diphthong has been reported as the character of old Acehnese, which is now eroded in some words of modern Acehnese. However, some dialects, such as Daya and Pidie, still retain certain diphthongs in certain Acehnese words. Samatiga dialect is one of the dialects in Aceh Barat. People in Aceh Barat has commonly marked this dialect as producing certain vowel as diphthong similar to those in Teunom and Daya. Thus, the current study aims to explore the diphthongization of certain monophthong in Acehnese words by the people in Samatiga. Specifically, it aims to learn the monophthongs often diphthongized in this dialect, the position in which the diphthong occurs, and the movement trajectory of the diphthong. Two language consultants are consulted to explore their diphthongization, and two other Acehnes are discussed to determine their diphthongization. Their production is recorded using a high-quality recorder and analyzed in Praat to obtains its formants data. The findings indicate that not all monophthongs are produced as diphthongs in Samatiga dialect. Samatiga dialect replaces vowel /ɛ/and /ɔ/ with diphthong /ai/ and /au/. The diphthong /au/ seems to be unique to Samatiga dialect since previous studies did not mention Acehnese diphthong ending in /u/. The diphthongization only occurs when it comes in the word final and open syllable. The diphthong /au/trajectory movement is greater than /ai/, indicating the former, not the initial may experience transformation into monophthong like other major dialects in Aceh.

This research considers the pronunciation of the Standard Dutch vowel /œy/ in the Achterhoek region, where it is typically realised as a monophthong. Previous studies (eg. Kloeke, 1927; Van Reenen, 2005; 2006; Gerritsen and Jansen, 1979) have shown a variable use of [y] and [u] in this area of the Netherlands. However, this research follows on from previous studies by considering the links between rural and non-rural pronunciation, as well as a geographical split between the north and south of the region. During the summer of 2015, 34 Achterhoeks speakers (aged from 26-73) from different towns in the region were recorded completing a picture task and reading sentences designed to elicit marked dialectal pronunciations. F1 and F2 formant frequencies were analysed in Praat (Boersma and Weenink, 2014) and a formant editor developed by Soskuthy (2014), and then compared in order to arrive at the results. These were then compared with the findings from a 1979 corpus designed by Leendert van Prooije. A system of classifying Dutch vowels into lexical sets (cf. Wells, 1982) was developed in order to more concisely discuss pronunciation differences; under this system, the vowels in question would fall under what has been termed the HUIS vowel. The first result is that variations in the position of the vowel following some rhotics were observed in the speakers. Grouped into age, gender, and location, and measured through normalised formant frequencies, it was found that the more retracted vowel [u] was observed in rural speakers, whereas the fronted vowel [y] was seen in speakers from non-rural areas. Where the vowel appeared in any position other than following the rhotic consonant, it was realised as [y], without any observable differences between speakers. However, further analysis of the FAND II corpus revealed that this effect was not always consistent. In the case of the HUIS vowel, it would appear there is variation based on the status of participants’ locations. The vowel [y] in this area of the Netherlands resulted in a shift from the older [u] of West Germanic dialects (Kloeke, 1927; Van Reenen, 2006), so here the [u] pronunciation after /r/ could be considered a relic of the older dialect of the area. This result was then considered alongside the possibility of a /ru/ isogloss involving more locations within the area of the Achterhoek. Using data from the FAND II database, it was found that there was some evidence for the existence of such an isogloss as a possible alternative explanation. This study therefore presents the conclusion that, based on the HUIS vowel, the style of speakers residing in the north-eastern part of the Achterhoek is likely to be more representative of the traditional dialect. Further exploration of this conclusion could be set up in other aspects of speech, and thus we can consider the implications for the future of the dialect in the southern and western areas.

The relative contributions of static and dynamic formant representations to speaker-specificity were investigated in conversational speech and in two vowels varyingin inherent spectral change. Using polynomial fits, the contribution of dynamicformant coefficients to speaker-specificity relative to that of the formant interceptwas investigated in the diphthongal vowel [ei] taken from English and Dutch conversationalspeech. The [ei] tokens were sampled from various linguistic contextsand analysed in an LR approach. Results show that formant dynamics containspeaker-specific information in conversational speech even though the high contextualvariation seems to reduce its effect relative to that reported by earlier work.Vowels differ in inherent dynamicity and therefore, the added value of dynamicformant information to speaker-specificity was also compared between vowels differingin inherent spectral change. Using Dutch data, the contribution of formantdynamics to speaker-specificity was compared between [ei] and [aː] tokens producedby the same speakers. Formant dynamics in conversational speech only contributedto speaker-specificity in the diphthong [ei], not in the monophthong [aː].

The article examines concepts related to the evolution of *о > і, analyzes scholars’ views on the reasons of differences between reflexes of *о in Ukrainian dialects, and describes the stages of *о transformation in the northern and the southern areas of the Ukrainian sprachraum. Attention is given to the nature of diphthong appearance according to two major theories – by Y. Sheveliov and by V. Moisiyenko. The author describes current reflexes of *о in newly closed stressed syllables, as documented in her own field records obtained in 120 towns and villages of Volyn Polissia. She establishes that typical for the Volyn-Polissia dialects sounds [и], [і] are simultaneously spread across all the area under research, while the monophthong [у] – only in its eastern parts. Alongside other reflexes, *о is sometimes (quite sporadically) preserved. While recording samples, the author has not come across diphthongs appertaining to *о, but recorded structures that are usually interpreted as the result of diphthongs breaking up: the consonant [в] + vowel, and the sound [е] < *о. The article includes a map.

Purpose Depicting the development pattern of vowel perception for children with normal hearing (NH) and cochlear implants (CIs) would be useful for clinicians and school teachers to monitor children's auditory rehabilitation. The study was to investigate the development of Mandarin Chinese vowel perception for Mandarin Chinese native–speaking children with the ages of 4–6 years. Method Vowel identification of children with NH and CIs were tested. All children with CIs received CIs before the age of 4 years. In a picture identification task with Mandarin Chinese speech stimuli, listeners identified the target consonant–vowel word among two to four contrastive words that differed only in vowels. Each target word represented a concrete object and was spoken by a young female native Mandarin Chinese talker. The target words included 16 monophthongs, 22 diphthongs, and nine triphthongs. Results Children with NH showed significantly better identification of monophthongs and diphthongs than children with CIs at the age of 6 years, whereas the two groups had comparable performance at age of 4 and 5 years. Children with NH significantly outperformed children with CIs for triphthong identification across all three age groups. For children with NH, a rapid development of perception of all three types of vowels occurred between age 4 and 5 years with a rapid development only for monophthong perception between age 5 and 6 years. For children with CIs, a rapid development of both diphthong and triphthong perception occurred between 4 and 5 years old, but not monophthong, with no significant development between 5 and 6 years old for all three types of vowels. Overall, Mandarin-speaking children with NH achieved their ceiling performance in vowel perception before or at the age of 6 years, whereas children with CIs may need more time to reach the typical level of their peers with NH. Conclusions The development of Mandarin vowel perception for Mandarin-native children differed between preschool-age children with NH and CIs, likely due to the deficits of spectral processing for children with CIs. The results would be a supplement to the development of speech recognition in Mandarin-native children with NH and CIs.

Summary Aims The primary aim of this study was to provide normative formant frequency (F) values for male and female speakers of Australian English. The secondary aim was to examine the effects of speaker sex, age, vowel quality, and geographical location on F. Method The first three monophthong formant frequencies (F1, F2, and F3) for 244 female and 135 male speakers aged 18–60 years from a recent large-scale corpus of Australian English were analysed on a passage reading task. Results Mixed effects linear regression models suggested that speaker sex, speaker age, and vowel quality significantly predicted F1, F2, and F3 (P = 0.000). Effect sizes suggested that speaker sex and vowel quality contributed most to the variations in F1, F2, and F3 whereas speaker age and geographical location contributed a smaller amount. Conclusion Both clinicians and researchers are provided with normative F data for 18–60 year-old speakers of Australian English. Such data have increased internal and external validity relative to previous literature. F normative data for speakers of Australian English should be considered with reference to speaker sex and vowel but it may not be practically necessary to adjust for speaker age and geographical location.

This paper addresses Labov’s principles of vowel chain shifting in Toronto and Hong Kong Cantonese based on sociolinguistic interviews from the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Project. The analysis is based on normalized F1 and F2 values of 33,179 vowel tokens from 11 monophthongs produced by 32 speakers (8 from Hong Kong, 24 from Toronto). In Toronto, results show retraction of [y] by generation but fronting of [i] by age. In Hong Kong, age is a significant predictor for the lowering of [ɪ], [ʊ], [ɔ], and for the fronting of [ɔ] and [i]. Overall, there is more vowel shifting in Hong Kong than in Toronto and the shifting is consistent with Labov’s Principles.

This paper examines the development of the Old Irish diphthongs */ai/, */oi/, */ui/ in later varieties of the Gaelic languages. These are generally accepted to have merged as a single phoneme by the end of the Old Irish period (c. 900). In all modern varieties the regular reflex of this phoneme is a long monophthong, represented orthographically as . There are three main developments: (a) in southern Irish has merged with /eː/ and/or /iː/; (b) in southern Scottish and Manx varieties remains a mid-central vowel, may be fairly fronted and may perhaps have weak rounding; and there is merger between /əː/ representing and reflexes of earlier */aɣ/; (c) in northern Scottish and northern Irish varieties is realized as a high back unrounded vowel /ɯː/, which is contrastive with mid back unrounded /ɤː/ representing earlier */aɣ/ (these may merge with /iː/ and /eː/ in Ulster). Building on suggestions of earlier scholars, it is argued that it is the developments of */əː/ are explained by its anomalous position in the phonological system of earlier varieties of Gaelic, and its interactions with the palatalization contrast of the consonant system.

Jamee language is one of the languages spoken in Aceh Province, in the super-diverse country, Indonesia. Previous studies have noted inconsistencies in the number of oral monophthong vowels produced by the Jamee speakers. Accordingly, this research aims to investigate the qualities of the oral monophthong vowels of the Jamee language that are still spoken today. Ten female speakers were chosen as the informants to provide data for this research. They were recorded to produce words that contained the target vowels. The recordings were then transferred to Praat software in spectrograms, and measurements on the midpoint of each vowel for their F1 and F2 in Hertz were conducted. In Excel, the measurements were converted in the Bark scale, and the average values of each vowel were plotted on an F1-F2 chart. The results further showed that there are currently seven monophthong vowels in this language, they are /i/, /e/, /ɛ/, /a/, /o/, /u/ and /ↄ/. This acoustic study has calculated the approximate measurements for the vowels based on their F1 and F2 from the spectrograms in Praat. The qualities of these vowels are /i/ with F1 = 463 Hz and F2 = 2484 Hz, /e/ with F1 = 550 Hz and F2 = 2493 Hz, /ɛ/ with F1 = 641 Hz and F2 = 2412 Hz, /o/ with F1 = 535 Hz and F2 = 1434 Hz, /ↄ/ with F1 = 713 Hz and F2 = 1312 Hz, /u/ with F1 = 489 Hz and F2 = 1165 Hz, and finally /a/with F1 = 887 Hz and F2 = 1898 Hz. The findings of this research are seen as pivotal in the field of phonology as it assists linguists in documenting and preserving a minority language in Aceh Province, Indonesia.

Speakers self-correct vowels with deviant formants: tokens whose onsets are farther from the average midpoint move toward that average, while nearer tokens move randomly (Niziolek et al., 2013). The method used to establish this finding typically groups tokens based on onset formants relative to midpoint formants, and the midpoint is taken as the target. But vowel inherent spectral change research has shown that vowels are best modeled as contours rather than midpoints. The present study asks whether speakers self-correct toward trajectories rather than static midpoints. Sixty-eight speakers provided 20 tokens of each stressed non-rhotic monophthong in English in [hVd] (heed, hid, etc.). Formants were sampled at 3% and 50% of vowel duration, and each speaker’s average formant position was calculated at both samples. Sample-matched Euclidean distances were calculated — each 3% token to the 3% average, each 50% token to the 50% average — rather than comparing to the midpoint sample in both cases. Tokens were grouped based on onset distance. Far tokens showed a larger decrease in distance by the midpoint than Near tokens, and regression to the mean was ruled out as the reason. This study suggests that speakers use dynamic spectral information for online self-correction.

This study addresses unsupervised subword modeling, i.e., learning acoustic feature representations that can distinguish between subword units of a language. We propose a two-stage learning framework that combines self-supervised learning and cross-lingual knowledge transfer. The framework consists of autoregressive predictive coding (APC) as the front-end and a cross-lingual deep neural network (DNN) as the back-end. Experiments on the ABX subword discriminability task conducted with the Libri-light and ZeroSpeech 2017 databases showed that our approach is competitive or superior to state-of-the-art studies. Comprehensive and systematic analyses at the phoneme- and articulatory feature (AF)-level showed that our approach was better at capturing diphthong than monophthong vowel information, while also differences in the amount of information captured for different types of consonants were observed. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between the effectiveness of the back-end in capturing a phoneme's information and the quality of the cross-lingual phone labels assigned to the phoneme. The AF-level analysis together with t-SNE visualization results showed that the proposed approach is better than MFCC and APC features in capturing manner and place of articulation information, vowel height, and backness information. Taken together, the analyses showed that the two stages in our approach are both effective in capturing phoneme and AF information. Nevertheless, monophthong vowel information is less well captured than consonant information, which suggests that future research should focus on improving capturing monophthong vowel information., Comment: 18 pages (including 1 page as supplementary material), 13 figures. Accepted for publication in IEEE Open Journal of Signal Processing (OJ-SP)

Фонетические процессы в системе гласных звуков в современном чеченском языке стали предметом внимания языковедов уже давно, тем не менее, не все эти процессы исследованы с исчерпывающей полнотой, а некоторые из них изучены в недостаточной степени или не привлекали к себе особого внимания. Поэтому данная тема остается до сих пор актуальной. В статье рассматриваются вопросы дистрибуции гласных (первичных a, â, ā, i, ī, ie, iē, u, ū, uo, uō и вторичных ä, e, ē, ü, ǖ, ö (uö), (uöö), o, ō, oa) фонем в чеченском языке. От фонетической дистрибуции зависит и то, какие фонетические процессы оказываются закономерными для данного языка. В этом смысле система и обусловленные фонетические изменения гласных в чеченском языке зависят в первую очередь от структуры производных слов и производящих основ. Характер и результат данных изменений напрямую связаны со структурой производных слов и производящих основ, а также от типа слога (открытый или закрытый), в котором находится тот или иной гласный первого слога. В ряде диалектов чеченского языка и в ингушском языке различаются долгая фонема ā, полудолгая фонема â и краткая фонема а. Для характера и результата регрессивно-дистанционной ассимиляции важно, какую позицию в структуре слова может занимать гласный V 1-го: положение открытого слога или закрытого., The article deals with the distribution of vowel phonemes (primary a, â, ā, i, ī, ie, iē, u, ū, uo, uō and secondary ä, e, ē, ü, ǖ, ö (uö), (uöö), o, ō, oa) in the chechen language. The phonetic distribution also determines which phonetic processes are natural for a given language. In this sense, the system and the resulting phonetic changes of vowels in the Chechen language depend primarily on the structure of derived words and generative stems. The nature and result of these changes are directly related to the structure of derived words and generating stems, as well as to the type of syllable (open or closed) in which one or another vowel of the first syllable is located. In a number of dialects of the Chechen language and in the Ingush language there are long phonemes, a semi-long phoneme and a brief phoneme a. For the character and result of regressive-remote assimilation, it is important what position in the structure of the word can occupy the vowel V1: the position of an open syllable or closed one.

This study investigated the acoustic features of vowel production in Mandarin-speaking patients with post-stroke dysarthria (PSD). The subjects included 31 native Mandarin-speaking patients with PSD (age: 25–83 years old) and 38 neurologically normal adults in a similar age range (age: 21–76 years old). Each subject was recorded producing a list of Mandarin monosyllables that included six monophthong vowels (i.e., /a, i, u, ɤ, y, o/) embedded in the /CV/ context. The patients’ speech samples were evaluated by two native Mandarin speakers. The evaluation scores were then used to classify all patients into two levels of severity: mild or moderate-to-severe. Formants (F1 and F2) were extracted from each vowel token. Results showed that all vowel categories in the patients with PSD were produced with more variability than in the healthy speakers. Great overlaps between vowel categories and reduced vowel space were observed in the patients. The magnitude of the vowel dispersion and overlap between vowel categories increased as a function of the severity of the disorder. The deviations of the vowel acoustic features in the patients in comparison to the healthy speakers may provide guidance for clinical rehabilitation to improve the speech intelligibility of patients with PSD.

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: (...) Članek obravnava fonetično lastnost kvalitete samoglasnikov v angleščini pri rojenih govorcih ameriške standardne angleščine in tujih govorcih ameriške angleščine srbskega porekla, ki živijo v Združenih državah Amerike. V ločenih poskusih smo posneli deset moških govorcev srbščine in štiri moške govorce ameriške angleščine.Posnetke smo akustično analizirali in ugotavljali signifikantne fonetične razlike v naboru devetih angleških enozložnih besed, ki so vsebovale devet samoglasnikov ameriške angleščine. Glavni cilj poskusa je bil ovrednotiti fonetične značilnosti ameriških samoglasnikov s posebnim poudarkom na vrednostih F1 in F2. Ugotavljali smo, kateri samoglasniki se najbolj razlikujejo pri govorcih obeh skupin, ter poskušali ugotoviti razloge za te razlike. Edina in najbolj pomembna ugotovitev, ki izhaja iz te študije samoglasnikov, je zlitje treh samoglasniških parov v govoru tujih govorcev ameriške angleščine: (...)

This paper aims to analyze the phonological phenomena that occurred on the acquisition of a Korean monophthong system of Myanmar learners. It is mainly examined in terms of the internal representation of vowels within the theoretical framework of the Element Theory. When Korean monophthong input is given, Myanmar learners reanalyze and adjust it based on the internal representation existing in the Myanmar vowel system, or on that of the target Korean. And this is pronounced by output. Positive and negative transitions appear in this process. The commonality of the internal structures of /i, a, u, o, e/ explains the positive transfer of those vowels by Myanmar speakers of Korean. On the other hand, substitution errors of [e] for /e/, [?] for /o/, and [u] for /i/ by negative transfer are found in Myanmar learners` pronunciation derived from adapting internal representation of Myanmar vowel to Korean. (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

Apparent time analysis has revealed that the Tyneside face vowel is the site of two intersecting trends: levelling towards the supra-northern monophthong as well as the gradual incursion of the southern standard closing diphthong. This article investigates the participation of individual speakers across their life-span in these ongoing changes in the face vowel. We report on a small-scale panel sample of six speakers who were recorded in 1971 and again, 42 years later, in 2013. The analysis probes the stability of individual speakers’ grammars, relying on longitudinal ethnographic analysis in the community as well as insights gleaned from sociolinguistic interviews about the speakers’ socio-demographic trajectory and their presentations of self. The article contributes to the growing body of panel research that aims to determine the scope and the limits of linguistic malleability across speakers’ life histories.

The aim of the present study was finding acoustic characteristics of the Latvian diphthongs irrespective of the speaker’s gender. The method designed by the author allowed to compare diphthongs of different duration, thus revealing common tendencies both in the formant structures and in the diphthong paths on the vowel plane. A comparison of the diphthong paths with the location of the long monophthongs on psychophysical F2′ vs. F1 plane showed that the paths begin in the vicinity of the corresponding monophthong but end with an undershoot, i.e., not completely reaching the target frequencies. Dynamics of the formant trajectories of the Latvian diphthongs produced in the zero context in most cases display a two-phase pattern with a relatively short steady state of the first component (the longest in [ie] and [uo]: about 1/3 of the total duration) and a long transitionary phase with no steady state of the second component. The duration of the Latvian diphthongs (W) is between that of the short (V) and the long (Vː) monophthongs. The durational ratio of the short monophthongs to the diphthongs and the long monophthongs is V : W : Vː = 1 : 1.5 : 2.

The paper discusses phonological competences of students of the first and fourth year of the Department of English Language and Literature at Faculty of Philosophy in Kosovska Mitrovica. Students ability to identify relevant elements of the English vowel system (namely, monophthongs) is tested through qualitative and quantitative oppositions of monophtongs [ɪ]-[iː], [e]-[ae], [ʌ]-[ɑː], [ɒ]-[ɔː], and [ʊ]-[uː], with the aim to determine how the two-year period of studies affected the overall competence of students of the final year. The research comprised thirty respondents, who were divided into two groups. Each group consisted of ten female and five male subjects. Upon completion of the research, we started to analyze the obtained results, which were further discussed from the perspectives of the respondents, separate groups, and in the context of phonetic/phonological theories from literature.

The present study aimed to identify certain acoustic parameters for speech evaluation in cerebral palsy children with dysarthria.The subject included 30 native Mandarin-Speaking children with cerebral palsy, who were 5-15 years old, and 13 healthy children in a similar age range. Each subject was recorded while producing a list of 12 Mandarin words, which included three syllables ('ba', 'bi' and 'du'), in all four Mandarin tones. The formants (F1 and F2) of monophthong vowels /a, i, u/ were extracted from each vowel token. Based on F1 and F2, the vowel acoustic indexes VSA, VAI and FCR were calculated and analyzed.Compared with the control group, the cerebral palsy group had significantly low F1 and F2 in vowel /a/ (P 0.05), and F2 in vowel /i/ (P 0.05), while F1 and F2 in vowel /u/ and F1 in vowel /i/ had no significant difference. Between the healthy group and cerebral palsy group, the differences in VSA, VAI and FCR were all statistically significant.Children with cerebral palsy have reduced vowel space and speech articulation. The significant difference in vowel acoustic indexes (VSA, VAI and FCR) among the two groups revealed that the three indexes were sensitive to the variation of the vowels production in children with cerebral palsy, and that these may be used as an evaluation method of speech intelligibility caused by impaired vowel pronunciation in children with cerebral palsy, and the effect of rehabilitation therapy.

Filipino and Indonesian belong to the Austronesian language family and this explains why they exhibit many linguistic similarities and numerous cognates. This study aims to further compare the two languages and establish their connection through phonology. The researchers use the cognates to compare the Filipino and Indonesian monophthong vowels. Qualitative method is utilized. The result shows that Filipino and Indonesian have a very similar vowel system with the exception of Indonesian having /ə/ phoneme. It was also found out that most of the changes in monophthongs between the two languages appear in medial position. Moreover, most changes are from the mid back rounded vowel /o/ in Filipino to high back rounded vowel /u/ in Indonesian. Lastly, the changes in the unrounded vowels in Filipino usually appear in the initial and medial position whereas in the rounded vowels in Filipino, changes only appear in either the medial or final position.

This article analyses the speech of Cheryl Fernandez-Versini (nee Tweedy, formerly Cole), henceforth “Cheryl” , who experienced rapid geographical and socioeconomic mobility between 2002 and 2014. In 2002, Cheryl was a working-class 19-year-old from Newcastle Upon Tyne, north-east England. Since then, she has risen to fame on the talent show Popstars: The Rivals , in the girl band Girls Aloud , through her marriage to footballer Ashley Cole, and through her work as a judge on The X Factor , among other things. This paper seeks to analyse the effect this has had on her accent. Four recordings between 2002 and the present day are analysed to discuss changes to her original Tyneside English (TE) accent, specifically through the changing phonetics of the FACE and the GOAT vowels. These changes are discussed in terms of both the TE speech community and Cheryl’s personal experiences. The two vowels have traditional diphthongs in TE which are different from the diphthongs in Received Pronunciation (RP). However, these vowels have been found to be undergoing dialect levelling, with many TE speakers producing them as the monophthongs found in the rest of the North (Watt 2000, 2002). The paper therefore investigates whether Cheryl follows the pattern of other TE speakers or moves towards RP. The recordings used are taken from online videos of interviews. The first time point studied is 2002, when Cheryl first rose to fame through Popstars: The Rivals , in which her GOAT and FACE vowels are shown to be the Northern monophthongs which have resulted from dialect levelling in TE. The intermediate time points studied are 2006 and 2011. In 2006, Cheryl was engaged to Ashley Cole and had been living and working in the south of England for 4 years. Both vowels move closer to RP in position but remain monophthongal. The 2011 recording is an interview in the US, during Cheryl’s brief career on American X Factor. The data for this time point are particularly interesting as the position of the vowels varies more, and the average position of both vowels does not fit the pattern of change, indicating style-shifting. The 2014 recording was the most recent interview of substantial length which could be found at the time of data collection. The analysis shows that Cheryl’s GOAT vowel is significantly closer to RP than it was in 2002, despite remaining a monophthong, while her FACE vowel appears to have become a diphthong as in RP. The results show that Cheryl does undergo lifespan change in these two vowels, being closer to RP at the time of writing than in 2002. However, the two intermediate time points studied show that these vowels do not change in parallel, as predicted by Watt (2000). The intermediate time points, in particular the 2011 data, give support to the conclusions of Rickford and Price (2013) and Bowie (2009) that in order to fully understand data on lifespan change, intermediate time points and factors other than age must be taken into account.

This study examined acoustic variation of vowels within speakers across speech tasks. The overarching goal of the study was to understand within-speaker variation as one index of the range of normal speech motor behavior for American English vowels. Ten male speakers of American English performed four speech tasks including citation form sentence reading with a clear-speech style (clear-speech), citation form sentence reading (citation), passage reading (reading), and conversational speech (conversation). Eight monophthong vowels in a variety of consonant contexts were studied. Clear-speech was operationally defined as the reference point for describing variation. Acoustic measures associated with the conventions of vowel targets were obtained and examined. These included temporal midpoint formant frequencies for the first three formants (F1, F2, and F3) and the derived Euclidean distances in the F1-F2 and F2-F3 planes. Results indicated that reduction toward the center of the F1-F2 and F2-F3 planes increased in magnitude across the tasks in the order of clear-speech, citation, reading, and conversation. The cross-task variation was comparable for all speakers despite fine-grained individual differences. The characteristics of systematic within-speaker acoustic variation across tasks have potential implications for the understanding of the mechanisms of speech motor control and motor speech disorders.

The Long Terawan Berawan system of vowel phonemes consists of one monophthong in the antepenult, schwa, and four monophthongs in the penult, i, ə, a , and u . However, the final syllable exhibits ten monophthongs ( i, ĭ, e, ĕ, a, a, u, ŭ, o, ŏ) and six diphthongs ( əi, ǝu, ai, ai, au, au ). The paper describes how the Long Terawan vowel phoneme system emerged from a Proto-Western Malayo-Polynesian system of four monophthongs (*i, *ə, *a, *u).

This paper presents findings of an acoustic investigation of monophthong vowels produced by learners of English from Yunnan, China. Speech data for the present study were collected from 15 participants comprising five Han Chinese English majors, five Han Chinese non-English majors and five Yi minority ethnic English majors. The findings show that the three groups share more differences than similarities in terms of vowel duration but not in terms of vowel quality though the results of Euclidean distance show that the Han Chinese English majors and the Han Chinese non-English majors are different from the Yi minority ethnic English majors. Results of standard deviation reveal that the Yi minority ethnic English majors have the lowest inter-speaker variability, followed by the Han Chinese English majors and the Han Chinese non-English majors.

Speech recognition is getting popularity day by day, as it plays a remarkable role in the field of human–computer communication (HCC). Due to the inclusion of speech recognition feature in the latest operating systems, its importance has been increased many folds. Although a lot of work has been conducted in English, the other languages have not yet been completely explored as far as speech research is concerned. In the present paper, a major language of northeast India, the Bodo language, has been studied in terms of monophthong sounds present in it, using formant frequency based on LPC. The study reveals a number of facts which will be helpful in the speech and speaker recognition.

Doktorska disertacija „Fonetsko-fonološka percepcija i produkcija engleskih monoftonga na tercijarnom nivou” bazirana je na dva istraživanja-istraživanju percepcije i istraživanju produkcije engleskih monoftonga kod studenata prve i četvrte godine na Filozofskom fakultetu u Kosovskoj Mitrovici. Test percepcije sastojao se od fonemske identifikacije u izolovanim rečima izgovorenim od strane izvornih govornika, dok je zadatak na testu produkcije bio izgovor obrasca rečenice sa 24 lekseme koje su ispitanici naizmenično čitali. U istraživanju je učestvovalo ukupno 30 ispitanika, tj. po 15 ispitanika sa prve i završne godine studija. Obe grupe od 15 studenata sastojale su se od po 10 ženskih i 5 muških ispitanika, tako da je analiza i uporedno ispitivanje rađeno i na nivou pola studenata. Sačinjeni audio snimci analizirani su u programu za akustičku analizu govora, a dobijeni rezultati upoređivani sa podacima iz literature i podacima izvornih govornika. Cilj istraživanja bio je utvrđivanje tačnosti percepcije monoftonga engleskog jezika i kvalitativnih i kvantitativnih distinkcija među njima kod ispitanika, odnosno upoređivanje sličnosti i razlika percepcije i produkcije kod studenata početne i studenata završne godine studija. Dobijeni rezultati istraživanja ukazuju uglavnom na zajedničke osobine obe grupe studenata. Najpre, kod obe grupe ispitanika postoji prilično visok stepen jezičke kompetencije, koji se sa većom ili manjom uspešnošću ispoljio na testovima percepcije i produkcije. Na testu percepcije je tako procenat uspešne fonemske identifikacije bio prilično visok, dok je ispitivanje rezultata testa produkcije pokazalo određene slabosti studenata u artikulaciji pojedinih monoftonga. Podaci dobijeni na oba testa bolji su u onim elementima vokalskog sistema koje ispitanici nemaju u maternjem jeziku i gde je nivo interferencije samim tim niži. Rezultati istraživanja ukazuju i na zajedničku težnju svih studenata, a to je zanemarivanje kvalitativnih spram kvantitativnih karakteristika vokala. Monoftonzi kod kojih je dužina trajanja izraženija procentualno su davali bolje rezultate na testovima. Na kraju, možemo zaključiti da među studentima ne postoji jasno izdefinisan fonološki razvoj tokom godina studija, već da se pre svega može govoriti o pojavama karakterističnim za obe grupe ispitanika. The disertation "Phonetic/phonological perception and production of English monophthongs at tertiary level" is based on two research: study of perception and study of production of English monophthongs in freshmen and senior students at Faculty of Philosophy in Kosovska Mitrovica. Perception test consisted of phonemic identification in isolated words uttered by native speakers, while the task in the test of production was pronunciation of a pattern (carrier) sentence with 24 different lexemes which subjects interchangeably read. The research comprised a total of of 30 participants divided into two groups of 15 participants -15 freshmen, and 15 seniors. Both groups of 15 students included 10 female and 5 male participants. Thus, the analysis and study of comparative testing was also carried out at the level of sex of the students. The audio recordings made were analyzed in the program for acoustic analysis of speech, and the results further compared to data from literature and data of native speakers. The aim of this study was to determine the accuracy of perception and production of English monophthongs and qualitative and quantitative distinctions among them, ie. to compare the similarities and differences of perception and production between the two groups of students. The study results mainly pointed to the common characteristics of both groups of students. First, both groups showed a fairly high level of language competence, which was, with more or less success, manifested on tests of perception and production. Thus, the percentage of successful phonemic identification in the test of perception was quite high, while the test results of the production test showed some weaknesses in the students’ articulation of certain monophthongs. The data obtained in both tests proved to be better in the elements of the vowel system that participants do not have in their mother tongue and where the level of interference is low. The research results also indicate the common tendency of all students to neglect qualitative towards quantitative characteristics of vowels. Monophtongs in which the duration was more pronounced gave better results in the tests. In the end, we can conclude that there is no clearly defined phonological progress among the students during the years of study, but it is mainly to speak of phenomena typical for both groups.

In this paper, I address the problem of including diphthong vowels into a Dispersion Theory (Flemming 2004) framework. First, I review the main aspects of Dispersion Theory in Flemming (2004), which gives an analysis of vowel inventories using a perception-based account of contrast, but noticeably omits diphthongs, which–while different from monophthongs–are highly productive, contrastive members of vowel inventories. Next, in order to correctly represent and incorporate diphthongs, I discuss acoustic properties of diphthongs and their presence in vowel inventories cross-linguistically. Diphthongs are compared to the monophthong inventory using production data to assess their relative positions in the vowel space. The English vowel production data should reflect the language-specific constraint ranking of *Effort with the maximum contrast and minimum distance constraints as predicted in Flemming's theory. To derive diphthongs, Flemming (2004)’s constraints as well as additional constraints from Minkova & Stockwell (2003) are used to account for the distance between the two offset targets. An additional constraint is proposed to account for the strong preference in the English production data to centralize the onset targets. Derivations for individual diphthong productions compared to possible surrounding candidates are provided in the analysis.

The aim of the present study was to analyzed vowel and diphthong formant variation of a female patient diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for 12 months using acoustic analysis. Monophthongs /a, i, u/ and diphthongs /h+ja+da/, /h+wi+da/, /h+ɰi+da/ were used for test. As the result of analysis, fundamental frequency and loudness declined with the progress of ALS characterized by decrease in the gradient of diphthong formant rather than change in monophthong formant. This result implies that vowel distortion of ALS with the progress is caused by decrease in coordination between tongue and chin.

This paper provides a detailed phonetic, synchronic description of the oral vowels of Upper Tanana, an Athabascan language spoken in eastern interior Alaska and the western Yukon Territory. Upper Tanana has, depending on the dialect, six or seven oral monophthongs that can be modified for (low) tone, nasalization, and length. Previous accounts are auditory. They disagree regarding the articulation of two of the vowels (which we represent as /ɘ/ and /ʌ/), and raise the question of whether ‘length’ indicates a quantity or a quality distinction. In contrast to earlier accounts, we provide acoustic measurements of F1, F2, and the duration of the vowels of two Alaskan dialects of Upper Tanana: Northway and Tetlin. We find that the phonetic realization of one of the vowels is quite different from the earlier auditory descriptions. For the other vowels and for the quantity distinction, our findings support earlier descriptions while supplying new details. Several co-articulation effects, previously undescribed, are also identified.

This study investigates the structure of the mid and low vowel systems of bilingual speakers of Korean and English, and considers how some current theories of phonetics learning would model their bilingual vowel system. Nine native speakers of Seoul Korean, nine native speakers of American English, and seven early bilingual speakers of Korean and English participated in this study. The native speakers of Korean also served as late learners of English. Five monophthong mid and low vowels of Korean and English were read in carrier phrases, and their F1 and F2 frequency values were measured. The early bilinguals exhibited native-like F1 and F2 values for most of the Korean and English vowel categories. Also, the Korean vowels [e] and [?], and English vowels [?] and [?] were realized as merged forms in their speech, just as in that of the native speakers of each language. On the other hand, the late learners did not achieve native-like values for most of the English vowel categories. The vowel space size of the late learners" English was larger than that of the native speakers of English and similar to that of their Korean. These results demonstrate that the age of learning effect can be modeled in terms of the Speech Learning Model (e.g., Flege 1995) and Exemplar-based Model (e.g., Foulkes & Docherty 2006), both of which emphasize the role of linguistic experience in phonetics learning. Finally, there were no clear indications of a reorganization of the phonemes of the two languages within a unified bilingual phonetic system.

Numerous quantitative and qualitative studies have already been published related to English vowels. However, only minimal amounts of studies based on the acoustic analysis of Korean vowels have been accomplished. The purpose of this study is to obtain sufficient quantitative data based on the acoustic aspects of Korean vowels produced by males between the ages of 20s and 30s. A total of 31 males in their 20s and 30s produced the five fundamental vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ by repeating each of them three times in the standard Korean dialect. Such speech productions were recorded with `Cool edit` and F1, F2, F3, F4 were extracted through the MATLAB acoustic analysis program. Results indicated that the overall patterns of formants were similar to previous studies, except that the formant levels of F1 and F2 of the vowels produced in this study were generally lower than that in previous studies. Future studies need to focus on obtaining vowel data by considering other factors such as age and other speech materials.

Early works on Singapore and Malaysian English used to consider them as a single homogeneous entity based on their shared history as previous British colonies. However, since 1965, both Malaysia and Singapore have been independent from each other. It is interesting to investigate, some four decades post-independence, how different the English speech patterns of Malaysians and Singaporeans have become taking into account the different language planning policies undertaken by both countries. This paper compares one particular aspect of pronunciation, i.e. the vowel qualities and durations of both varieties. The formants of the vowels of the read speech of five male and five female speakers of Malaysian English (MalE) are compared to an equivalent sample of speakers of Singapore English (SgE) in order to compare the vowel qualities between the two varieties. In particular, we compare the vowel quadrilateral space of MalE in comparison with SgE. Vowel durations are also measured for vowels produced in citation forms only. It is found that SgE speakers did maintain some distinctions between the long/short vowel pairs in terms of duration while the MalE speakers tended to conflate the long/short vowel pairs durationally.

The aim of this study was to examine how earlier second language teaching affects Finnish school children’s pronunciation of British English vowels. Two groups of Finnish children between the ages of eleven and thirteen were tested. The early learners studied in an English immersion class in a Finnish elementary school while the control group attended a regular Finnish speaking class at the same school. The task consisted of twenty three English stimulus words which included the twelve monophthong English target vowels in voiced and voiceless environments. The words were repeated seven times during the task. The participants produced the words after a native model and the target vowel qualities were then acoustically analysed. Statistical analysis revealed a group main effect. More specifically the analysis showed that the groups differed significantly in the way they produced target vowel second formant (F2) values. The F2 difference was only significant in the voiced context. Closer examination of the groups’ vowel qualities revealed that the control group tended to produce the F2 values higher than the early learner group in most of the target vowels. The higher F2 values can be an indication of more frontal tongue position or less lip rounding during vowel production.

We explore two aspects of English spoken by native speakers of Thai: rhythm and the vowel system, and compare each to the substrate language Thai, to target varieties of English, and to two New Englishes in Asia. Data was collected from a group of Thai speakers who participated in an interview in English, and who read a Thai paragraph, and English words, sentences and a paragraph. For rhythm, we measured the “Pairwise Variability Index” (nPVI, Grabe and Low 2002) and the proportion of time in an utterance devoted to vowels (%V, Ramus, Nespor and Mehler 1999) of Thai read speech, and English spontaneous and read speech. We find that the English of Thai speakers had stress-timed values of high nPVI, like Thai and British English (BrE), and low %V, like BrE but not Thai. Neither measure of rhythm resembled New Englishes’ more syllable-timed lower nPVI and high %V. The vowel system of Thai English revealed transfers of both quality and quantity from the substrate, resulting in a system distinct from British, American, and New Englishes.

The paper discusses the geographical distribution of the monophthongisation of (1) the diphthong [ei] ( i:c]) and (2) the diphthong [ou] ( u:x] in words like high an bough. The resulting monophthongs became the input to the diphthongisation rule, a part of the Great Vowel Shift. On the basis of forty-nine Middle English poetic texts from the Chadwyck-Healey online corpus un effort is made here to establish temporal and dialectal conditioning of the change. 1. Preliminaries The present writer's recent article (Welna 2004) on a similar topic which discussed the question of long vowel raising in loanwords like OF frere > frire (> friar) or in native words like OE (A) brer > brier (> MoE briar) contained a conclusion that in certain environments, especially before the liquid [r], the process was initiated us early as the end of the 13th century and its effects were visible in the following century, thus a long time before the late 15th century, a period generally believed to have generated the basic impulse of the long vowel raising and diphthongisation, labelled as the Great Vowel Shift. Recently a hypothesis has been launched that the two Early Middle English long low vowel raisings, [ae: > [??]:], as in OE sae 'sea', and [a: > [??]:], us in OE stan 'stone', can also be considered harbingers of the Great Vowel Shift (Lutz 2004). In what follows attention is focussed on a completely different set of changes which increased the number of input forms to the 15th century diphthongisation of long vowels. In Middle English, the raising of the long front close vowel [e:] to [i:] operated in the two main contexts: (a) before representing the palatalised voiced velar fricative which later became the semivowel [j], as in e.g. dezen 'die', eze 'eye', fleze 'fly', leze 'lie', teze 'tie' v., etc. and (b) before representing the palatalised voiceless fricative [c], as in e.g. heh 'high', neh 'nigh', peh 'thigh', and also sheh 'shy', sleh 'sly', slehp 'sleight', the last three poorly evidenced in the Middle English texts. A parallel process affected the long close back vowel [o:] which, when followed by the velar fricative [x], was raised to [u:] in items like bozh 'bough', clozh 'clough', ynozh 'enough', plozh 'plough', slozh 'slough', tozh 'tough'. The subsequently narrowed [e:] and [o:] created the input [i:] and [u:] respectively to the diphthongisation rule which ultimately produced the contemporary output diphthongs [ai] and [au]. Since the changes before [j] and the velar fricatives, palatalised or not, went along different paths the present brief contribution examines the temporal and regional circumstances of the raising only in the context before the fricatives [c] (long [e:]) and [x] (long [o:]) in the two of the above sets of words, with particular attention paid to spelling variation reflecting the changes. 2. Traditional grammars on e- and o-diphthongisation/raising before In his account of the change, Jordan ([1925] 1974: 120) postulates that some time in Middle English "there developed a glide sound /i/ after /e:/, so that /e:i/ > /ei/ originated; heih, heigh /heic/ 'high', neigh 'nigh' ... sleigh 'sly' ...". The diphthongal forms, first recorded, according to him, in the Ancrene Riwle, were rare in other 13th century texts. "This ei only later, probably in the second half of the 14th cent., was simplified to i, so that now high, nigh, sligh arose." According to Jordan's (1974: 132) quasi-sociolinguistic hypothesis, the monophthongised forms "first arose in vulgar language, while ouh, eih were the conservative more aristocratic pronunciations." Simultaneously, forms like heegh 'high' found north of the Humber seem to show that the monophthong [e:] remained unchanged in that region (Brunner 1963: 23). …

This paper presents a novel framework of speaker identification based on Chinese vowel mapping theory. The base of this framework is the mapping from Chinese multi-phthong to monophthong phonemes. According to the contrast of spectrum, features, monophthong phoneme glide statistical distribution and the performance of vowel classification, we confirmed that Chinese vowels could be decomposed into several monophthong phonemes based on the short time characteristics. Then we developed a new mapping table from multi-phthong to monophthong phoneme to assist the latter research of a great deal of experiment and theory analysis. The novel framework added a special model to implement the decomposition and organized several monophthong classifiers to replace the traditional classification module, which can avoid the disturbance of semantic information and achieve higher performance. In this new framework, it adopts short time frame as the basic identify unit, which makes it more compatible to real time system. The sufficient theory analysis and experimental results showed that the presented model and algorithms based on novel framework have achieved higher accuracy, speed and enhanced the robustness in different conditions compared with many traditional methods. Especially, we succeed in separating personal identification information from semantic information based on classifying the Chinese vowel, which will be a new way to transform the text-independent system into text-dependent speaker recognition system.

The present study quantified the amount of accent in English vowels produced by native adult Turkish speakers. Vowels that are present in both Turkish and English (close vowels) were compared with those that are present only in English (distant vowels). The first two formant frequencies (F1 and F2) were obtained from the 11 English monophthong vowels (/i, i, e, ε, æ, Λ, u, [Formula: see text], o, [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]/) produced by 20 Turkish-accented English (TE) (10 males and 10 females) bilinguals and 20 native American English (AE) speakers. Euclidean distance (ED) was used to measure the separation between the corresponding TE and AE vowels. Perceptual experiment was also carried out to assess the amount of accent in the English produced by Turkish speakers as perceived by native monolingual English speakers. F1 and F2 values revealed that TE speakers generally were able to produce close and distant vowels comparably, with considerable amount of deviation from AE speakers. ED values for close and distant vowels were not significantly different. The amount of perceived accent indicated the precision of vowel production and was found to directly correlate with the acoustic findings.

There is a wide range of segment simplification patterns across African English accents, which depend on the phonological context. This paper examines, in turn, the patterns of simplification in the nucleus, in the onset, in the coda and in intervocalic clusters. Simplification in the nucleus involves the monophthongisation of diphthongs and of triphthongs, as well as the disyllabification of triphthongs; the monophthongisation of diphthongs either results in the retention of the first element of the diphthong or in the substitution of an altogether different monophthong; the simplification of triphthongs through monophthongisation consists in the retention of the first element of the sequence, but the general trend is disyllabification through the gliding of the medial element into [j] or [w]. The two patterns of simplification in the onset are the dropping of the initial consonant in some English-based pidgins and creoles and vowel insertion. Simplification in the coda sometimes involves the dropping of one of the consonants, which may be the first, second, or third; there is also a high prevalence in east and southern African Englishes of /?/ and /i/ insertion. /?/ and /i/ insertion is also the pattern of simplification of intervocalic clusters, similarly more common in east and southern African Englishes. The complex range of simplification patterns often follow neat phonological rules a comprehensive picture of which this paper tries to capture.

English teaching has been carried out in every region of China. However, the teaching of English phonetics in minority regions faces the problems of poor teaching quality and low intelligibility of phonetic production. Under the framework of Speech Learning Model (SLM), the current research adopts the experimental phonetic approach to select 10 Lhasa students (5 male and 5 female) from the Corpus of Chinese, English, Tibetan by Tibetan Speakers (CETTS) and examine the characteristics of the vowel space of their English in continuous speech, with a purpose to explore minority students' phonetic transfer of L1 and L2 on L3 vowel system. Euclidean distances between Tibetan speakers' English and Tibetan, and between Tibetan speakers' English and Chinese, reveal the degree of phonetic transfer of Tibetan (L1) and Chinese (L2) on English (L3). Results show that the nonstandard English vowel production by Lhasa speakers are more influenced by the similar vowels in L1 or L2. Due to equivalence classification, Lhasa students' English vowels /a:/, /i:/ and /i/ are more influenced by Tibetan similar vowels, and their English vowels /Ʊ/ and /u:/ are more influenced by Chinese similar vowels. In addition, Tibetan female speakers' /ɜ:/ is more influenced by the similar vowel in Chinese. The study has revealed that when Tibetan speakers learn L3, the interference seems to be partly from their L1 and partly from their L2. Therefore, in minority students' L3 vowel learning, both L1 and L2 have influence on their L3 vowel system.

This paper provides an acoustic description of the vowels of Brunei English (BrunE). Ten female BrunE speakers were recorded reading The North Wind and the Sun (NWS) passage. The formant values of the eleven monophthong vowels and the rate of change (ROC) of the diphthong /eI/ were measured and compared with the data of seven British English (BrE) speakers and also the results of similar studies on Singapore English (SgE). It was found that BrunE shares some common features with SgE as both groups do not distinguish between /i˜/ and /I/, /e/ and /æ/, and /f˜/ and /#/. The high back vowels of BrunE, however, are unlike the SgE vowels. Whereas in SgE /u˜/ and /~/ are fully back, in BrunE these two vowels are fronted, so they are similar to the vowels of the BrE speakers. The data also shows that BrunE /f˜/ is more open and less back than BrE /f˜/. For /eI/, the average ROC for Bruneian speakers is considerably less negative than that for British speakers, which indicates that in BrunE, just as in SgE, this vowel is less diphthongal than its counterpart in BrE.

We compare the vowel systems of Finnish, Mongolian (in China) and Udmurt, and illustrate the average placements of their monophthongal vowel types on F1/F2 plots. Mongolian has more vowel phonemes (12 long and 12 short ones) than Finnish (eight long and eight short) and Udmurt (seven). Some basic linguistic characteristics and key word lists of the three languages are presented. For comparison we utilise psychoacoustical F1/F2 formant charts which are fairly good approximations to the vowel space. The phoneme distances are indicated by means of circles of 1 Bark diameter centered on the mean F1/F2 points of the vowel types. This kind of representation allows one to draw conclusions about qualitative vicinity, partial overlapping or even merging of phoneme qualities on F1/F2 plots and about the necessity of further acoustic parameters for vowel differentiation. We also discuss some centralisation phenomena in the three languages.

The formants of the conversational vowels of five male and five female Singapore English (SgE) speakers are measured and compared with comparable measurements of British English (BrE) in order to gain a comprehensive view of the vowel space of Singaporean speakers and to determine which of the vowel distinctions of BrE are not maintained in SgE. It is found that the distinctions between /iː/ and /ɪ/ and also /e/ and /æ/ are not maintained in SgE, and any distinction between /ɔː/ and /ɒ/ is small. It is also found that SgE /uː/ is more back than BrE /uː/. It is further suggested that the fewer number of vowel contrasts in SgE does not contribute to much loss of intelligibility.

This study investigates the extent to which users of Black South African English (BSAE) command the vowel system of English. One mother-tongue speaker each of English, Southern Sotho and Zulu read a set of stimulus words representing various monophthong contrasts in standard South African English. Three groups of subjects participated as listeners in an experiment on English vowel perception. These include (1) 21 Southern Sotho speakers and 21 Zulu speakers, (2) 41 Arabic speakers, and (3) 20 Afrikaans speakers. The Arabic and Afrikaans speakers were used in the experiment for comparative purposes. Overall the results indicate a general lack of command of the vowel contrasts of Standard South African English by the speakers of Bantu languages. The same holds but to a lesser extent for the other two groups of listeners. Further analysis reveals that the Southern Sotho- and Zulu-speaking listeners process the long vowel/short vowel contrast differently from contrasts based on vowel quality differences. In the concluding section, the results are interpreted against the backdrop of current theories of second language acquisition. The evidence supports transfer-based explanations for phonological acquisition, since the vowels that the first language and target language of the speakers share are perceived more accurately than those that the languages do not share. In addition, the results are discussed in relation to the question whether BSAE is an interlanguage, or a fully-fledged new English. On the face of current evidence, it seems that the mesolectal form of BSAE could be viewed as an interlanguage rather than as a new English, but one that has as yet to develop into a more stable alternative to the standard variety of South African English.

This study investigated the acoustic features of vowel production in Mandarin-speaking patients with post-stroke spastic dysarthria. The subjects included 31 native Mandarin-speaking patients with post-stroke spastic dysarthria (age: 33–73 years old) and 40 normal adults in a similar age range (age: 22–68 years old). Each subject were recorded producing a list of 28 Mandarin monosyllables that composed of six monophthong vowels (i.e., /a, o, ɣ, i, u, y/) embedded in the /CV/ context. The patients’ speech samples were evaluated by two native Mandarin speakers. The evaluation scores were then used to classify each patient into one of the two categories: mild or moderate-to-severe severity. Midpoint F1 and F2 of each vowel token were extracted and normalized. Results showed no significant differences between the patients and normal speakers on vowel duration. However, the vowel categories in the patients were more scattered and greatly overlapped than in the normal speakers. The magnitude of the vowel disper...

This study compares the underlying perceptual structure of vowel perception in monolingual Chinese, monolingual English and bilingual Chinese-English listeners. Of particular interest is how listeners' spatial organization of vowels is affected either by their L1 or their experience with L2. Thirteen English vowels, /i, I, e, epsilon, ae, u, omega, o, (see symbol), alpha, (see symbol)I, alphaI, alphaomega/, embedded in /hVd/ syllable produced by an Ohio male speaker were presented in pairs to three groups of listeners. Each listener rated 312 vowel pairs on a nine-point dissimilarity scale. The responses from each group were analyzed using a multidimensional scaling program (ALSCAL). Results demonstrated that all three groups of listeners used high/low and front/back distinctions as the two most important dimensions to perceive English vowels. However, the vowels were distributed in clusters in the perceptual space of Chinese monolinguals, while they were appropriately separated and located in that of bilinguals and English monolinguals. Besides the two common perceptual dimensions, each group of listeners utilized a different third dimension to perceive these English vowels. English monolinguals used high-front offset. Bilinguals used a dimension mainly correlated to the distinction of monophthong/diphthong. Chinese monolinguals separated two high vowels, /i/ and /u/, from the rest of vowels in the third dimension. The difference between English monolinguals and Chinese monolinguals evidenced the effect of listeners' native language on the vowel perception. The difference between Chinese monolinguals and bilingual listeners as well as the approximation of bilingual listeners' perceptual space to that of English monolinguals demonstrated the effect of L2 experience on listeners' perception of L2 vowels.

The /o/ vowel in the English of Bradford is produced by many speakers as a monophthong with a clearly fronted or central quality. Description of such a pronunciation is, however, all but absent from the literature, suggesting that such pronunciations are a relatively recent development in Bradford speech. The acoustic characteristics of 337 tokens of /o/ are investigated, with a view to matching acoustic cues to the auditory impression of fronting. The findings are assessed with respect to similar fronting patterns in the vowel systems of varieties of English elsewhere in the UK and worldwide, and to the principles of sound change elucidated by Labov (1991, 1994). We conclude that “internal” factors alone are inadequate to explain the current tendency for varieties of English in northern England to feature /o/ fronting, and suggest that the appearance of this variant in Bradford English is the consequence of contact-induced spread.