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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 article offers finer-grained acoustic analyses of two aspects of the linguistic sound system of Japanese English (JpE): monophthongal vowels and rhythmic patterning. At the segmental level, th...

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 article investigates temporal characteristics of Scouse dialect speech, or Liverpool English, which is spread in the county of Merseyside in the North West of England. Scouse originated in the 19th century when a large number of Irish immigrants, as well as a fair number of Welshmen, settled in this region of England. Scouse is characterized by the accentuation of speech, a wide range of tonal rises and falls and rising intonation in declarative sentences. In southern Liverpool, the dialect is softer and more lyrical. This difference is most significant in the pronunciation of vowels. The prominent vocal feature of the Scouse dialect is the absence of a diphthong [ɛə] and its replacement by a long monophthong [ɛ:]. The aim of the study is to determine the prosodic temporal features of the speech of the residents of Liverpool, taking into account their gender and age. The material of the study is audio recordings of spontaneous speech of 16 Liverpool residents. The total duration of audio recordings is 43 minutes. The study has been conducted taking into account gender and age factors. The interviewees have been divided into 2 gender and 2 age groups, namely: "20 – 40 years" and "over 40 years". The instrumental analysis has made it possible to determine such temporal parameters as speech rate and articulation rate, pausation coefficient and average duration of pauses, as well as the distribution of different types of pauses in the Scouse speech. It has been suggested that the temporal markers of Liverpool English are an increase in the articulation rate of female speech compared to male one, greater pause saturation of female speech in the age group "20 – 40 years" and male speech in the group "over 40 years", the prevalence of short pauses, pauses of medium duration and long pauses.

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.

The orthography of Östergötland’s 11th century runic inscriptions varies widely, in part due to the lack of spelling norms at the time. This thesis seeks to identify other causes for the observed variation, based on the frequency and distribution of aspects of inscription orthography. The Old Norse words ræisa and stæin in the phrase “raised the stone” were analyzed based on the main vowel and its status as a monograph or digraph. The presence or absence of þ in inflected ræisa was also included as an indicator of age. All runic inscriptions in Östergötland with definite key word orthography were included, 169 in total. The analysis reveals that most inscriptions are clustered in three regions, each with a dominant vowel. By region, these are ei (west), i (central) and ai (east), with vowel consistency between ræisa and stæin the norm. The consonant þ in inflected ræisa is most common in the west and east. The vowel orthography together with the distribution of þ implies a relative chronology for Östergötland’s runic inscriptions, where the ongoing monophthongization is reflected in digraphs and monographs. The detailed orthography distribution of these variables shows that the main clusters align with the known 11th century quarries at Borghamn (west) and Vreta (central). Stoneworking at a shared site resulted in a transfer of knowledge, including runestone design and orthography which became a local norm as it spread. The lack of a unifying quarry in eastern Östergötland resulted in a more diverse local orthography, and possibly hampered the building of the first stone churches during the early 12th century. Östergötlands runinskrifter från 1000-talet varierar stort i sin ortografi, delvis på grund av bristen på stavningsnormer när de ristades. Uppsatsen eftersträvar att identifiera andra orsaker för denna variation, baserat på frekvensen och distributionen av vissa aspekter i inskrifternas ortografi. De fornnordiska orden ræisa och stæin i inskriftsfrasen “reste sten” analyserades baserat på huvudvokalen samt om den var en monograf eller digraf. Användning av þ i böjda former av ræisa inkluderades som ett tecken på inskriftens ålder. Samtliga runinskrifter i Östergötland med en säker nyckelordsortografi analyserades, totalt 169 stycken. Resultaten visar att de flesta inskrifterna är grupperade i tre regioner som har varsin dominant vokal. Vanligast i väster är ei, i den centrala regionen råder i och i öster råder ai, med normen att samma vokal används i både ræisa och stæin. Konsonanten þ i böjd ræisa är vanligast i väster och i öster. Vokalortografin tillsammans med þ-distributionen indikerar en relativ kronologi för Östergötlands runinskrifter, där vokalernas monoftongering under 1000-talet återspeglas i digrafer och monografer. De analyserade variablernas distribution visar att huvudgrupperingarna sammanfaller med de kända stenbrotten från 1000-talet vid Borghamn (i väster) och Vreta (centrala regionen). Att stenarbetet skedde vid en gemensam site ledde till en omedveten kunskapsöverlämning mellan ristare. Inskriftsortografi kopierades och blev lokala normer allt efter att den spreds. Bristen på ett större stenbrott som informell, gemensam arbetsplats i östra Östergötland ledde till en mer varierad lokalortografi. Detta kan ha hindrat stenkyrkobygget lokalt under tidigt 1100-tal.

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.

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.

This article is concerned with the question of why, when immediately preceding primary stress, orthographic o is as a rule phonetically realized not only as the diphthongs / əʊ /, / oʊ / but also as the qualitatively reduced short monophthong / ə /. For example, l/ əʊˈ /cation ∼ l/ əˈ /cation. It is argued that the instability of alphabetic o in this position is mainly due to 1) its frequent occurrences in intertonic position (e.g., ˌcomp o ˈnential), in which it is surrounded by two stressed syllables; 2) derivation from forms in which stress occurs upon the short monophthongs / ɒ /, / ɑ / (e.g., Roberta ← Robert + -a); 3) a relatively small number of formations such as co-sponsor or pro-choice, in which alphabetic o belongs to a semantically transparent prefix; and 4) frequent use of the single letter o (to orthographically represent alphabetic o) rather than a combination of letters such as, e.g., ow. Additionally, this paper argues that the American English diphthong / oʊˈ / is in general more stable than the British English diphthong / əʊˈ / because American English is in general a more conservative variety, which to a larger extent than British English respects the etymological history of a word.

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.

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.

This study discovers the formants of Punjabi speakers living in western Punjab, Pakistan, and their relative position in a trapezium while articulating English cited words. English is a lingua franca while Punjabi is one of the local languages of India and Pakistan spoken in upper western Punjab, a province of Pakistan, and Eastern Punjab, a part of India. The F1 and F2 (Formant 1 & Formant 2) determine the position of a monophthong (vowel) in a trapezium. Data were collected from twenty (20) Male participants from Lahore and Faisalabad, two major cities of Pakistan, and were asked to articulate one hundred and twenty English cited words carrying all English monophthongs. The data was analyzed by measuring the Formant values (F1 and F2) of every single word articulated by twenty (20) Punjabi Male speakers. The Values in Hertz were changed into Bark Scale and the Euclidian method was used to measure the distance of monophthongs articulated by Male participants living in Lahore and Faisalabad to determine the difference between two dialects of Punjabi language. Both the groups were also compared through a co-relative t-test. The results showed that the t value is 0.58, df=11, and P>0.955 which is much higher than 0.05, so it can be concluded that these two cities' speakers utter the English cited words in the same way.

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.

В данной статье исследуются особенности гласных звуков, анализируются первичные a, â, ā, i, ī, ie, iē, u, ū, uo, uō и вторичные гласные ä, e, ē, ü, ǖ, ö (uö), (uöö), o, ō, oa чеченского и ингушского языков. Рассматривается система гласных фонем (производные, непроизводные) чеченского и ингушского языков. Дана характеристика простых (монофтонгов) и сложных (дифтонгов), долгих и кратких гласных. Более того, в статье уделяется внимание вопросу наличия дифтонга оа в плоскостном диалекте чеченского языка в связи с тем, что языковеды (А.Г. Магомедов, Ю.Д. Дешериев) отрицают наличие дифтонга оа в чеченском языке. В чеченском языке система вокализма представляется таким образом: первичные a, â, ā, i, ī, ie, iē, u, ū, uo, uō. Эти гласные фонемы характерны для ингушского языка и всех диалектов чеченского языка, исключая пхарчхойский говор аккинского диалекта, где можно наблюдать процесс монофтонгизации дифтонгов ie (→e), iē (→ē), uo (→u), uō (→ū)., The article examines features of vowel sounds, analyzes the primary a, â, a, â, ā, i, ī, ie, iē, u, ū, uo, uō and secondary vowels ä, e, ē, ü, ǖ, ö (uö), ( uöö), o, ō, oa of the Chechen and Ingush languages. The system of vowel phonemes (derivatives, non-derivatives) of the Chechen and Ingush languages is considered. The characteristics of simple (monophthongs) and complex (diphthongs), long and short vowels are given. Moreover, the article pays attention to the issue of the presence of the diphthong oa in the flat dialect of the Chechen language, due to the fact that linguists (A.G. Magomedov, Yu.D. Desheriev) deny the presence of the diphthong oa in the Chechen language. According to our observations, in the Chechen language, the system of vocalism is represented as follows: primary a, â, â, i, σ, ie, iē, u, ü, uo, uō. These vowel phonemes are characteristic of the Ingush language and all the dialects of the Chechen language, except the Pkharchkhoy variety of the Akkinsky dialect, where one can observe the process of monophthongization among the diphthongs ie (→e), iē (→ē), uo (→u), uō (→ū).

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.

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.

With reference to the acoustic data of seven first-level vowels in Mandarin Chinese, this paper examines the vowel characteristics of the 16 dialects in Cangzhou, Hebei, and summarizes the local and overall characteristics of the Monophthongs in the Cangzhou dialect based on a large amount of acoustic data. Through comparative analysis of the distribution of Monophthongs of various dialects in Cangzhou and their differences and similarities with Mandarin, we hope to enrich the dialect phonetic database and provide a reference basis for data support for the promotion of Mandarin Chinese.

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)

This study examines the pronunciation of announcers, who are articulatory experts, with the aim of pragmatically resolving the argument over the Korean monophthongal system, which has variously been proposed to consist of seven to ten vowels. If monophthongs are not observed to occur in the standard pronunciation of announcers, then what has traditionally been viewed as ‘standard pronunciation’ is nothing but a pronunciation system of the past that has disappeared. As for the pattern of articulation of /ㅚ/, /ㅟ/, it was found that no announcers articulated both of these vowels as monophthongs. Though there were two announcers who articulated /ㅚ/ as a monophthong, and two other announcers who articulated /ㅟ/ as a monophthong, there were not any announcers who articulated both vowels as monophthongs. These results reflect the difficulty of maintaining the argument for the monophthongal status of these vowels any longer. As for /ㅔ/, /ㅐ/, a process of confluence was conspicuously observed in the speech of announcers as indicated in previous studies. The difference appeared clearly only for announcers in their 50s or older who pronounced the vowels after concentrating on monophthongs in isolation. It was difficult to observe the difference clearly when announcers in their 50s spoke full words, or when announcers in their 40s or younger spoke. As for /ㅗ/, /ㅜ/, a phonetic characteristic was discovered that the tendency contrasted by the height of the tongue changed into a contrast in the backness of the tongue. Compared to the loss of auditory perceptive discrimination of /ㅔ/, /ㅐ/ due to their confluence, there was a shift in the position of articulation for /ㅗ/, /ㅜ/, but in that it maintains auditory perceptive discrimination, it can be predicted that the discriminative characteristics of /ㅗ/, /ㅜ/ may change the backness of the tongue in a phonetic manner.

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 formation of pronunciation abilities of the English back monophthong /u:/ is of great significance especially in case of linguistic transfer of the characteristics of the mother tongue into the English language. The audio-pronunciation habit is an inseparable part for developing the professional competence of the student. The subject-matter of the present investigation concerns the use of different methods for making distinctions and similiarities between the English monophthong /u:/ and the Romanian /u/. Communication in English is in need of pronunciation competence at a high level on the part of speakers.

Starting from “fuzziness” as a character of pronunciation, this paper proposes the possibility of referencing between different phonetic symbols, and explores the general standards and specific standards of reference. Using the logical quantification tool MMTD, with the qualitative and quantitative analysis, the true value of the reference of the Chinese vowels to the English monophthong is displayed and calculated, and the reference system of the “Chinese Character Reference Frame of English Monophthong” is established. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of the phonetic learning method of “Learning English phonetic with Chinese Character pronunciation”, aiming to provide a path for the development of the phonetic learning concept of learning a foreign phonetic with native language phonetic” and the establishment of other language phonetic pronunciation reference frame.

The clear and intelligible pronunciation is one of the keys of ef!icient communication in English. The phonetico-phonological analysis of the elements of the English language guarantees the process of teaching and learning it. The use of the English back monophthong /ᴧ/ is of great importance for the glotodidactical aspect for delimiting its common and distinctive features with the Romanian /ɑ/. The investigation of this problem from the acoustic and articulatory points of view has been done to avoid making mistakes in the articulation and pronunciation of these two monophthongs, English /ᴧ/ and Romanian /ɑ/

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.