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There are three phonological hypotheses on the Kaytetye segmental inventory. Hypothesis 1 proposes 30 segments: four monophthongs, one diphthong and 25 consonants. Hypothesis 2 proposes 54 segments: two monophthongs and 52 consonants. Hypothesis 3 proposes 55 segments: three monophthongs and 52 consonants. The choice between these three hypotheses has significant implications for models of phonological contrast, phonotactic organization, syllable structure and partial reduplication processes in Kaytetye. We evaluate the three hypotheses against evidence from these domains and find that Hypothesis 1 is the best supported phonological analysis. Companion analysis of the phonetic distribution and functional load of medial Kaytetye monophthong tokens was conducted by phonetically-trained transcribers, and compared with groupings of vowels obtained through unsupervised classification of first and second formant values using finite Gaussian mixture models. Both transcriber-perceived and machine-learnt categorizations agree that none of the four monophthongs are marginal, nor can their qualities be attributed to phonological context effects. These data demonstrate the importance of both phonological and phonetic evidence in evaluating the structure and properties of vowel systems in under-described languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Trager & Bloch (1941), I argue that diphthongs in English are short vowels followed by a glide, that is, a consonant (Szigetvári 2016). In the present paper, I bring further evidence for this claim, based on the distribution of unstressed vowels in British English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the non-final posttonic vowel subsystem of Brazilian Portuguese, specifically it questions if the high-mid vowels /e, o/ have undergone neutralization in this position. Three accounts have been provided so far to answer this question. Câmara Jr. (1999) proposes that the nonfinal posttonic subsystem is composed of four vowels /i, e, a, u/; Bisol (2003) advocates for a three-vowel subsystem /i, a, u/, and Ribeiro (2007) defends a five-vowel subsystem /i, e, a, o, u/. In this paper, I show that mid-vowel alternation in nonfinal posttonic context is the key to defining what the vowel subsystem is, which must be composed of five vowels /i, e, a, o, u/; however, differently to what has been proposed by Ribeiro (2007) for whom mid-vowel alternation is a case of lexical diffusion, I show that a rule-based approach is more explanatory of the phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that the size of the second language (L2) vowel inventory relative to the native (L1) inventory may affect the discrimination and acquisition of L2 vowels. Models of non-native and L2 vowel perception stipulate that naïve listeners' non-native and L2 perceptual patterns may be predicted by the relationship in vowel inventory size between the L1 and the L2. Specifically, having a smaller L1 vowel inventory than the L2 impedes L2 vowel perception, while having a larger one often facilitates it. However, the Second Language Linguistic Perception (L2LP) model specifies that it is the L1-L2 acoustic relationships that predict non-native and L2 vowel perception, regardless of L1 vowel inventory. To test the effects of vowel inventory size vs. acoustic properties on non-native vowel perception, we compared XAB discrimination and categorization of five Dutch vowel contrasts between monolinguals whose L1 contains more (Australian English) or fewer (Peruvian Spanish) vowels than Dutch. No effect of language background was found, suggesting that L1 inventory size alone did not account for performance. Instead, participants in both language groups were more accurate in discriminating contrasts that were predicted to be perceptually easy based on L1-L2 acoustic relationships, and were less accurate for contrasts likewise predicted to be difficult. Further, cross-language discriminant analyses predicted listeners' categorization patterns which in turn predicted listeners' discrimination difficulty. Our results show that listeners with larger vowel inventories appear to activate multiple native categories as reflected in lower accuracy scores for some Dutch vowels, while listeners with a smaller vowel inventory seem to have higher accuracy scores for those same vowels. In line with the L2LP model, these findings demonstrate that L1-L2 acoustic relationships better predict non-native and L2 perceptual performance and that inventory size alone is not a good predictor for cross-language perceptual difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second language (L2) learners often struggle to distinguish sound contrasts that are not present in their native language (L1). Models of non-native and L2 sound perception claim that perceptual similarity between L1 and L2 sound contrasts correctly predicts discrimination by naïve listeners and L2 learners. The present study tested the explanatory power of vowel inventory size versus acoustic properties as predictors of discrimination accuracy when naïve Australian English (AusE) and Iberian Spanish (IS) listeners are presented with six Brazilian Portuguese (BP) vowel contrasts. Our results show that IS listeners outperformed AusE listeners, confirming that cross-linguistic acoustic properties, rather than cross-linguistic vowel inventory sizes, successfully predict non-native discrimination difficulty. Furthermore, acoustic distance between BP vowels and closest L1 vowels successfully predicted differential levels of difficulty among the six BP contrasts, with BP /e-i/ and /o-u/ being the most difficult for both listener groups. We discuss the importance of our findings for the adequacy of models of L2 speech perception.

This study tests the output constraints hypothesis that languages with a crowded phonemic vowel space would allow less vowel-to-vowel coarticulation than languages with a sparser vowel space to avoid perceptual confusion. Mandarin has fewer vowel phonemes than Cantonese, but their allophonic vowel spaces are similarly crowded. The hypothesis predicts that Mandarin would allow more coarticulation than Cantonese. Eight native speakers of Cantonese and of Beijing Mandarin were recorded saying the target sequences /pV11pV2pV3/ (V = /i a u/) in carrier phrases. F1 and F2 frequencies were measured at vowel edge and midpoint, and were normalized for analyses. The results show that Cantonese and Mandarin do not differ in degree of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in either F1 or F2. In addition, unstressed vowels exhibit more coarticulation than stressed vowels. Carryover coarticulation exceeds anticipatory coarticulation in both F1 and F2. Unstressed vowels in the carryover position are the most susceptible to coarticulation. The results show that vowel inventory does not predict vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. Fundamental assumptions of the output constraints hypothesis are evaluated to explain its failure in predicting language-specific patterns of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. The importance of syntagmatic relationships in coarticulation is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Production studies have shown that speakers of languages with larger phoneme inventories expand their acoustic space relative to languages with smaller inventories [Bradlow, A. (1995). A comparative acoustic study of English and Spanish vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97(3), 1916–1924; Jongman, A., Fourakis, M., & Sereno, J. (1989). The acoustic vowel space of Modern Greek and German. Language Speech, 32, 221–248]. In this study, we investigated whether this acoustic expansion in production has a perceptual correlate, that is, whether the perceived distance between pairs of sounds separated by equal acoustic distances varies as a function of inventory size or organization. We used magnetoencephalography, specifically the mismatch field response (MMF), and compared two language groups, French and Spanish, whose vowel inventories differ in size and organization. Our results show that the MMF is sensitive to inventory size but not organization, suggesting that speakers of languages with larger inventories perceive the same sounds as less similar than speakers with smaller inventories. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]