scholarly journals Acoustic characteristics of the vowel systems of six regional varieties of American English

2005 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 1661-1676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia G. Clopper ◽  
David B. Pisoni ◽  
Kenneth de Jong
1995 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 3099-3111 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Hillenbrand ◽  
Laura A. Getty ◽  
Michael J. Clark ◽  
Kimberlee Wheeler

Linguistica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Biljana Čubrović

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: /i ɪ/, /u ʊ/, and /ɛ æ/.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katsura Aoyama ◽  
James E. Flege ◽  
Reiko Akahane-Yamada ◽  
Tsuneo Yamada

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Kautzsch

The current study presents acoustic analyses of non-high back vowels and low central vowels in the lexical sets LOT, THOUGHT, STRUT, PALM and BATH as pronounced by German learners of English. The main objective is to show that learners of English at university level are highly inconsistent in approximating the vowels of their self-chosen target accents British English (BrE) and American English (AmE). To that end, the acoustic qualities of the English vowels of learners are compared to their native German vowels and to the vowels of native speakers of BrE and AmE. In order to facilitate statements about the effect of increased experience, the study differentiates between students in their first year at university and in their third year or later. The results obtained are highly variable: In some cases the learners transfer their L1 vowels to English, other cases show clear approximations to the target vowels, while other cases again document the production of new vowels neither found in German nor in English. However, close approximation to the target vowels only sometimes correlates with higher proficiency. This might be an indicator of a low level of awareness of systematic differences between the BrE and AmE vowel systems. But the data also indicate that the more advanced learners produce more distinct AmE BATH vowels and BrE THOUGHT vowels than the less advanced learners, which points to a partial increase of awareness resulting from increased experience. All in all it seems that raising the awareness of differences between target accents in L2 instruction is necessary if the envisage goal is for learners to reach near-native pronunciation.


2010 ◽  
Vol 128 (4) ◽  
pp. 2352-2352
Author(s):  
Phoebe E. M. Allen ◽  
Gary G. Weismer

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