Parents’ hyper-pitch and vowel category compactness in infant-directed speech are associated with 18-month-old toddlers’ expressive vocabulary

The present study examines the acoustic properties of infant-directed speech (IDS) as compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) in Norwegian parents of 18-month-old toddlers, and whether these properties relate to toddlers’ expressive vocabulary size. Twenty-one parent- toddler dyads from Tromsø, Northern Norway participated in the study. Parents (16 mothers, 5 fathers), speaking a Northern Norwegian dialect, were recorded in the lab reading a storybook to their toddler (IDS register), and to an experimenter (ADS register). The storybook was designed for the purpose of the study, ensuring identical linguistic contexts across speakers and registers, and multiple representations of each of the nine Norwegian long vowels. We examined both traditionally reported measures of IDS: pitch, pitch range, vowel duration and vowel space expansion, but also novel measures: vowel category compactness and vowel category distinctiveness. Our results showed that Norwegian IDS, as compared to ADS, had similar characteristics as in other languages: higher pitch, wider pitch range, longer vowel duration, and expanded vowel space area; in addition, it had less compact vowel categories. Further, parents’ hyper-pitch, that is, the within-parent increase in pitch in IDS as compared to ADS, and vowel category compactness in IDS itself, were positively related to toddlers' vocabulary. Our results point towards potentially facilitating roles of parents’ increase in pitch when talking to their toddler and of consistency in vowel production in early word learning.

Vowel Production in Prelingually Deafened Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants

Purpose The purpose of this study was to characterize the acoustic profile and to evaluate the intelligibility of vowel productions in prelingually deafened, Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs). Method Twenty-five children with CIs and 20 age-matched children with normal hearing (NH) were recorded producing a list of Mandarin disyllabic and trisyllabic words containing 20 Mandarin vowels [a, i, u, y, ɤ, ɿ, ʅ, ai, ei, ia, ie, ye, ua, uo, au, ou, iau, iou, uai, uei] located in the first consonant–vowel syllable. The children with CIs were all prelingually deafened and received unilateral implantation before 7 years of age with an average length of CI use of 4.54 years. In the acoustic analysis, the first two formants (F1 and F2) were extracted at seven equidistant time locations for the tested vowels. The durational and spectral features were compared between the CI and NH groups. In the vowel intelligibility task, the extracted vowel portions in both NH and CI children were presented to six Mandarin-speaking, NH adult listeners for identification. Results The acoustic analysis revealed that the children with CIs deviated from the NH controls in the acoustic features for both single vowels and compound vowels. The acoustic deviations were reflected in longer duration, more scattered vowel categories, smaller vowel space area, and distinct formant trajectories in the children with CIs in comparison to NH controls. The vowel intelligibility results showed that the recognition accuracy of the vowels produced by the children with CIs was significantly lower than that of the NH children. The confusion pattern of vowel recognition in the children with CIs generally followed that in the NH children. Conclusion Our data suggested that the prelingually deafened children with CIs, with a relatively long duration of CI experience, still showed measurable acoustic deviations and lower intelligibility in vowel productions in comparison to the NH children.

foot-fronting and foot–strut splitting: vowel variation in the East Midlands

This article investigates the status of the foot–strut split in the counties of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the East Midlands of England. The East Midlands area is a linguistic transition zone between northern English varieties with a phoneme inventory of five short vowels, where foot and strut are represented by the same phoneme, and southern English varieties which have the foot–strut split and therefore six short vowels. However, a lack of research on the distribution of the foot and strut vowels in the East Midlands exists and to fill that gap, this article examines the possible diffusion of the split northwards as predicted by Trudgill (1986). Reading-passage data, stratified by age group, sex and location is used to provide an apparent time, multilocal view on the distribution of the two vowel categories. Surprisingly, the changes that we notice do not concern the increasing distance between foot and strut but mainly foot-fronting in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire and strut-retraction in Derbyshire which leads to an increase in overlap between foot and strut in all three counties.

Cross-Linguistic Perceptual Categorization of the Three Corner Vowels: Effects of Listener Language and Talker Age

The present study examined the center and size of naïve adult listeners’ vowel perceptual space (VPS) in relation to listener language (LL) and talker age (TA). Adult listeners of three different first languages, American English, Greek, and Korean, categorized and rated the goodness of different vowels produced by 2-year-olds and 5-year-olds and adult speakers of those languages, and speakers of Cantonese and Japanese. The center (i.e., mean first and second formant frequencies (F1 and F2)) and size (i.e., area in the F1/F2 space) of VPSs that were categorized either into /a/, /i/, or /u/ were calculated for each LL and TA group. All center and size calculations were weighted by the goodness rating of each stimulus. The F1 and F2 values of the vowel category (VC) centers differed significantly by LL and TA. These effects were qualitatively different for the three vowel categories: English listeners had different /a/ and /u/ centers than Greek and Korean listeners. The size of VPSs did not differ significantly by LL, but did differ by TA and VCs: Greek and Korean listeners had larger vowel spaces when perceiving vowels produced by 2-year-olds than by 5-year-olds or adults, and English listeners had larger vowel spaces for /a/ than /i/ or /u/. Findings indicate that vowel perceptual categories of listeners varied by the nature of their native vowel system, and were sensitive to TA.

Distinctiveness and Assimilation in Vowel Perception in a Second Language

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate how the distinctive establishment of 2nd language (L2) vowel categories (e.g., how distinctively an L2 vowel is established from nearby L2 vowels and from the native language counterpart in the 1st formant [F1] × 2nd formant [F2] vowel space) affected L2 vowel perception. Method Identification of 12 natural English monophthongs, and categorization and rating of synthetic English vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ in the F1 × F2 space were measured for Chinese-native (CN) and English-native (EN) listeners. CN listeners were also examined with categorization and rating of Chinese vowels in the F1 × F2 space. Results As expected, EN listeners significantly outperformed CN listeners in English vowel identification. Whereas EN listeners showed distinctive establishment of 2 English vowels, CN listeners had multiple patterns of L2 vowel establishment: both, 1, or neither established. Moreover, CN listeners' English vowel perception was significantly related to the perceptual distance between the English vowel and its Chinese counterpart, and the perceptual distance between the adjacent English vowels. Conclusions L2 vowel perception relied on listeners' capacity to distinctively establish L2 vowel categories that were distant from the nearby L2 vowels.

Production of Estonian vowels by Finnish speakers

In the study, we examined the production of Estonian vowel categories by second language (L2) speakers of Estonian (native language Finnish) and compared them to those of native Estonian (L1) speakers. The vowel systems of the two languages are very similar: all eight Finnish vowels have close counterparts in Estonian, though Estonian has one more vowel category. The vowels for acoustic analysis were extracted from the target words embedded in sentences read by both L1 and L2 informants. The results showed that using the native Finnish vowel patterns for the Estonian counterparts has been a successful strategy – due to phonetic similarity of the shared vowels in the two languages, the L2 vowels assimilate well to Finnish L1 vowel categories. The L2 learners have acquired proper tongue position for the new vowel category /õ/ in tongue height and in front-back dimension, but deviate from the L1 speakers in use of the lip rounding gesture. Kokkuvõte. Einar Meister ja Lya Meister: Eesti vokaalid soome emakeelega keelejuhtide häälduses. Artiklis uuriti soome emakeelega keelejuhtide eesti vokaalide hääldust ja võrreldi seda eesti emakeelega keelejuhtide hääldusega. Eesti ja soome vokaalisüsteemid on väga sarnased – kõigil soome vokaalidel on eesti keeles foneetiliselt lähedane vaste. Eesti keeles on lisaks veel üks vokaalikategooria, s.o ümardamata keskkõrge tagavokaal /õ/. Uuringus kasutati eesti ja soome emakeelega keelejuhtide loetud samu lauseid, vokaalide akustiliseks analüüsiks eraldati neist rõhulised vokaalid. Kõigi vokaalide puhul leiti kolme formandi sagedused, millest esimene (F1) on seotud keele kõrgusega, teine (F2) keele ees-tagapoolsusega ja kolmas (F3) huulte ümardatusega. Tulemused näitasid, et (1) tänu soome vokaalide foneetilisele sarnasusele vastavate eesti vokaalidega oli soome emakeelega kõnelejate eesti vokaalide hääldus lähedane eesti emakeelega keelejuhtidele; (2) on omandatud küll /õ/-vokaali hääldusasend nii keele kõrguse (F1) kui ka ees-tagapoolsuse (F2) teljel, kuid F3 väärtuste põhjal paigutub soomlaste hääldatud /õ/ ümarate vokaalide rühma. Märksõnad: eesti keel, soome keel, L2, vokaalide hääldus, akustiline analüüs

A phonetic study of length and duration in Kyrgyz vowels

This paper examines the phonetic correlates of the (phonological) vowel length contrast in Kyrgyz to address a range of questions about the nature of this contrast, and also explores factors that affect (phonetic) duration in short vowels. Measurement and analysis of the vowels confirms that there is indeed a significant duration distinction between the Kyrgyz vowel categories referred to as short and long vowels. Preliminary midpoint formant measurements show that there may be some accompanying spectral component to the length contrast for certain vowels, but findings are not conclusive. A comparison of F0 dynamics and spectral dynamics through long and short vowels does not yield evidence that some long vowels may in fact be two heterosyllabic short vowels. Analysis shows that duration is associated with a vowel’s presence in word-edge syllables in Kyrgyz, as anticipated based on descriptions of word-final stress and initial prominence. However, high vowels and non-high vowels are found to consistently exhibit opposite durational effects. Specifically, high vowels in word-edge syllables are longer than high vowels in medial syllables, while non-high vowels in word-edge syllables are shorter than non-high vowels in medial syllables. This suggests either a phenomenon of durational neutralisation at word edges or the exaggeration of durational differences word-medially, and is not taken as a case of word-edge strengthening. Proposals for how to select from between these hypotheses in future work are discussed.