A phonetic-phonological study of vowel height and nasal coarticulation in French

Dow, Michael

doi:10.1017/s0959269520000083

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 79 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…However, nasal coarticulation also depends on the phonology. French mid and low vowels show no nasality when preceding a nasal consonant, presumably to avoid confusion since these vowels participate in the French oralnasal contrast (Dow 2020). Thus, the phonetic conditions that cause vowel nasalization in English are blocked by phonological constraints in French.…”

Section: Prior Work On Phonetic Interfacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From interfaces to system embedding: Phonetic contrasts in the lexicon

Redmon¹,

Jongman²

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The analysis of phonetic systems largely operates independently of other linguistic systems. This is despite the fact that the critical components of the system—phones and the contrastive relations between them—are definitionally linked to higher-order systems such as the mental lexicon. In this paper we outline an alternative approach where the phonetic system is studied as embedded within these higher-order systems. We show that system embedding radically changes the assumed role of different contrasts in the system, and warps estimates of the relative weight of the corresponding acoustic dimensions that delineate that system. Specifically, we compare three models of obstruent discrimination in English: (1) the canonical, inventory model, where contrasts are studied between phones in controlled syllables balanced in weight; (2) the lexicon model, where all contrasts are between real words; and (3) an intermediate, weighted inventory model, where the acoustics are derived from controlled syllable data but the items are sampled to match the distribution of contrasts in the lexicon. By comparing these three models we are able to identify discrepancies in the role of each acoustic dimension under different system assumptions, and model their impact on phonetic generalizations.

show abstract

Section: Prior Work On Phonetic Interfacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From interfaces to system embedding: Phonetic contrasts in the lexicon

Redmon¹,

Jongman²

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Separate amplitude (dB) tracks for the oral and nasal signals were created in Praat (Boersma and Weenink, 2017), and a measurement of the degree of nasalization (called "nasalance") was derived by calculating the proportional nasal amplitude, i.e. A nasal /(A oral + A nasal ); see Dow (2020) for discussion of the Differential Energy Ratio, an alternative approach to quantifying nasometric data. Throughout this paper, this nasalance measure will be referred to as the "ground truth", as it represents an objective (albeit indirect) measurement of the changing degree of nasalization.…”

Section: A Nasometry and Nasalancementioning

confidence: 99%

A practical method of estimating the time-varying degree of vowel nasalization from acoustic features

Carignan

2021

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents a simple and easy-to-use method of creating a time-varying signal of the degree of nasalization in vowels, generated from acoustic features measured in oral and nasalized vowel contexts. The method is presented for separate models constructed using two sets of acoustic features: (1) an uninformed set of 13 Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) and ( 2) a combination of the 13 MFCCs and a phonetically-informed set of 20 acoustic features of vowel nasality derived from previous research. Both models are compared against two traditional approaches to estimating vowel nasalization from acoustics: A1-P0 and A1-P1, as well as their formant-compensated counterparts. Data include productions from six speakers of different language backgrounds producing 11 different qualities within the vowel quadrilateral. The results generated from each of the methods are compared against nasometric measurements, representing an objective "ground truth" of the degree of nasalization. The results suggest that the proposed method is more robust than conventional acoustic approaches, generating signals which correlate strongly with nasometric measures across all vowel qualities and all speakers and which accurately approximate the time-varying change in the degree of nasalization. Finally, a experimental example is provided to help researchers implement the method in their own study designs.

show abstract

“…Nasality was quantified using the Differential Energy Ratio (DER) measurement, which models the proportion of the vowel at which energy is predominantly nasal (Dow, 2014(Dow, , 2020. Ideally, the DER for nasal vowels should be close to 100%.…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

L1 phonological effects on L2 (non-)naïve perception: A cross-language investigation of the oral–nasal vowel contrast in Brazilian Portuguese

Martinez

Goad

Dow

2021

Second Language Research

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Feature-based approaches to acquisition principally focus on second language (L2) learners’ ability to perceive non-native consonants when the features required are either contrastively present or entirely absent from the first language (L1) grammar. As features may function contrastively or allophonically in the consonant and/or vowel systems of a language, we expand the scope of this research to address whether features that function contrastively in the L1 vowel system can be recombined to yield new vowels in the L2; whether features that play a contrastive role in the L1 consonant system can be reassigned to build new vowels in the L2; and whether L1 allophonic features can be ‘elevated’ to contrastive status in the L2. We examine perception of the oral–nasal contrast in Brazilian Portuguese listeners from French, English, Caribbean Spanish, and non-Caribbean Spanish backgrounds, languages that differ in the status assigned to [nasal] in their vowel systems. An AXB discrimination task revealed that, although all language groups succeeded in perceiving the non-naïve contrast /e/–/ẽ/ due to their previous exposure to Québec French while living in Montréal, Canada, only French and Caribbean Spanish speakers succeeded in discriminating the naïve contrast /i/–/ĩ/. These findings suggest that feature redeployment at first exposure is only possible if the feature is contrastive in the L1 vowel system (French) or if the feature is allophonic but variably occurs in contrastive contexts in the L1 vowel system (Caribbean Spanish). With more exposure to a non-native contrast, however, feature redeployment from consonant to vowel systems was also supported, as was the possibility that allophonic features may be elevated to contrastive status in the L2.

show abstract

A phonetic-phonological study of vowel height and nasal coarticulation in French

Cited by 13 publications

References 79 publications

From interfaces to system embedding: Phonetic contrasts in the lexicon

From interfaces to system embedding: Phonetic contrasts in the lexicon

A practical method of estimating the time-varying degree of vowel nasalization from acoustic features

L1 phonological effects on L2 (non-)naïve perception: A cross-language investigation of the oral–nasal vowel contrast in Brazilian Portuguese

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About