Cross-linguistic studies of children’s and adults’ vowel spaces

Chung, Hyunju; Kong, Eun Jong; Edwards, Jan; Weismer, Gary; Fourakis, Marios; Hwang, Youngdeok

doi:10.1121/1.3651823

Cited by 39 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…This suggests that the acoustic characteristics of pairs of vowels are well separated. Indeed, published data confirm this (Chung, Kong, Edwards, Weismer, Fourakis, & Hwang, 2012). In contrast, the difference in perceived gender typicality of male and female children’s voices is more poorly separated.…”

Section: Gradiency In Speech Perceptionsupporting

confidence: 54%

Bias in the perception of phonetic detail in children’s speech: A comparison of categorical and continuous rating scales

Munson

Schellinger

Edwards

2016

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics

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Previous research has shown that continuous rating scales can be used to assess phonetic detail in children’s productions, and could potentially be used to detect covert contrasts. Two experiments examined whether continuous rating scales have the additional benefit of being less susceptible to task-related biasing than categorical phonetic transcriptions. In both experiments, judgments of children’s productions of /s/ and /θ/ were interleaved with two types of rating tasks designed to induce bias: continuous judgments of a parameter whose variation is itself relatively more continuous (gender typicality of their speech) in one biasing condition, and categorical judgments of a parameter that is relatively less-continuous (the vowel they produced) in the other biasing condition. One experiment elicited continuous judgments of /s/ and /θ/ productions, while the other elicited categorical judgments. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the influence of acoustic characteristics on continuous judgments of /s/ and /θ/ was stable across biasing conditions. In contrast, the results of Experiment 2 showed that the influence of acoustic characteristics on categorical judgments of /s/ and /θ/ differed systematically across biasing conditions. These results suggest that continuous judgments are psychometrically superior to categorical judgments, as they are more resistant to task-related bias.

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Section: Gradiency In Speech Perceptionsupporting

confidence: 54%

Bias in the perception of phonetic detail in children’s speech: A comparison of categorical and continuous rating scales

Munson

Schellinger

Edwards

2016

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics

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“…Earlier research showed that the F3 varies cross-varietally, e.g. the F3 is lowered in the "r-colored" varieties of American English (see also Eklund and Traunmüller, 1997;Jongman et al, 1989;O'Brien and Smith, 2010;Chung et al, 2012), which points to possible effects of variety on the F3 (Harrington, 2010). Although the F3 is less understood than the F1 and F2 (see Adank et al, 2004;Leinonen, 2010), a number of studies show that the segmental context can have significant effects on the F3 (Harrington, 2010), and in languages with round vowels, such as in Swedish, the F3 can distinguish the rounded vowels from the nonrounded ones (Fujimura, 1967).…”

Section: This Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Nature of Phonetic Gradience across a Dialect Continuum: Evidence from Modern Greek Vowels

Themistocleous

2017

Phonetica

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This study investigates the acoustic properties of vowels in 2 Modern Greek varieties: Standard Modern Greek (SMG) and Cypriot Greek (CG). Both varieties contain in their phonetic inventories the same 5 vowels. Forty-five female speakers between 19 and 29 years old participated in this study: 20 SMG speakers and 25 CG speakers, born and raised in Athens and Nicosia, respectively. Stimuli consisted of a set of nonsense CVCV and VCV words, each containing 1 of the 5 Greek vowels in stressed and unstressed position. Gaining insights from the controlled experimental design, the study sheds light on the gradient effects of vowel variation in Modern Greek. It shows that (1) stressed vowels are more peripheral than unstressed vowels, (2) SMG unstressed /i a u/ vowels are more raised than the corresponding CG vowels, (3) SMG unstressed vowels are shorter than CG unstressed vowels, and (4) SMG /i·u/ are more rounded than the corresponding CG vowels. Moreover, it shows that variation applies to specific subsystems, as it is the unstressed vowels that vary cross-varietally whereas the stressed vowels display only minor differences. The implications of these findings with respect to vowel raising and vowel reduction are discussed.

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“…If decoupled tongue and jaw both contribute to the tongue composite movement, the extent of relative contribution of each articulator can be expressed by an angular displacement from the x-axis along the isoline of tongue composite movement size (or, in short, by an angle θ). The larger the angular displacement from the x-axis along the isoline, the more the decoupled tongue contributes to the tongue composite movement (see Chung, Kong, Edwards, Weismer, & Fourakis, 2012, for similar use of angular displacement to describe positional changes in acoustic vowel space). Figure 1b shows the hypothetical framework from a perspective in which the circular isoline of the tongue composite movement is projected as a straight line.…”

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confidence: 99%

Tongue- and Jaw-Specific Contributions to Acoustic Vowel Contrast Changes in the Diphthong /ai/ in Response to Slow, Loud, and Clear Speech

Mefferd

2017

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose This study sought to determine decoupled tongue and jaw displacement changes and their specific contributions to acoustic vowel contrast changes during slow, loud, and clear speech. Method Twenty typical talkers repeated “see a kite again” 5 times in 4 speech conditions (typical, slow, loud, clear). Speech kinematics were recorded using 3-dimensional electromagnetic articulography. Tongue composite displacement, decoupled tongue displacement, and jaw displacement during /ai/, as well as the distance between /a/ and /i/ in the F1–F2 vowel space, were examined during the diphthong /ai/ in “kite.” Results Displacements significantly increased during all 3 speech modifications. However, jaw displacements increased significantly more during clear speech than during loud and slow speech, whereas decoupled tongue displacements increased significantly more during slow speech than during clear and loud speech. In addition, decoupled tongue displacements increased significantly more during clear speech than during loud speech. Increases in acoustic vowel contrast tended to be larger during slow speech than during clear speech and were predominantly tongue-driven, whereas those during clear speech were fairly equally accounted for by changes in decoupled tongue and jaw displacements. Increases in acoustic vowel contrast during loud speech were smallest and were predominantly tongue-driven, particularly in men. Conclusions Findings suggest that task-specific patterns of decoupled tongue and jaw displacement change and task-specific patterns of decoupled tongue and jaw contributions to vowel acoustic change across these speech modifications. Clinical implications are discussed.

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Cross-linguistic studies of children’s and adults’ vowel spaces

Cited by 39 publications

References 21 publications

Bias in the perception of phonetic detail in children’s speech: A comparison of categorical and continuous rating scales

Bias in the perception of phonetic detail in children’s speech: A comparison of categorical and continuous rating scales

The Nature of Phonetic Gradience across a Dialect Continuum: Evidence from Modern Greek Vowels

Tongue- and Jaw-Specific Contributions to Acoustic Vowel Contrast Changes in the Diphthong /ai/ in Response to Slow, Loud, and Clear Speech

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