- timing in English ?
نویسنده
چکیده
1 Is vowel reduction centralization or contextual assimilation? Vowel reduction has traditionally been considered as centralization. A tube modelling a centralized connguration of an average sized male speaker resonates at 500 Hz, 1500 Hz, and 2500 Hz (Fant 1960). That is, the formants are evenly spaced. It was suggested that in both British and American varieties of English, most vowels approach a vowel of this central quality, namely schwa, when they are in weakly stressed syllables (Lehiste 1970). Schwa is described as a central vowel by Kenyon (1946), Gimson (1980) and Crystal (1985). On the other hand, unstressed vowels have been observed to coarticulate more strongly with the surrounding segments than stressed vowels also observed that the quality of schwa is much aaected by surrounding sounds. These two observations connict with one another as they suggest movements in the opposite directions as schematized below. From these observations, a question arises: is vowel reduction centralization or contextual assimilation? & # .-" % ! ! % "-. # & Figure 1: Schematic illustrations of centralization and contextual assimilation of schwa The rst person who addressed this question was Nord (1974). He concluded that vowel reduction is a result of increased contextual assimilation and that schwa is central in quality only when it is assimilated to the neutral vocal tract connguration of a rest position; that is, when it is adjacent to a pause. Another advocate of the contextual assimilation hypothesis is Bergem (1993, 1994). He argues that 'centralization' could be a result of averaging diierent contextual eeects on schwa. He suggests that Dutch schwa may be interpreted as a vowel without articulatory target and that it is completely assimilated with its phonemic context. However, there seems to be a case of centralization per se as a result of vowel reduction or weakening. Stevens & House (1963) have shown that vowels in consonantal contexts have more central F 2 values compared to vowels in isolation. That is, the acoustic values of vowels are perturbed by adjacent consonants. Segments that are shorter in duration also seem to centralize. It was observed that while phonemically short (V) and long (VV) vowels of Japanese overlap with one another in the 63
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