This study investigates the vowel space of trilingual speakers of Saterland Frisian, Low German, and High German. The three vowel systems show differences in the number of distinct categories but share the majority of vowel qualities. The speakers were instructed to read vowels of all three languages in a /hVt/ frame. We examine whether the dispersion and size of the vowel space as well as inte...

Since the seminal work of Lindblom (1963) a wealth of studies have investigated undershoot and the factors governing its occurrence and variability. However, although sex-specific differences in reduction patterns have been found in adults (Byrd 1994; Whiteside 1996), as well as in children (McCormack & Knighton 1996), possible sex-specific differences in formant transitions and in particular u...

The aim of this paper is to study the effect of the number of vowels a language has on the size of its vocalic space, in the production of speech from two Arabic dialects, Moroccan and Jordanian Arabic, and from French. 5 speakers per language (or dialect) recorded a list of vowels in 3 conditions: vowels were embedded in 1) Words, 2) Syllables, and 3) produced in Isolation. For each condition,...

Languages differ widely in the size of their vowel inventories; however, cross-linguistic surveys indicate that certain vowels and vowel system configurations are preferred. A cross-linguistic comparison of the acoustic vowel categories of two languages that differ in vowel inventory size, namely, English and Spanish, was performed in order to reveal some of the language-specific and/or univers...

While multiethnolects have been documented in major European metropolises over the last several decades, no such varieties reported North America. This is surprising given high degree of global immigration many American cities. We consider Toronto, Ontario, one most multicultural cities world, and explore features a Multicultural Toronto English. Data comes from young people an ethnolinguistica...

The current study presents the preliminary results of an investigation into the development of the vowel space in one female child with Down syndrome (DS). Vowel productions at five points in time, ranging from 1;0 to 3;8 years of age, have been analysed to produce age-specific F1-F2 vowel plots and to calculate metrics quantifying changes in their size and dimensions. The results show that cha...

The objective of this research is to investigate the planning and control of vowel-to-vowel sequences using a computer model of the vocal tract. The vocal tract model, which is based on a French male speaker, consists of a biomechanical tongue model (Perrier et al., 2003) with the addition of jaw (rotation and translation) and lip (opening and protrusion) movements. A comparison of acoustic dat...

This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of vowel-recognition training on beginner and advanced Iranian ESL learners. A total of 36 adult Iranian ESL learners (18 advanced and 18 beginners) who were students of various majors at Memorial University (MUN) were recruited for the study. Advanced participants had the experience of living in Canada for at least three years while beginners...

It has been suggested that the larger area of the average female acoustic vowel space is a consequence of compensating for poorer harmonic sampling of the spectral envelope resulting from a higher f0. This predicts that there should be variation in vowel space size within any group of males or females representing sufficient interindividual range of average f0. Inspired by this, the present pap...

This study explored two tenets of the Italian Bel Canto operatic singing technique “Come si parla” and “aggiustamento.” Articulatory changes in the lower formant vowel space of 11 spoken and sung vowels were systematically examined in six male singers. Results showed that singers influence the placement of the lowest formant frequencies in the sung vowel space using both a lowered larynx and mo...