In this study, we expand the question of ”what is the intrinsic dimensionality of speech?” to ”how does the intrinsic dimensionality of speech change from speaking to singing?”. Our focus is on dimensionality of the vowel space regarding spectral features, which is important in acoustic modeling applications. Locality Preserving Projection (LPP) is applied for dimensionality reduction of the sp...

Research on vowel space dispersion has found that vowel spaces are less dispersed when lexical and contextual factors favor identification of a word (e. g., a highly predictable word), and vowel spaces are more dispersed when lexical and contextual factors create an environment for less predictability [1, 2]. Examining sound changes in progress, recent work has demonstrated that, for some vowel...

In Japanese, high vowels may devoice between two unvoiced obstruents (k[u̥]kaku 'division', k[i̥]kaku 'plan'). Recent studies have shown that the devoicing of non-high vowels (k[ḁ]karu 'take', k[e̥]ta 'digit, k[o̥]tae 'answer') may also occur. This paper evaluates the role of vowel duration and vocal folds gestures involved in vowel devoicing in Japanese. An experiment using an electroglottograph (...

This paper describes in detail several explicit computational methods for approaching such questions in phonology as the vowel/consonant distinction, the nature of vowel harmony systems, and syllable structure, appealing solely to distributional information. Beginning with the vowel/consonant distinction, we consider a method for its discovery by the Russian linguist Sukhotin, and compare it to...

Vowels tend to be reduced in words that are semantically predictable from context, an effect amenable to talkeror listener-oriented accounts of speech production. This study explored the role of perception in these accounts by testing for effects of semantic predictability on vowel production in the face of impaired speech perception (but otherwise normal hearing)—namely, in a patient with pure...

The reduced energy level of unstressed syllables compromises perceptibility of vowel distinctions, leading to the ‘neutralization’ of some of the distinctions. The difference between the collapse of most vowels into [M] in English, and more restricted effects in other languages is shown to be managed by constraint ranking within OT. The same factors that compromise perceptibility of Vquality ar...

The reduction of the six Bulgarian vowels (i, ɛ, a, ɜ, ɔ, u) to a fouror (in some dialects) three-vowel subsystem (i, (ɜ), ɜ, u) in unstressed syllables is generally accepted. But a number of studies disagree on the exact nature of the reduction process. Claims differ as to whether or not /a/ merges phonetically with /ɜ/, and /ɔ/ with /u/, or whether the assumed neutralized oppositions take a p...