Vowel Quality and Language Contact in Miami-Cuban Spanish

2019

Longitudinal acquisitions of English vowels have been previously studied by Monroe (2008), Lai (2010), and others. Most of these studies rely primarily on an impressionistic methodology, i.e., native speaking judges listen to oral inputs by non-native speakers and rate the intelligibility of their vowels on a Likert scale. This is not so for this study. The assessment relies primarily on the speech signals emitted by Author 2 when reading vowels in citation form and in running speech. The F1 and F2 correlates of his vowels are measured at three different intervals: in 2011, in 2017, and in 2018. The measured correlates are compared and contrasted with each other, and with the prototypical formant values in Peterson and Barney (1952). Masking thresholds, Just Noticeable Difference (JND) limens, and relative functional load (RFL) calculations are used to determine which of Author 2's vowels have become native-like and which ones have remained intractable over the course of seven years. The acoustic measurements from 2017 and 2018 also help investigate whether or not F1 and F2 correlates change or remain the same in citation form and running speech. 1 Authorship Responsibilities: Author 2 provided the acoustic phonetic data, the measurements, and all but the last two acoustic vowel spaces. He wrote an initial report. Author 1 has rewritten and expanded the analyses on the basis of the data provided by Author 2 who has vouched for the accuracy of all the measurements. To the extent that the acoustic measurements are accurate, Author 1 assumes full responsibility for any erroneous interpretation of the data.

Phonetica, 2011

Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics

The present study explored development in Spanish vowel production during a short-term study abroad program. The production patterns of a group of learners studying abroad in a 4-week program in the Dominican Republic were compared in terms of overall vowel quality, tendency to diphthongize /e/ and /o/, and vowel duration to those of a similar group of learners studying in the at-home context. Results revealed no significant changes or differences between groups in vowel quality or diphthongization, but a significant improvement (i.e., reduction) in vowel duration for /a/, /o/, and /u/ for the at-home group only. Findings are discussed in relation to previous research, and areas for future research are outlined.

2014

Journal of Phonetics, 2015

This study investigates the influence of speech style, duration, contextual factors, and sex on vowel dispersion and variability in Yoloxóchitl Mixtec, an endangered language spoken in Mexico. Oral vowels were examined from recordings of elicited citation words and spontaneous narrative speech matched across seven speakers. Results show spontaneous speech to contain shorter vowel durations and stronger effects of contextual assimilation than elicited speech. The vowel space is less disperse and there is greater intra-vowel variability in spontaneous speech than in elicited speech. Furthermore, male speakers show smaller differences in vowel dispersion and duration across styles than female speakers do. These phonetic differences across speech styles are not entirely reducible to durational differences; rather, speakers also seem to adjust their articulatory/acoustic precision in accordance with style. Despite the stylistic differences, we find robust acoustic differences between vowels in spontaneous speech, maintaining the overall vowel space pattern. While style and durational changes produce noticeable differences in vowel acoustics, one can closely approximate the phonetics of a vowel system of an endangered language from narrative speech. Elicited speech is likelier to give the most extreme formants used by the language than is spontaneous speech, but the usefulness of phonetic data from spontaneous speech has still been demonstrated.

nupffale.ufsc.br

Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, 2013

The vowel spaces of Southern Californian English and Mexican Spanish were investigated using three groups of speakers: 11 English monolinguals (9 female), 10 Spanish monolinguals (7 female), and 11 Spanish-English bilinguals (8 female). Speakers produced six repetitions of the ten American English vowels [i, ɪ, ɛ, ae, ɑ, ɔ, ʊ, u, Λ, and ɜr] and six repetitions of the five Spanish vowels [i, e, a, u, and o]. Monolinguals produced vowels in one language; bilinguals produced vowels in both languages. Preliminary analysis shows for females Southern Californian English back vowels were less fronted compared to the results of Hagiwara (1997) from Southern Californian English, but more fronted than those of on General American English. Mexican Spanish back vowels [u] and [o] were substantially backed compared to Castilian Spanish vowels , while [i] was lower and more fronted. In general, Mexican Spanish vowels were produced more backed than Southern Californian English vowels in monolingual productions. Bilinguals produced their two vowel spaces with Spanish more backed and lower as compared to English.

Spanish phonetics and phonology in contact: Studies from Africa, the Americas, and Spain, 2020

The point vowels /i, a, u/ serve to mark the extremes of the acoustic vowel space; however, previous experimental research on K'ichee' has shown that the acoustic location of point vowels varies according to the vowel inventory of the specific dialect of K'ichee'. The present study analyzes the acoustic vowel spaces of Guatemalan Spanish monolinguals and of Spanish-K'ichee' bilinguals from two K'ichee' dialects with different vowel inventories. The results of a production task reveal that the bilingual Spanish vowel spaces differ from those of monolinguals. Furthermore, although these bilinguals maintain cross-language differences in their mid vowels, their Spanish point vowels correspond in acoustic location to their K'ichee' point vowels, meaning they have similar acoustic vowel spaces in both languages.

Topics in Linguistics

This study investigates the production of three morphophonetic variations of schwa in American English: the plural allomorph {-s} as in watches, the possessive allomorph {-s} as in Sasha’s, and word-finally as in Russia. The production of these three allomorphs were examined in Miami’s English monolingual and early Spanish-English bilingual populations. Our purpose was to determine how native-like early Spanish-English bilinguals′ spectral qualities and reduced vowel durations were compared to Miami English monolinguals during a reading task. Results indicate that early bilinguals′ reduced vowels followed the same overall pattern as monolinguals, but had different acoustic properties.

This paper considers the transition from consistent phonemic distinction to consistent neutralization of /a/ and /o/ in unstressed syllables following hard consonants, as found in one Arkhangelsk dialect. The dialect in question presents three types of individual systems: (i) one where the phonemes /a/ and /o/ are consistently discriminated, (ii) one where these phonemes are consistently neutralized and (iii) a transitional type which presents a competition between models (i) and (ii). Our study shows that a shift of articulatory zones of the phonemes /a/ and /o/ is a key factor contributing to the loss of okan'je. The articulatory shift leads to overlapping of the respective articulatory zones, thus reducing the acoustic and perceptual contrast between the phonemes in question. This, in combination with a considerable quantitative reduction, drives the development of neutralization in unstressed syllables. At the same time, our analysis of the most archaic vowel system of the three types specified above rules out quantitative reduction as the sole factor at play, as consistent okan'je can be shown to occur in a system with a strong quantitative reduction of unstressed syllables.