Introduction to VOWELS

1
Introduction to VOWELS

• LING 3330
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Spring 2009

2
Review from last time

• What is an example of a word initial bilabial
  plosive?
• fat or cat?
• top or stop?
• What is the technical term for the initial sound
  in the word then?
• how about in the word thin
• What is the difference between a stop (or
  plosive) and a fricative?
• Rule of thumb Cs ? VPM, MVP

3
Consider the following chart

• What differences do you see between aspirated and
  unaspirated?
• How about the beginning of the voiced segment?

4
Tagalog (T?ga'l?g) demo

• listen to the sounds and follow along on the
  handout from last time.
• Pay attention to the initial voiceless and voiced
  plosives
• 1st set Bilabial p b
• Can you hear the difference?
• 2nd set Alveolar t d
• 3rd set Velar k g

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Sample Spectrogram
6
Vowels vs. Consonants whats the difference?

• review / preview
• consonants are identified by
• location of obstruction (place)
• nature of obstruction (manner)
• state of vocal cords (voice)
• vowels are identified by
• vertical position of articulation (high, mid,
  low)
• horizontal position of articulation (front,
  central, back)
• also the state of the lips and velum
  (rounding) (nasalized)

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Vowel Basics

• Vs are produced by egressive pulmonic airflow
  through the vibrating vocal folds vocal tract
  (VT)
• They are varied by manipulating the size and
  shape of the VT (recall the filter discussion
  from a few days ago)
• The various cavities/chambers in the VT can
  change shape and volume giving different
  preferred freq.
• The freq components of the glottal waveform that
  are closest to the preferred freq are amplified
• Resonances that are associated with the cavities
  in the oral tract are called formants (F1, F2,
  F3)

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Vowel Basics Cont.

• In speech perception, the Fundamental Freq. is
  important for distinguishing ____________________?
  
• Pitch
• In vowel production, it is primarily the first
  and second frequencies (or formants) that are
  most important. The different numerical values
  (in Hz) for F1 F2 determine how we perceive them
  as /i, ?, e, ?, o, ?, u, ?/ etc.
• The tongue and lips influence the size and shape
  of the VT the most

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Differences from Consonants

• unlike Consonants (Cs) Vs are much more difficult
  to describe in terms of their place of
  articulation.
• (i.e. where exactly are they made in the mouth).
• This is true for several reasons
• Vs form a continuum of sounds rather than being
  neatly divisible pin-pointable units
• the degree of impedance is very minimal making it
  difficult to determine the articulators
• Cs near the V may also affect the tongue position
• (e.g. are the Vs in thee think the same?)
• do they sound the same? where is your tongue?

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What makes each vowel different?

• The vowel categories
• English has an unusually rich and complex vowel
  system, and a great deal of variation in vowel
  pronunciation across dialects. Standard English
  spelling does not identify pronunciations clearly
  or reliably.
• The easiest way to start is with a list of vowel
  categories or equivalence classes
• each class is represented by a set of words whose
  vowels are all pronounced alike.
• For each vowel category, we'll pick a single word
  as a convenient way to name the class. This
  doesn't tell us how the words in each vowel class
  are pronounced -- and of course the pronunciation
  varies across dialects.
• Different dialects also differ in how many
  distinctions they make.
• Each phonological equivalence class only tells us
  that the vowels in it behave the same way.

adapted from http//www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fal
l_2003/ling001/English.html
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24 "lexical sets" (J.C. Wells) Accents of English
adapted from http//www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fal
l_2003/ling001/English.html
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Problems with Example Words

• Because of splits and mergers, any particular
  choice of sets is likely to make some
  distinctions that are unnecessary for a given
  dialect, and also to fail to make some other
  useful distinctions.
• For example, very few American dialects
  distinguish the TRAP and BATH sets -- though many
  British dialects do. The NORTH and FORCE sets
  have merged for most speakers on both sides of
  the Atlantic, though a few dialects still
  distinguish them at least in part. You can see if
  they have merged for you by asking whether "for"
  and "four" are pronounced the same, or "horse"
  and "hoarse". There are some people for whom they
  are different!

adapted from http//www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fal
l_2003/ling001/English.html
13
Problems with Example Words

• The idea of naming an English vowel type by
  referring to a set of example words is a helpful
  one.
• though, this doesn't tell us anything about how a
  vowel category is actually pronounced.
• One way to indicate actual pronunciation is to
  give some audio examples.
• often we want to say something more systematic
  about the nature of vowel pronunciations, their
  relationships, how they are changing, etc.
• For this, use of the IPA vowel chart is helpful.
  The full chart is given below.

adapted from http//www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fal
l_2003/ling001/English.html
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IPA Vowel Space

• It represents a sort of 3D space
• degree of opening of the vocal tract
• top to bottom
• fronter vs. backer position of the tongue
• left to right
• spread vs. rounded lips
• indicated by adjacent pairs of symbols

adapted from http//www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fal
l_2003/ling001/English.html
15
Dialect Comparison

• Nominal pronunciation of the vowels in Wells'
  lexical sets in IPA for the varieties of British
  and American speech might be heard from in
  national broadcast news

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Idealized Cardinal Vowels

• around 1917 a leading phonetician of the British
  School, Daniel Jones addressed the difficult
  problem of being as precise as possible in
  labeling Vs by articulation.
• Instead of production, he focused on perception
  and thus developed the Cardinal Vowel System
  (based on the cardinal points of a compass)
• thus V qualities could be heard by a trained
  phonetician could be recorded in terms of how
  close it sounded to a cardinal V quality

Ball Rahilly 1999
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Idealized Cardinal Vowels

• Jones system used equal spacing and outside
  vowels as prototypes.
• it used 8 vowels

Ball Rahilly 1999
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Tongue Position for 8 Cardinal Vs
Catford 2001
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Idealized Cardinal Vowels

• Other sets of Cardinal vowels just use a set of 3
  that show maximum contrast
• Front High, Back High
• i u
• a
• Front/Central Low

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Tongue position for 3 Cardinal Vs

• Also showing V limit or thephysical spacing of
  the Vowels at the most extreme contrasting points
  in the oral cavity

Catford 2001
21
Vowel separation

• In theory to provide the maximum contrast V space
  (and to a lesser extent) C space will be mostly
  balanced.

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1. Vowel Height

• Height
• one variable in which Vs are typically measured
• This means the height of the tongues highest
  point in the oral cavity
• For instance as you go down the chart from
• i
• to e
• to ?
• to æ
• to a
• your tongues highest point will get lower

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2. Vowel Frontness Backness

• A second variable for measuring vowels is their
  amount of variation from tongues front most
  position to its back most position
• so as you move from
• i
• to ?
• to ? (unrounded back vowel)
• your tongues position should shift backwards in
  your mouth

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Lets pause for a quick review of acoustics

• Neutral VowelSchwamodel vs. actual

Picket 1999
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Tube filter/formant model

• notice the constriction vs F1 F2 data

CYF 3rd ed 2007
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CV Plot of F1 F2 x Hz
Catford 2001
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Amplitude the 3rd Dimension of the Spectrogram
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Quick demo

• Sonogram a 3D acoustic viewer

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Combination of the first 2 dimensions

• F1xF2 chart
• Lets look at what formants can help show us

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Typical American Eng V chart
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Typical Vowel Plot

• A typical Vowel plot will include multiple
  samples to help more accurately define the vowel
  space.
• These will thenshow the targetarea for each
  vowel

http//www.ics.mq.edu.au/cassidy/comp449/html/epl
ot.gif
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A few rules about Freq and Formants

• Length Rule
• The average freq of the vowel formants are
  inversely proportional to the length of the
  pharyngeal-oral tract. In other words, the
  longer the tract, the lower the average formant
  freqs.
• Oral Constriction Rule
• The freq of F1 is lowered by any constriction in
  the front half of the oral part of the vocal
  tract, the greater the constriction the more F1
  is lowered
• Pharyngeal Constriction Rule
• The freq of F1 is raised by constriction of the
  pharynx, and the greater the constriction the
  more F1 is raised

Picket 1999
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A few rules about Freq and Formants

• Back Tongue Constriction
• The freq of F2 tends to be lowered by a back
  tongue constriction, and the greater the
  constriction the more F2 is lowered
• Front tongue Constriction
• The freq of F2 is raised by a front tongue
  constriction ,and the greater the constriction
  the more F2 is raised
• Lip-Rounding Rule
• The frequencies of all formants are lowered by
  lip-rounding. The more the rounding, the more
  the constriction, and the more the formants are
  lowered

Picket 1999
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Probable Articulation points for Vs

• Ladefoged
• Approximate articulator positioning for vowel
  space

Ladefoged 2007 fig 1.12
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Another Example

• 3 Cardinal Vs
• Front Vs
• Back

Picket 1999
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And yet, one more example

• compare V space in mouth with V space in trapezoid

Ladefoged 2005 Vs Cs
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Lets watch some vowels in action

• Movement of the tongue
• Movement of the Larynx
• Movement of the Jaw/Mandible
• (note to see the videos after ppt is posted
  online go to http//www.phonetics.ucla.edu/vowels
  /chapter11/chapter11.html

Ladefoged 2005
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3. Vowel Lip Rounding

• The 3rd dimension of vowel quality is the amount
  of rounding of the lips.
• Notice that both front and back vowels as well as
  high and low vowels can be rounded
• However, it is generally more common for low and
  back vowels to be rounded

Catford 2001
44
Formal Characteristics of Vs

• Sonorant
• All speech sounds are either sonorants or
  non-sonorants
• Sonorants involve no closure or stricture
  (restricting) of the airstream but instead,
  relatively unimpeded airflow in the vocal tract.
• Non-sonorants involve stricture of the airstream
  and relatively impeded airflow.
• What types of sounds are non-sonorants?
• Stops Fricatives, wh/ together are known as
  obstruents b/c they obstruct the airflow.

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Formal Characteristics of Vs

• Oral
• Some sonorants are oral, nasal (those with air
  only through the nose), or nasalized (those with
  air in both the oral and nasal cavities)
• Airflow must also happen through the oral cavity
  for a sonorant to be classified as a vowel
• Otherwise its a consonant like
  __________________
• n m ? etc.

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Formal Characteristics of Vs

• Central
• Some oral sonorants are NOT vowels
• For an oral sonorant to be a vowel, the airflow
  must go over the central part of the tongue.
• If the airflow goes over the sides of the tongue
  thin it is a consonant.
• Which consonant do you think it would most likely
  be?
• probably an l

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Questions?
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Practice Quiz on Articulation types and
transcription