A Phonetically-Based Model of Phonological Vowel Reduction

This paper proposes an analysis of phonological vowel reduction according to which vowel contrasts are subject to neutralization in unstressed syllables because it is more difficult to keep vowels distinct where vowel duration is shorter. Where the durational difference between stressed and unstressed vowels is large enough, it may not be possible to realize the same number of vowel contrasts in stressed and unstressed syllables while keeping the unstressed vowels adequately distinct, in which case it is preferable to reduce the size of the unstressed vowel inventory. The analysis is formulated as a numerical model, extending Liljencrants and Lindblom’s (1972) model of vowel inventories by incorporating aspects of the prosodic and segmental contexts of vowels, and allowing for different vowel inventories in different contexts. The model contributes to our understanding of vowel reduction, providing an explanation for the observation that vowel reduction primarily neutralizes height contrasts, and demonstrates how Liljencrants and Lindblom’s modeling approach can be developed to analyze contextual restrictions on the distribution of speech sounds.

[1]  Rado L. Lencek.  The Structure and History of the Slovene Language , 1982 .

[2]  M. Greenberg.  A historical phonology of the Slovene language , 2001 .

[3]  Louis C. W. Pols,et al.  Formant frequencies of Dutch vowels in a text, read at normal and fast rate , 1990 .

[4]  Coarticulation • Suprasegmentals,et al.  Acoustic Phonetics , 2019, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Human Communication Sciences and Disorders.

[5]  Sandra Chung,et al.  Transderivational Relationships in Chamorro Phonology , 1983 .

[6]  Marija Tabain,et al.  Adaptive Dispersion Theory and Phonological Vowel Reduction in Russian , 2005, Phonetica.

[7]  B. Atal,et al.  Inversion of articulatory-to-acoustic transformation in the vocal tract by a computer-sorting technique. , 1978, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[8]  B. Lindblom,et al.  On the Notion "Possible Speech Sound , 1990 .

[9]  B. Lindblom,et al.  Numerical Simulation of Vowel Quality Systems: The Role of Perceptual Contrast , 1972 .

[10]  D H Klatt,et al.  Review of text-to-speech conversion for English. , 1987, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[11]  N. Vallée,et al.  Phase spaces of vowel systems : A typology in the light of the dispersion-focalization theory (DFT) , 1999 .

[12]  What’s in a Schwa? , 1994 .

[13]  Donald M. Topping,et al.  Chamorro Reference Grammar , 1980 .

[14]  Robert Hagiwara.  WPP, No. 90: Acoustic Realizations of American /r/ as Produced by Women and Men , 1995 .

[15]  Matthew Y. Chen.  Vowel Length Variation as a Function of the Voicing of the Consonant Environment , 1970 .

[16]  J. Perkell,et al.  Economy of effort in different speaking conditions. I. A preliminary study of intersubject differences and modeling issues. , 2002, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[17]  Yuko Kondo.  Targetless Schwa: Is That How We Get the Impression of Stress-timing in English? , 2007 .

[18]  Björn Lindblom,et al.  Increasing Realism of Auditory Representations Yields Further Insights into Vowel Phonetics , 2003 .

[19]  B. Lindblom,et al.  Interaction between duration, context, and speaking style in English stressed vowels , 1994 .

[20]  John Colarusso,et al.  A grammar of the Kabardian language , 1992 .

[21]  Edward Flemming,et al.  Auditory Representations in Phonology , 2002 .

[22]  B. Lindblom.  Phonetic Universals in Vowel Systems , 1986 .

[23]  Henricus Joannes Smeets.  Studies in West Circassian phonology and morphology , 1984 .

[24]  A. Benguerel,et al.  Coarticulation of Upper Lip Protrusion in French , 1974, Phonetica.

[25]  A. Berinstein,et al.  WPP, No. 47: A Cross-linguistic Study on the Perception and Production of Stress , 1979 .

[26]  M. Maiden,et al.  The Dialects of Italy , 1997 .

[27]  R. Pittman,et al.  Phoneme and morpheme in Kabardian (eastern Adyghe) , 1963 .

[28]  B. Lindblom.  Spectrographic Study of Vowel Reduction , 1963 .

[29]  P. Ladefoged,et al.  The sounds of the world's languages , 1996 .

[30]  M. Studdert-Kennedy,et al.  Approaches To The Evolution Of Language: Social And Cognitive Bases , 1998 .

[31]  Colleen Richey.  Cues for place and palatalization in Russian stops , 2000 .

[32]  Johan Wouters,et al.  Effects of prosodic factors on spectral dynamics. II. Synthesis. , 2002, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[33]  Edward Flemming.  Contrast and Perceptual Distinctiveness , 2003 .

[34]  J S Perkell,et al.  Temporal measures of anticipatory labial coarticulation for the vowel/u/: within- and cross-subject variability. , 1992, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[35]  Ilse Lehiste,et al.  Akustische Analyse bulgarischer Silbenkerne , 1970 .

[36]  Patricia A. Keating,et al.  Central representation of vowel duration , 1980 .

[37]  C. O. Orgun,et al.  Turkish stress: a review , 2003, Phonology.

[38]  Joyce McDonough.  The Navajo Sound System , 2003 .

[39]  Michael Lee Mazzola,et al.  Proto-Romance and Sicilian , 1976 .

[40]  Margaret R. MacEachern,et al.  Laryngeal Cooccurrence Restrictions , 1999 .

[41]  A Löfqvist,et al.  Interarticulator programming in VCV sequences: lip and tongue movements. , 1999, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[42]  J. Barnes.  Positional Neutralization: A Phonologization Approach to Typological Patterns , 2002 .

[43]  Sieb G. Nooteboom,et al.  Lexical retrieval from fragments of spoken words: beginnings vs endings , 1981 .

[44]  Jennifer L. Smith.  Phonological Augmentation in Prominent Positions , 2004 .

[45]  George N. Clements,et al.  Feature economy in sound systems , 2003, Phonology.

[46]  W. L. Nelson.  Physical principles for economies of skilled movements , 1983, Biological Cybernetics.

[47]  John B. Anderson.  Digital Transmission Engineering , 1998 .

[48]  Ian Maddieson,et al.  Patterns of sounds , 1986 .

[49]  Louis C. W. Pols,et al.  Static and dynamic structure of vowel systems , 1987 .

[50]  Earl W. Stevick.  Shona : basic course , 1965 .

[51]  S. Ohman.  Coarticulation in VCV utterances: spectrographic measurements. , 1966, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[52]  L. Pols,et al.  Formant movements of Dutch vowels in a text, read at normal and fast rate. , 1992, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[53]  J. Schwartz,et al.  The Dispersion-Focalization Theory of vowel systems , 1997 .

[54]  Marcelino M. Liphola.  Aspects of phonology and morphology of shimakonde , 2001 .

[55]  F. J. van Beinum.  What's in a schwa? Durational and spectral analysis of natural continuous speech and diphones in Dutch , 1994 .

[56]  John‐Dongwook Choi,et al.  An acoustic study of Kabardian vowels , 1991, Journal of the International Phonetic Association.

[57]  Dick R. van Bergem,et al.  A model of coarticulatory effects on the schwa , 1994, Speech Commun..

[58]  David Lawrence Payne,et al.  The phonology and morphology of Axininca Campa , 1981 .

[59]  李幼升,et al.  Ph , 1989 .

[60]  R. Houde.  Tongue‐Body Motion during Selected Speech Sounds , 1968 .

[61]  K. Crosswhite,et al.  Vowel Reduction in Optimality Theory , 2001 .

[62]  Bart de Boer,et al.  The Origins of Vowel Systems , 2001 .

[63]  D. Everett,et al.  On the relevance of syllable onsets to stress placement , 1984 .