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1
Ronquest, Rebecca. "Stylistic Variation in Heritage Spanish Vowel Production." Heritage Language Journal 13, no. 2 (August 31, 2016): 275–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.46538/hlj.13.2.9.
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While recent studies of Spanish vowels produced by heritage speakers of Spanish (HSS) have revealed important differences in acoustic distribution and unstressed vowel reduction in comparison to monolingual norms (Alvord & Rogers, 2014; Boomershine, 2012; Ronquest, 2013; Willis, 2005), the influence of speech style on vowels produced by HSS remains relatively unexplored. Previous research examining stylistic variation in monolingual and bilingual varieties of Spanish report vowel space expansion in controlled speech relative to spontaneous speech (Alvord & Rogers, 2014; Harmegnies & Poch-Olivé, 1992; Poch-Olivé, Harmegnies, & Martín Butragueño, 2008) and increased vowel duration (Bradlow, 2002), although many of these studies included a small number of participants or did not examine the entire vowel system. The present investigation extends previous research by including a larger number of speakers and three novel tasks, as well as examining the effects of style on both quality and duration throughout the system as a whole. Acoustic and statistical analyses confirmed an overall vowel space expansion effect in controlled speech similar to that reported in previous studies, although not all vowels varied equally and along the same dimensions. Furthermore, vowel duration exhibited less variation than expected and was limited to the lowest vowels, suggesting that vowel quality and duration may be affected independently of one another. Combined, the general results not only reveal that speech style has a similar impact on vowels produced by HSS and other bilingual and monolingual populations, but also emphasize the importance of analyzing the entire vowel system on multiple dimensions.
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Hasan, Aveen Mohammed, and Rebeen Abdulrahman Rasheed. "Glide Insertion And Dialectal Variation In Kurdish." European Scientific Journal, ESJ 12, no. 14 (May 29, 2016): 289. http://dx.doi.org/10.19044/esj.2016.v12n14p289.
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One of the strategies used as a hiatus resolution is glide insertion. Previous Kurdish phonological works involve only a description of glide insertion in one dialect neglecting the segmental context. This study provides an analysis of glide insertion in word-medial vowel clusters in Kurdish and it is the first attempt to analyse the effects of dialect and segmental context. The speech material includes a set of words consisting of a stem plus a suffix with different vowel sequences at their boundaries. It is produced by four native speakers from four Kurdish speaking areas. The data analysis involves word transcription, their segmentation and the comparison of vowel sequences within and across the subdialects. The results indicate that glide insertion is not the only strategy used as word medial hiatus resolution, but it depends on the segmental context and dialect. Generally, the vowel hiatus is resolved by /j/ insertion. Vowel deletion is also used obligatorily in some segmental contexts when the second vowel in a sequence is /i/ and also when there are identical vowels in a sequences. Dialectal variations are observed in some vowel sequences in which /j/ insertion and vowel deletion both are used and when the first vowels in the sequence are the high back vowels in that /j/ and /w/ insertions are used. The findings suggests that /j/ insertion is the default strategy to resolve word-medial vowel clusters in Kurdish, the insertion of /w/ or vowel deletion are other strategies which are limited to some dialects and vowel sequences.
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Wassink, Alicia Beckford. "Theme and variation in Jamaican vowels." Language Variation and Change 13, no. 2 (July 2001): 135–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394501132023.
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Reporting the results of an instrumental acoustic examination of the vowel systems of ten Jamaican Creole (or basilect-) dominant and nine Jamaican English (or acrolect-) dominant speakers, this article links phonetic features with sociolinguistic factors. The nature and relative role of vowel quantity and quality differences in phonemic contrast are considered. The question of whether contrastive length operates in speakers' phonological systems is addressed by comparison of spectral and temporal features. Intraspeaker variation in vowel quality is found to play an important role in stylistic variation, demonstrating the complexity of variation in Jamaican varieties. The complex vowel quality (spectral) and quantity (temporal) relations reported here extend our understanding of the spectral and temporal characteristics of vowels involved in phonological contrasts in Jamaican varieties, the range of phonetic variation to be found within a postcreole continuum, and the interaction of phonetic factors in the expression of stylistic variation.
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Berns, Janine. "Low vowel variation in three French-speaking countries." Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 64, no. 1 (September 7, 2018): 1–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cnj.2018.23.
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AbstractIt is commonly noted that standard French is losing the contrast between its two low vowels /a/ and /ɑ/, due to the fronting of the back vowel. The difference in length, which accompanied the qualitative difference of this pair, is affected as well. In mainland France, this tendency can be found to various degrees across the country, and is spreading throughout the speech community. This article further develops the picture of the current status of the low vowel contrast by investigating Belgian and Swiss French, where length is known to play overall a far more prominent role in the vowel inventories than it does in standard French. Are Belgian and Swiss French also affected by the merger of the two low vowels? To what extent can a difference in length and/or timbre still be found? And how do the patterns of contrast neutralisation/preservation relate to the developments in France?
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Barreda, Santiago. "Perceptual validation of vowel normalization methods for variationist research." Language Variation and Change 33, no. 1 (March 2021): 27–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394521000016.
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AbstractThe evaluation of normalization methods sometimes focuses on the maximization of vowel-space similarity. This focus can lead to the adoption of methods that erase legitimate phonetic variation from our data, that is, overnormalization. First, a production corpus is presented that highlights three types of variation in formant patterns: uniform scaling, nonuniform scaling, and centralization. Then the results of two perceptual experiments are presented, both suggesting that listeners tend to ignore variation according to uniform scaling, while associating nonuniform scaling and centralization with phonetic differences. Overall, results suggest that normalization methods that remove variation not according to uniform scaling can remove legitimate phonetic variation from vowel formant data. As a result, although these methods can provide more similar vowel spaces, they do so by erasing phonetic variation from vowel data that may be socially and linguistically meaningful, including a potential male-female difference in the low vowels in our corpus.
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Muehlbauer, Jeffrey. "Vowel spaces in Plains Cree." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 42, no. 1 (March 12, 2012): 91–105. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100311000302.
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This paper presents a pilot study of the acoustic correlates of the Plains Cree vowel system. Naturalistic recordings of speakers of mid-20th-century Plains Cree, including one monolingual speaker, provide an empirical test for the general expectations from phonological descriptions. The results demonstrate that, while the hypothesized short/long vowel pairs do indeed have a strong durational contrast, the majority of vowel pairs are also distinguished by their formants. In all cases, the long vowel occupies a more extreme position in the vowel space. Plains Cree thus appears to show both a quantity and a quality contrast in its vowel pairs. The individual speaker data are then normalized to test whether there is intra-speaker variation in these results, with the results showing variation in the relation between vowels in all three parts of the vowel space.
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Koenig, Laura L., and Susanne Fuchs. "Vowel Formants in Normal and Loud Speech." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 62, no. 5 (May 21, 2019): 1278–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2018_jslhr-s-18-0043.
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Purpose This study evaluated how 1st and 2nd vowel formant frequencies (F1, F2) differ between normal and loud speech in multiple speaking tasks to assess claims that loudness leads to exaggerated vowel articulation. Method Eleven healthy German-speaking women produced normal and loud speech in 3 tasks that varied in the degree of spontaneity: reading sentences that contained isolated /i: a: u:/, responding to questions that included target words with controlled consonantal contexts but varying vowel qualities, and a recipe recall task. Loudness variation was elicited naturalistically by changing interlocutor distance. First and 2nd formant frequencies and average sound pressure level were obtained from the stressed vowels in the target words, and vowel space area was calculated from /i: a: u:/. Results Comparisons across many vowels indicated that high, tense vowels showed limited formant variation as a function of loudness. Analysis of /i: a: u:/ across speech tasks revealed vowel space reduction in the recipe retell task compared to the other 2. Loudness changes for F1 were consistent in direction but variable in extent, with few significant results for high tense vowels. Results for F2 were quite varied and frequently not significant. Speakers differed in how loudness and task affected formant values. Finally, correlations between sound pressure level and F1 were generally positive but varied in magnitude across vowels, with the high tense vowels showing very flat slopes. Discussion These data indicate that naturalistically elicited loud speech in typical speakers does not always lead to changes in vowel formant frequencies and call into question the notion that increasing loudness is necessarily an automatic method of expanding the vowel space. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8061740
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Perkell, Joseph, Majid Zandipour, Satrajit Ghosh, Lucie Menard, Harlan Lane, Mark Tiede, and Frank Guenther. "Variation in vowel production." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 120, no. 5 (November 2006): 3293–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4777888.
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Tse, Holman. "Variation and change in Toronto heritage Cantonese." Asia-Pacific Language Variation 2, no. 2 (December 31, 2016): 124–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/aplv.2.2.02tse.
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Abstract This paper presents the first sociophonetic study of Cantonese vowels using sociolinguistic interview data from the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Corpus. It focuses on four allophones [iː], [ɪk/ɪŋ], [uː], and [ʊk/ʊŋ] of two contrastive vowels /iː/ and /uː/ across two generations of speakers. The F1 and F2 of 30 vowel tokens were analyzed for these four allophones from each of 20 speakers (N = 600 vowel tokens). Results show inter-generational maintenance of allophonic conditioning for /iː/ and /uː/ as well as an interaction between generation and sex such that second-generation female speakers have the most retracted variants of [ɪk/ɪŋ] and the most fronted variants of [iː]. This paper will discuss three possible explanations based on internal motivation, phonetic assimilation, and phonological influence. This will illustrate the importance of multiple comparisons (including inter-generational, cross-linguistic, and cross-community) in the relatively new field of heritage language phonology research.
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Nekrasova, Galina Alexandrovna. "VARIATION OF CASE SUFFIXES IN THE MODERN UDMURT LANGUAGE." Yearbook of Finno-Ugric Studies 14, no. 1 (March 27, 2020): 25–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.35634/2224-9443-2020-14-1-25-33.
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The paper deals with variable case suffixes having double vowel, differing by the presence/absence of a coaffix - ла and the presence/absence of an anlaut vowel. On the material of the Udmurt language Corpus the quantitative ratio of variable suffixes is revealed and the conditions of functioning of non-standard suffixes in the modern Udmurt language are analyzed. Suffixes that differ in vowels have instrumental, prolative and illative. Comparison of the degree of variation of suffixes showed that in the modern Udmurt language the process of unification of instrumental vocalization continues. The number of nouns accepting the instrumental exponent only with the vowel ы decreases; in parallel, the number of nouns admitting the suffix with double vowel and only with the vowel э increases. The variable suffixes of prolative and illative allow separate nouns with a variable root morpheme, which is represented by allomorphs differing by the presence/absence of a vowel ( кенос/кенс- ‘barn’, сэрег / сэрг- ‘corner’, etc.), and allomorphs differing by the presence/absence of a final consonant к ( кус/куск - ‘loin’, нюлэс/нюлэск - ‘forest’, etc.). Only related root allomorphs accept the suffix with vowel - ы . Variable suffixes, differing by the presence/absence of the coaffix -ла , allow open toponyms in illative ( -ла ~ -e ), inessive ( -лан ~ -ын ), elative ( -лась ~ -ысь ), egressive ( -ласен ~ -ысен ). In the modern Udmurt language, the correlation between variable suffixes is approximately equal, but there is a tendency to displace suffixes with coaffix -ла by standard suffixes. Individual nouns ending in a , ( корка ‘ouse, hut’, куа , куала ‘anctuary; summer kitchen’ кунокуа ‘otel’) in inessive ( -н ~ -ын ), elative ( -сь ~ -ысь ), egressive ( -сен ~ -ысен ) and prolative ( -тü ~ -етü ) allow variable suffixes, differing by the presence/absence of a vowel, illative has a suffix -е and zero morpheme. The degree of variation of suffixes depends on lexical and semantic conditions. Formants without anlaut vowel remain the preferred with the lexeme корка ‘house, hut’. It is established that in the modern Udmurt language the relation between variable forms changes, the sphere of functioning of all types of non-standard suffixes decreases. The variability of suffixes testifies to rather long preservation of proto-linguistic morphonological features and slow intra-linguistic unification of case suffixes.
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Misnadin, M. "Phonetic realisations of Madurese vowels and their implications for the Madurese vowel system." Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics 10, no. 1 (June 1, 2020): 173–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v10i1.25033.
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It has been suggested that Madurese has eight surface vowels [a, ɛ, ə, ɔ, ɤ, i, ɨ, u], but there have been disagreements with regard to the number of its vowel phonemes. The disagreements arise partly because some scholars base their analyses of Madurese vowels on phonetic grounds while others base them on certain phonological analyses. Besides, some researchers do not consider native versus non-native Madurese words in their analyses. The paper addresses these problems by incorporating both phonetic and phonological analyses in order to provide a better description of Madurese vowels. To achieve this, we investigated the acoustic realisations of the eight surface vowels by looking at the first and second formant frequencies (F1 and F2) of the high and non-high vowel pairs (i ~ ɛ, ɨ ~ ə, ɤ ~ a, u ~ ɔ). Fifteen speakers of Madurese were recorded reading Madurese words put in a carrier phrase. All segmentations were done employing Praat, and F1 and F2 values were extracted using a Praat script. The data were assessed with a linear mixed-effects model accounting for variation due to both random and fixed factors. The results showed that all high and non-high vowel pairs significantly differed in their F1 values. However, the results for F2 values showed variations; only the pair [ɨ ~ ə] showed a significant difference at vowel onset and at vowel midpoint the pairs [i ~ ɛ] and [ɨ ~ ə] were significantly different. Furthermore, we also looked at the vowels [ɤ] and [ɨ] as well as [ɤ] and [ə] to see if they differed in their F1 and F2 values. Our results confirmed that at both vowel onset and midpoint, they were significantly different. The results were discussed employing phonological analysis and vowel dispersion theory. The result of the analyses suggests that Madurese should be best described as a language with a four-vowel system and further offers a solution to the disagreements on the number of vowel phonemes in Madurese
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Gross, Johan. "Segregated vowels: Language variation and dialect features among Gothenburg youth." Language Variation and Change 30, no. 3 (October 2018): 315–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394518000169.
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AbstractThis paper examines the effects of housing segregation on variation in the vowel systems of young speakers of Swedish who have grown up in different neighborhoods of Gothenburg. Significant differences are found for variants of the variables /i:/ and /y:/, which are strongly associated with the local dialect; these two vowels also exhibit coherence. Another vowel pair, /ε:/ and /ø:/, are involved in a coherent leveling process affecting many of the central Swedish dialects but differing in degree of openness in different neighborhoods of Gothenburg. The results show that the variation is not simply a reflection of foreign background, nor of groups of youth adopting single variants; rather, a number of social factors conflate in housing segregation, which interferes with the transmission of more abstract aspects of the local dialect's vowel system to young speakers in certain neighborhoods.
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Lu, Yu-An. "The effect of dialectal variation on word recognition." Language and Linguistics / 語言暨語言學 20, no. 4 (September 24, 2019): 535–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lali.00048.lu.
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Abstract Previous studies on Chinese dialect variation have mostly focused on the description of dialects, the regions where these dialects are spoken, attitudes towards dialects, and acoustic differences across dialects. The present study draws on experimental evidence concerning a vowel difference in two Taiwan Southern Min (TSM) dialects to provide more understanding on how non-contrastive, dialectal variations may affect speakers’ processing of speech. The variation of interest is a phonemic difference, [ə] and [ɔ], in the vowel inventory in two TSM dialects, in which the difference signals a lexical contrast in one dialect (e.g. [ə-a] ‘oyster’ vs. [ɔ-a] ‘taro’) but not in the other ([ɔ-a] ‘oyster, taro’). A long-term repetition-priming experiment investigating the word recognition involving the two vowels revealed a dialect effect on TSM speakers’ word recognition in accordance with prior exposure, native-ness and variant frequency. Implications of the findings are provided.
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McAdams, Brian. "The relationship between vowel variation and vowel‐to‐vowel coarticulation across languages." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 81, S1 (May 1987): S66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.2024342.
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Guzzo, Natália Brambatti, and Guilherme Duarte Garcia. "Phonological Variation and Prosodic Representation: Clitics in Portuguese-Veneto Contact." Journal of Language Contact 13, no. 2 (December 11, 2020): 389–427. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19552629-bja10021.
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Abstract In a variety of Brazilian Portuguese in contact with Veneto, variable vowel reduction in clitic position can be partially accounted for by the phonotactic profile of clitic structures. We show that, when phonotactic profile is controlled for, vowel reduction is statistically more frequent in non-pronominal than in pronominal clitics, which indicates that these clitic types are represented in separate prosodic domains. We propose that this difference in frequency of reduction between clitic types is only possible due to contact with Veneto, which, unlike standard BP, does not exhibit vowel reduction in clitic position. Contact thus provides speakers with the possibility of producing clitic vowels without reduction, and the resulting variation is used to signal prosodic distinctions between clitic types. We show that the difference in frequency of reduction is larger for older speakers, who are more proficient in Veneto and use the language regularly.
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Van Hout, Roeland. "Regional variation in vowels and vowel systems: normalization and optimization." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123, no. 5 (May 2008): 3068. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.2932833.
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ORIE, OLANIKE OLA. "Syllable asymmetries in comparative Yoruba phonology." Journal of Linguistics 36, no. 1 (March 2000): 39–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022226799008130.
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Syllables display symmetrical and asymmetrical properties in two Yoruba dialects. In the asymmetrical dialect, only a vowel with an onset participates in syllable-conditioned processes; an onsetless vowel is syllabically inert. In the symmetrical dialect, a vowel, with or without an onset, participates in syllable processes. It is argued that onsetless vowels are not syllabified in the asymmetrical dialect. Since there is no phonological contrast between syllables with onsets and those without onsets in the symmetrical dialect, all vowels are parsed into syllables exhaustively. Using ideas from Optimality Theory, attested interdialectal variation is shown to follow from different rankings of the same syllable and faithfulness constraints.
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CARDOSO, AMANDA. "Variation in nasal–obstruent clusters and its influence on price and mouth in Scouse." English Language and Linguistics 19, no. 3 (August 17, 2015): 505–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1360674315000192.
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This article has two main goals: (i) to show how nasal–obstruent clusters interact with a Canadian-Raising-type pattern in Liverpool English and (ii) to provide evidence that fine phonetic variation in the realisation of nasal–obstruent clusters influences the production of the preceding vowels. I present quantitative evidence from an acoustic study on price and mouth vowel realisations before nasal–obstruent clusters in Liverpool English. The investigation looks at price and mouth separately before obstruents, nasals and nasal–obstruent clusters, in order to demonstrate that nasal–obstruent clusters influence vowels differently depending on the quality of the vowel. Price realisations before nasal–obstruent clusters are similar to productions before singleton obstruents with the same voicing. Specifically, price has a raised realisation before nasal–voiceless obstruent clusters, but a non-raised realisation before nasal–voiced obstruent clusters, which is the same pattern as before singleton obstruents. Mouth realisations preceding nasal–obstruent clusters show evidence of a greater influence from the nasal. The nucleus formant measurements are similar to those before singleton obstruents, but there is frequent monophthongisation preceding nasal–obstruent clusters in mouth, which is mainly found before singleton nasals. Furthermore, I show that the variation in nasal–obstruent clusters in Liverpool English helps to explain the differences in realisation of the target vowels. Nasal deletion is more frequent in nasal–voiceless obstruent clusters following price, leading to vowel productions similar to those before singleton voiceless obstruents. However, nasal durations are longer in nasal–obstruent clusters following mouth, leading to a greater influence of the nasal in the form of more monophthongal vowel productions.
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Fabricius, Anne H. "Variation and change in thetrapandstrutvowels of RP: a real time comparison of five acoustic data sets." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37, no. 3 (December 2007): 293–320. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s002510030700312x.
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The present study examines evidence for change in real time within the short vowel subsystem of the RP accent of English over the course of the twentieth century. It compares plots of average formant positions for the short vowels, stemming from several data corpora. It furthermore describes a change over time in the juxtaposition of thetrapandstrutvowels as captured in the calculated angle and distance between the two, usingtrapas a fixed point. This representation of a relationship in a single measurement by means of angle calculation is a methodological innovation for the sociophonetic enterprise. A value specifying the geometric relationship between two vowel positions is precise and replicable, as well as abstract enough to be comparable across data sets. Differences between ‘phonetic’ and ‘sociolinguistic’ stances on the interpretation of acoustic vowel data in formant plots and the issue of suitable vowel normalisation procedures for sociophonetics will also be discussed.
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Storme, Benjamin. "Contrast enhancement as motivation for closed syllable laxing and open syllable tensing." Phonology 36, no. 2 (May 2019): 303–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0952675719000149.
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This paper proposes that closed syllable laxing and open syllable tensing of non-low vowels are motivated by conflicting strategies of contrast enhancement in vowel–consonant sequences. Laxing enhances the distinctiveness of consonant contrasts by allowing for more distinct VC formant transitions, in particular in sequences involving a non-low vowel followed by an oral labial/coronal/velar consonant (e.g. [p t k]). Tensing enhances the distinctiveness of vowel contrasts by providing more distinct formant realisations for vowels. Linguistic variation results from different ways of resolving the tension between maximising vowel dispersion and maximising consonant dispersion. Laxing typically applies before coda consonants as a way to compensate for the absence of good perceptual cues to place of articulation. The hypothesis that laxing enhances the distinctiveness of postvocalic place contrasts is supported by a study of mid-vowel laxing in French, which corroborates the general claim that perceptual contrast plays a role in shaping phonotactic restrictions.
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Yang, Byunggon. "Vowel perception by formant variation." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 103, no. 5 (May 1998): 3093. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.422952.
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Pretorius, R., D. P. Wissing, and J. C. Roux. "Front vowel variation in tswana." South African Journal of Linguistics 16, sup36 (December 1998): 90–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10118063.1998.9724404.
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Walker, James A., and Miriam Meyerhoff. "Pivots of the Caribbean? Low-back vowels in eastern Caribbean English." Linguistics 58, no. 1 (February 25, 2020): 109–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling-2019-0037.
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AbstractResolving the convergence of low-back vowels in English constitutes a pivot with repercussions for the rest of the vowel system. We consider how speakers on an eastern Caribbean island co-opt the inherent variability of vowel systems to differentiate themselves. Examining the vowels of Bequia English (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) shows the main source of variation to lie in the position and duration of four low back vowels (cloth, lot, palm, thought), which do not act as the same pivot point for realignment of the vowel space as in North American English. The crucial distinction between transmission and diffusion lies at the heart of our findings: principles of language change derived from varieties characterized by transmission may differ from principles associated with histories of diffusion central to many contact and creole varieties.
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Prévost, François, and Alexandre Lehmann. "Saliency of Vowel Features in Neural Responses of Cochlear Implant Users." Clinical EEG and Neuroscience 49, no. 6 (April 24, 2018): 388–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1550059418770051.
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Cochlear implants restore hearing in deaf individuals, but speech perception remains challenging. Poor discrimination of spectral components is thought to account for limitations of speech recognition in cochlear implant users. We investigated how combined variations of spectral components along two orthogonal dimensions can maximize neural discrimination between two vowels, as measured by mismatch negativity. Adult cochlear implant users and matched normal-hearing listeners underwent electroencephalographic event-related potentials recordings in an optimum-1 oddball paradigm. A standard /a/ vowel was delivered in an acoustic free field along with stimuli having a deviant fundamental frequency (+3 and +6 semitones), a deviant first formant making it a /i/ vowel or combined deviant fundamental frequency and first formant (+3 and +6 semitones /i/ vowels). Speech recognition was assessed with a word repetition task. An analysis of variance between both amplitude and latency of mismatch negativity elicited by each deviant vowel was performed. The strength of correlations between these parameters of mismatch negativity and speech recognition as well as participants’ age was assessed. Amplitude of mismatch negativity was weaker in cochlear implant users but was maximized by variations of vowels’ first formant. Latency of mismatch negativity was later in cochlear implant users and was particularly extended by variations of the fundamental frequency. Speech recognition correlated with parameters of mismatch negativity elicited by the specific variation of the first formant. This nonlinear effect of acoustic parameters on neural discrimination of vowels has implications for implant processor programming and aural rehabilitation.
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Yang, Jing, and Robert A. Fox. "Acoustic development of vowel production in native Mandarin-speaking children." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 49, no. 1 (July 12, 2017): 33–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100317000196.
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The present study aims to document the developmental profile of static and dynamic acoustic features of vowel productions in monolingual Mandarin-speaking children aged between three and six years in comparison to adults. Twenty-nine monolingual Mandarin children and 12 native Mandarin adults were recorded producing ten Mandarin disyllabic words containing five monophthongal vowel phonemes /a i u yɤ/. F1 and F2 values were measured at five equidistant temporal locations (the 20–35–50–65–80% points of the vowel's duration) and normalized. Scatter plots showed clear separations between vowel categories although the size of individual vowel categories exhibited a decreasing trend as the age increased. This indicates that speakers as young as three years old could separate these five Mandarin vowels in the acoustic space but they were still refining the acoustic properties of their vowel production as they matured. Although the tested vowels were monophthongs, they were still characterized by distinctive formant movement patterns. Mandarin children generally demonstrated formant movement patterns comparable to those of adult speakers. However, children still showed positional variation and differed from adults in the magnitudes of spectral change for certain vowels. This indicates that vowel development is a long-term process which extends beyond three years of age.
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Bostoen, Koen, and Joseph Koni Muluwa. "Vowel split in Hungan (Bantu H42, Kwilu, DRC)." Journal of Historical Linguistics 1, no. 2 (December 31, 2011): 247–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jhl.1.2.04bos.
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This paper examines the diachronic origin of a vowel split in the Bantu language Hungan. It is shown that the inherited Proto-Bantu seven-vowel (7V) system was first reduced to a classical five-vowel (5V) system before the Kipuka variety of Hungan developed a new kind of 7V system. Such a 7V>5V>7V cycle has never before been described in Bantu. The new 7V system is thus the end product of a vowel merger and a vowel split which succeeded each other, but it could be mistaken for the outcome of a chain shift. The vowel split itself started out as an internally-motivated allophonic variation between tense and lax mid vowels that subsequently became phonologized through an externally-motivated loss of the conditioning environment. It can therefore be considered as a contact-induced language-internal change.
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MAYR, ROBERT, and PAOLA ESCUDERO. "Explaining individual variation in L2 perception: Rounded vowels in English learners of German." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 13, no. 3 (March 15, 2010): 279–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728909990022.
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Most empirical research in L2 vowel perception focuses on the development of groups of learners. However, recent studies indicate that individual learners' developmental paths in L2 vowel perception may not be uniform (e.g., Escudero, 2001; Escudero and Boersma, 2004; Morrison, 2009). The aim of the present study is to add to this line of research by investigating (1) whether individual English learners of German follow different paths in their perceptual development of six rounded German vowels, and (2) whether the observed patterns are explicable on the basis of Escudero's (2005)Second-Language Linguistic Perception(L2LP) model. A cross-language perceptual assimilation experiment revealed that learners’ assimilation of L2 sounds to native categories is indeed highly diverse, yet systematic. Importantly, these cross-language mapping patterns largely predict the learners’ further development in L2 vowel perception, as assessed in a forced-choice identification task. Implications for explanatory frameworks in second-language speech research are discussed.
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Carr, Philip. "Strict Cyclicity, Structure Preservation and the Scottish Vowel-Length Rule." Journal of Linguistics 28, no. 1 (March 1992): 91–114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022226700015000.
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The analysis of vowel length in Standard Scottish English (SSE) and Scots dialects has proved problematical for some time now. With most analyses the Scottish Vowel-Length Rule (SVLR) is taken to lengthen underlyingly short vowels, and the principal problem with this approach has been in giving a phonological characterization of the set of vowels which act as input to the rule. A complicating factor here is the fact that the set of input vowels seems to vary across dialects. A recent analysis by Anderson (to appear), couched in dependency-phonology (DP) representations which allow for non-specification, argues rather persuasively that SVLR is a shortening operation on underlyingly long vowels, thus resolving the problem of the phonological definition of the input set (for some dialects at least). It also goes some way towards dealing with variation across dialects by giving an explanation for the variable behaviour of the lower mid vowel [ↄ,], which participates in SVLR in some dialects but not in others.
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Botne, Robert. "Prosodically-conditioned vowel shortening in Chindali." Studies in African Linguistics 27, no. 1 (June 1, 1998): 97–122. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v27i1.107386.
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In Chindali [Bantu M21, northern Malawi and southern Tanzania], the augment vowel of noun classes 1 a, Sa, 9 and 10 exhibits allomorphic variation in length. In other noun classes, the vowel of the noun class prefix varies in length before NCinitial stems. The author demonstrates that, in both cases, potentially long vowels become shortened, except that they do so under different conditions: mora-count of the noun stem in the first case, lack of high tone (accent) on the prefix in the second.
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Carlson, Matthew T., and Alexander McAllister. "I’ve heard that one before: Phonetic reduction in speech production as a possible contributing factor in perceptual illusory vowel effects." Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 12, no. 2 (September 25, 2019): 281–308. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/shll-2019-2013.
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Abstract This study probed the relationship between productive phonotactic repair and speech production, by asking whether the natural variability found in speech, through phonetic reduction, may include apparent illicit sequences requiring repair, even though the target words are licit. Spanish productively repairs word-initial /s/-consonant clusters (#sC) with a prothetic [e] in both production and perception. We asked whether the initial vowel in Spanish #VsC words like espalda ‘back’ is prone to reduction, and whether or not /e/, which matches the default repair vowel, is more susceptible to reduction than other vowels (e.g. in aspirina ‘aspirin’) due to its predictability. We explore these hypotheses in the speech of 11 speakers of Andalusian Spanish who produced #VsC words in isolation. Initial vowels showed lower intensity, greater devoicing, and less modal voicing compared to control #pVs-initial words, and initial /e, i, o/ were occasionally deleted, leading to the occurrence of apparently illicit sequences in actual speech, e.g. espalda produced as [spalda]. However, evidence that the default vowel, [e], was reduced more than other vowels was weak. These results suggest that variation in speech may contribute to the well-known illusory vowel effects, where listeners perceive illicit sequences as though the repair vowel had been present.
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Van der Harst, Sander, Hans Van de Velde, and Roeland Van Hout. "Variation in Standard Dutch vowels: The impact of formant measurement methods on identifying the speaker's regional origin." Language Variation and Change 26, no. 2 (June 16, 2014): 247–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394514000040.
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AbstractIt is common practice in sociophonetics to measure vowel formants at one (monophthongs) or two (diphthongs) time points. This paper compares this traditional target approach with two dynamic approaches for investigating regional patterns of variation: the multiple time point approach, which measures formants at successive time points, and the regression approach, which estimates formant dynamics over time by fitting polynomial regression equations to formant contours. The speech material consisted of monosyllabic words containing all full vowels of Dutch, except for /y/. These words were read out by 160 speakers of Standard Dutch, who were distributed over four regions in the Netherlands and four regions in Flanders, Belgium. The results show that dynamic approaches outperform the target approach in uncovering regional vowel differences, which suggests that sociophonetic vowel studies that apply the target approach run the risk of overlooking important sociolinguistic patterns.
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Jacewicz, Ewa, Robert A. Fox, and Jill M. Deatherage. "Stylistic variation in children’s vowel production." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 139, no. 4 (April 2016): 2123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4950322.
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Dossey, Ellen. "Perceptual adaptation to regional vowel variation." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 146, no. 4 (October 2019): 3051. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.5137573.
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Brumbaugh, Susan, and Christian Koops. "Vowel Variation in Albuquerque, New Mexico." Publication of the American Dialect Society 102, no. 1 (2017): 31–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00031283-4295200.
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Ridwan, Ridwan, Farida Maricar, Sunaidin Ode Mulae, and Sherly Asriyani. "PHONOLOGICAL VARIATION OF TALIABU LANGUAGE DIALECTS." RETORIKA: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, dan Pengajarannya 13, no. 1 (February 23, 2020): 156. http://dx.doi.org/10.26858/retorika.v13i1.9266.
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This research aimed to describe the phonological variation of Taliabu language dialects. This research used a qualitative descriptive method. The technique of data collection was obtained by taking notes, records, and interviews. Data obtained was analyzed by the stages of reduction, presentation, conclusion, and verification data. The result of the research showed that Taliabu language had three dialects, namely Kadai, Siboyo, and Mange. Phonological variations of Taliabu language occurred in the three dialects comprise of vowel variations, namely /e/, /a/, and /o/. Beside the vowel variation, there is also variation of consonants such as /g/, /y/, /h/, /t/, /d/, / m/, /ŋ/, /b/, /p/, /k/, dan /r/ phonemes. Among the three dialects, one of them has high innovation namely Mange dialect, meanwhile, dialects have high phonological differences between Kadai and Mange dialects.
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Khan, Afzal, and Soleman Awad Mthkal Alzobidy. "Vowel Variation Between American English and British English." International Journal of English Linguistics 9, no. 1 (December 31, 2018): 350. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v9n1p350.
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The English Language, being an international language, is spoken all over the world with many variations. These variations occur primarily due to environmental, cultural and social differences. The main reasons for these variations are intermingling of different races and strata in a society. In this regard prominent differences can be observed at phonological levels. These phonological variations produce different kinds of English, like British and American English. In these two there are differences in intonation, stress pattern, and pronunciation. Although South-Eastern British R.P. is known as Standard English but one cannot deny the existence and value of American English. The study attempts to highlight the vowel variation between British English and American English at phonological level.
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IRONS, T. L. "ANALYZING VOWEL VARIATION BY THE NUMBERS: An Acoustic Analysis of Vowel Variation in New World English." American Speech 79, no. 3 (September 1, 2004): 317–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00031283-79-3-317.
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Wong Gonzales, Wilkinson Daniel, and Rebecca Lurie Starr. "Vowel system or vowel systems?" Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 35, no. 2 (October 1, 2020): 253–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00061.won.
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Abstract The Manila variety of Philippine Hybrid Hokkien (PHH-M) or Lánnang-uè is a contact language used by the metropolitan Manila Chinese Filipinos; it is primarily comprised of Hokkien, Tagalog/Filipino, and English elements. Approaching PHH-M as a mixed language, we investigate linguistically and socially conditioned variation in the monophthongs of PHH-M, focusing on the extent to which the vowel systems of the three source languages have converged. This analysis draws on data gathered from 34 native speakers; Pillai scores are calculated to assess the degree of merger. Contrary to certain predictions of prior work on mixed languages, PHH-M is found to have a unified, eight-vowel inventory distinct from any of its sources. Older women use more stable vowels across source languages, suggesting that they have led in the development of PHH-M as a mixed code; however, signs of change among younger women suggest either the endangerment of the code or its evolution in response to the community’s shifting identity. We contextualize our conclusions in relation to the sociohistory and language ecology of metropolitan Manila’s Chinese Filipino community.
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Almisreb, Ali Abd, Nooritawati Md Tahir, Ahmad Farid Abidin, and Norashidah Md Din. "Acoustical Comparison between /u/ and /u:/ Arabic Vowels for Non-Native Speakers." Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 11, no. 1 (July 1, 2018): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijeecs.v11.i1.pp1-8.
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<p>The articulation of Arabic phonemes is essential for the Malay community since Arabic language is mandatory to perform worship. Hence, in this paper, an acoustical analysis of Arabic phonemes for vowels /u/ and /u:/ is discussed based on tokens pronounced by Malay speakers. The experimental results showed that the Malay speakers are inclined to utter these Arabic phonemes similar to the native speakers and it was also found from the analysis that the vowel /u/ and /u: was articulated as high-back vowels. Conversely, the vowel /u/ was located lower than /u:/ as in the vowel-space. Alternatively results also showed that /u/ and /u:/ is higher than the other vowels specifically /a/ and /a:/. In addition, the statistical analysis showed that the formant frequencies of both short and long dummah for formant frequency F1, F2 and F3 have more variation in terms of /u/ as compare to /u:/. In contrast formant frequency F4 and F5 are more diversity in terms of /u:/.</p>
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Zirnask, Tatiana. "Rõhk ja kestus mokša keele Kesk-Vadi murdes." Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 1, no. 1 (July 1, 2010): 99–111. http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2010.1.1.06.
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In Moksha, methods of experimental phonetics have not been systematically used to study prosody. Fragmentary data available on stress, which were based on durational measurements in Mid-Vad, show that duration might be an important stress correlate. This article treats the relationship between stress and duration in Mid-Vad by using sets of measurement data. It focuses on vowel durations measured in mono-, di-, and trisyllabic words of different structure, which were read in a frame sentence by two speakers. Vowel durations were found to depend on stress – vowels in stressed syllables were longer than in unstressed syllables. Variation was related to word structure – e.g. high vowels (having lower intrinsic duration than low and mid vowels) under stress were as long as unstressed low and mid vowels. The results are useful for the development of prosody research in Moksha
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Al Aziiz, Arief Nur Rahman, and Muhammad Ridwan. "PHONOLOGICAL VARIATION OF PASAR KLIWON ARABIC DIALECT SURAKARTA." PRASASTI: Journal of Linguistics 4, no. 1 (May 11, 2019): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.20961/prasasti.v4i1.4146.
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<p>This article studies about sound variation sand sound change in Arabic dialect Pasar Kliwon. The data searching use observe (<em>simak</em>) and conversation (<em>cakap</em>) method. The technique of data searching is record (<em>rekam</em>) and register (<em>catat</em>). The data searching refers to question list from 120 swadesh vocabularies. Data analysis used padan method and depends on informan’s speech organ. The analysis research use sound change theory according to Crowley (1992) and Muslich (2012). The vowel sound in Arabic dialect Pasar Kliwon divided by two kinds: short vowel sound and long vowel sound. There are twenty sevenconsonant sounds and divided by seven kinds: plosive, fricative, affricative, liquid, voiced, voiceless, and velariation sound. The sound variation of semi-vowel is <em>wawu</em> and <em>ya</em>>’. The vowel sound change divided by four kinds: lenition, anaptycsis, apocope, metathesis. The consonant sound change divided by four kinds: lenition, anaptycsis, apocope, and sincope.The diftong sound change is monoftongitation.</p>
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Osberger, Mary Joe. "Training Effects on Vowel Production by Two Profoundly Hearing-Impaired Speakers." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 30, no. 2 (June 1987): 241–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/jshr.3002.241.
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Two profoundly hearing-impaired adolescents received systematic speech training to improve their production of the vowels /i/ and /æ/. Acoustic measures of F 1 , F 2 , and duration, and listener judgments of vowel acceptability, were used to quantify vowel production before and after training. Both subjects demonstrated significant changes in their production of the two vowels at the acoustic and perceptual levels following treatment. The changes were highly individualized. For some features, significant improvement occurred posttreatment with differences between the hearing-impaired subject and a control group of subjects with normal hearing no longer present. There was a significant improvement in the acceptability of the two vowels in each subject's speech after training. Vowel duration remained unchanged in the speech of one subject whereas it increased in the speech of the other subject following training. There was a trend toward reduced token-to-token variation in the posttreatment samples. Acoustic and perceptual measures also were obtained on two vowels not directly trained in the program. Significant changes occurred in the production of these segments but some of the changes resulted in greater deviation in the post- than in the pretreatment samples.
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Gordon, Matthew. "A typology of contour tone restrictions." Studies in Language 25, no. 3 (December 31, 2001): 423–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sl.25.3.03gor.
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This paper presents results of a survey of contour tones in 105 languages with lexical tone. Results indicate an implicational hierarchy of tone bearing ability, whereby long vowels are most likely to carry contour tones, followed by syllables containing a short vowel plus a sonorant coda, followed by syllables containing a short vowel plus an obstruent coda, followed by open syllables containing a short vowel. It is claimed that this tonal hierarchy is phonetically motivated: syllable types which are phonetically better suited to carrying tonal information are more likely to support contour tones. Languages whose tone distributions superficially appear to fall outside the range of variation predicted on phonetic grounds are demonstrated, upon closer examination, to be unexceptional in their behavior.
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Pillai, Stefanie, Min En Chan, and Alan Norman Baxter. "Vowels in Malacca Portuguese Creole." Research in Language 13, no. 3 (September 30, 2015): 248–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/rela-2015-0024.
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This paper examines the vowel system of present day Malacca Portuguese Creole (MPC) or Kristang, based on recordings from interviews with five female native speakers of MPC. A total of 1083 monophthongs were extracted from the recordings. The first and second formants of these vowels were measured and analysed. Considerable variation was found within and between the speakers in the way each of the vowels was produced. There were also noticeable overlaps between /i/ and /e/ suggesting that they were being used interchangeably. Based on the variation in the way that vowels are produced, and the overlaps between vowels, the findings suggest the possibility of phonological instability of this endangered language.
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Oder, Austin L., Cynthia G. Clopper, and Sarah Hargus Ferguson. "Effects of dialect on vowel acoustics and intelligibility." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 43, no. 1 (April 2013): 23–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100312000333.
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A great deal of recent research has focused on phonetic variation among American English vowels from different dialects. This body of research continues to grow as vowels continuously undergo diachronic formant changes that become characteristic of certain dialects. Two experiments using the Nationwide Speech Project corpus (Clopper & Pisoni 2006a) explored whether the Midland dialect is more closely related acoustically and perceptually to the Mid-Atlantic or to the Southern dialect. The goal of this study was to further our understanding of acoustic and perceptual differences between two of the most marked dialects (Mid-Atlantic and Southern) and one of the least marked dialects (Midland) of American English. Ten vowels in /hVd/ context produced by one male talker from each of these three dialects were acoustically analyzed and presented to Midland listeners for identification. The listeners showed the greatest vowel identification accuracy for the Mid-Atlantic talker (95.2%), followed by the Midland talker (92.5%), and finally the Southern talker (79.7%). Vowel error patterns were consistent with vowel acoustic differences between the talkers. The results suggest that, acoustically and perceptually, the Midland and Mid-Atlantic dialects are more similar than are the Midland and Southern dialects.
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A. R, Mashita Nadaa, Sitie Fithriyah, Muhammad Irfan Fathurrahman, and Rika Astari. "Variasi Fonologis Kosakata Bahasa Arab: Bahasa Arab Fushā dengan Bahasa Arab Maroko." Al-Ta'rib : Jurnal Ilmiah Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Arab IAIN Palangka Raya 8, no. 1 (June 24, 2020): 65–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.23971/altarib.v8i1.1789.
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This study aims to explore phonological variations between the Arabic vocabulary of fusha and Moroccan Arabic. This article uses a qualitative method with a literature approach in expressing phenomena that develop, especially in the aspect of phonological variation between Arabic fusha and Moroccan Arabic. The results of this study reveal that there are several phonological variations in the Arabic vocabulary of Fusha with Moroccan Arabic namely: (1) Sound reinforcement such as changes in low vowel sound / a / into moderate vowel sound / e /, (2) Lattice like weakening high vowel sounds / u / become a low vowel sound / a /, (3) Monophonization such as the merging of vowel sounds / a / and / u / into a single vowel sound / o /, (4) Dating which is divided into three categories such as anheresis (dating that occurs in some vocabulary such as aħmaru, azraqu, and asˤfaru become Ħmar, zraq, and sˤfar by removing the vowel / a / at the beginning of a word), syncope (some dating of vowel sounds in the middle such as / a /, vowel / u / and / a /, and vowel / i /, and apokope (The dating of the sound at the end such as the word ʃamsun becomes ʃams, and the word ħamma: mun becomes ħamma: m, the word baħrun becomes baħr by removing the sound / un / at the end of the word).
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Kasim, Ziyad R. "CAN VOICE ONSET TIME EXPLAIN VOWEL DURATION VARIATION?" Academic Journal of Nawroz University 8, no. 4 (December 20, 2019): 311. http://dx.doi.org/10.25007/ajnu.v8n4a476.
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Vowel durations have been reported in many languages to vary before syllable final stops; these durations are shorter before voiceless stops and longer before voiced ones. One type of explanations to this phenomenon suggests prevocalic effect influencing vowel duration variation. The present study attempts at a preliminary investigation to find out whether the voice onset time (VOT) of a syllable initial stop can be correlated with this vowel duration variation in a CVC context in Arabic. Measurements of the VOT of the Arabic voiceless uvular stop /q/ are made where /q/ is the first C, V is one of /a:/, /u:/ and /i:/ and the final C is either /t/ or /d/. A Paired-Samples T-Test is used to compare between the VOT measurements of /q/ of the words containing /t/ and those containing /d/. The result of the comparison did not show any significant difference; no relationship could be found between the VOT of the initial stop and vowel duration variation.
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Pappalardo, Giuseppe. "Sociolinguistic Factors Affecting Vowel Devoicing in Spontaneous Japanese: A Preliminary Corpus-based Analysis." Annali Sezione Orientale 78, no. 1-2 (April 18, 2018): 164–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/24685631-12340048.
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Abstract Maekawa and Kikuchi (2005) used the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ) to analyse the frequency of vowel devoicing in different phonological environments. According to their analysis, the devoicing rate is highest when a fricative is followed by a stop and lowest when an affricate is followed by a fricative. Moreover, the results of their study suggest that devoicing also occurs in atypical environments, as in non-close vowels and in contexts where a vowel is followed by a voiced consonant. However, the frequency of devoicing is conditioned not only by phonological factors but, at a certain extent, also by extra-linguistic and sociological factors such as age, gender and speech style. This paper aims to analyse the sociolinguistic variation of vowel devoicing in spontaneous Japanese using the CSJ-Core consisting of about 45 hours of speech, all of which have been (sub-)phonemically segmented. Age, gender and speech style variation has been analysed for different phonological environments. Particular attention will be given to atypical environments which showed a higher rate of variability.
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Fabricius, Anne. "Weak vowels in modern RP: An acoustic study of happy-tensing and kit/schwa shift." Language Variation and Change 14, no. 2 (July 2002): 211–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394502142037.
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Several changes in consonant and vowel pronunciations in younger generations of native speakers of Received Pronunciation (RP) are currently the object of research interest. In order to further an empirically grounded description of changes in RP, the present study examines variation in weak vowels. Patterns of variation in word-final open weak syllables (happy, city) as well as in past and present/plural suffixes (waited, changes) are investigated acoustically in the interview speech of eight young (born in the late 1970s) speakers of modern RP. The data show variation in happy vowels for some speakers according to phonetic environment, a phenomenon which deserves further study. kit/schwa variation in the inflectional suffixes studied here shows a tendency to maintain kit-like values. Overall, the study indicates that acoustic analysis of such weak vowels can provide interesting data on variation.
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Jacewicz, Ewa, Robert Allen Fox, and Joseph Salmons. "Cross-generational vowel change in American English." Language Variation and Change 23, no. 1 (March 2011): 45–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394510000219.
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AbstractThis study examines cross-generational changes in the vowel systems in central Ohio, southeastern Wisconsin, and western North Carolina. Speech samples from 239 speakers, males and females, were divided into three age groups: grandparents (66–91 years old), parents (35–51), and children (8–12). Acoustic analysis of vowel dynamics (i.e., formant movement) was undertaken to explore variation in the amount of spectral change for each vowel. A robust set of cross-generational changes in /ɪ, ɛ, æ, ɑ/ was found within each dialect-specific vowel system, involving both their positions and dynamics. With each successive generation, /ɪ, ɛ, æ/ become increasingly monophthongized and /ɑ/ is diphthongized in children. These changes correspond to a general anticlockwise parallel rotation of vowels (with some exceptions in /ɪ/ and /ɛ/). Given the widespread occurrence of these parallel chainlike changes, we term this development the “North American Shift,” which conforms to the general principles of chain shifting formulated by Labov (1994) and others.