Dynamic acoustic properties of monophthongs and diphthongs in Western Sydney Australian English

Elvin, J Mark; Williams, Daniel; Escudero, Paola

doi:10.1121/1.4952387

Cited by 52 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…This led the authors to compare the amount of F1 and F2 vowel inherent spectral change (VISC) between the AusE and CanE productions of DEET at 25% and 75% of the vowel, finding that there was greater change in the AusE than the CanE productions. This large change in the production of the AusE vowel /iː/ in DEET has been documented in acoustic descriptions of AusE (Watson & Harrington, ) and Western Sydney AusE (Elvin, Williams, & Escudero, )—the variety spoken by the female speaker who produced the AusE stimuli. For vowel perception and early word learning, it is possible that vowels with more varying internal properties are more difficult to learn because their dynamic properties obscure the target and may make the vowel more confusable.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…Although Escudero et al. () measured VISC by comparing the difference in spectral values between 25% and 75% of the vowel, we instead followed recent approaches (Elvin, Williams et al., ; Williams & Escudero, ; see these studies for a full account of the analysis procedure) that provide a more reliable measure of VISC by obtaining formant estimates at 30 equally spaced time points from the central (20%–80%) portion of the vowel. This allowed us to (a) capture dynamic (spectral) change that would otherwise be masked by comparing the difference between two endpoints, and (b) compare the amount of VISC across vowels.…”

Section: Acoustic Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Mummy, keep it steady”: phonetic variation shapes word learning at 15 and 17 months

Escudero

Mulak

Elvin

et al. 2017

Developmental Science

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Fifteen-month-olds have difficulty detecting differences between novel words differing in a single vowel. Previous work showed that Australian English (AusE) infants habituated to the word-object pair DEET detected an auditory switch to DIT and DOOT in Canadian English (CanE) but not in their native AusE (Escudero et al., ). The authors speculated that this may be because the vowel inherent spectral change variation (VISC) in AusE DEET is larger than in CanE DEET. We investigated whether VISC leads to difficulty in encoding phonetic detail during early word learning, and whether this difficulty dissipates with age. In Experiment 1, we familiarized AusE-learning 15-month-olds to AusE DIT, which contains smaller VISC than AusE DEET. Unlike infants familiarized with AusE DEET (Escudero et al., ), infants detected a switch to DEET and DOOT. In Experiment 2, we familiarized AusE-learning 17-month-olds to AusE DEET. This time, infants detected a switch to DOOT, and marginally detected a switch to DIT. Our acoustic analysis showed that AusE DEET and DOOT are differentiated by the second vowel formant, while DEET and DIT can only be distinguished by their changing dynamic properties throughout the vowel trajectory. Thus, by 17 months, AusE infants can encode highly dynamic acoustic properties, enabling them to learn the novel vowel minimal pairs that are difficult at 15 months. These findings suggest that the development of word learning is shaped by the phonetic properties of the specific word minimal pair.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: Acoustic Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Mummy, keep it steady”: phonetic variation shapes word learning at 15 and 17 months

Escudero

Mulak

Elvin

et al. 2017

Developmental Science

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“…Had this prediction been borne out, we would see higher overlap scores for EP /e/-/ / compared to /i/-/e/ and BP /i/-/e/ and /e/-/ /. This may be explained by the fact that American English does not use duration as a cue (compared to, e.g., Australian English; see Elvin et al 2016b), and therefore, the vowel duration and quality difference are not as salient for these listeners. Based on the above perceptual overlap scores and following previous studies (Levy 2009;Vasiliev 2013;Elvin 2016), we can qualitatively predict an ordering of discrimination accuracy from the least to most difficult (with~referring to equal or comparable difficulty), which is shown in Example (1) below.…”

Section: 58mentioning

confidence: 91%

Non-Native Dialect Matters: The Perception of European and Brazilian Portuguese Vowels by Californian English Monolinguals and Spanish–English Bilinguals

2018

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Studies show that second language (L2) learners’ perceptual patterns differ depending on their native dialect (e.g., Chládková and Podlipský 2011; Escudero and Williams 2012). Likewise, speakers from the same native language background show different perceptual patterns depending on the dialect to which they are exposed (e.g., Escudero and Boersma 2004; Escudero and Chládková 2010). The Second Language Linguistic Perception model (L2LP; Escudero 2005) accounts for these differences, explicitly stating that the acoustic similarity between the native and target dialect affects L2 perception. This study investigated whether Californian English monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual listeners differ in their perception of European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) vowels. Escudero et al. (2009a) showed that there were differences in the acoustic realization of vowels in BP and EP. Stressed vowels were longer in BP than in EP, with differences in vowel height observed for some vowels (e.g., /ɛ/ is higher in EP than in BP). According to the L2LP model, these acoustic differences between dialects will affect vowel perception; therefore, we predicted that there would be differences in the listeners’ perception of certain vowel contrasts in BP and EP. Participants completed a non-native categorization task and a discrimination task presented in the XAB format. The results from the non-native categorization task predicted differential vowel perception depending on both the dialect and vowel contrast that listeners heard, which were mostly confirmed with an interaction between dialect and contrast in the discrimination results. We contextualize these results with respect to models of L2 speech perception, highlighting that dialectal differences impact language perception and may influence later language learning.

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“… These vowels are also differentiated by their dynamic properties in AusE (Elvin, Williams, & Escudero, ; Escudero, Mulak, Elvin, & Traynor, ; Williams, Escudero, & Gafos, ). …”

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confidence: 99%

Cross‐Situational Learning of Phonologically Overlapping Words Across Degrees of Ambiguity

2019

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Cross‐situational word learning (XSWL) tasks present multiple words and candidate referents within a learning trial such that word–referent pairings can be inferred only across trials. Adults encode fine phonological detail when two words and candidate referents are presented in each learning trial (2 × 2 scenario; Escudero, Mulak, & Vlach, ). To test the relationship between XSWL task difficulty and phonological encoding, we examined XSWL of words differing by one vowel or consonant across degrees of within‐learning trial ambiguity (1 × 1 to 4 × 4). Word identification was assessed alongside three distractors. Adults finely encoded words via XSWL: Learning occurred in all conditions, though accuracy decreased across the 1 × 1 to 3 × 3 conditions. Accuracy was highest for the 1 × 1 condition, suggesting fast‐mapping is a stronger learning strategy here. Accuracy was higher for consonant than vowel set targets, and having more distractors from the same set mitigated identification of vowel set targets only, suggesting possible stronger encoding of consonants than vowels.

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Dynamic acoustic properties of monophthongs and diphthongs in Western Sydney Australian English

Cited by 52 publications

References 21 publications

“Mummy, keep it steady”: phonetic variation shapes word learning at 15 and 17 months

“Mummy, keep it steady”: phonetic variation shapes word learning at 15 and 17 months

Non-Native Dialect Matters: The Perception of European and Brazilian Portuguese Vowels by Californian English Monolinguals and Spanish–English Bilinguals

Cross‐Situational Learning of Phonologically Overlapping Words Across Degrees of Ambiguity

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