Improved representation of variance in measures of vowel merger

Hall‐Lew, Lauren

doi:10.1121/1.3460625

Cited by 42 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…In order to investigate the individual variation in the production patterns of these bilinguals, the data were analyzed for their Pillai score, which is a measure for the degree of merger (Hall-Lew, 2010;Hay et al, 2006;Sloos, 2013). The Pillai score is an output of a multivariate analysis of variance that represents the degree of overlap between 2 vowel clusters.…”

Section: Back Mid Vowel Data (/O/ and /ɔ/)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Language Dominance in the Perception and Production of the Galician Mid Vowel Contrasts

Amengual¹,

Chamorro²

2015

Phonetica

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Aims: This study investigates the perception and production of the Galician mid vowel contrasts by 54 early Spanish-Galician bilinguals in the cities of Vigo and Santiago (Galicia, Spain). Empirical data is provided to examine the role of language dominance in the perception and production of Galician mid vowel contrasts in order to determine whether the Galician vowel system is becoming more Spanish-like as a result of extensive contact with Spanish in urban areas. Methods: Perception and production data for each mid vowel contrast were collected in (1) binary forced-choice identification tasks, (2) AX discrimination tasks and (3) a reading-aloud task. Results: Results from binary forced-choice identification and AX discrimination tasks indicate that Spanish-dominant bilinguals have great difficulty in discriminating between these mid vowels while Galician-dominant subjects display a robust categorical identification of the two mid vowel categories. Acoustic analyses of their productions show that Galician-dominant bilinguals implement a Galician-specific /e/-/ɛ/ contrast but Spanish-dominant ones produce a single, merged Spanish-like front mid vowel. However, both language dominance groups seem to maintain a more robust /o/-/ɔ/ contrast. This asymmetry between front and back mid vowels is found in the productions of both language dominance groups. Conclusion: These results show that language dominance is a strong predictor of the production and perception abilities of Spanish-Galician bilinguals, and that only Galician-dominant subjects in these urban areas possess two independent phonetic categories in the front and back mid vowel space.

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Section: Back Mid Vowel Data (/O/ and /ɔ/)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Language Dominance in the Perception and Production of the Galician Mid Vowel Contrasts

Amengual¹,

Chamorro²

2015

Phonetica

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“…If no decision can be made on the basis of purely linguistic information, other information may be invoked. Hay et al (2006) suggest that in case of equal competition between different exemplars -but not otherwise -speakers may rely on other cues; for instance, social information. This implies that sociolinguistic information is stored alongside the pronunciation of the word.…”

Section: General Discussion and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The reversal of the BÄREN-BEEREN merger in Austrian Standard German

Sloos

2014

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In language change, a reversal of a merger is generally considered to be impossible, since after two sounds have become fully merged, they are no longer distinct, so no phonetic or phonological cues exist that could reverse this process. This article investigates such an 'impossible' merger reversal: the split of the Bären vowel (orthographically represented by <ä> or <äh>) and the Beeren vowel (orthographically represented by , or in Austrian Standard German. We investigated a corpus of spoken data, measured the acoustic properties of the vowels, and determined the degree of the merger (by computing Pillai scores) for younger and older speakers. It turns out that the two sounds were formerly merged, but currently a split can be observed as an ongoing process. This paper argues that language contact with Standard German as it is spoken in Germany motivates the ongoing reversal. Since the Bären vowel is also subject to substantial variation in German Standard German, in order to get the split right, Austrian speakers are likely to invoke orthographical knowledge. We will consider the mental representations of this sound, including the graphemic representations from an Exemplar-theoretical viewpoint. Reversal of a MergerIn a merger, two different sounds converge on a single sound. It is usually assumed that a merger, if completed, cannot be reversed for the logical reason that after merging no phonetic or phonological cues exist that can serve as a means for reversal. Even in dialect contact, in which dialect M has the merger and dialect S has the split, M speakers will not learn the split, for they are not able to perceive the categorical distinction; if speakers try to reverse a merger, they will not get it

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“…As a result, 2 vocalic clusters that have a very different distribution of tokens will yield higher Pillai scores than 2 clusters that have the same distance between vowel means but, instead, show a similar distribution in their spread (Hall-Lew, 2010). To account for this, the quantitative analysis of Pillai scores was accompanied by a qualitative analysis of the distribution of vowels.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this part of the analysis, a Pillai score that measured the degree of phonetic overlap between vowel pairs for each speaker was calculated, using the Pillai-Barlett statistic (Hay et al 2006, Hall-Lew, 2010 in R (version 3.3.2, R Core Team 2017). The Pillai score is an output of a multivariate analysis of variance.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variable Vowel Metaphony in Asturian: An Acoustic Analysis

Barnes¹

2018

Phonetica

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Background/Aims: Vowel metaphony, a type of vowel harmony observed in Asturian, is characterized by the raising and/or centralization of stressed mid or low vowels in the presence of a high vowel in word-final position. Descriptions of Asturian metaphony have been based on data collected using exclusively auditory judgments. This study is the first to document the phenomenon acoustically. Methods: The data were collected using a word elicitation task and sociolinguistic interviews of 40 speakers from the 2 geographic areas in which metaphony has been observed. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of vocalic distributions were performed. Results: The results of the analyses show that: (1) while metaphony still occurs in Asturian, its implementation is highly variable; (2) metaphonized variants remain distinct from other vowels; and (3) the traditional distinction between 2 areas of metaphony cannot be maintained. Conclusion: This study provides the first acoustic characterization of vowel metaphony in Asturian, offering empirical evidence on which to build theoretical approaches to vowel metaphony.

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Improved representation of variance in measures of vowel merger

Cited by 42 publications

References 0 publications

The Effects of Language Dominance in the Perception and Production of the Galician Mid Vowel Contrasts

The Effects of Language Dominance in the Perception and Production of the Galician Mid Vowel Contrasts

The reversal of the BÄREN-BEEREN merger in Austrian Standard German

Variable Vowel Metaphony in Asturian: An Acoustic Analysis

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