An acoustic investigation of Arabic vowels pronounced by Malay speakers

AbstractIn Malaysia, Arabic language is spoken, and commonly used among the Malays. Malays use Arabic in their daily life, such as during performing worship. Hence, in this paper, some of the Arabic vowels attributes are investigated, analyzed and initial findings are presented based on tokens articulated by Malay speakers as we can consider the spoken Arabic by Malays as one of the Arabic dialects. It is known that in Arabic language there are 28 consonants and 6 main vowels. Firstly, the duration, variability, and overlapping attributes are highlighted based on syllables of Consonant–Vowel with each syllable representing every Arabic consonant with the corresponding vowels. Next, the dispersion of each vowel is examined to be compared with each other along with the variability among vowels that may cause overlapping between vowels in the vowel-space. Results showed that the vowel overlapping occurred between short vowels and their long counterpart vowels. Furthermore, an investigation of the Arabic vowel duration is addressed as well, and duration analysis for all the vowels is discussed, followed by the analysis for each vowel separately. In addition, a comparison between long and short vowels is presented as well as comparison between high and low vowel is carried out

The production and perception of peripheral geminate/singleton coronal stop contrasts in Arabic

Gemination is typologically common word-medially but is rare at the periphery of the word (word-initially and -finally). In line with this observation, prior research on production and perception of gemination has focused primarily on medial gemination. Much less is known about the production and perception of peripheral gemination. This PhD thesis reports on comprehensive articulatory, acoustic and perceptual investigations of geminate-singleton contrasts according to the position of the contrast in the word and in the utterance. The production component of the project investigated the articulatory and acoustic features of medial and peripheral gemination of voiced and voiceless coronal stops in Modern standard Arabic and regional Arabic vernacular dialects, as produced by speakers from two disparate and geographically distant countries, Morocco and Lebanon. The perceptual experiment investigated how standard and dialectal Arabic gemination contrasts in each word position were categorised and discriminated by three groups of non-native listeners, each differing in their native language experience with gemination at different word positions. The first experiment used ultrasound and acoustic recordings to address the extent to which word-initial gemination in Moroccan and Lebanese dialectal Arabic is maintained, as well as the articulatory and acoustic variability of the contrast according to the position of the gemination contrast in the utterance (initial vs. medial) and between the two dialects. The second experiment compared the production of word-medial and -final gemination in Modern Standard Arabic as produced by Moroccan and Lebanese speakers. The aim of the perceptual experiment was to disentangle the contribution of phonological and phonetic effects of the listeners’ native languages on the categorisation and discrimination of non-lexical Moroccan gemination by three groups of non-native listeners varying in their phonological (native Lebanese group and heritage Lebanese group, for whom Moroccan is unintelligible, i.e., non-native language) and phonetic-only (native English group) experience with gemination across the three word positions. The findings in this thesis constitute important contributions about positional and dialectal effects on the production and perception of gemination contrasts, going beyond medial gemination (which was mainly included as control) and illuminating in particular the typologically rare peripheral gemination

Spoken English discrimination (SED) training with multilingual Malaysians: effect of adaptive staircase procedure and background babble in high variability phonetic training.

High variability phonetic training (HVPT) has been shown to improve non-native speakers’ perceptual performance in discriminating difficult second language phonemic contrasts (Bradlow, Akahane-Yamada, Pisoni, & Tohkura, 1999; Bradlow, Pisoni, Akahane-Yamada, & Tohkura, 1997; Lively, Logan, & Pisoni, 1993; Lively, Pisoni, Yamada, Tohkura, & Yamada, 1994; Logan, Lively, & Pisoni, 1991). The perceptual learning can be generalized to novel words (Wang & Munro, 2004), novel speakers (Nishi & Kewley-Port, 2007; Richie & Kewley-Port, 2008) and even to speech production (Bradlow et al., 1997). However, the rigidity of the laboratory training settings has limited applications to real life situations. The current thesis examined the effectiveness of a new phonetic training program - the Spoken English Discrimination (SED) training. SED training is a computerized individual training program designed to improve non-native speakers’ bottom-up perceptual sensitivity to discriminate difficult second language (L2) phonemic contrasts. It combines a number of key training features including 1) natural spoken stimuli, 2) highly variable stimuli spoken by multiple speakers, 3) multi-talker babble as background noise and 4) an adaptive staircase procedure that individualizes the level of background babble. The first experiment investigated the potential benefits of different versions of the SED training program. The effect of stimulus variability (single speaker vs. multiple speakers) and design of background babble (constant vs. adaptive staircase) were examined using English voiceless-voiced plosives /t/-/d/ phonemic contrast as the training materials. No improvements were found in the identification accuracy on the /t/-/d/ contrast in post-test, but identification improvements were found on the untrained English /ε/-/æ/ phonemic contrast. The effectiveness of SED training was re-examined in Chapter 3 using the English /ε/-/æ/ phonemic contrast as the training material. Three experiments were conducted to compare the SED training paradigms that had the background babble implemented either at a constant level (Constant SED) or using the adaptive staircase procedure (Adaptive Staircase SED), and the longevity of the training effects. Results revealed that the Adaptive Staircase SED was the more effective paradigm as it generated greater training benefits and its effect generalized better to the untrained /t/-/d/ phonemic contrast. Training effects from both SED paradigms retained six months after the last training section. Before examining whether SED training leads to improvements in speech production, Chapter 4 investigated the phonetics perception pattern of L1 Mandarin Malaysian speakers, L1 Malaysian English speakers and native British English speakers. The production intelligibility of the L1 Mandarin speakers was also evaluated by the L1 Malaysian English speakers and native British English speakers. Single category assimilation was observed in both L1 Mandarin and L1 Malaysian English speakers whereby the /ε/ and /æ/ phonetic sounds were assimilated to a single/æ/ category (Best, McRoberts, & Goodell, 2001). While the British English speakers showed ceiling performance for all phonetic categories involved, the L1 Malaysian English speakers had difficulty identifying the British English /ε/ phoneme and the L1 Mandarin speakers had difficulty identifying the /d/ final, /ε/ and /æ/ phonemes. As seen by their perceptual performance, the L1 Mandarin speakers also had difficulty producing distinct /d/ final, /ε/ and /æ/ phonemes. Two experiments in Chapter 5 examined whether the effects of SED training generalizes to speech production. The results showed that L1 Malaysian English speakers and native British English speakers found different SED paradigms to be more effective in inducing the production improvement. Only the production intelligibility of the /æ/ phoneme improved as a result of SED training. Collectively, the seven experiments in this thesis showed that SED training was effective in improving Malaysian speakers’ perception and production performance of difficult English phonemic contrasts. Further research should be conducted to examine the efficacy of SED training in improving speech perception and production across different training materials and in speakers who come from different language backgrounds

Spoken English discrimination (SED) training with multilingual Malaysians: effect of adaptive staircase procedure and background babble in high variability phonetic training.

High variability phonetic training (HVPT) has been shown to improve non-native speakers’ perceptual performance in discriminating difficult second language phonemic contrasts (Bradlow, Akahane-Yamada, Pisoni, & Tohkura, 1999; Bradlow, Pisoni, Akahane-Yamada, & Tohkura, 1997; Lively, Logan, & Pisoni, 1993; Lively, Pisoni, Yamada, Tohkura, & Yamada, 1994; Logan, Lively, & Pisoni, 1991). The perceptual learning can be generalized to novel words (Wang & Munro, 2004), novel speakers (Nishi & Kewley-Port, 2007; Richie & Kewley-Port, 2008) and even to speech production (Bradlow et al., 1997). However, the rigidity of the laboratory training settings has limited applications to real life situations. The current thesis examined the effectiveness of a new phonetic training program - the Spoken English Discrimination (SED) training. SED training is a computerized individual training program designed to improve non-native speakers’ bottom-up perceptual sensitivity to discriminate difficult second language (L2) phonemic contrasts. It combines a number of key training features including 1) natural spoken stimuli, 2) highly variable stimuli spoken by multiple speakers, 3) multi-talker babble as background noise and 4) an adaptive staircase procedure that individualizes the level of background babble. The first experiment investigated the potential benefits of different versions of the SED training program. The effect of stimulus variability (single speaker vs. multiple speakers) and design of background babble (constant vs. adaptive staircase) were examined using English voiceless-voiced plosives /t/-/d/ phonemic contrast as the training materials. No improvements were found in the identification accuracy on the /t/-/d/ contrast in post-test, but identification improvements were found on the untrained English /ε/-/æ/ phonemic contrast. The effectiveness of SED training was re-examined in Chapter 3 using the English /ε/-/æ/ phonemic contrast as the training material. Three experiments were conducted to compare the SED training paradigms that had the background babble implemented either at a constant level (Constant SED) or using the adaptive staircase procedure (Adaptive Staircase SED), and the longevity of the training effects. Results revealed that the Adaptive Staircase SED was the more effective paradigm as it generated greater training benefits and its effect generalized better to the untrained /t/-/d/ phonemic contrast. Training effects from both SED paradigms retained six months after the last training section. Before examining whether SED training leads to improvements in speech production, Chapter 4 investigated the phonetics perception pattern of L1 Mandarin Malaysian speakers, L1 Malaysian English speakers and native British English speakers. The production intelligibility of the L1 Mandarin speakers was also evaluated by the L1 Malaysian English speakers and native British English speakers. Single category assimilation was observed in both L1 Mandarin and L1 Malaysian English speakers whereby the /ε/ and /æ/ phonetic sounds were assimilated to a single/æ/ category (Best, McRoberts, & Goodell, 2001). While the British English speakers showed ceiling performance for all phonetic categories involved, the L1 Malaysian English speakers had difficulty identifying the British English /ε/ phoneme and the L1 Mandarin speakers had difficulty identifying the /d/ final, /ε/ and /æ/ phonemes. As seen by their perceptual performance, the L1 Mandarin speakers also had difficulty producing distinct /d/ final, /ε/ and /æ/ phonemes. Two experiments in Chapter 5 examined whether the effects of SED training generalizes to speech production. The results showed that L1 Malaysian English speakers and native British English speakers found different SED paradigms to be more effective in inducing the production improvement. Only the production intelligibility of the /æ/ phoneme improved as a result of SED training. Collectively, the seven experiments in this thesis showed that SED training was effective in improving Malaysian speakers’ perception and production performance of difficult English phonemic contrasts. Further research should be conducted to examine the efficacy of SED training in improving speech perception and production across different training materials and in speakers who come from different language backgrounds

The Role of Perception in the Typology of Geminate Consonants: Effects of Manner of Articulation, Segmental Environment, Position, and Stress

The present study seeks to answer the question whether consonant duration is perceived differently across consonants of different manners of articulation and in different contextual environments and whether such differences may be related to the typology of geminates. The results of the crosslinguistic identification experiment suggest higher perceptual acuity in labeling short and long consonants in sonorants than in obstruents. Duration categories were also more consistently and clearly labelled in the intervocalic than in the preconsonantal environment, in the word-initial than in the word-final position, and after stressed vowels than between unstressed vowels. These perceptual asymmetries are in line with some typological tendencies, such as the crosslinguistic preference for intervocalic and post-stress geminates, but contradict other proposed crosslinguistic patterns, such as the preference for obstruent geminates and the abundance of word-final geminates

Non-durational acoustic correlates of word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay: The potential roles of amplitude and f0

This study reports on non-durational acoustic correlates of typologically rare word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay (KM) by focusing on two acoustic parameters – amplitude and f0. Given the unusual characteristics of the word-initial consonant contrast and its potential maintenance in domain-initial environments, this study sets to examine the extent to which amplitude and f0 can potentially characterise such a contrast in KM in addition to the cross-linguistically established acoustic correlate of closure duration. The production data involved elicited materials from sixteen KM native speakers. RMS and f0 values were measured at the start of the vowel following stops and sonorants produced in isolation (i.e. utterance-initial position) and in a carrier sentence (i.e. utterance-medial position). Results indicate that the consonant contrast is reflected in systematic differences in (i) vowel onset amplitude and f0 following the target consonant and (ii) the ratios of amplitude and f0 across two syllables of disyllabic words. There are also effects of utterance position, manner of articulation and voicing type on the magnitude of contrast between singletons and geminates with utterance-initial voiceless stops generally showing the greatest magnitude difference. The conclusion is drawn that the KM word-initial singleton/geminate consonant contrast can be associated with a set of acoustic parameters alongside closure duration

Phonetics and phonology of the three-way laryngeal contrast in Madurese

Madurese, a Western Malayo-Polynesian language spoken on the Indonesian island of Madura, exhibits a three-way laryngeal contrast distinguishing between voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops and an unusual consonant-vowel (CV) co-occurrence restriction. The CV co-occurrence restriction is of phonological interest given the patterning of voiceless aspirated stops with voiced stops rather than with voiceless unaspirated stops, raising the question of what phonological feature they may share. Two features have been linked with the CV co-occurrence restriction: Advanced Tongue Root [ATR] and Lowered Larynx [LL]. However, as no evidence of voicing during closure for aspirated stops is observed and no other acoustic measures except voice onset time (VOT), fundamental frequency (F0), frequencies of the first (F1) and the second (F2) formants and closure duration relating to the proposed features have been conducted, it remains an open question which acoustic properties are shared by voiced and aspirated stops. Three main questions are addressed in the thesis. The first question is what acoustic properties voiced and voiceless aspirated stops share to the exclusion of voiceless unaspirated stops. The second question is whether [ATR] or [LL] accounts for the patterning together of voiceless aspirated stops with voiced stops. The third question is what the implications of the results are for a transparent phonetics-phonology mapping that expects phonological features to have phonetic correlates associated with them. In order to answer the questions, we looked into VOT, closure duration, F0, F1, F2 and a number of spectral measures, i.e. H1*-A1*, H1*-A2*, H1*-A3*, H1*-H2*, H2*-H4* and CPP. We recorded fifteen speakers of Madurese (8 females, 7 males) reading 188 disyllabic Madurese words embedded in a sentence frame. The results show that the three-way voicing categories in Madurese have different VOT values. The difference in VOT is robust between voiced stops on the one hand and voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops on the other. Albeit statistically significant, the difference in VOT values between voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops is relatively small. With regard to closure duration, we found that there is a difference between voiced stops on the one hand and voiceless unaspirated and aspirated stops on the other. We also found that female speakers distinguish F0 for the three categories while male speakers distinguish between F0 for voiced stops on the one hand and voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops on the other. The results for spectral measures show that there are no significant differences in H1*-A1*, H1*-A3*, H1*-H2*, H2*-H4* and CPP between vowels adjacent to voiced and voiceless aspirated stops. In contrast, there are significant differences in these measures between vowels adjacent to voiced and voiceless unaspirated stops and between vowels adjacent to voiceless aspirated and voiceless unaspirated stops. Regarding the question whether voiced and voiceless aspirated stops share certain acoustic properties, our findings show that they do. The acoustic properties they share are H1*-A1* for both genders, H1*-H2* for females, H1*-A3* and H2*-H4* for males, and CPP for females at vowel onset and for males at vowel midpoint. However, they do not share such acoustic properties as VOT, closure duration and F0. Voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops can be distinguished by VOT, F0 and spectral measures, i.e. H1*-A1*, H1*-A3*, H1*-H2*, H2*-H4* and CPP. However, these two voiceless stop categories have similar closure durations. As regards the question if [+ATR] or [+LL] might be responsible for the patterning together of voiceless aspirated stops with voiced stops, our findings suggest that either feature appears to be plausible. Acoustic evidence that lends support to the feature [+ATR] includes lower F1 and greater spectral tilt measures, i.e. H1*-A1*, H1*-A3*, H1*-H2* and H2*-H4*, and lower CPP values. Acoustic evidence that supports the feature [+LL] includes lower F1 and greater spectral tilt measures, i.e. H1*-A1*, H1*-A3*, H1*-H2* and H2*-H4*, and lower CPP values. However, the fact that voiceless aspirated stops are voiceless during closure raises a problem for the feature [+ATR] and the fact that F0 for voiceless aspirated stops is higher than for voiced stops also presents a problem for the feature [+LL]. The fact that not all acoustic measures fit in well with either feature is problematic to the idea that the relationship between phonetics and phonology is transparent in the sense that phonological features can be directly transformed into their phonetic correlates. Following the view that not all phonological features may not be expected to be phonetically grounded, for example, when they are related to historical sound change, we hold the idea of a phonetics-phonology mapping which allows for other non-phonetic factors to account for a phonological phenomenon. We also provide historical and loanword evidence which could support that voiceless aspirated stops in Madurese may have derived from earlier voiced stops, which probably retain their historical laryngeal contrast through phonologisation

Production and perception of English consonants by Yemeni EFL learners

Previous studies on the perception-production correlation focused mainly on transcriptions and native English speaker evaluations for production accuracy assessments; only a few included acoustic measurements. This study aims to investigate the production and perception of six English consonants by Yemeni EFL learners of English using an acoustic measurement of second-language production. It has three objectives: (1) To investigate the extent to which word position influences the accuracy of Yemeni EFL learners’ production of the target consonants, (2) to assess the extent to which word position affects their perception, and (3) to investigate the relationship between the overall production and perception of the investigated sounds. A quantitative research method was employed for collecting data from six Yemeni EFL postgraduate students from Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). In the production tasks, the researchers asked the speakers to produce seventy-two words with the target consonants three times in isolation (Experiment 1) and the other three times in a carrier sentence (Experiment 2). The researchers recorded the speakers’ productions with an iPhone and later evaluated them acoustically via Praat. In the perception test, an AXB experiment was conducted. The findings showed that word position significantly affected the production, yet not the perception of the target sounds. Moreover, an insignificant positive moderate correlation was revealed between the overall production and perception of the target consonants. The findings have implications for second-language speech as well as pronunciation instruction. Teachers may put more focus on specific sound environments that lead learners to struggle while producing/perceiving particular English sounds

Syllable structure and gemination in Maltese

Little is known on the phonetics and the phonotactic constraints of Maltese. This dissertation sheds light on aspects of syllable structure and geminates in Maltese in order to contribute to understanding how the sound system of the language is structured. The study begins by describing the possible syllable structures in Maltese, carefully defining the onsets, nuclei and codas attested in its syllables. Furthermore, the syllabification processes employed in Maltese are discussed. The dissertation then moves on to its primary focus: geminates in Maltese. In relation to syllable structure, geminates in word-medial position are considered to be ambisyllabic, however, the syllable affiliation of word-initial and word-final geminates is under scrutiny. In addition to word-medial geminates, Maltese also has word-initial and word-final geminates. Previous descriptions of Maltese word-initial geminates (e.g, Azzopardi 1981) have claimed that such geminates are preceded by the epenthetic vowel [ɪ]. Based on a series of production studies, I provide acoustic evidence to examine the articulation of word-initial geminates, and show that this epenthesis occurs almost always when the preceding word ends in a consonant. However, when the preceding word ends in a vowel, there are a number of strategies which speakers employ. Subsequently, in a perception experiment, I show that native speakers of Maltese are insensitive to true word-initial geminates (#ss); results indicate that native speaking Maltese listeners could not discriminate between true word-initial geminates (#ss) and word-initial singletons (#s). However, they were able to discriminate between word-initial geminates that were preceded by the epenthetic vowel (#ɪss) and word-initial singletons (#s). Therefore, I argue that this vowel is part of the phonological representation of word-initial geminates, and I discuss implication of these results for lexical access. In addition, I compare word-initial and word-medial geminates and word-final and word-medial geminates. As expected, the most robust correlate is constriction duration as geminates are always longer than singletons. Other correlates, such as voice onset time, does not serve as a correlate to gemination in Maltese. However, the duration of the vowel before word-medial geminates is shorter than the vowel before word-medial singletons and this can serve as a correlate to gemination in production. Finally, I address the consequences that these results have for phonological representation. Following the current literature on gemination, I propose a moraic representation for geminates in Maltese, regardless of their position in the word