Ali Pirhayati
Abstract
In their article in Elm-e Zaban (Volume 7, Issue 11) titled “Acoustic Analysis of Glottal Stop Occurrence before Initial Vowels in Persian Words”, Navab Safavi et al report the findings of their research on the acoustic features of the glottal stop before the word-initial vowels in the Persian ...
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In their article in Elm-e Zaban (Volume 7, Issue 11) titled “Acoustic Analysis of Glottal Stop Occurrence before Initial Vowels in Persian Words”, Navab Safavi et al report the findings of their research on the acoustic features of the glottal stop before the word-initial vowels in the Persian language and try to answer the question whether this sound is a phoneme or not. The research is based on the recorded pronunciation of some non-words with the CVCV syllable structure and also 30 Persian words with word-initial glottal stops (or “vowels” as the authors argue). The authors suggest that the criteria for the existence of the glottal stop consonant in the word group are not verified and conclude that a full glottal stop with the characteristics of a consonant does not exist before the word-initial vowels in the Persian language. It seems that this acoustic research suffers from weaknesses in terms of assumptions, critique of previous studies, methodology, conclusion, and references. The most serious weakness is the confusion between the realms of phonology and phonetics, and the lack of distinction between the status and characteristics of the two branches of linguistics. This reply takes up a number of phonological and methodological issues which challenge the main conclusions of the authors.
Zahra Navab Safavi; Mohammad Hadi Fallahi; Mohammadreza Ghadimi Fomani
Abstract
The present study, in the context of computational linguistics and acoustic phonetics, attempted to determine the acoustic features of glottal stop before the word initial vowels in the Persian language and to answer the question whether this sound is a consonant or is the characteristic of the initial ...
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The present study, in the context of computational linguistics and acoustic phonetics, attempted to determine the acoustic features of glottal stop before the word initial vowels in the Persian language and to answer the question whether this sound is a consonant or is the characteristic of the initial vowel in the Persian. The research test groups consisted of three groups: (a) nonword group in which the vowel is located after a consonant except glottal stop, (b) nonword group in which the presence of glottal stop is clear before the vowel, and (c) the group containing 30 words of Farsi language which begin with vowels. The three groups were read and recorded by 16 sample members at the studio. Then, they were subjected to acoustic measures, duration, first formant, intensity and spectral tilt of vowels evaluation using The Praat software. The numerical values obtained were analyzed based on mean indices, variance and Scheffe test. It was found that the criteria for the existence of the glottal stop consonant in the word group were not verified; as a result, the complete stop that has the acoustic characteristics of a consonant does not exist before the word initial vowels in the Persian language. Therefore, the incomplete obstruction can be taken as the phonetic process that is added at the beginning of the initial vowel production, and it makes that vowel glottalized.
