Neda Bigdeli; Vahid Sadeghi
Abstract
The present study addressed the perception of English vowel contrasts /i-I/ and /u-U/ by Persian speakers in light of the theoretical assumptions underlying the Perceptual Assimilation Model. The lexical pair (feet-fit) and (fool-full) illustrating the contrasts /i-I/ and /u-U/ were extracted from a ...
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The present study addressed the perception of English vowel contrasts /i-I/ and /u-U/ by Persian speakers in light of the theoretical assumptions underlying the Perceptual Assimilation Model. The lexical pair (feet-fit) and (fool-full) illustrating the contrasts /i-I/ and /u-U/ were extracted from a natural English spoken corpus, and then duration, first and second formant frequencies were resynthesized. Persian native speakers completed a discrimination task on the non-native vowel contrast. Results suggested that responses are sensitive to variation in duration, and this sensitivity holds irrespective of whether the subjects are familiar with the English language or not. In contrast, variation in the first and second formant frequencies (as acoustic manifestation of vowel quality) failed to produce significant changes in the responses. Moreover, discrimination was not any better for the combinatory stimuli (duration + vowel quality) than the single stimuli duration. In sum, discrimination was consistent with the Perceptual Assimilation Model, showing that assimilation of the two vowel contrasts /i-I/ and /u-U/ with the Persian sound system is a two-category assimilation (TC) for which discrimination is highly accurate.
vahid sadeghi; Banafshe Mardan
Abstract
Persian velar glide [w], unlike the palatal glide [j], does not serve a contrastive function in Persian phonology since it has incomplete distribution, occurring only in few words after the mid back vowel /o/. Thus, [w] is described as an allophone of the phoneme /v/. Furthermore, it has been assumed ...
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Persian velar glide [w], unlike the palatal glide [j], does not serve a contrastive function in Persian phonology since it has incomplete distribution, occurring only in few words after the mid back vowel /o/. Thus, [w] is described as an allophone of the phoneme /v/. Furthermore, it has been assumed that [w] in [ow] may be deleted in connected speech giving rise to the compensatory lengthening of the preceding [o] vowel. In the present research, we examined the phonetic realization [w] in Persian words in an experimental study. The results suggested that [w] is acoustically present in the target words but is reduced or weakened to different degrees. As [w] is reduced in [ow], the shape of the vocal tract as well as the phonation type changes, resulting in (1) increase of overall intensity of the spectrum; (2) increase in the formant frequencies; and (3) decrease in bandwidths of the formant frequencies. All these systematic acoustic variations cause the vowel [o] in [ow] to be produced and perceived as longer than an ordinary [o] vowel
