TY - GEN A1 - Williams, Daniel A1 - Escudero, Paola A1 - Gafos, Adamantios I. T1 - Perceptual sensitivity to spectral change in Australian English close front vowels BT - an electroencephalographic investigation T2 - 19 th annual conference of the international speech communicaton association (INTERSPEECH 2018), VOLS 1-6: Speech research for emerging marjets in multilingual societies N2 - Speech scientists have long noted that the qualities of naturally-produced vowels do not remain constant over their durations regardless of being nominally "monophthongs" or "diphthongs". Recent acoustic corpora show that there are consistent patterns of first (F1) and second (F2) formant frequency change across different vowel categories. The three Australian English (AusE) close front vowels /i:, 1, i/ provide a striking example: while their midpoint or mean F1 and F2 frequencies are virtually identical, their spectral change patterns distinctly differ. The results indicate that, despite the distinct patterns of spectral change of AusE /i:, i, la/ in production, its perceptual relevance is not uniform, but rather vowel-category dependent. KW - vowels KW - pre-attentive discrimination KW - speech perception KW - speech acoustics KW - English dialects Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-1-5108-7221-9 U6 - https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2018-2505 SN - 2308-457X SP - 1442 EP - 1446 PB - ISCA-International Speech Communication Association CY - Baixas ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Williams, Daniel A1 - Escudero, Paola T1 - A cross-dialectal acoustic comparison of vowels in Northern and Southern British English JF - The journal of the Acoustical Society of America N2 - This study compares the duration and first two formants (F1 and F2) of 11 nominal monophthongs and five nominal diphthongs in Standard Southern British English (SSBE) and a Northern English dialect. F1 and F2 trajectories were fitted with parametric curves using the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and the zeroth DCT coefficient represented formant trajectory means and the first DCT coefficient represented the magnitude and direction of formant trajectory change to characterize vowel inherent spectral change (VISC). Cross-dialectal comparisons involving these measures revealed significant differences for the phonologically back monophthongs /D, , , u:/ and also /3z:/ and the diphthongs /eI, e, aI, I/. Most cross-dialectal differences are in zeroth DCT coefficients, suggesting formant trajectory means tend to characterize such differences, while first DCT coefficient differences were more numerous for diphthongs. With respect to VISC, the most striking differences are that /u:/is considerably more diphthongized in the Northern dialect and that the F2 trajectory of /e/proceeds in opposite directions in the two dialects. Cross-dialectal differences were found to be largely unaffected by the consonantal context in which the vowels were produced. The implications of the results are discussed in relation to VISC, consonantal context effects and speech perception. (c) 2014 Acoustical Society of America. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4896471 SN - 0001-4966 SN - 1520-8524 VL - 136 IS - 5 SP - 2751 EP - 2761 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Melville ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Williams, Daniel A1 - Escudero, Paola T1 - Influences of listeners' native and other dialects on cross-language vowel perception JF - Frontiers in psychology KW - non-native speech perception KW - native dialects KW - non-native dialects KW - speech production KW - acoustic phonetics Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01065 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 5 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mokari, Payam Ghaffarvand A1 - Gafos, Adamantios I. A1 - Williams, Daniel T1 - Perceptuomotor compatibility effects in vowels BT - effects of consonantal context and acoustic proximity of response and distractor JF - JASA Express Letters N2 - In a cue-distractor task, speakers' response times (RTs) were found to speed up when they perceived a distractor syllable whose vowel was identical to the vowel in the syllable they were preparing to utter. At a more fine-grained level, subphonemic congruency between response and distractor-defined by higher number of shared phonological features or higher acoustic proximity-was also found to be predictive of RT modulations. Furthermore, the findings indicate that perception of vowel stimuli embedded in syllables gives rise to robust and more consistent perceptuomotor compatibility effects (compared to isolated vowels) across different response-distractor vowel pairs. KW - speech Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0003039 SN - 2691-1191 VL - 1 IS - 1 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Melville ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mayr, Robert A1 - Morris, Jonathan A1 - Mennen, Ineke A1 - Williams, Daniel T1 - Disentangling the effects of long-term language contact and individual bilingualism: The case of monophthongs in Welsh and English JF - International journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior N2 - Aims and objectives: This study investigates the effects of individual bilingualism and long-term language contact on monophthongal vowel productions in English and Welsh. Design: To this end, we recorded the Welsh and English vowel productions of two sets of Welsh-English bilinguals differing in home language use, as well as the English vowel productions of English monolinguals. Data and analysis: The data were analysed acoustically, with a focus on spectral and temporal properties. Comparisons were then made within each language and cross-linguistically. Findings: The results of a cross-linguistic acoustic comparison revealed a high degree of convergence in the monophthong systems of Welsh and English, but also some language-specific categories. Interestingly, at the individual level we found no effect of linguistic experience on vowel production: the two sets of bilinguals and the English monolinguals did not differ in their realisation of English vowels, and the two sets of bilinguals did not differ in their realisation of Welsh vowels. Implications: The findings demonstrate pervasive phonetic convergence in a language contact situation with a historical substrate. They also indicate that a homogeneous peer group with shared values can override the effects of individual linguistic experience. KW - Acoustic analysis KW - experience KW - language KW - phonetic convergence KW - vowel productions KW - Welsh-English bilingualism Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006915614921 SN - 1367-0069 SN - 1756-6878 VL - 21 SP - 245 EP - 267 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kashima, Eri A1 - Williams, Daniel A1 - Ellison, T. Mark A1 - Schokkin, Dineke A1 - Escudero, Paola T1 - Uncovering the acoustic vowel space of a previously undescribed language: The vowels of Nambo JF - The journal of the Acoustical Society of America N2 - This study presents the first acoustic description of the vowel space of a Papuan language—Nambo, spoken in southern Papua New Guinea—based on duration and first and second formant measurements from 19 adult male and female speakers across three age groups (young, middle-aged, senior). Phonemically, Nambo has six full vowels /i, e, æ, ɑ, o, u/ and a reduced vowel tentatively labeled /ə/. Unlike the full vowels, the quality of /ə/ showed great variation: seniors' and young females' realizations tended to be more open and retracted than those by young males, while middle-aged speakers' productions fell between these two variants. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4954395 SN - 0001-4966 SN - 1520-8524 VL - 139 SP - EL252 EP - EL256 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Melville ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ghaffarvand-Mokari, Payam A1 - Gafos, Adamantios I. A1 - Williams, Daniel T1 - Perceptuomotor compatibility effects in vowels BT - beyond phonemic identity JF - Attention, perception, & psychophysics N2 - Perceptuomotor compatibility between phonemically identical spoken and perceived syllables has been found to speed up response times (RTs) in speech production tasks. However, research on compatibility effects between perceived and produced stimuli at the subphonemic level is limited. Using a cue-distractor task, we investigated the effects of phonemic and subphonemic congruency in pairs of vowels. On each trial, a visual cue prompted individuals to produce a response vowel, and after the visual cue appeared a distractor vowel was auditorily presented while speakers were planning to produce the response vowel. The results revealed effects on RTs due to phonemic congruency (same vs. different vowels) between the response and distractor vowels, which resemble effects previously seen for consonants. Beyond phonemic congruency, we assessed how RTs are modulated as a function of the degree of subphonemic similarity between the response and distractor vowels. Higher similarity between the response and distractor in terms of phonological distance-defined by number of mismatching phonological features-resulted in faster RTs. However, the exact patterns of RTs varied across response-distractor vowel pairs. We discuss how different assumptions about phonological feature representations may account for the different patterns observed in RTs across response-distractor pairs. Our findings on the effects of perceived stimuli on produced speech at a more detailed level of representation than phonemic identity necessitate a more direct and specific formulation of the perception-production link. Additionally, these results extend previously reported perceptuomotor interactions mainly involving consonants to vowels. KW - speech perception KW - speech production KW - psycholinguistics Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-020-02014-1 SN - 1943-3921 SN - 1943-393X VL - 82 IS - 5 SP - 2751 EP - 2764 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Elvin, Jaydene A1 - Williams, Daniel A1 - Escudero, Paola T1 - Dynamic acoustic properties of monophthongs and diphthongs in Western Sydney Australian English JF - The journal of the Acoustical Society of America N2 - This study provides a thorough acoustic analysis of the 18 Australian English monophthongs and diphthongs produced in a variety of phonetic contexts by young adult speakers from Western Sydney. The 18 vowels are well separated by duration and dynamic formant trajectory information. Vowel durations and formant trajectories were affected by the consonantal context in which the vowels were produced, particularly those produced in the /hVd/ context. Finally, the results indicate that capturing aspects of vowel inherent spectral change may be useful in future cross-dialectal and cross-linguistic studies. (C) 2016 Acoustical Society of America. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4952387 SN - 0001-4966 SN - 1520-8524 VL - 140 SP - 576 EP - 581 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Melville ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Chladkova, Katerina A1 - Hamann, Silke A1 - Williams, Daniel A1 - Hellmuth, Sam T1 - F2 slope as a Perceptual Cue for the Front-Back Contrast in Standard Southern British English JF - Language and speech N2 - Acoustic studies of several languages indicate that second-formant (F2) slopes in high vowels have opposing directions (independent of consonantal context): front [i.]-like vowels are produced with a rising F2 slope, whereas back [u.]-like vowels are produced with a falling F2 slope. The present study first reports acoustic measurements that confirm this pattern for the English variety of Standard Southern British English (SSBE), where /u./ has shifted from the back to the front area of the vowel space and is now realized with higher midpoint F2 values than several decades ago. Subsequently, we test whether the direction of F2 slope also serves as a reliable cue to the /i.// u./ contrast in perception. The findings show that F2 slope direction is used as a cue (additional to midpoint formant values) to distinguish /i./ from /u./by both young and older Standard Southern British English listeners: an otherwise ambiguous token is identified as /i./if it has a rising F2 slope and as /u./if it has a falling F2 slope. Furthermore, our results indicate that listeners generalize their reliance on F2 slope to other contrasts, namely /epsilon/-/./and /ae/-/./, even though F2 slope is not employed to differentiate these vowels in production. This suggests that in Standard Southern British English, a rising F2 seems to be perceptually associated with an abstract feature such as [+ front], whereas a falling F2 with an abstract feature such as [-front]. KW - perceptual cues KW - front-back contrast KW - /u./-fronting KW - Standard Southern British English KW - vowel perception KW - phonological feature Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830916650991 SN - 0023-8309 SN - 1756-6053 VL - 60 SP - 377 EP - 398 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER -