{"title":"Merger in Eivissan Catalan: an acoustic analysis of the vowel systems of young native speakers.","authors":"Silke Hamann, Francesc Torres-Tamarit","doi":"10.1515/phon-2022-0037","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The vowel system of Catalan has been the focus of many studies, though work on the varieties spoken on the island of Eivissa (Ibiza) are scarce, with a single mention of the possible merger of the mid back vowels /o, ɔ/ (Torres Torres, Marià. 1983. Aspectes del vocalisme tònic eivissenc. <i>Eivissa</i> 14. 22-23). The present article provides the first acoustic analysis of the vowel inventory of 25 young native speakers of Eivissan Catalan, with a focus on the realisations of stressed /ə, ɛ/, and the back mid vowels /o, ɔ/. We employed Pillai scores (Hay, Jennifer, Paul Warren & Katie Drager. 2006. Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress. <i>Journal of Phonetics</i> 34. 458-484) to compare the possibly merged pairs /ə, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ to the fully-contrasting neighbouring pairs /e, ɛ/ and /o, u/. Our results show that all participants had considerable overlap of stressed /ə/ and /ɛ/, and all but one had considerable overlap of the back mid vowels, while the fully contrastive pairs (/e, ɛ/ and /o, u/) showed almost no overlap.</p>","PeriodicalId":55608,"journal":{"name":"Phonetica","volume":"80 1-2","pages":"43-78"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Phonetica","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/phon-2022-0037","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ACOUSTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The vowel system of Catalan has been the focus of many studies, though work on the varieties spoken on the island of Eivissa (Ibiza) are scarce, with a single mention of the possible merger of the mid back vowels /o, ɔ/ (Torres Torres, Marià. 1983. Aspectes del vocalisme tònic eivissenc. Eivissa 14. 22-23). The present article provides the first acoustic analysis of the vowel inventory of 25 young native speakers of Eivissan Catalan, with a focus on the realisations of stressed /ə, ɛ/, and the back mid vowels /o, ɔ/. We employed Pillai scores (Hay, Jennifer, Paul Warren & Katie Drager. 2006. Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress. Journal of Phonetics 34. 458-484) to compare the possibly merged pairs /ə, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ to the fully-contrasting neighbouring pairs /e, ɛ/ and /o, u/. Our results show that all participants had considerable overlap of stressed /ə/ and /ɛ/, and all but one had considerable overlap of the back mid vowels, while the fully contrastive pairs (/e, ɛ/ and /o, u/) showed almost no overlap.
期刊介绍:
Contemporary research into spoken language employs a wide range of approaches, from instrumental measures to perceptual and neurocognitive measures, to computational models, for investigating the properties and principles of speech in communicative settings across the world’s languages. ''Phonetica'' is an international interdisciplinary forum for phonetic science that covers all aspects of the subject matter, from phonetic and phonological descriptions of segments and prosodies to speech physiology, articulation, acoustics, perception, acquisition, and phonetic variation and change. ''Phonetica'' thus provides a platform for a comprehensive understanding of speaker-hearer interaction across languages and dialects, and of learning contexts throughout the lifespan. Papers published in this journal report expert original work that deals both with theoretical issues and with new empirical data, as well as with innovative methods and applications that will help to advance the field.