Vowel discrimination of American English
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2023/14/0005/000599Keywords:
Discrimination, Vowels, Phonetic distance, American English, GreekAbstract
This study is about vowel discrimination of eight New Mexico American English vowels by American and Greek native speakers. Two forced-choice discrimination experiments were carried out as follows. In the first experiment, native New Mexico American listeners were asked to choose between “same” or “different” among pairs of same or different New Mexico American English monophthong vowels. In the second experiment, likewise, native Greek listeners were asked to carry out the same task. The results of the investigation indicate the following: the New Mexico American listeners discriminated correctly for over 88% of all vowel pairs except for the vowel pair /bɔt/~/bɑːt/ (bought~bot), which resulted in an 11% correct discrimination rate. The Greek listeners, on the other hand, discriminated all vowels well above chance, including the /bɔt/~/bɑːt/ (bought~bot) pairs. The Greek results indicate a phonetic mode of discrimination rather than a phonological one.
References
Clopper, C., Pisoni, D., de Jong, K. 2005. Acoustic characteristics of the vowel systems of six regional varieties of American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 118, 1661-1676.
Fourakis, M., Botinis, A., Katsaiti, M. 1999. Acoustic Characteristics of Greek Vowels. Phonetica, 56, 28-43.
Labov, W., Ash, S., Boberg, C. 2006. The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Lengeris, A. 2016. Comparison of perception-production vowel spaces for speakers of Standard Modern Greek and two regional dialects. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 140, 314-319.
Charalambos Themistocleous 2017. The nature of phonetic gradience across a dialect continuum: Evidence from modern Greek vowels. Phonetica, 74, 157-172.
Downloads
Published
Data Availability Statement
Clopper, C., Pisoni, D., de Jong, K. 2005. Acoustic characteristics of the vowel systems of six regional varieties of American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 118, 1661-1676.
Fourakis, M., Botinis, A., Katsaiti, M. 1999. Acoustic Characteristics of Greek Vowels. Phonetica, 56, 28-43.
Labov, W., Ash, S., Boberg, C. 2006. The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Lengeris, A. 2016. Comparison of perception-production vowel spaces for speakers of Standard Modern Greek and two regional dialects. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 140, 314-319.
Charalambos Themistocleous 2017. The nature of phonetic gradience across a dialect continuum: Evidence from modern Greek vowels. Phonetica, 74, 157-172.
Issue
Section
License
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
