Methodology Results VOWEL QUALITY

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CHAPTER 5 VOWEL QUALITY

This chapter presents an acoustic analysis of the positions of Enggano vowels, using measurements of the first and second formants. An analysis of vowel position is undertaken here for reasons of typological interest. Enggano’s sevenLvowel system is larger than the basic fiveLvowel system found in many Austronesian languages. The placement of the vowels, particularly the high and mid central vowels, is therefore of interest. It is also of interest to see how the place of oral vowels compares with their nasal counterparts. The results show that the oral vowels can be readily grouped into high, mid and low vowels, as well as front, central and back vowels. There is more interLspeaker variation in formants of the nasal vowels. Section 5.1 discusses the methodology used in the study, followed by the results in section 5.2, and a discussion of the results in section 5.3.

5.1 Methodology

Examples of all seven oral vowels and six of the nasal vowels were recorded in the frame [ʔu pe ___ ʔãn pe janik] ‘Please say ___ again’. Two tokens of each word from four speakers were selected for acoustic analysis, yielding eight tokens of each vowel. Each word selected has the target vowel in a closed stressed final syllable. Vowels between voiceless stops were chosen whenever possible for maximum differentiation between the vowel and the surrounding segments. If there was no such word in the 71 data, the word most closely matching these criteria was chosen. The words selected for analysis are listed in 47. 47 Vowels for acoustic analysis hɘdik [hɘdik] ‘turn around’ kɨx [kɨx] ‘turtle’ duduk [duduk] ‘burn’ karep [karep] ‘boil’ kɘx [kɘx] ‘mountain’ kaʔLtok [kaʔə̆tok] ‘red’ kak [kak] ‘person’ kãʔLkĩh [kãʔə̆kĩh] ‘dry’ pA ̃ʔ [pA ̃ʔ] ‘fireplace’ kũk [kũk] ‘back’ kãLpẽp [kãpẽp] ‘shallow’ kãʔLkɘ̃h [kãʔə̆kɘ̃h] ‘black’ kõp [kõp] ‘grave’ kãp [kãp] ‘traditional leader’ ʔaLioiaʔ [ʔajojaʔ] ‘pay out a rope’ ʔauaʔ [ʔawaʔ] ‘mangrove’ I failed to record the vowel [ɘ̃] in a frame. In order to include this vowel in the study, I took four words from the main wordlist where two repeats of each word were recorded in isolation, and used the eight recordings for analysis. The selected words are shown in 48. All tokens for these words are from the same speaker. 48 Words with mid central vowel, said in isolation pɘ̃ʔ [pɘ̃ʔ] ‘shoot’ pɘ̃ʔ [pɘ̃ʔ] a village name hãpɘ̃ʔ [hãpɘ̃ʔ] ‘breathe’ kiLpɘ̃ʔ [kĩpɘ̃ʔ] ‘weave’ I measured the first and second formants of each vowel. Using Praat, I first marked the beginning and ending boundaries of the vowel. I then took formant readings in the center of the vowel. All formant measurements were rounded to the nearest five hertz Hz, and are found in Appendix D. 72

5.2 Results

The oral vowels show consistency in their places of articulation in the vowel space, both between utterances of the same speaker and between speakers. The positions of the oral vowels are charted below in Figure 15. Figure 15. Plotted oral vowels 22 All seven vowels are in the general areas expected, with some variations. In terms of height distinction, the high vowels [i], [ɨ] and [u] have a fairly uniform F1 of 250L400 Hz. The mid vowels [e] and [o] have an F1 of 450L600 Hz while the mid central vowel [ɘ] is higher, with an F1 of 350L475 Hz. The mid and high central vowels [ɨ] and [ɘ] are very close together in height, but the height for each does not vary much. The lower limit of the F1 of [ɨ] is 350 Hz, while 350 Hz is the upper limit of the F1 of [ɘ]. 23 While the height range of [ɘ] overlaps considerably with the height ranges of [i] and [u], it does not overlap with that of [ɨ]. So height here is relative, being different for central vowels than for front and back vowels. 22 I used JPlotFormants BillereyLMosier 2001 for all the vowel plot diagrams in the thesis. 23 The mid central vowel is acoustically a highLmid central vowel, as reflected in its IPA representation [ɘ]. 73 The low vowel [a] has an F1 value of 700L900 Hz. There is no height overlap between mid and low vowels. There is very little variation in the place of articulation of [a]. In terms of backness, the back vowels [u] and [o] have a narrow range, with F2 readings between 700L1000 Hz. The central vowels [ɨ] and [ɘ] a have F2 readings of 1100L1700 Hz, while the front vowels [i] and [e] have F2 values of 1700L2600 Hz. The ranges of front and central vowels come very close to each other, with near overlap in the ranges of [e] and [ɘ]. 24 Compared to the relatively neat distribution of the oral vowels, the nasal vowels have a considerably larger spread. The vowel space of adjacent vowels often overlaps as seen in the position of the nasal vowels charted below in Figure 16. Figure 16. Plotted nasal vowels The low vowel [ã] is the only one with a clearly defined space distinct from all the other vowels. For all other vowels, both F1 and F2 ranges overlap in each adjacent pair. 24 While the ellipses encircling the ranges of [e] a nd [ɘ] overlap, the actual F2 values do not overlap. 74 F1 ranges overlap between [ĩ] and [ẽ]; [[ ̃] and [ɘ̃]; and [ũ] and [õ]. F2 ranges overlap between [ĩ] and [[ ̃]; [ẽ] and [ɘ̃]; [[ ̃] and [ũ]; and [ɘ̃] and [õ].

5.3 Discussion