An Acoustic Analysis of Vowels

Dear Colleagues,

Acoustic analyses have long been used to investigate the characteristics of both normal and abnormal speech in a variety of languages and settings. Methods of acoustic analyses have been particularly useful for the study of vowels. For example, acoustic analyses have been used to describe vowel production across mainstream languages and variation among dialects (e.g., American English (Clopper et al., 2005), Australian English (Harrington et al., 1997), Portuguese (Escudero et al., 2005) and Spanish (Chládková et al., 2011), to name a few), as well as under described languages (e.g., Nungon (Sarvasy et al., 2020), Otomi (Hñäñho) Mulík et al., 2019)). In studies of second language (L2) speech, methods of acoustic analyses have been used to predict L2 vowel perception and production (e.g., Gilichinskaya and Strange, 2010; Escudero and Vasiliev, 2011; Elvin et al., 2021). Acoustic analyses have also been used to investigate vowel production among speakers with speech disorders (e.g., Kent and Rountrey, 2020; Swartz et al., 2022). The goal of this Special Issue is to bring together state-of-the-art articles that use various methods of acoustic analyses to investigate the realizations of vowels for a variety of purposes. Topics of interest for this issue are those which feature acoustic analyses of vowels and include but are not limited to investigations of new and innovative methods of acoustic analysis, acoustic–phonetic language descriptions, language variation and change, L2 speech research, speech disorders.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor (jaydene@mail.fresnostate.edu) or to the Languages editorial office (languages@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

References

Clopper, C. G., Pisoni, D. B., & De Jong, K. (2005). Acoustic characteristics of the vowel systems of six regional varieties of American English. The Journal of the Acoustical society of America, 118(3), 1661-1676.

Chládková, K., Escudero, P., & Boersma, P. (2011). Context-specific acoustic differences between Peruvian and Iberian Spanish vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(1), 416-428.

Elvin, J., Williams, D., Shaw, J. A., Best, C. T., & Escudero, P. (2021). The role of acoustic similarity and non-native categorisation in predicting non-native discrimination: Brazilian Portuguese vowels by English vs. Spanish listeners. Languages, 6(1), 44.

Escudero, P., Boersma, P., Rauber, A. S., & Bion, R. A. (2009). A cross-dialect acoustic description of vowels: Brazilian and European Portuguese. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 126(3), 1379-1393.

Escudero, P., & Vasiliev, P. (2011). Cross-language acoustic similarity predicts perceptual assimilation of Canadian English and Canadian French vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(5), EL277-EL283.

Gilichinskaya, Y. D., & Strange, W. (2010). Perceptual assimilation of American English vowels by inexperienced Russian listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 128(2), EL80-EL85.

Harrington, Jonathan, Felicity Cox, and Zoe Evans. "An acoustic phonetic study of broad, general, and cultivated Australian English vowels." Australian Journal of Linguistics 17.2 (1997): 155-184.

Kent, R. D., & Rountrey, C. (2020). What acoustic studies tell us about vowels in developing and disordered speech. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 29(3), 1749-1778.

Mulík, S., Amengual, M., Avecilla-Ramírez, G., & Carrasco-Ortíz, H. (2019). An acoustic description of the vowel system of Santiago Mexquititlán Otomi (Hñäñho). In Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XIX), Melbourne, Australia (pp. 1377-1381).

Swartz, M. T., Koenig, L., & Hitchcock, E. R. (2022). Acoustic analysis of vowel production in children with childhood apraxia of speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 151(4), A44-A45.

Dr. Jaydene Elvin
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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