The Emotional Approach of Foreign Vowel Acquisition Within the Example of British English Vowels

The aim of the article is to present results of research that was performed with 97 Polish students of the second and third year of English Philology. The purpose of the research is to examine how conscious manipulation of facial expressions aids acquisition of foreign vowels by learners, regardless of their native language and the culture they have been brought up in. Taking advantage of achievements derived from such disciplines as psychology of emotions and phonetics depicted as a physical process, an attempt is made to find a tool that improves teaching/learning of foreign vowels, that is to say, an effort is put in search of a useful method to make the phonetic process faster and more accurate. Teachers of English are encouraged to put the method, which is described in detail in the paper, into practice with their own mother languages and to share opinions about the method with colleagues. Similarly, it is believed that it can be applied to courses of other languages than just English. Teachers of those languages are encouraged to try to use it, too.

Payload Capacity Scheme for Quran Text Watermarking Based on Vowels with Kashida

The most sensitive Arabic text available online is the digital Holy Quran.This sacred Islamic religious book is recited by all Muslims worldwide including non-Arabs as part of their worship needs.Thus,it should be protected from any kind of tampering to keep its invaluable meaning intact.Different characteristics of Arabic letters like the vowels(),Kashida(extended letters),and other symbols in the Holy Quran must be secured from alterations.The cover text of the Quran and its watermarked text are different due to the low values of the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio(PSNR)and Embedding Ratio(ER).A watermarking technique with enhanced attributes must,therefore,be designed for the Quran’s text using Arabic vowels with kashida.The gap addressed by this paper is to improve the security of Arabic text in the Holy Quran by using vowels with kashida.The purpose of this paper is to enhance the Quran text watermarking scheme based on a reversing technique.The methodology consists of four phases:The first phase is a pre-processing followed by the second phase-the embedding process phase—which will hide the data after the vowels.That is,if the secret bit is“1”,then the kashida is inserted;however,the kashida is not inserted if the bit is“0”.The third phase is the extraction process and the last phase is to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme by using PSNR(for the imperceptibility)and ER(for the capacity).The experimental results show that the proposed method of imperceptibility insertion is also optimized with the help of a reversing algorithm.The proposed strategy obtains a 90.5%capacity.Furthermore,the proposed algorithm attained 66.1%which is referred to as imperceptibility.

Using Formants to Compare Short and Long Vowels in Modern Standard Arabic

This study was concerned with the short vowels in modern standard Arabic words with Consonant Vowel-Consonant Vowel-Consonant Vowel (CVCVCV) structure, and the long vowels in words with Consonant Vowel Vowel-Consonant (CVVC). Even though there has been a dispute on the precise number of Arabic vowels that exist between language studies, this study used the opinion that the Arabic language has three vowels;the elongation of each vowel gave the other three because this is the opinion of classical Arabic linguists which is the source of the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Studies said that the first and second formant values (F1, F2) can represent the vowels. In this study, the formants were measured using LPC (Linear Predictive Coding), verifying the measurement to see if the measured follows the pattern of formants measurements of the other studies, and the formants were used to investigate the relationship between short and long vowels. Furthermore, the study figured out if the dialect of speakers can affect the values of formants, even if the spoken language is MSA, some statistical measurements were calculated to evaluate the relationship.

A Useful System in Learning and Teaching English Pronunciation——IPA Cardinal Vowels System

The paper introduces the cardinal vowels system invented by the famous English phonetician Daniel Jones.This system enables a teacher to describe to his students a foreign vowel by comparing it with the nearest vowel in his mother tongue,which makes the learning of a foreign sound much easier to his students.Two cases of teaching Chinese students English vowels are taken as an example to illustrate the point.IPA cardinal vowel system is of use in terms of teaching and learning English.Two suggestions are put forward in the end.

Using Formants to Extract Short Vowels from Arabic Words with (Consonant Vowel)³Structure

Arabic texts suffer from missing short vowels. Arabic Speech Recognition is not as good as English speech recognition due to the short vowels not being recognized. And the Arabic language is unlike the English language in characteristics such as the number of vowels. English has more than 24 vowels that are close to each other in pronunciation. The Arabic language only has three short vowels that are far from each other in utter and measurement, by elongating those short vowels, long vowels arose. Researchers said that the vowels could be recognized using formants. The formants’ measurements of Arabic vowels are far from each other too, so it is possible to recognize them so that Arabic Speech recognition can give more accurate results. The paper applies this idea to the corpus Phonemes of Arabic. It uses the Euclidian distance method to measure the distances between formant values to recognize Arabic from words with a CV3 structure, the Linear Predictive Coding method and MATLAB to develop the programs that will extract the formants and calculate the means of the short vowels by using the corpus to identify the short vowels within words in the corpus. The results showed that if highly qualified readers were chosen to read the Arabic text, then higher rates of recognition of the short vowels involved in words will be achieved. This paper revealed that some of the characteristics of a language can be utilized for vowel recognition or to enhance the existing methods for speech recognition.

IPA Cardinal Vowels and the English Pronunciation Teaching in China

In pronunciation teaching, learners may have difficulty when there is a ＂gap＂ in the phonemic system between L1 （the first or native language） and L2 （the second or foreign language）. In such a case, they tend to use their native language sounds in speaking the foreign language. Since some Chinese and English vowel sounds are easy to be confused, applying IPA cardinal vowels in the teaching of English pronunciation will help Chinese learners identify the difference between an English vowel sound and a Chinese vowel sound and thus enables them to make intelligible English speech sounds.

Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet:As Sound Notation

While Bronze Age Proto-Sinaic and Proto-Canaanite syllabic inscriptions were found engraved on fragments of pottery and stone,evidence of early alphabetic script was also inscribed in ink onto a massive parchment scroll,known as the Torah.Albeit the contours of those original characters transformed over time,it took the clairvoyant genius of Moses,and later the scribes of Ancient Israel,to configure and adapt ancient semitic prototypes into phonetic letters,producing the greatest literary document in the history of the world,the Bible.This article summarizes the acoustic properties of that alphabet,with further historical considerations.

An acoustic analysis of vowels in checked syllables in Chinese

Vowels in checked syllables are almost short and abrupt in Chinese Mandarin dialects. This paper proposed a parametric statistical modeling for the analysis of these vowels.The parameters were described empirically with the method of probability distribution. The effects of the multiparameter classifications were estimated by the binary and multinomial logistic models, and the method of support vector machine was adopted to carry out the pattern recognition of the classifications. The results show that the parameters of duration, DCT_（1-3）are significant to the external classification, and the parameters of DCT_（0-3） have significant main effects on the internal classification. The automatic testing shows that the hit rate of the external pattern recognition is only 43.6% but the rate is 96.1% of the internal. It indicates that the abrupt feature should be additive rather than distinctive.

ARTICULATORY-ACOUSTIC RELATIONS IN PALATAL VOWELS

The study^1 evaluates the quantal theory by analyzing the articulatory-acoustic relations in the four Cantonese palatal vowels[i:y:i y]through investigating the sensitivity of vowel formant frequencies to variation of linguo-palatal constriction location and that of constriction size along the vocal tract length during the vowels,using KMA AG5 0 0.The articulatory-acoustic data obtained in this study show non-linear relationship between the up-down and front-back displacements in linguo-palatal constriction during the vowels and the acoustic consequences,which is similar to what the quantal theory claims.Moderate displacements in constriction location and constriction size result in large spectral changes.The level of sensitivity of formant frequencies to variation of tongue displacement is lower for the unrounded[i:i]than the rounded counterparts[y:y],suggesting the quantal nature is more apparent in[i:i]than[y:y].In general,for the Cantonese palatal vowels the levels of sensitivity of F1 to the variation of constriction location and that of constriction size are similar,whereas F2 is more sensitive to the variation of constriction size than to the variation of constriction location.The latter is similar to the articulatory-acoustic relations in the Knglish vowels reported in the previous studies.

AN ACOUSTIC MODELING STUDY OF FRICATION LEVELS OF HIGH VOWELS IN CHINESE

Frication of high vowels has three levels in auditory impression,including non-frication,low frication,and high frication.The aim of this study was to study the acoustic characteristics and social variability of the three levels via the method of multivariate statistical modeling.We estimated the weighting of each parameter by fitting the model of Boosted Logistic Regression to obtain the optimal parametric set.Pattern recognition then quantified the social variability with the optimal set.It showed that the acoustic characteristics of the vowel frication are mainly reflected in the formants,of which the second bandwidth (B2) plays the most prominent role in distinguishing the three levels.Three dimensional diagrams further illustrated that the high frication group has the greatest B2 value,with the smallest first formant (F1) and skewness,while the non-frication group is completely the opposite.Results of pattern recognition showed that the degrees of variation in age and gender are both close to 19%,where the higher the frication level is,the greater the variability is.This paper thus suggested that low frication variants should be treated as fricative approximants,instead of fricative vowels as reported in the literature.

General Definitions of Consonants and Vowels

This article discusses the definitions,classifications and features of consonants and vowels by listing different varieties of languages as examples.

Excitation patterns and phonetic identities of Chinese vowels

After entering the peripheral auditory system, a sound undergoes many significant changes. The excitation pattern describes these changes psychoacoustically as inner expression. This study investigates the relations between excitation patterns and their phonetic qualities for Chinese steady-state vowels. First, the peak positions of the envelope of excitation patterns were measured on a database. The results demonstrated that each Chinese vowel has its own special position for the representative peak of the excitation pattern. Second, to examine the sufficiency of these results, a series of experiments that consisted of identification and evaluation tasks were conducted, in which spectral components of natural isolated vowels were manipulated to create certain excitation patterns. Subjects＇ responses of these stimuli show that the position of the representative peak of the excitation pattern of a vowel plays a crucial role on its phonetic identity. The results suggest that the phonetic identity of vowels is determined by the position of the representative peak of the excitation pattern evoked by it, and other peaks, if any, do not have phonetic meaning. Additionally, several phenomena about speech perception are discussed on the basis of this study.

ACOUSTIC AND ARTICULATORY ANALYSIS ON CHINESE AND JAPANESE VOWELS IN EMOTIONAL SPEECH

This research investigated the articulatory and acoustic cues of the emotional vowels from production/coding perspectives Chinese and Japanese emotional speech and EMA data were recorded.The acoustic and articulatory spaces of isolated vowels across different emotions were analyzed to understand the coding scheme in cross-cultural emotion production.The results suggest that,on the one hand,those two languages share some common features:(1) Significant differences of the acoustic space exist across emotions;(2) 'Sad' and 'Angry' vowels raise tongue position higher than other emotions;(3)The lip’s protrusion feature is shared by both 'Angry' and 'Sad' emotions,except[a]or[A].We suggested that the exception is caused by the increase of the mouth opening.The mouth opening and the degree of lip protrusion are a pair of complementary features.On the other hand,differences also exist between those two languages;(l)In Chinese,the acoustic space moves downwards with the increasing of emotion intensity;in Japanese,however, 'Angry' is characterized by a horizontally compressed acoustic space,and 'Sad' by a vertically compressed acoustic space.(2)In Chinese,emotional factors only cause tongue raising movement;in Japanese,emotional factors cause both tongue raising and significant tongue retraction,which can be enhanced by 'Angry' and 'Sad' emotions.

AN ANALYSIS OF ACOUSTIC CHARACTERISTICS OFCLEFT PALATE SPEECH WITH COMPUTERIZED SPEECH SIGNAL PROCESSING SYSTEM

The acoustic characteristics or the chinese vowels of 24 children with cleft palate and 10 normal control children were analyzed by computerized speech signal processing system (CSSPS),and the speech articulation was judged with Glossary of clert palate speech(GCPS).The listening judgement showed that the speech articulation was significantly different between the two groups(P<0.01).The objective quantitative measurement suggested that the formant pattern(FP)of vowels in children with cleft palate was different from that of normal control children except vowel[a](P< 0.05).The acoustic vowelgraph or the Chinese vowels which demonstrated directly the relationship of vocal space and speech perception was stated with the first formant frequence(F1)and the second formant frequence(F2).The authors conclude that the values or F1 and F2 point out the upward and backward tongue movement to close the clert, which reflects the vocal characteristics of trausmission of clert palate speech.

云南瑞丽汉语方言音系概况

瑞丽市位于西南边陲,三面与缅甸接壤,以傣族为主,方言兼具缅傣特点。本文以瑞丽市区方言为调查对象,描写瑞丽汉语方言的声韵调系统及其配合规律,同时对瑞丽汉语方言的语音特点和音变现象进行分析和解释。

A Real-Time Oral Cavity Gesture Based Words Synthesizer Using Sensors

The present system experimentally demonstrates a synthesis of syllables and words from tongue manoeuvers in multiple languages,captured by four oral sensors only.For an experimental demonstration of the system used in the oral cavity,a prototype tooth model was used.Based on the principle developed in a previous publication by the author(s),the proposed system has been implemented using the oral cavity(tongue,teeth,and lips)features alone,without the glottis and the larynx.The positions of the sensors in the proposed system were optimized based on articulatory(oral cavity)gestures estimated by simulating the mechanism of human speech.The system has been tested for all English alphabets and several words with sensor-based input along with an experimental demonstration of the developed algorithm,with limit switches,potentiometer,and flex sensors emulating the tongue in an artificial oral cavity.The system produces the sounds of vowels,consonants,and words in English,along with the pronunciation of meanings of their translations in four major Indian languages,all from oral cavity mapping.The experimental setup also caters to gender mapping of voice.The sound produced from the hardware has been validated by a perceptual test to verify the gender and word of the speech sample by listeners,with∼98%and∼95%accuracy,respectively.Such a model may be useful to interpret speech for those who are speech-disabled because of accidents,neuron disorder,spinal cord injury,or larynx disorder.

Children's Deviation in the Acquisition of Variable Linguistic Gender Patterns

This study examines the acquisition of variation from the vernacular Syrian input of 22 parents in the output of their 21 children in the village of Oyoun Al-Wadi in Syria, using the four rural vowel variables (o), (o:), (e), and (e:). Each variable has two realizations: rural [o, o:, e, e:] respectively and urban [a, a:, a, a:] respectively.Fathers use the rural vowels more than mothers, but the difference is statistically insignificant. Like fathers, boys use more rural vowels than girls. However, the difference between boys and girls is statistically significant. No correlation emerged between the children’s and parents’ use of the variants, indicating that children are not acquiring their parents5 exact frequencies, which suggests developmental effect rather than statistical learning of parental input effect. The boys’ higher use of the rural forms after age eight is attributed to a social, psychological polarization process between boys and girls to create a highly differentiated gendered linguistic behavior in line with another highly differentiated gendered linguistic behavior related to a stereotypical consonant variable, (q), which is observed in both parents and children.

Using Arabic in an EFL Class： Bringing a New Approach to Using L1 in a Foreign Language Class

Can Arabic be an unconventional method for teaching English？ This research will describe how the teacher used some Arabic language methods as a teaching strategy to improve her EFL students＇ reading, writing, and understanding of English grammar. The research took place over a period of two years in Lebanon and four years in Saudi Arabia. Data consists of comparative tables, videos of two samples of students using Arabic to learn English, and pictures of the teacher using Arabic for comparative in grammar. Results revealed an increase in the level of understanding and comprehension of students in both the elementary and intermediate levels.

On the Vowel Changes of English Language in History

The Vowel changes of English are more dramatic and complicated in every period of English development. Especially theGreat Vowel Shift from Middle English to Modern English influenced the whole English phonetic system. This paper examines thevowel changes in each period of English development and aims at concluding the rules of the language change and development.

Perception of English Tense and Lax Vowel Contrasts in Chinese Learners of English

This paper aims at examining the perception of English tense and lax vowel contrasts by testing an identification task of CVC syllables with different manipulated durations in Chinese learners of English.This can provide some empirical evidence for English as a second language teachers in teaching second language pronunciation.