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.

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.

Preliminary Studies on Great Vowel Shift

The great gowel ghift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the 15th to 18th centuries. Based on the history and theory of great vowel shift, the thesis makes an investigation on the principle, exceptions and effect of Great Vowel Shift.

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.

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.

Recognition of vertical vowel graphemes of Korean characters based on combination of vowel graphemes

Korean characters consist of 2 dimensional distributed consonantal and vowel graphemes. The purpose of reducing the 2 dimensional characteristics of Korean characters to linear arrangements at early stage of character recognition is to decrease the complexity of following recognition task. By defining the identification codes for the vowel graphemes of Korean characters, the rules for combination of vowel graphemes are established, and a recognition algorithm based on the rules for combination of vowel graphemes, is therefore proposed for vertical vowel graphemes. The algorithm has been proved feasilbe through demonstrating simulations.

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.

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.

Presentation of Consonants,Vowels and Stresses in English Medical Terminology

This paper studies the special pronunciation rules of consonants.vowels and stresses in English medical terms from the phonetic and etiologic perspectives,which may provide help for medical students in studying medical English.

Acoustic Analysis of EkeGusii Vowel System

This study describes the vowel system of EkeGusii(“Bantu E.42”)(Guthrie,1948)in an acoustic phonetics perspective using oral data got from purposively sampled subjects:four adult males,four adult females and four children(two boys and two girls all 8 years old)equally from the two dialects of EkeGusii(EkeMaate and EkeRogoro Dialects).In order to capture the distribution characteristics of the vowel acoustic concentration,the group frequency means are normalized using Lobanov’s(1971)algorithm.Two viewpoints are the subjects of analysis in EkeGusii vowels:(a)acoustic vowel space as projected by the intersection of F2 vs.F1 or quadrilateral,and(b)spatial features of high,low,front and back.These qualities are mainly influenced by the physiology of speakers and social variability as occasioned by gender,age and dialect.The results indicate that children have no gender difference in formants,and have the highest frequencies for all formants,followed by adult females and then adult males.Furthermore,acoustic vowel space and spatial features are affected by gender,age,and dialect.A vowel pattern,replicated by all informants,is realized in the dispersion of the vowels within the chart influenced by gender and age.This study found out that EkeGusii seems to adopt a seven-vowel system of/i eɛaɔo u/with a length contrast.

Differences of Vowel Pronunciation in China English and American English： A Case Study of [i] and [I]

This paper investigates the differences between vowels [i] and [ I] pronounced by Chinese English speakers and American English speakers. Seven people consisting of two natives and five Chinese have read a list of sentences and their voices were recorded. A software program is used to analyze their voices. In spectrograms generated by Praat, the connection between formant values and articulation features is used to investigate how native speakers pronounce these two vowels and what the differences are between native speakers and Chinese speakers. Through this investigation, it is discovered that Chinese speakers have lower tongue position in [i] and their tongues are more forward in [I], thus making it hard to differentiate these two vowels. Moreover, the length of [i] is much shorter than those in American pronunciation, suggesting that Chinese speakers differentiate [i] and [I] largely by length. However, the comparison of Chinese speakers and native speakers proved otherwise.

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.

《碛砂藏》随函音义甾思韵考

《碛砂藏》的随函音义作于宋初,其中止摄开口精、庄组字改良切下字,比例超过90%(少数特殊情况除外),而且完全不作其他字的切下字,反映甾思韵已经独立。甾思韵的性质大概是舌尖元音,有?、?两个条件变体,分别出现在精、庄组声母之后。甾思韵进一步发展,则为《韵会》的赀字母韵,演变路径与《中原音韵》的支思韵不同。

嗓音障碍患者的普通话元音空间面积及其合理施测方式和语料研究

目的探究嗓音障碍患者的元音声学特征,以及普通话体系下的元音空间面积(vowel space area,VSA)合理的施测方式和语料。方法招募年龄和性别相匹配的嗓音障碍患者和正常健康对照组受试者各20例,在不同语料(单个元音/a/、/i/、/u/、/o/、/e/和长句)以及不同元音顶点个数(3个、4个、5个)下的VSA进行差异分析。结果嗓音障碍组与正常组之间在单元音和长句语料下VSA都有极显著差异,但两种语料类型间VSA差异不显著,两种语料均可用于VSA的测量。4个元音顶点与3个元音顶点及5个元音顶点下的VSA差异极显著,选择5个元音用于普通话体系下VSA的测量更加合适。结论嗓音障碍患者的元音发音较正常人清晰度下降。在普通话体系下采用5个元音顶点测量VSA相对较精准,更能测得口腔的运动能力。单个元音和连续语音两种语料均适用于VSA的测量。

普兰店方言元音格局代际差异的实验研究

本研究采用声学实验的方法,以元音格局理论为依据,通过对比老中青3个年龄段的元音格局,考察不同年龄段发音人元音格局之间的代际差异。研究发现,不同年龄段发音人的元音格局之间确实存在代际差异,且发音人年龄越小,其元音格局越接近于普通话元音格局。这一现象表明普兰店方言元音格局在这几十年来一直在不断地向着普通话元音格局转变。导致这一代际差异的原因不仅有普通话强有力的影响,还有人们对普通话和当地方言所采取的不同态度。

弗朗西斯科·皮纳尔《厦门方言语法》韵母系统研究

西班牙传教士弗朗西斯科·皮纳尔所著的《厦门方言语法》(1928)从语音、词汇、语法等角度对厦门方言进行全面系统的分析,重点围绕着语法特征展开。论文着重整理韵母系统:19个元音韵母(包括7个单元音和12个复元音)、15个鼻音韵母、10个鼻化韵母、2个声化韵母、31个入声韵母。《厦门方言语法》对元音的分析没有罗常培《厦门音系》的精细和全面,它的音系与《翻译英华厦腔语汇》《厦荷大辞典》《厦门方言英汉辞典》《厦门话字典补编》等传教士文献比较接近。

韵母类型对听障儿童不同塞音嗓音起始时间的影响

目的探究韵母类型对听障儿童不同塞音嗓音起始时间(voice onset time,VOT)的影响,为其塞音习得及矫正提供依据。方法随机选取3~6岁听障儿童和健听儿童各22例,录制6个塞音(/b/、/p/、/d/、/t/、/g/、/h/)与3个单韵母(/a/、/i/或/e/、/u/)所组成的18个辅-元(consonant-vowel,CV)音节,声调均为第一声。使用Praat 6.1.29软件提取VOT值,对每种塞音采用双因素方差分析,因变量为VOT,自变量为听力状况、韵母类型。结果听障组儿童/t/、/g/、/k/发音存在构音错误。听力状况对塞音/g/、/p/、/t/、/k/主效应效果显著(P<0.05),健听组塞音/g/、/p/、/t/、/k/的VOT显著大于听障组(P<0.05)。韵母类型对塞音/b/、/p/、/t/VOT主效应效果显著(P<0.05)。听力状况与韵母类型在塞音/t/VOT上产生交互效应,简单主效应显示,听障组与健听组/ti/音VOT差异大于/ta/及/tu/。结论听障儿童塞音/g/、/p/、/t/、/k/音的VOT小于健听儿童,听障组与健听组/ti/音的VOT差异大于/ta/及/tu/。对听障儿童/t/音教学,可以先从差异较小的/ta/、/tu/开始,后期巩固/ti/音,并且注重呼吸及口部运动训练,为清晰发音奠定良好的基础。

基于超声动态舌形的普通话元音发音特点研究

目的基于超声动态舌形图研究拼音方案中元音字母的实际舌位,并提出针对性发音训练策略,以提高言语康复和教学质量。方法选取包含6个元音(a、o、e、i、u、ü)的45个发音材料(覆盖普通话所有韵母),招募16例20~25岁的普通话二甲以上的受试者,同步采集语音和超声舌形数据。处理数据时,首先用Praat进行音段标注,然后用AAA软件提取目标音段的舌形、上腭线的坐标,最后从语音教学的角度基于发音舌位对比,确定6个元音的实际舌位。结果元音a有[A]、[■]2种舌位,o有[o]1种舌位,e有[■]、[e]、[■]3种舌位,i有[i]、[■]、[■]3种舌位,u有[u]1种舌位,ü有[y]1种舌位,儿化元音是元音目标舌位后加卷舌动程。结论①韵母根据元音舌位统计分成11类,可以更准确系统地进行普通话元音舌位的教学和训练;②超声舌位数据为元音的发音学习提供可视化参照,比传统拼音方案教学更直观。

从历代文献探究蒙古书面语“元音+■”和“元音+■”的性质及其演变规律

回鹘式蒙古文或现行蒙古文词中元音之后的■是音节、复合元音还是音节末辅音?学者们持有不同的观点。在蒙古文中,■是多音字形,因此单从蒙古文文献或上述字符自身所包含的信息很难判定其性质。本文以婆罗米文蒙古语文献、八思巴字蒙古语文献、托忒文文献等不同时期蒙古语文献为依据,从■所对应的字符序列阐释了其性质和演变规律。我们认为,在古代蒙古语词中元音之后的“■”表示一个单独的音节“yi”,但到中期蒙古语随着“y”的元音属性的逐渐突出,这一书写形式也发生了变化,词中依然是单独的音节,但词末变成了复合元音的组成部分。再到托忒文或现代蒙古文,词中和词末均变成了构成复合元音的元素。