Distinctive Features - Speech Resource Pages - Macquarie University

More documents

Recommendations

Info

onglide ([ ə iː]) of broad speakers, through the shorter, but acoustically similar, onglide of general speakers to the short onglide (something like [ ɪ iː]) of cultivated speakers. For those Australian English speakers who move between [ɪə] and [ɪːɹ] sequences in different phonetic contexts, the phoneme /ɪə/ may (according to transformational theory) be described to be "underlyingly" a sequence of the phonemes /ɪ/ + /r/ (or perhaps /iː/ + /r/). If this is so, then the process of monophthongisation of the centring diphthongs may be the result of a more fundamental process whereby the underlying /r/ component of the sequence is deleted. Even in American English, which is a rhotic dialect of English, the surface representations of the underlying post-vocalic /r/ phonemes varies greatly. In American English /ə˞/ the following /r/ is most often entirely represented by the surface rhoticisation of the vowel. In the Eastern New England variety of American English the post-vocalic /r/ in many words is not as rhoticised as is the case of most American English varieties, but the /r/ still exists as an alveolar, but not retroflexed, approximant (Olive et al, 1993, p367). The next table represents a possible feature representation for the three high front vowels of Australian English speakers. The feature "onglide" is proposed here as a feature that accounts for the virtually universal existence of an on-glide for /i:/ in Australian English. Feature table for Australian English /iː/,/ɪ/ and /ɪə/ high low front back round tense onglide /iː/ = [ ə iː] [ ɪ iː] + - + - - + + /ɪ/ = [ɪ] + - + - - - - /ɪə/ = [ɪə] [ɪː] + - + - - + - c) Feature Analysis of Diphthong Vowels Diphthongs are single vowels with two targets. In other words the tongue must attempt to move from one position to another in order for the diphthong to be fully pronounced. In the following discussion /eː/ is excluded because it as regarded as a tense monophthong (with an optional offglide) and /ʊə/ is excluded because it is either extinct or is almost extinct. One way of performing a distinctive feature analysis of diphthongs is to analyse each target separately. This type of analysis appears to assume that diphthongs are "underlyingly" a sequence of two monophthongs. In this approach, each target would be allocated a full set of features. This approach has the advantage of not requiring the invention of new features. Its weakness is that implicitly it treats diphthongs as two vowels. In Australian English all diphthongs are pronounced with distinct first targets and very brief or sometimes absent second targets. They are realised as having a clear first target followed by a long offglide in the direction of some intended second target, which may have a very short or even a zero length. In unaccented contexts (i.e. not affected by sentence stress) diphthongs may be reduced to a monophthong (often similar to the first target) or even to schwa.
Australian English diphthongs can be divided into three classes of diphthongs on the basis of the direction of their offglides. These directions are centring /ɪə/, high-fronting /æɪ, ɑe, ɔɪ/, and a third class of diphthongs /æɔ, əʉ/ whose offglide moves toward a high-central, high-back or a back position. We have already dealt with /ɪə/ above and so we will omit it from this analysis. These classes could be differentiated by inventing three new features:- 1. [offglide]: true for all diphthongs 2. [centring]: true for centring diphthongs (where the vowel glides to a more central position following the first target) 3. [fronting]: true for the high-fronting diphthongs (where the glides move toward the position of [i]). The feature [centring] seems redundant, however, as the centring diphthong can be treated as a [-fronting] diphthong. Further, all of these diphthongs can be distinguished by the features for the first target so the fronting feature, whilst descriptive, is redundant. In the following table, offglide indicates the presence of a second target whilst the other features describe the quality of the stronger first target. Feature Table for Australian English Offgliding Diphthongs Phoneme high low front back round tense offglide æɪ - + + - - + + ɑe - + - + - + + ɔɪ - - - + + + + əʉ - - - - - (+?) + + æɔ - + + - - (+?) + + The main problem with this analysis is its failure to capture the rounding gesture into the second targets of /əʉ/ and /æɔ/. This also results in /æɪ/ and /æɔ/ having identical feature specifications. This failure is a possible argument for providing a featural specification of both diphthong targets. However, if we apply [+round] to any diphthong that contains a round lip gesture in either target (see below in the next table). We continue to apply height and fronting features based on the first target. We will now bring all of this together into a single table of all Australian English vowel phonemes. Vowels are defined as being syllabic, con-consonantal, sonorant, continuant speech sounds and therefore they all share the following features [+syll, -cons, +son, +cont] . The following table includes only those vowel features necessary for distinguishing between vowel phonemes. In the following table "0" means "inapplicable feature" whilst "+/-" means optional (either are possible as are intermediate values).
Page 1 and 2: Topics Distinctive Features © Robe
Page 3 and 4: d) Gradual Oppositions The members
Page 5 and 6: We could refer to all these phoneme
Page 7 and 8: stops are already defined uniquely
Page 9 and 10: iv. Place of articulation The [ant]
Page 11 and 12: produced without such a gesture." [
Page 13 and 14: as lax. Instead we use the [tense]
Page 15: distinct tense vowel. All other cen
Page 19 and 20: 7. English Consonant Features (an o
Page 21 and 22: 9. Articulatory Features In more re
Page 23: 20. Jakobson, R., Fant, C.G.M. and

Distinctive Features - Speech Resource Pages - Macquarie University

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?