CReSS LLC, 1 Seaborn Place, Lexington, Massachusetts 02420, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2012 Apr;131(4):3017-35. doi: 10.1121/1.3692246.
The purpose of this study is to test a methodology for describing the articulation of vowels. High front vowels are a test case because some theories suggest that high front vowels have little cross-linguistic variation. Acoustic studies appear to show counterexamples to these predictions, but purely acoustic studies are difficult to interpret because of the many-to-one relation between articulation and acoustics. In this study, vocal tract dimensions, including constriction degree and position, are measured from cinéradiographic and x-ray data on high front vowels from three different languages (North American English, French, and Mandarin Chinese). Statistical comparisons find several significant articulatory differences between North American English /i/ and Mandarin Chinese and French /i/. In particular, differences in constriction degree were found, but not constriction position. Articulatory synthesis is used to model the acoustic consequences of some of the significant articulatory differences, finding that the articulatory differences may have the acoustic consequences of making the latter languages' /i/ perceptually sharper by shifting the frequencies of F(2) and F(3) upwards. In addition, the vowel /y/ has specific articulations that differ from those for /i/, including a wider tongue constriction, and substantially different acoustic sensitivity functions for F(2) and F(3).
本研究旨在测试一种描述元音发音的方法。高前元音是一个测试案例，因为一些理论表明高前元音在跨语言上的变化很小。声学研究似乎提供了这些预测的反例，但由于发音和声学之间的多对一关系，纯粹的声学研究很难解释。在这项研究中，从三种不同语言（北美英语、法语和普通话）的高速电影射线和 X 射线数据中测量了声道尺寸，包括紧缩程度和位置。统计比较发现，北美英语 /i/ 和普通话以及法语 /i/ 之间存在几个显著的发音差异。特别是，发现了紧缩程度的差异，但没有紧缩位置的差异。发音合成用于模拟一些显著发音差异的声学后果，发现发音差异可能会通过将 F(2) 和 F(3) 的频率向上移动，使后两种语言的 /i/ 听起来更尖锐，从而产生声学后果。此外，元音 /y/ 的发音方式与 /i/ 不同，包括舌部紧缩更宽，以及 F(2) 和 F(3) 的声学灵敏度函数有很大差异。
