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Acoustic Study of /i,u/ in the Spanish Diphthong

Ana M. Borzone de Manrique Language and Speech 1976 19: 121 DOI: 10.1177/002383097601900203 The online version of this article can be found at: http://las.sagepub.com/content/19/2/121

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121

ACOUSTIC STUDY OF /i,u/ IN THE SPANISH DIPHTHONG*

ANA M. BORZONE Laboratorio de Investigaciones

DE MANRIQUE Sensoriales, Buenos Aires

The positional variants of /i, u/ in the Spanish diphthong were studied by spectographic techniques. Four male speakers recorded a list of 24 words that contained the dipthongs /ie/, /ei/, /ue/ and the sounds /i/, /u/ in the same consonant environment. The measurement of the central frequency of the first three formants shows that their displacement is different for each positional variant. Furthermore the intensity relation between the positional variants and the vowel-sound /e/ and the rate of change of F2 transition seem to be significant cues for the identification of the three variants observed. These acoustic results suggest some articulatory differences in the way these variants are produced.

INTRODUCTION The purpose of the present work is to acoustically characterize the variants of /i, u/ in the Spanish diphthong. Traditionally it is considered that there are three positional variants for /i, u/ in the diphthong. According to Navarro Thomas (1967) they are consonants in an absolute initial position (hiena-huesol), semi-consonants when they come after a consonant (Viena-puedo), and semi-vowels in a final position. The three variants are referred to as produced with stricture in the place of articulation and therefore with a higher tongue position than in the case of the pure vowel sounds /i/, /u/. To determine if this description agrees with the normal realization of the common speaker of Buenos Aires, the following study of the three positional variants was carried out with spectrographic techniques.
_

PROCEDURE A list of 24 words was made in which the diphthongs /ie/, /ei/, /ue/, /eu/ and the sounds /i/, /u/ appear in the same consonant environment. These diphthongs were chosen in view of the fact that they are the most highly used in River Plate
*

The author wishes to express her appreciation to Dr. M. Guirao and Prof. I. Dahl who read the manuscript and made helpful suggestions, and to Miss Calvo for her assistance in the recording of the sounds.
It must be remembered that in

Spanish,

h in hie and hue does not represent

sound.

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122

Spanish (Guirao and Manrique, 1972). The complete list consisted of these 24 words repeated three times, twice in isolation and in different order, and once within sentences. duelo The word series were as follows: hiena Viena pino, huelo peina
-

deudo dudo. The material was recorded on an AMPEX AG 440-2 tape recorder and registered through a Kay Electric 7029 A sound analyser. The spectrograms were made in the 80-8000 c.p.s. range with two filter settings of a band width of 300 and 45 c.p.s., respectively. Four male speakers participated in the experiments. Instructions were given to the speakers to maintain a normal emission rate. The following measurements were made on the spectrograms: (a) the central frequency and the intensity of Fl, F2 and F3 of the positional variants of /i/, /u/ in diphthongs, (b) intensity of Fl, F2 and F3 of /e/, (c) the rate of change of formant transition from one vowel sound to the other, (d) duration of the transition.
-

RESULTS Positional variants

of li l

The results obtained from the total of 36 emissions are graphed in Fig. 1. These results correspond to the measurements of the central frequency of Fl, F2 and F3 of the three positional variants of /i/ within the diphthong, and the sound /i/ when it does not form part of a diphthong. In Fig. 1 it may be noted that the Fl of the absolute initial positional variant hie is displaced toward the low frequencies. In addition this variant shows an evident drop of intensity with respect to the vowel sound /e/, the mean difference being -11.2 db. ~for Fl, -15.5 db. for F2 and -8.8 db. for F3. No intensity change of the other positional variants with respect to the sound /e/ may be noted. Fant (1970, p. 58) has demonstrated that the lowering of frequency of Fl and the intensity reduction, especially in the higher formants, are the acoustic manifestation of an articulatory fact, a greater stricture or articulatory narrowing. The palatalization of the vowel sound /i/ causes, according to what has been observed in other languages (Fant 1970, p. 110), an increase in frequency of F2 and of F3. These modifications are apparent in the absolute initial position variant, whose F2 and F3 are displaced toward higher frequencies, especially F3 which notably approaches F4. The noise components of this variant, which are usually perceptible, are not apparent in the spectograms. But sometimes explosive elements can be found which have been also seen in the Czech consonant /j/ (Borovickova and Malac, 1967, p. 56). On the other hand, noise elements are not necessary for the identification of this sound (Fant, 1970, pp. 58 and 170). The spectral features that so far identify the absolute initial position variant are a shift down of Fl, an increase in frequency of F2 and mainly of F3, a drop of intensity and initial explosive elements. It is apparent that the characteristics that result in the modified formant pattern of this variant, are due

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123

Fig.

1.

Histogram showing the of /i/ by the height

distribution of three formants of the of the bar along the mel scale.

positional

variants

different manner of production. Indeed the stricture between the speech-organs is greater than that of the other positional variants and the vowel sound /i/. With respect to the other two positional variants, as shown in Fig. 1, the formant for the variant in C + ie coincide with those for /i/ in C + i. The Fl of the variant C + ei has higher frequency positions, while F2 and F3 shift downwards. Therefore the variant in C + ie and vowel /i/ have the same articulatory opening. The variant in C + ei is opener and its formants are displaced toward the acoustic area of the vowel sound /e/. This displacement is shown in Fig. 2 in which the areas of isolated vowels sounds (Guirao and Manrique, 1973) are compared with those of the positional variants. There is besides another cue that differentiates these three variants. It is the rate
to a

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124

Fig.

2.

in

Comparison between diphthongs.

-

isolated vowels and the

-

positional

variants of

/i/, /u/

isolated vowels

hie-hue
―――――――――

―――――――――

C -I- ie - C -I- ue C -~ ei - C -I- eu

change of the formant transition. Lehiste (1961, p. 273) explains the rate of change &dquo; the frequency range in cycles per second through which the formant moves in a given time interval &dquo;. Gay (1968) puts it in articulatory terms as the speed of movement from one position to another. The rate of change was measured in the F2 transition in c.p.s./msec. Apparently the movement of the tongue is faster in the articulation of the absolute initial position variant because the reading of the rate of change of this variant is greater than that of the other variants: 5.9 c.p.s./msec. versus
as

of

4.7 and 4. These average values are shown in Table 1 in which the standard deviation and the number of measurements are included. The variability that results from the values of the standard deviation clearly shows how difficult it is to make this kind of measurement on spectrograms. Nevertheless the

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125 TABLE 1

Rate of

change

of F2 transition of the

positional

variants of

/i/

in

diphthongs.

results obtained seem to be significant cues for the identification of the positional variants. It appears that a higher rate of change differentiates a more close variant which is described, by most authors, as a semi-vowel. Some experiments using synthetic speech have been done in order to evaluate the duration of the transition. In spite of the fact that this factor is considered to be closely related to the rate of change, duration is emphasized as the distinctive feature. However, this parameter seems not to be always conclusive, as shown in the present experiments and in the work of other researchers (Lehiste and Peterson, 1961) all of which have been carried out with spectographic techniques, not with speech synthetizers. This statement is based on the impossibility of arriving at any conclusion from the data obtained through the duration measurements because they do not follow any relevant pattern. Taking only the duration of the transition into account, that of the absolute initial position variant is found to be shorter than the variant in C + ie in 18 cases, longer in 12, and the same in 4. With regard to the variant in C + ei, it is shorter in 16 instances, longer in 17, and the same in one. There is no decisive value for any of the three possibilities to distinguish the positional variants. The probability of the duration of the transition in the absolute initial position variant being longer or shorter than that of the other two variants seems to be almost the same. In fact, for a given diphthong, the moving of the speech organs from the vowel sound beginning to the vowel sound ending the diphthong may have the same duration as for any other diphthong. But both displacements are differentiated by the starting and finishing points, that is, the frequency change. Therefore, the rate of change appears to be a decisive factor as a compensating value between the change in frequencies and the duration of that change.

Positional variants

of /u/

The features of the variants of /u/ according to their position in the diphthong are very similar to those of /i/. The absolute initial position variant hue as shown in Fig. 3, has a remarkable shift down of F2. Fl also moves toward the lower frequencies. Fant (1970, p. 171) proved that the shift of F2 is due to the velarization of the sound, and the lowering of Fl and

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126

Fig.

3.

of

Histogram showing the distribution of two formants of the positional variants /u/ in diphthongs by the height of the bar along the mel scale.
TABLE 2

Rate of

change

of F2 transition of the

positional

variants of

/u/

in

diphthongs.

intensity with regard to the vowel sound /e/, which can be seen in this is a result of articulatory narrowing. The mean difference of intensity variant, between this variant and /e/ is -18.7 db. for Fl and -10 db. for F2. There is no difference of intensity between the vowel sound /e/ and the other positional variants. Fl and F2 of the variant in C + ue and the variant in C + eu have a higher frequency mainly in the variant in C + eu. This displacement indicates a greater opening in these variants than in the pure vowel sound. Comparing the areas of the three positional variants with those of the isolated vowel sounds in Fig. 2, it can be observed that the variants in C + ue and in C + eu, specially the last one, tend to move toward the area of the more open vowel sound /o/. These positional variants also differ from each other in the rate of change of formant transition. This value is greater for the absolute initial position variant, 17.9 c.p.s./msec. versus 14.2 and 11.7 for the other two, a3 is shown in Table 2. The meaning of these data is the same as that for the positional variants of /i/. In this case the rate of change also adds new evidence to that already obtained on

drop

of

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127

the different degree of articulatory opening of these variants. Considering the duration of the transition, the results are not the same as those obtained for the variants of /i/. The duration of the transition of the absolute initial position variant is shorter than that of the variant in C + ue in 21 instances, longer in 6, and the same in 5, and than that of the variant in C + eu, shorter in 18, longer in 10, and the same in 3. The conclusion to be drawn from these values would seem to be the predominance of shorter duration of the transition in the absolute initial position variant compared with the variant in C + ue.
~

CONCLUSIONS
The three positional variants of either /i/ or /u/ are clearly distinguished from each other. The absolute initial position variant has particular features which set it off from the other two which resemble one another more closely. In fact, this variant is closer than the pure vowel while the other two variants are generally more
open.

Acoustically, the absolute initial position variant differs from the others because of the changes in the formant pattern-its displacement in frequency-and also the drop of intensity with regard to the following vowel-sound. Furthermore the elements of noise are clearly perceptible in the absolute initial position variant but not in the other variants. All these features of the former variant agree with the description of the semi-vowels as they occur in many languages. So this variant may be described as a semi-vowel and aptly represented by /j/ and /w/ respectively. Jones (1957) interpretation and representation of the other positional variants seem to be quite satisfactory. He says that the second element of the diphthong the speaker aims at is not generally reached, but suggests the representation of the diphthong in full, with a diacritic mark rover the close vowel. This work is, however, in the initial stages and there is much to be studied in the Spanish diphthong from an acoustic and articulatory point of view.

REFERENCES
LLORACH, A. (1961). Fonologia Española (Madrid). BOROVICKOVA, B. and MALAC, U. (1967). The Spectral Analysis of Czech Sound Combination (Prague). FANT, G. (1970). Acoustic Theory of Speech Production (The Hague). . GAY, T. (1968). Effects of speaking rate on diphthong formant movements, J acoust. Soc. Amer., 44, 1570. GUIRAO, M. and MANRIQUE, A. M. B. de (1972). Fonemas, silabas y palabras del Español de Buenos Aires, estudio estadistico, Filologia, 16, 135.
ALARCOS

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128

MANRIQUE, A. M. B. de (1973). Identification of Argentine Spanish vowels. J. psycholing. Res. 4, 17. JONES, D. (1957). Outline of English Phonetics (Cambridge). . LEHISTE, I, and PETERSON, G. E. (1961). Transitions, glides and diphthongs. J acoust. Soc.

GUIRAO,

M. and

Amer., 38, 268. LIBERMAN, A., DELATTRE, P. C., GERSTMAN, L. J. and COOPER, F. (1956). Tempo of . frequency change as a cue for distinguishing classes of speech sounds. J exp. Psychol., 52, 127. NAVARRO TOMAS, T. (1967). Manual de Pronunciación Española (Madrid). OCONNOR, J. D., GERSTMAN, L. J., LIBERMAN, A. M., DELATTRE, P. C. and COOPER, F. (1957). Acoustic cues for the perception of initial /w, j, r, I/ in English. Word, 13,
24.

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