Acoustic measures for linguistic features distinguishing the semivowels /w j r l/ in American English

Abstract

Acoustic properties related to the linguistic features which characterize the semivowels in American English were quantified and analyzed statistically. The features can be divided into those which separate the semivowels from other sounds and those which distinguish among the semivowels. The features of interest are sonorant, syllabic, consonantal, high, back, front, and retroflex. Acoustic correlates of these features were investigated in this study of the semivowels. The acoustic correlates, which are based on relative measures, were tested on a corpus of 233 polysyllabic words, each of which was spoken once by two males and two females. For the most part, the appropriate distinctions are made by the chosen acoustic properties for features. However, for each property, there was some overlap in the acoustic correlates of features for the sounds being distinguished. An examination of the sounds in the overlap regions reveals that their surface manifestation varies substantially from the canonical form. In large part, the observed variability can be explained in terms of changes due to feature spreading and lenition.

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