Document Type : Research

Authors

• Rafee Khoshkhoo ¹
• Batool Alinezhad ²
• Adel Rafiei ³
• Vahid Sadeghi ⁴

¹ Student

² Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

³ linguistic faculty , university of isfhan

⁴ Associate Professor, Department of English Language, Faculty of Literature and Humanity Science, Imam Khomeini International University. Qazvin, Iran.

Abstract

The influence of vowel feature on alignment in tehrani and isfahani varieties
Abstract
In recent years, cross linguistics studies have been conducted on timing and alignment. The present study investigates the effect of vowel quality features on the alignment of nuclear accents within auto segmental theory of pierrehumbert(1980). Therefore it was attempted to evaluate the way in which nuclear pitch accent in copular sentence realized. A production experiment with 40 speakers of 2 regional varieties of Persian language (Isfahani and Tehrani) in the age group of 20-40 years, to determine prosodic pattern in verbal production. Whether is there a change in prosodic pattern of nuclear pitch accent by changing the vowel type (front/ back), syllabic structure (open/ closed), varieties and gender?. The speaker of both varieties consistently produce the target word by pitch L*+H. L tone has complete phonetic aligned within onset monosyllabic target words, H tone occurs early within segmental string of the accented syllabic. Compared to the interval time of L -H, average of relative alignment in tehrani variety is smaller than Isfahani variety. So, H tone (peak in nuclear pitch accent is aligned earlier than peak in otherwise. Hence, it seems that occurrence of peak f0 in nuclear pitch accent changes as function of syllable structure and the effect of vowel type on alignment is similar to the effect of syllable structure. In other words, the independent variables of the variety type, syllable structure, vowel type and gender had a significant effect on relative alignment.
Keywords: Alignment, Nuclear pitch accent, Varieties.
1. Introduction
Speakers use sound information to distinguish varieties from each other. Prosodic information such as pitch, duration and scaling play an important role in perception dialectal differences. In recent years, extensive studies have been conducted in the field of prosodic system on the timing or alignment and scaling (height level) of tonal targets. The temporal adaptation of the peak and valley of fundamental frequency (f0) is related to the phonological properties such as: vowels, consonants and syllables. For example, in Spanish, the alignment of tonal targets is a function of phonological conditions (Silverman and Pierrehumbert, 1990; Prieto, van Santen and Hirschberg, 1995) and the alignment of the LH * peak depends on the prenuclear pitch accent in Spanish depending on the presence or absence of coda consonant (Prieto and Torreira, 2007). In the Dutch language, the alignment of the nuclear pitch accent is dependent on syllable structure (Ladd, Mennen, & Schepman, 2000). In English, the peak timing is earlier in contexts which the distance of accented syllable to the next word boundary is smaller; while this distance is long, peak delay occur (Silverman and Pierrehumbert, 1990). The pattern of alignment of the peaks in nuclear pitch accent in Greek shows that the peak H always align to onset of the first unstressed syllable after stressed syllable, and in L, this accent is always consistently and systematically aligned with the onset of accentual syllable (Arvaniti, Ladd and Mennen, 1998). These results are consistent with the findings of Shaw (1997, 1998, and 1999) in Mandarin Chinese, Ladd and Faulkner, and Faulkner and Schepman (1999) in British English, and Ladd and Mennen and Schepman (2000) in Dutch.
This paper aims at identifying the main factors that influence f0 peak placement in two varieties of Persian, spoken in Isfahan and Tehran. So far, little research has been done on the Isfahani and Tehrani varieties of Persian language, most of which are from a traditional perspective or have been studied in the framework of phonological theories. The present article is an attempt to better understand the melody in both Isfahani and Tehrani varieties. Considering that so far no research has been done on the effect of segmental factors (vowel type) on the alignment and scaling of peaks and valleys in the Isfahani and Tehrani varieties of the Persian language in the nuclear position, therefore, we study the performance of peaks and valleys (H and L) in alignment with the phonological segment in both Isfahani and Tehrani varieties. Given these goals, the following general question arises:
What is the effect of segmental factors such as vowel type on the alignment of the peaks and valleys in both Isfahani and Tehrani varieties in the nuclear position?
2. Materials and methods
The present study is a descriptive-analytical study. In this study, in order to collect data, 10 female Isfahani dialects and 10 female Tehranian dialects, all of whom were monolingual healthy, were selected. Isfahani and Tehrani speakers spoke conversationally. It should be noted that the age range of speakers is between 20 and 40 years and their education is from diploma to master. In this experiment, the question and answer method was used. Four conversations were designed to test research hypotheses. Each conversation was made up of two parts, the subject and the examiner. In the experimental part, there were target sentences. Target sentences included target words that examined the effect of the one-syllable target word vowel feature (CV-CVC) on the concept of alignment of peaks and valleys in the nuclear position of declarative sentences with a related verb. It should be noted that Praat version 5.2.24 was used to record the data. The recording sampling frequency was 16,000 Hz in the menu mode and the pitch contour and other data were extracted from the recorded speech by Pratt software. In order to have a completely represented representation of tonal targets in the pitch curve and to have a uniform curve, we tried to make the tonal targets consist of sonorant and voiced phonological units. The selected participants pronounced the sentences twice at normal speed in the form of a list of excerpts. The type of language type, vowel type (, front and back,) and position type were considered as independent variables and duration, alignment was considered as dependent variables. Each of the six Persian vowels in this test was examined and tested separately. It was attempted to evaluate the way in which nuclear pitch accent in carrier sentence is realized. To determined prosodic pattern of nuclear in verbal production, whether or not is there a changing prosodic pattern of nuclear pitch accent by changing the vowel type, syllable structure, varieties and gender?
3. Results and discussions
The speakers of both varieties consistently produce the target monosyllabic word by pitch L*+H. L tone has complete phonetic aligned within onset of the accented syllable as a definite f0 valley, H tone occurs early within segmental string of the accented syllabic. Compared to the interval time of L -H, average of relative alignment in Tehrani varieties is smaller than Isfahani varieties. So, H tone (peak in nuclear pitch accent is aligned earlier than peak in otherwise.
4. Conclusion
Hence, it seems that occurrence of peak f0 in nuclear pitch accent changes as function of syllable structure and the effect of vowel type on alignment is similar to the effect of syllable structure. In other words, the independent variables of the variety type, syllable structure, vowel type and gender had a significant effect on relative alignment.

Keywords

• Alignment
• Nuclear pitch accent
• Varieties