An Acoustic Study of Romanian Stressed Vowels with Special Reference to Mid Central [ɨ] and [ə]
The present study is concerned with some aspects of the production of [ɨ] and [ə] in Romanian, i.e., their position within the vowel space, degree of acoustic variability and acoustic duration. To this end, acoustic data were collected for the Romanian stressed vowels [i e a o u ɨ ə] produced by six...
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2025-01-01
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| author | Daniel Recasens Fernando Sánchez-Miret |
| author_facet | Daniel Recasens Fernando Sánchez-Miret |
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| description | The present study is concerned with some aspects of the production of [ɨ] and [ə] in Romanian, i.e., their position within the vowel space, degree of acoustic variability and acoustic duration. To this end, acoustic data were collected for the Romanian stressed vowels [i e a o u ɨ ə] produced by six speakers in controlled consonantal context conditions and real and nonsense words. The formant frequency data reveal that [ɨ] and [ə] do not overlap along the F1 dimension, which may be ascribed to the need to set in contrast the two central vowels phonologically. Moreover, [ɨ] is clearly more variable in F2, and thus in vowel fronting, than schwa. Regarding segmental duration, [ɨ] is as short as high vowels and shorter than schwa, whose duration is comparable to that of mid vowels. The phonetic characteristics for stressed schwa in Romanian are in contrast with those for the same vowel in other world’s languages, in which it is highly variable and shorter than all or most peripheral vowels. This behaviour may be attributed to the existence of two central vowels, while suggesting that [ə] has a well-defined articulatory target in the Romanian language. |
| format | Article |
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| institution | Kabale University |
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| spelling | doaj-art-ced5bb6e456c458f9096ddbfa566441d2025-01-24T13:38:23ZengMDPI AGLanguages2226-471X2025-01-011011210.3390/languages10010012An Acoustic Study of Romanian Stressed Vowels with Special Reference to Mid Central [ɨ] and [ə]Daniel Recasens0Fernando Sánchez-Miret1Departament de Filologia Catalana, Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, SpainDepartamento de Lengua Española, Facultad de Filología, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, SpainThe present study is concerned with some aspects of the production of [ɨ] and [ə] in Romanian, i.e., their position within the vowel space, degree of acoustic variability and acoustic duration. To this end, acoustic data were collected for the Romanian stressed vowels [i e a o u ɨ ə] produced by six speakers in controlled consonantal context conditions and real and nonsense words. The formant frequency data reveal that [ɨ] and [ə] do not overlap along the F1 dimension, which may be ascribed to the need to set in contrast the two central vowels phonologically. Moreover, [ɨ] is clearly more variable in F2, and thus in vowel fronting, than schwa. Regarding segmental duration, [ɨ] is as short as high vowels and shorter than schwa, whose duration is comparable to that of mid vowels. The phonetic characteristics for stressed schwa in Romanian are in contrast with those for the same vowel in other world’s languages, in which it is highly variable and shorter than all or most peripheral vowels. This behaviour may be attributed to the existence of two central vowels, while suggesting that [ə] has a well-defined articulatory target in the Romanian language.https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/10/1/12central vowelsphonological contrastRomanianacoustic analysis |
| spellingShingle | Daniel Recasens Fernando Sánchez-Miret An Acoustic Study of Romanian Stressed Vowels with Special Reference to Mid Central [ɨ] and [ə] Languages central vowels phonological contrast Romanian acoustic analysis |
| title | An Acoustic Study of Romanian Stressed Vowels with Special Reference to Mid Central [ɨ] and [ə] |
| title_full | An Acoustic Study of Romanian Stressed Vowels with Special Reference to Mid Central [ɨ] and [ə] |
| title_fullStr | An Acoustic Study of Romanian Stressed Vowels with Special Reference to Mid Central [ɨ] and [ə] |
| title_full_unstemmed | An Acoustic Study of Romanian Stressed Vowels with Special Reference to Mid Central [ɨ] and [ə] |
| title_short | An Acoustic Study of Romanian Stressed Vowels with Special Reference to Mid Central [ɨ] and [ə] |
| title_sort | acoustic study of romanian stressed vowels with special reference to mid central i and ə |
| topic | central vowels phonological contrast Romanian acoustic analysis |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/10/1/12 |
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