The nature of vowels
Raung-fu Chung
National Kaohsiung Normal University
The nature of vowels
1. Vowels differ from consonants in the
process of production (in addition to other
phonetic or phonological properties). It was
proposed that there is a borderline for the
production of vowels:
Jones (1948:29) and Catford
(1998: 127)
With Fant (1960) and Ladefoged
(1982[2004]), most studies on vowels are
focused on F1 and F2. A vowel chart is
usually plotted on the basis that the Hz
value of F1 serves the horizontal reference,
and F2 the vertical reference.
Methodology
1. Subjects: Each dialect we recruited at least
10 subjects, all males.
2. Reading a list in which all the six vowels
are included. Each syllable was repeated in
the manner:「花樹」 [fa su]… [fa su]
(The pause is normally requested to be two
minutes, but some of them could not do
this.)
Methodology (2)
3. All the sounds were directly recorded with
an IBM Thinkpad 310, with a Sony
microphone. The frequency was set over
40000 Hz.
4. The environments for recording are
requested to be withour noises, but this is
very hard for fieldwork. Thus some of them
cannot entirely get rid of tolerable noises.
Northern Sixien Hakka (5
subjects)
Northern Sixien (more subjects)
Northern Sixien average
Southern Sixien
N and S Hakka
N: blue
S: red
Hailu: (30 subjects)
Hailu (average)
Dapu:
Zhaoan:
Raoping:
A comparison:
Now we have examined the phonetic
distribution of each of the six Hakka
varieties. Individually, it is very hard to
imagine or get what the whole picture
would be like.
Let us put together all we have explored
into a vowel plot:
A comparison of six varieties:
Basic findings:
1. All the six Hakka varieties are not so
different in the production of [i], [e], [a],
and [u], as shown in the comparison.
2. For the central high vowel [], it is, as
predicted in the Perceptional phonology
(Flemming 2002, 2008), either approaching
to the back, giving rise to [u], or
approaching to the front, resulting in [i].
Findings (2)
3. The back vowels, [u] nad [o], are not so
sharp in the distance in vowel production.
The raising of F2 in [o] indicates that the [o]
in Hakka is somewhat raised.
4. Based on the general findings, we would
like to claim that the 6 Hakka varieties are
not so different on the basis of vowel
qualities.