Speech Rate and Vowel Quality Effects on Vowel-related Word-initial Irregular Phonation in Hungarian

Markó, Alexandra and Deme, Andrea and Bartók, Márton and Gráczi, Tekla Etelka and Csapó, Tamás Gábor (2018) Speech Rate and Vowel Quality Effects on Vowel-related Word-initial Irregular Phonation in Hungarian. In: CHALLENGES IN ANALYSIS AND PROCESSING OF SPONTANEOUS SPEECH. MTA Nyelvtudományi Intézet, Budapest, pp. 49-74. ISBN 978-963-9074-75-0 (nyomtatott), 978-963-9074-76-7 (online)

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Abstract

We examined utterance-initial irregular phonation as a function of vowel quality (vowel height and backness), and speech rate in Hungarian. In the analysis we distinguished two types of irregular phonation: glottalization and glottal stop. In Experiment 1, all nine Hungarian vowel qualities were analysed in pseudo words, with respect to the extent they facilitate the occurrence of irregular phonation as a function of their (i) vowel height (three levels: close, mid, open), (ii) backness using two levels in the first run (front vs. back) and three levels in the second run (front vs. central vs. back), and (iii) speech rate. In Experiment 2, four vowel qualities were analysed in real Hungarian words with respect to all the above factors (but in this analysis, only two categories were distinguished in the backness dimension). With respect to vowel height, we found that open vowels elicited more irregular phonation than mid and close vowels in both experiments. With respect to backness, in the twofold comparison (front vs. back) we found no effect in either of the experiments, while in the threefold comparison (front vs. central vs. back) we found that back vowels showed a higher ratio of irregular phonation than central and front ones in Experiment 1. The frequency of occurrence of irregular phonation was higher in fast than in slow speech in Experiment 1, and it was lower in Experiment 2 (in the latter, the confounding effect of the hiatus position was eliminated which was probably present in Experiment 1). The relative frequency of glottalization did not show an increase as a function of increased speech rate as claimed by earlier studies.

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