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An acoustic study of Kabardian vowels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

John D. Choi
John D. Choi
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90024–1543
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Extract

The results of a spectrographic study of the Kabardian vowel system confirm reports in the literature that phonetic vowel quality in Kabardian is determined by the preceding consonant. The data further show that there are three distinct phonetic categories along the F1 axis in the vowel space, and that the contextually determined variation in vowel coloring generally respects this division. Durationally, a correspondence was found between vowel height and duration. While the durational differences were found to be comparable to those reported in languages with contrastive vowel length, the differences were interpreted as a phonetic strategy to enhance the perceptual salience of the vertical vowel system.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , June 1991 , pp. 4 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © Journal of the International Phonetic Association 1991

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