Sonorant spectra and coarticulation distinguish speakers with different dialects

TL;DR

This study investigates how dialectal differences influence the spectral properties of sonorants and their coarticulatory effects on vowels in Greek, revealing distinct acoustic patterns linked to language variety.

Contribution

It introduces a novel comparative acoustic analysis of Athenian and Cypriot Greek sonorants, combining spectral moments and coarticulatory modeling to distinguish dialectal features.

Findings

Significant spectral differences between dialects for most sonorants.

Distinct coarticulatory effects of sonorants on vowel formants.

First comparative acoustic analysis of Greek dialects' sonorants.

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the effect of language varieties on the spectral distribution of stressed and unstressed sonorants (nasals /m, n/, lateral approximants /l/, and rhotics /r/) and on their coarticulatory effects on adjacent sounds. To quantify the shape of the spectral distribution, we calculated the spectral moments from the sonorant spectra of nasals /m, n/, lateral approximants /l/, and rhotics /r/ produced by Athenian Greek and Cypriot Greek speakers. To estimate the co-articulatory effects of sonorants on the adjacent vowels' F1 - F4 formant frequencies, we developed polynomial models of the adjacent vowel's formant contours. We found significant effects of language variety (sociolinguistic information) on the spectral moments of each sonorant /m/, /n/, /l/, /r/ (except between /m/ and /n/) and on the formant contours of the adjacent vowel. All sonorants (including /m/ and /n/) had distinct effects on adjacent vowel's formant contours, especially for F3 and F4. The study highlights that the combination of spectral moments and coarticulatory effects of sonorants determines linguistic (stress and phonemic category) and sociolinguistic (language variety) characteristics of sonorants. It also provides the first comparative acoustic analysis of Athenian Greek and Cypriot Greek sonorants.