An Acoustic Analysis of Surrounding Vowel Effects on Intervocalic /h/ in Turkish

Authors : Merve Nur Arslan, İpek Pınar Uzun

Pages : 248-261

Doi:10.32600/huefd.1534383

View : 67 | Download : 132

Publication Date : 2025-06-30

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Previous studies on Turkish glottal consonant /h/ typically investigated the acoustic characteristics of this consonant; however, recent studies generally examine the formant frequency changes between preceding and following vowels as to determine the place of articulation of fricatives. This study investigates the place of articulation of Turkish /h/ in intervocalic position by comparing formant frequency changes of preceding and following vowels through their height and rounding characteristics of vowels. A production experiment is conducted with 21 speakers in a sound-proof booth. Stimuli consisted of eight Turkish vowels in preceding and following positions of intervocalic /h/ embedded into a carrier sentence (e.g., [Adam tohum yazdı] ‘The man seed write -past’). Rawdata analysis was performed on normalized mean F1, F2, F3, F2_3 values of each vowel adjacent to /h/. Findings for preceding vowels showed a decrease in rounding features of mean F1, F2, F3 and F2_3 values. On contrary to preceding vowels, findings for the following vowels indicated an increase in both height and rounding features for the mean F1 and F2 values. Overall results suggested that formant changes on the following vowels elicited more significance for the acoustic changes in following vowels compared to preceding vowels.
Keywords : Formant, normalizasyon, ünlülerarası, üretim, akustik

ORIGINAL ARTICLE URL