A Comparative Acoustic Study of the Vowels of Argobba Dialects

Abstract

This paper explores the fundamental frequency and the first three formants of Shonke and Gachinne dialects of Argobba vowels. The vowels were put in within 8 consonantal contexts embedded in disyllabic nonsense words based on the data collected from 40 subjects. A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to investigate the effects of contexts as within-subject factor, and dialects and genders as between-subject factors. The results showed that high vowels’ F0, F2, and F3 values were higher than the lower ones; and F0, F2, and F3 values of front vowels were higher than back vowels. Argobba vowels between voiceless consonants had higher F0, F1, F2, and F3 values than vowels between voiced consonants. Likewise, vowels followed by geminate consonants had higher F0, F1, F2, and F3 values than those followed by nongeminate ones. Comparison of dialects showed F0, F1, F2, and F3 values of the Shonke dialect were higher than those of the Gachinne dialect. This resulted in the vowel space of the Shonke dialect being bigger than that of the Gachinne dialect for both genders. Females’ vowel space was larger than males’ in both dialects. In the present study, the two central vowels of Argobba /ɨ/ and /ə/ and were found to occupy a lower position in the height dimension than the position they are assumed to occupy in the articulatory-based vowel space. As a result, a four-height vowel system was proposed for Argobba. The result of the discriminant analysis of Argobba vowels was very low.