skip to main content
research-article

Acoustic Analysis of Vowels in Konkani

Published:29 April 2022Publication History
Skip Abstract Section

Abstract

Konkani is an under-resourced language mainly spoken on the west coast of India. Although linguistic analyses of vowel sounds in various dialects of Konkani have been done in the past, more accurate analysis of Konkani vowels, especially an acoustic-phonetic analysis, was never carried out. In this article, we present a detailed analysis of nine Konkani vowels, namely /i/, /e/, /ε/, /u/, /o/, /ɔ/, /a/, /ə/, and /ɨ̞/. The dataset used for the analysis was created from audio recordings of 28 native speakers of Goan Konkani. Based on the experimental results, we propose a vowel chart for Konkani. We also observed a partial loss of Konkani vowel /ɨ̞/ in the regular speech of native speakers. This change is also evident in the substitution analysis of vowel phonemes that was carried out by us as a part of this study.

REFERENCES

  1. [1] Agrawal Shyam S., Bansal Shweta, Sharan Shambhu, and Mahajan Minakshi. 2016. Acoustic analysis of oral and nasal Hindi vowels spoken by native and non-native speakers. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 140, 4 (2016), 33383338. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  2. [2] Almeida S. J. Matthew. 1989. The Konkani sound system. In A Description of Konkani (1st ed.). Thomas Stephens Konknni Kendr, Miramar, Panaji, 3337.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. [3] Besacier Laurent, Barnard Etienne, Karpov Alexey, and Schultz Tanja. 2014. Automatic speech recognition for under-resourced languages: A survey. Speech Commun. 56, 1 (2014), 85100. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. [4] Burris Carlyn, Vorperian Houri K., Fourakis Marios, Kent Ray D., and Bolta Daniel M.. 2014. Quantitative and descriptive comparison of four acoustic analysis systems: Vowel measurements. J. Speech, Lang. Hear. Res. 57, 1 (2014), 2645. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  5. [5] Chakrasali Sadashiva, Bilembagi Umesh, and Indira K.. 2018. Formants and LPC analysis of Kannada vowel speech signals. In Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Recent Trends in Electronics, Information and Communication Technology (RTEICT’18). 945948. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  6. [6] Chandramouli C. and General R.. 2018. Census of India 2011. Provisional population totals. Government of India, New Dehli, 2011.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. [7] Hillenbrand James, Getty Laura A., Clark Michael J., and Wheeler Kimberlee. 1995. Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 5 (1995), 30993111. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  8. [8] Kulkarni S. B. and Kamat Srinivas. 2010. Konkani from its inscriptions. In The Konkani Language: Nature & Tradition (Linguistics). Goa Konkani Akademi, Panaji, Chapter IV, 16, 24, 30, 50–60.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  9. [9] Loakes Deborah, Carr Therese, Gawne Lauren, and Wigglesworth Gillian. 2015. Vowels in Wunambal, a language of the north west Kimberley region. Austr. J. Ling. 35, 3 (2015), 203231. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  10. [10] Lobab. 2016. Demystifying Konkani. Retrieved from https://extraetc.wordpress.com/2016/07/02/the-konkani-vowels/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  11. [11] D. R. McCloy. 2016. Normalizing and plotting vowels with phonR 1.0.7. University of Washington, USA. https://drammock.github.io/phonR/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  12. [12] Menezes Vivek. 2017. Konkani: A Language in Crisis. Retrieved from https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/AJVHke7VvvvVPerV1jv8WO/Konkani-a-language-in-crisis.html.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  13. [13] Pereira José. 1977. The themes of Ellora Jain sculpture. In Monolithic Jinas [The Iconography of the Jain Temples of Ellora] (1st ed.). Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 4748.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. [14] Roux J. C. and Holtzhausen A. J.. 1989. An acoustic and perceptual analysis of Xhosa vowels. S. Afr. J. Afr. Lang. 9, 1 (1989), 3034. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  15. [15] Sardesai Madhavi. 1986. Some Aspects of Konkani Grammar (The Salcette Gauda-Saraswat-Brahmin Dialect). Technical Report. University of Poona, Pune. 1, 3 pages.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  16. [16] Sardesai Madhavi. 1993. Bhasabhas Article on Linguistics (1st ed.). Goa Konkani Academy. 34–35, 60–64, 188 pages.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  17. [17] Sardesai Madhavi. 2004. Mother Tongue Blues. Retrieved from https://india-seminar.com/2004/543/543madhavisardesai.htm.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  18. [18] Verenkar Shyam, Sardesai Madhavi, and Kamalakar Mhalashi. 2003. Essays on Konkani Language, Literature and Culture (1st ed.). Konkani Bhasha Mandal, Margao, Goa. 56–58 pages.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  19. [19] Weenink David and Boersma Paul. 2004. Sound : To Formant (burg)… Retrieved from https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/manual/Sound__To_Formant__burg____.html.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. Acoustic Analysis of Vowels in Konkani

        Recommendations

        Comments

        Login options

        Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

        Sign in

        Full Access

        • Published in

          cover image ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing
          ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing  Volume 21, Issue 5
          September 2022
          486 pages
          ISSN:2375-4699
          EISSN:2375-4702
          DOI:10.1145/3533669
          Issue’s Table of Contents

          Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

          Publisher

          Association for Computing Machinery

          New York, NY, United States

          Publication History

          • Published: 29 April 2022
          • Online AM: 3 February 2022
          • Accepted: 1 December 2021
          • Revised: 1 July 2021
          • Received: 1 September 2020
          Published in tallip Volume 21, Issue 5

          Permissions

          Request permissions about this article.

          Request Permissions

          Check for updates

          Qualifiers

          • research-article
          • Refereed
        • Article Metrics

          • Downloads (Last 12 months)187
          • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)12

          Other Metrics

        PDF Format

        View or Download as a PDF file.

        PDF

        eReader

        View online with eReader.

        eReader

        Full Text

        View this article in Full Text.

        View Full Text

        HTML Format

        View this article in HTML Format .

        View HTML Format
        About Cookies On This Site

        We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

        Learn more

        Got it!