Journal of Audiology & Otology

The Korean Audiology Society (대한청각학회)
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Vowel Context Effect on the Perception of Stop Consonants in Malayalam and Its Role in Determining Syllable Frequency

  • Mohan, Dhanya (Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, Baby Memorial College of Allied Medical Sciences) ;
  • Maruthy, Sandeep (Department of Audiology, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing)
  • Received : 2021.02.10
  • Accepted : 2021.05.21
  • Published : 2021.07.20
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Abstract

Background and Objectives: The study investigated vowel context effects on the perception of stop consonants in Malayalam. It also probed into the role of vowel context effects in determining the frequency of occurrence of various consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in Malayalam. Subjects and Methods: The study used a cross-sectional pre-experimental post-test only research design on 30 individuals with normal hearing, who were native speakers of Malayalam. The stimuli included three stop consonants, each spoken in three different vowel contexts. The resultant nine syllables were presented in original form and five gating conditions. The consonant recognition in different vowel contexts of the participants was assessed. The frequency of occurrence of the nine target syllables in the spoken corpus of Malayalam was also systematically derived. Results: The consonant recognition score was better in the /u/ vowel context compared with /i/ and /a/ contexts. The frequency of occurrence of the target syllables derived from the spoken corpus of Malayalam showed that the three stop consonants occurred more frequently with the vowel /a/ compared with /u/ and /i/. Conclusions: The findings show a definite vowel context effect on the perception of the Malayalam stop consonants. This context effect observed is different from that in other languages. Stop consonants are perceived better in the context of /u/ compared with the /a/ and /i/ contexts. Furthermore, the vowel context effects do not appear to determine the frequency of occurrence of different CV syllables in Malayalam.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

We wish to thank our Director, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, for allowing us to conduct the study. We extend our sincere thanks to all our participants for their patient cooperation.

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