Journal statistics
How to use the archive
When the cursor changes from an arrow to a pointing finger, it indicates a link that you may click on to select that item.
The blue buttons at the top can be selected to return to the overview or to run a search for specific information.
Most volumes have been split into two parts, each with separate articles. When you select a specific number, all of the articles will be listed with details of the author, date of publication, language and the size of the file that will be downloaded if you choose that option. Just click on the yellow "Download" button to transfer a copy of the article to your own computer or device.
- Language Family: Atlantic
- Topic #1: Vowels
- Topic #2: Vowels
A Phonetic analysis of Uvwiẹ vowels
Abstract
This study presents a phonetic analysis of the vowels of Uvwiẹ drawing upon evidence from acoustic cues. The acoustic properties of the sounds were examined using Praat 6.0.16 software on a notebook running Windows 10. The aim was to identify the surface vowel qualities attested in the language and to examine the phonetic parameters within which the vowel system of Uvwiẹ could be described. Data for the study comprised lexical samples elicited from two adult L1 speakers of the language. The impetus for the study is the dearth of linguistic works on the Uvwiẹ language, an endangered language spoken by the Uvwiẹ people of southern Nigeria. So far, only Omamor (1973) has examined the phonetic vowels of Uvwiẹ. It was found that contrary to observation by Omamor, the formant frequency values suggest that there are seven surface vowels in the language. It was also found that the vowels vary in three phonetic lengths- short, normal and long, and in formant bandwidth which cues the distinction between oral and nasalized vowels. Thus given all phonetic parameters, the Uvwiẹ language may be understood as having a total of twenty-eight surface vowels.