A Durational Comparison of the Vowels of Argobba Dialects: Shonke and Gachine

Abstract

This paper presents an acoustic investigation of the duration of vowels of the two dialects of Argobba: Shonke and Gachine dialects. The data were collected from 40 subjects (10 female and 10 male subjects from each dialect). The recordings were made in 8 consonantal contexts embedded in disyllabic real and nonce words and in the context of wordlists and carrier sentences to investigate the effect of contexts on vowels‟ duration. The statistical analysis was done with repeated measures ANOVA to investigate the effects of consonantal contexts (4 levels of voice/voiceless, 2 levels of geminate/nongeminate consonants) and 2 levels of wordlists and carrier sentences as within-subject factor, and dialects and genders as between-subject factors. The findings showed that both dialects, (Shonke and Gachine) had similar durational features. Consequently, vowelsspoken between voiced consonants had higher duration than vowels between voiceless consonants, and vowels followed by a nongeminate consonant had higher duration than followed by geminate consonants. Furthermore, in both dialects, the duration of vowels in a wordlist was higher than the duration in a carrier sentence. Generally, lower vowels measured the longest duration while higher vowels had the shortest measure.With regard to front-back contrast, front and back high vowels had equivalent durations and similarly front and back mid vowels had similar durations in both dialects as well. Comparison of dialects showed that Shonke dialect vowels had a longer duration than their Gachine equivalents but the differences were not statistically significant and the results were not consistent when compared for the two genders separately. The effect of gender on the duration of vowels in the two dialects was not statistically significant and the patterns were different for the two dialects.