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Date
2019
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Learned Press
Abstract
This study describes the vowel system of EkeGusii (“Bantu E.42”)(Guthrie,
1948) in an acoustic phonetics perspective using oral data got from purposively sampled
subjects: four adult males, four adult females and four children (two boys and two girls all
8 years old) equally from the two dialects of EkeGusii (EkeMaate and EkeRogoro Dialects).
In order to capture the distribution characteristics of the vowel acoustic concentration, the
group frequency means are normalized using Lobanov’s (1971) algorithm. Two view-
points are the subjects of analysis in EkeGusii vowels: (a) acoustic vowel space as
projected by the intersection of F2 vs. F1 or quadrilateral, and (b) spatial features of high,
low, front and back. These qualities are mainly influenced by the physiology of speakers
and social variability as occasioned by gender, age and dialect. The results indicate that
children have no gender difference in formants, and have the highest frequencies for all
formants, followed by adult females and then adult males. Furthermore, acoustic vowel
space and spatial features are affected by gender, age, and dialect. A vowel pattern,
replicated by all informants, is realized in the dispersion of the vowels within the chart
influenced by gender and age. This study found out that EkeGusii seems to adopt a
seven-vowel system of /i e ɛ a ɔ o u/ with a length contrast.