The Acoustic and Auditory Study of Simple Vowels of Khafi Dialect

Abstract

Khafi is one of the dialects of Persian which is common in the city of Khaf (situated in Khorasan Province). The Dialect has a number of differences from Standard Persian regarding phonetics, phonology, and morphology. In this article, simple vowels in the Khafi dialect are described and categorized through minimal pairs and according to generative phonological theory. In order to study and perform an accurate and quantitative comparison, an acoustic experiment is carried out involving eight male speakers in the city of Khaf and within the framework of Source-Filter theory, the acoustic features of these vowels are studied and measured in an unstressed open syllable. In this article, first of all, the average frequency of first and second formants (quality acoustic correlates) of simple vowels in Khafi and Standard Persian are presented on the hertz scale and the average duration of these vowels is presented according to the millisecond, then the quantitative difference of acoustic features of the vowels in Khafi from Standard Persian is measured according to percentage and the results are analyzed. Acoustic vowel space in the Khafi dialect is drawn. In order to study these vowels concerning auditory, the quantity of first and second formants are changed from hertz to auditory and non-linear Bark measurement and are shown in a table then based on these numbers and in order to study the similarities and differences more accurately, Euclidean distance of the vowels in Khafi with the vowels in Standard Persian are calculated.

Keywords

• khafi dialect
• standard persian
• phonological simple vowels
• acoustic
• auditory phonetics
• frequency formants
• duration