This paper presents an acoustic study of the vowel system of Southern Ute, a Southern Numic Uto-Aztecan language spoken in southwestern Colorado. Previous auditory accounts proposed an inventory of five vowel phonemes that participate in three allophonic processes and contrast in length and stress. We investigate how the vowels are realized at the phonetic level by analyzing F1, F2, duration, spectral emphasis and f0 in over 6000 vowel tokens produced by eight fluent speakers (four female and four male). Our findings provide new phonetic detail for the earlier non-instrumental descriptions of the language, including both expected and previously unreported effects. We confirm the existence of five distinct phonemic categories but show that their prototypical phonetic realizations and positional allophones do not always match the earlier descriptions. We also describe how phonemic length and stress are marked in Southern Ute.

中文翻译：

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南尤特元音的注音

本文介绍了南尤特语元音系统的声学研究，这是一种在科罗拉多州西南部使用的南部 Numic Uto-Aztecan 语言。以前的听觉记录提出了五个元音音素的清单，这些音素参与三个同位异音过程并在长度和压力上形成对比。我们通过分析八位流利说话者（四位女性和四位男性）产生的 6000 多个元音标记中的 F1、F2、持续时间、频谱强调和 f0 来研究元音是如何在语音层面实现的。我们的研究结果为该语言的早期非工具描述提供了新的语音细节，包括预期的和以前未报告的效果。我们确认存在五个不同的音位类别，但表明它们的原型语音实现和位置同位异音并不总是与早期的描述相匹配。我们还描述了南尤特语中音位长度和重音是如何标记的。