Description
This study aims to characterize the influence of lexical stress on Bengali oral vowels. F1 and F2 data were collected from speech samples, using spectrum analysis, and they were transformed into Lobanov’s z scores. Results showed that the effect of lexical stress was significant, but the nature of this effect varied in different vowels: in comparison with stressed position, unstressed /ɔ/ and /ɛ/ were highly centralized, /i e o ɐ/ were moderately centralized, and /u/ remained stable. In conclusion, Bengali vowels go through phonetic transformation depending on stress structure and, thus, acoustic expression of lexical stress in Bengali appears to be rather strong.
