Abstract:
Sixteen utterances comprising eight Ika Igbo utterances and eight English utterances were produced and fed into the computer. The cross – correlation method of analysis was used to obtain their harmonics – to – noise ratios. Literature on Ika Igbo does not provide about harmonics – to – noise ratio. This study gives this information and compares the harmonics – to – noise ratio (degree of acoustic periodicity) of Ika Igbo and English. The comparison is necessitated by the existence of similar intonation patterns in both languages. The analysis revealed that generally, English utterances have higher harmonicity values than those of Ika Igbo, with the difference being more marked in some intonation patterns than others. Furthermore, the only Ika Igbo utterance with higher harmonicity value had more nasal sounds than its English counterpart. It is evidently clear from this research that English generally has higher degree of periodicity than Ika Igbo and that nasality increases periodicity. In addition, it is confirmed that periodicity is determined by type of intonation pattern and that lexical tone (which exists in Ika Igbo) reduces the degree of periodicity.
