The human auditory system can become an active agent in the production of sound when stimulated with specific tone combinations. The resulting auditory distortion products can be amplified and drawn attention to by employing certain just intonation practices – a compositional technique that may serve as a powerful catalyst for reaching different states of mind in listeners. In this thesis, those psychoacoustic phenomena critical to the act of tuning are explored. An experiential tuning protocol is introduced and supported by insights from physiology and neuroscience research. Based on the tuneability of musical intervals, a harmonic framework involving harmonic and subharmonic relationships is analyzed and exemplified via the accompanying composition XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations. From a phenomenological perspective, the research extends to broader contexts, investigating potential social, ethical, cultural, and political implications of such a practice. / <p><em>XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations</em> by Luka Aron is a work in 5 parts in which a selected acoustic instrumentation, consisting of bass clarinet, contrabass, euphonium, foghorn organ, harpsichord, serpent, shō, and trumpet coalesces with analog as well as digital synthesis, into one unified mass of sound. By tuning sustained tones towards precision upon occupying the same pitch space, the various timbresare as much canceled out as reinforced, resulting in flux states of spectral fusion. This effect is further achieved through traversing a labyrinth of multiple closely related overtone series, serving as a harmonic framework for the piece’s ever-shifting bedrock. A careful selection of partials is presented, stimulating additional tones in the perception of the listener, making use of a psychoacoustic phenomenon, commonly referred to as otoacoustic emissions, or combination tones. Heavy distortion is then applied to the source signal, allowing the combination tones to materialize in the physical space. Through this, a secondary structure (that, in fact, exposes theundertone series) is gradually unveiled: like light rays meeting the surface of water, partially reflecting back to air, and refracting at once, as they pass from one medium to the other. On a structural plane, the piece stems from complex multi-layered golden mean relationships that permeate to all levels of the composition, ranging from the overall arc to the formal as well as rhythmical aspects of each individual variation, where every sound event is spiraling out of the previous one, and the endpoint is determined right at the initial stroke, before ever unfolding over the total playtime of 43 minutes. With Aron operating the Buchla 200 and EMS VCS3 synthesizers, in addition to the SuperCollider andPure Data coding environments, the cast of musicians includes an array of Stockholm-based artists, such as Mattias Hållsten on shō–a japanese mouth organ–and Susana Santos Silva on trumpet (both members of CC Hennix’ Kamigaku ensemble), just intonation contrabassist Vilhelm Bromander, along with Amina Hocine and her unique self-built foghorn organ. Frequent collaborators Fabian Willmann on bass clarinet and Raphaël Rossé on serpent and euphonium join from the electroacoustic group MINUA, which Aron co-founded. For this occasion, the piece will be diffused on an arrangement of 31 speakers.</p><p><strong>Den klingande delen är arkiverad.</strong></p><p><strong>Luka Aron är artistnam för Luca Aaron Pusch.</strong></p>

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Le travail présenté ici est sous-tendu par deux observations majeures. Premièrement, la plupart des modèles proposés pour le français s’accordent sur l’existence de deux niveaux de structure prosodique: le syntagme accentuel et le syntagme intonatif. Deuxièmement, bien que l’existence d’un niveau additionnel de structure situé entre ces deux niveaux ait été proposé pour le français, les propriétés phonétiques et phonologiques de ce constituant n’ont pas clairement été définies. Dans cette thèse nous avons fourni des preuves de l’existence du syntagme intermédiaire (ip) à la fois en production et en perception de la parole. Grâce à cinq expérimentations menées dans le cadre de la phonologie de laboratoire, nous avons caractérisé les propriétés phonético-phonologiques de ce constituant et attesté de son rôle dans le traitement perceptif du langage. Les résultats obtenus en production montrent que l’ip est le domaine de l’abaissement des accents mélodiques en français. Sa frontière droite est marquée par un allongement pré-frontière ainsi qu’un accent de syntagme responsable du retour à la ligne de référence du registre. Les analyses menées en perception ont montré que les frontières droites du syntagme accentuel et du syntagme intermédiaire sont utilisées très tôt dans le processus de traitement syntaxique. Les indices phonétiques et phonologiques présents à ces frontières permettent aux auditeurs du français de construire des attentes sur la structure syntaxique des énoncés perçus. Une analyse séparée des différents types d’indices acoustiques a également montré qu’en l’absence de marquage tonal, les indices de durée semblent suffisants dans le but de marquer la frontière de syntagme accentuel. Un marquage conjoint de la frontière droite d’ip par les indices mélodiques et l’allongement pré-frontière semble au contraire nécessaire pour que les auditeurs du français perçoivent et utilisent cette frontière dans le traitement du langage. / The work described here is grounded by two major observations. Firstly, most of the French intonation models agree on the existence of two levels of prosodic phrasing: the accentual phrase and the intonation phrase. Secondly, although the existence of an additional level of structure ranked between these two levels has been proposed for French, the phonetic and phonological properties of this intermediate phrase (ip) have not been clearly defined. In this thesis we provide evidence for the existence of an intermediate level of phrasing in French through both speech production and perception studies. Results of five experiments conducted within the framework of laboratory phonology revealed specific ip phonetic and phonological properties and tested its role in the perceptual processing of language. The production studies showed that the ip is the domain of downstep in French and that its right boundary is marked by a phrase accent responsible for a return to the register reference line. Analyses conducted in perception showed that the accentual phrase and intermediate phrase right boundaries are used early in the syntactic processing. Phonetic and phonological indices at these boundaries allow French listeners to build expectations about the syntactic structure of spoken utterances. A separate analysis of different types of acoustic cues showed that without tonal marking, pre-boundary lengthening seems to be sufficient to mark the accentual phrase boundary. Joint marking through melodic and lengthening cues appears to be necessary to perceive and make use of the ip boundary in language processing.

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published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

The thesis concerns the function of different intonation tunes in British English yes/no questions. The theoretical part of the work explores the phenomenon of language intonation and describes the commonly listed default contours of English yes/no questions. The practical part analyses authentic samples of British speakers' conversations and compares the function of intonation patterns in yes/no questions with the theoretical assumptions.

The diploma thesis deals with the major accents of English used by Northern Irish speakers and their application in teaching English as a foreign language. In the theoretical part of the text, the fundamental information concerning the language development in the given area is put forward. Furthermore, it concentrates on the division of particular accents and attempts for their characterisation in comparison to Received Pronunciation. In the following practical part, the text concentrates on the application of the theoretical findings in lessons for English language students at a Czech grammar school. It describes the preparation of the teaching materials and of the lesson plan, and their subsequent application in sample lessons. The evaluation of the activities is based on the student feedback which is discussed in the final chapter.