This thesis examines the status of onsets and their effects on stress and prosody. I argue that moraic onsets exist, a claim that contradicts standard phonological models (Hyman 1985, Hayes 1989, Gordon 1999, Moren 1999) which assume that onsets are not moraic, given that in the overwhelming majority of languages onsets are inert for prosodic processes. Using data from Piraha, Karo and Arabela stress, I show that weightful onsets actively participate in weight-sensitive stress assignment. Moreover, I point out that if onsets can be moraic, a host of other weight-based phenomena, should also be able to utilize them. This is exactly right, as verified by word minimality in Bella Coola, Samothraki Greek compensatory lengthening (CL), onset geminates in Pattani Malay, Trukese and Marshallese and a variety of other data, e.g. Trique CL, Bellonese reduplication. Crucially, this is not a prediction shared by previous prominence-based analyses of similar facts (Hayes 1995, Gordon 2005, Smith 2005). Prominence is inherently designed to account only for stress, not for other weight-based phenomena. If one were to entertain a prominence account, then most of the data above would remain unexplained. However, not all onsets can be moraic. The proposed model is restrictive in admitting only two kinds of moraic onsets: those which are underlying, i.e. emerging as geminates, and those which are derived in the output and serve for stress purposes. While the former can be of any featural content (since they are lexically specified and thus unpredictable), for the latter ones, I claim that only voiceless onsets can be moraic, whereas voiced ones are never moraic. This relates to a well-known generalisation affecting a different prosodic phenomenon, namely tone. Voiceless onsets raise the pitch of the following vowel, voiced ones lower it. In many languages such pitch perturbation is interpreted as tone. My proposal is that in some other languages, this pitch perturbation is instead interpreted as stress and is formally represented by means of moras, which are only assigned to the stress-attracting voiceless onsets. Piraha, Karo and Arabela data empirically confirm this finding.

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No description available.

This thesis investigates the intonation system of Anglesey Welsh, an under researched variety with regards to its suprasegmental aspects. The main aim of this thesis is to provide a fine-grained intonational investigation into the realisation of the structural components of the intonation system. The secondary aim considers a functional hypothesis proposed by Haan (2002), that there may be a trade-off between the amount of lexicosyntactic marking used to cue interrogativity (e.g. inversion, wh-words) and the amount of intonational marking (e.g. higher and later accent peaks). With regards to the phonetic realisation of the structural elements, two features are investigated: the vertical scaling (or height) and the temporal alignment to the segmental string. The materials were manipulated to test the effect that a) grammatical function and b) temporal constraints had on the scaling and alignment of the structural components. The results show that the scaling (height) was significantly affected by the grammatical function of the test sentences, with the structural components in questions being realised higher than statements. With regards to alignment, there was evidence of significant adjustments in the location of some structural components as a function of the number of syllables available in the sentence. The final part of this thesis discusses issues surrounding a phonological analysis of the intonation system using the scaling and alignment data. It is proposed that Anglesey Welsh questions and statements are best analysed as having a rising L+H* in both prenuclear and nuclear position, followed by a low boundary tone L%. This thesis contributes to knowledge on prosodic typology by analysing the structure and function of the intonation system using a widely used approach to intonational analysis (the autosegmental-metrical approach). Furthermore, it tests questions about the phonetic implementation of intonation in Anglesey Welsh and uses the patterning to discuss an appropriate underlying phonological representation of the intonation.

This study investigates the role of articulation, phonological systematicity and individual boldness in attempting challenging targets in phonological development. In particular, it examines the interaction of these factors and their link with variability. The purpose of the analysis is to provide an answer to the question whether child phonology could be better understood by adopting Dynamic Systems Theory, as it has been done in other natural sciences. Three longitudinal case studies of children acquiring English are presented. The results suggest that articulation, variability and individual differences in children’s strategies of selecting words to attempt play an important part in the emergence of the phonological system. The evidence provided supports the view that the nature of the interaction between the above factors and the developing phonological systematicity and accuracy might the same as has been observed in other dynamic systems in the natural world. It is argued that further research in this direction, involving computer modeling, should be pursued as a promising direction in child phonology research.

Vowel inventories vary across languages in terms of the phonological vowel categories within them and the phonetic properties of individual vowels. The same also holds across different accents of a language. The four studies in this project address the role of listeners’ native accents in the cross-language acoustic and perceptual similarity of vowels. Study I explores the acoustic similarity of Northern Standard Dutch (NSD) vowels to the vowels in two accents of British English, namely Standard Southern British English (SSBE) and Sheffield English (SE), and demonstrates that some NSD vowels are acoustically most similar to different SSBE and SE vowels and that other NSD vowels differ in the degree of acoustic similarity to SSBE and SE vowels. Study II examines how SSBE and SE listeners use spectral properties to identify English monophthongs and finds that SSBE and SE listeners differ on some monophthongs, broadly in line with the spectral differences between naturally produced SSBE and SE vowels. Study III investigates SSBE and SE listeners’ discrimination accuracy of five NSD vowel contrasts, which cause British English learners of Dutch perceptual problems, and shows that SE listeners are generally less accurate than SSBE listeners. Study IV tests SSBE and SE listeners’ perceptual similarity of NSD vowels to English vowels and reveals that SSBE and SE listeners differ on some NSD vowels. The present findings demonstrate the influence of listeners’ differential linguistic experience on speech perception and underscore the importance of accounting for listeners’ particular native accents in cross-language studies.

Understanding the design of talk-in-interaction is important in many domains, including speech technology. Although phonetic, linguistic and gestural correlates have been identified for some of the social actions that conversational participants accomplish, it is only recently that researchers have begun to take account of the immediately prior interactional context as an important factor influencing the design of a speaker’s turn. The present study explores the influence of context by focussing on characteristics of short turns produced by one speaker between turns from another speaker. The hypothesis is that the speaker designs her inserted turn as a match to the prior turn when wishing to align with the previous speaker’s agenda. By contrast, non-matching would display that the speaker is non-aligning, preferring instead to initiate a new action for example. Data are taken from the AMI corpus, focussing on the spontaneous talk of first-language English participants. Using sequential analysis, such short turns are classified as either aligning or non-aligning in accordance with definitions in the Conversation Analysis literature. The degree of prosodic similarity between the inserted turn and the prior speaker’s turn is measured using novel acoustic techniques. The results show that aligning turns are significantly more similar to the immediately preceding turn, in terms of pitch contour, than non-aligning turns. In contrast to the prosodic-acoustic analysis, the results of the gestural analysis indicate that aligning and non-aligning are differentiated by the use of distinct gestures, rather than by the matching (or non-matching) of gestures across the adjacent turns. These results support the view that choice of pitch contour is managed locally, rather than by reference to an intonational lexicon. However, this is not the case for speakers’ use of gesture. The implications of these findings for a model of talk-in-interaction are considered, along with potential applications.

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This study is conducted in the Karak area (Jordan) to investigate linguistic variation in the speech of the Fallahis who migrated to the area in 1948. Three variables are considered to investigate this variation. These are the (Q), (Vki) and (K). The study shows that young Fallahis have abandoned the variants of their native dialect in favour of the local variants, or sometimes the urban variant. Young Fallahis have abandoned the [k] variant of the variable (Q) in favour of the local variant [g] or [?] and the [ik] variant of the variable (Vki) in favour of the local variant [ki]. They also appear to have abandoned the variant [C] of the variable (K) in favour of the [k] variant. The study also shows that while none of the young males abandon the non-local variant [k] in favour of the urban variant [?], a considerable proportion (50%) of young females appear to have abandoned the non-local [k] variant in favour of the urban variant [?]. The young, thus, appear to prefer the local variants of the investigated variables whether this variable is stereotype like (Q) or a marker like (Vki). A considerable proportion of the middle age-group also show a tendency to accommodate to the local variant [g] as well as the local variant [ki). The old appear to preserve the variant [k] and the variant [ik] of their native dialect. The variant [C] of the variable (K) is categorically abandoned by the young and used in a very low ratio by the middle-age group (6%), but rather more frequently by the old age group (430/0). In this regard, we can report a sound change which is near completion in the Karak area in the speech of the Fallahis.