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The two glides w and j exist in both English and Korean. In English, these two glides form syllable-initial glide-vowel (GV) sequences with any of the following twelve vowels (i, ɪ, eɪ, ɛ, ʌ, ə, œ, u, ʊ, oʊ, ɔ, a). In Korean, assuming seven monophthongs (i, e, ə, ɨ, u, o, a), fourteen GV sequences are logically possible, but only nine occur; the following five GV sequences are absent: *ji, *jɨ, *wu, *wɨ, *wo. Researchers who have proposed phonological explanations for this gap unanimously point to the homorganicity between the two segments in these absent sequences. In English, however, homorganicity seems to be disregarded; five GV sequences--GV[HO] sequences--consist of homorganic segments: wu, ji, wʊ, jɪ, wo. This difference in phonotactics between the two languages constitutes the source of difficulty for Korean ESL learners in mastering the L2 glides and GV[HO] sequences. In this study, I first provide detailed phonological and phonetic characterizations of glides. I review phonological representations of glides, as well as corresponding high vowels. Then, I perform a series of acoustic analyses of a set of production data collected from Korean and English monolingual speakers. The acoustic parameters under analysis include the first three formants (F1-F3) and the duration of the glide steady state and the glide-to-vowel transition. These analyses reveal that the F2 of English [w] is consistently lower than that of any of the twelve vowels, while the F2 of Korean [w] depends significantly on the quality of the following vowel. Also, English glides exhibit considerably longer steady state durations compared to Korean glides. Next, I analyze the learners' production data, collected from twenty-two Korean ESL learners. The L2 data reveal that the learners resorted to a few major repair strategies for target GV[HO] sequences, while the vast majority of the non-homorganic GV sequences (GV[N-HO]) are produced target-appropriately. Among these repair strategies, 79% were glide deletion (wound → [und]/[ʔund]), 20% vowel shift (wound → [wənd]), and 1% glide shift (yip → [wɪp]). Interestingly, however, in their L2 glides, many of the learners showed a departure from monolingual Korean glides in the F2 of [w] and the duration of the steady state. Lastly, an Optimality Theoretic account is proposed for the learners' L2 data. Under the assumption that GV[HO] sequences are marked relative to GV[N-HO] sequences (Kawasaki 1982), I argue that learning English GV[HO] sequences by Korean ESL learners involves constraint reranking, crucially, demotion of a set of markedness constraints below a set of competing faithfulness constraints.

This dissertation demonstrates that the optimal account of English phonology denies phonemic status to oral glides. That is, it shows that all instances of phonetic [y] and [w] are predictable by rule. These occurrences include the following: formative initial glides, such as those in yet and wet; post-consonant, pre-vocalic [w] in such forms as quit, guava, and white and post-consonant, pre-vocalic [y] in such forms as cute, few, million, onion, and champion; the [y] following the tense vowels in bite, beet, bate, and boy and the [w] following the tense vowels in bout, boot, boat, cute, and few; and, finally, the post-vocalic centering glide [h] in spa, cloth, beer [bihr], and bear. The new proposals, described and justified in Chapter III, have the effect of eliminating the glides [y] and [w] from the inventory of underlying phonemes of English. From this flows what is perhaps more significant: they render the feature [Syllabic] completely redundant in the lexical representations of English formatives.

No description available.

本篇論文旨在從優選理論（Optimality Theory）的架構觀點分析海陸客語中 的三個音韻現象：變調（Tone Sandhi）、介音（Pre-nuclear Gliding）及音節連併（Syllable Contraction）。 　　在變調方面，由於海陸客語中上聲與陰入聲助數詞不因環境而變調，在利用之前文獻解釋時必須另外設定條件來說明海陸助數詞的特殊變調行為，本文建議利用優選論的制約來分析，本文所提出的一組制約，可以成功的解釋海陸客語中的上聲與陰入聲變調現象。 　　在介音方面，本文選擇以端木三所提出的音節結構為海陸客語音節結構，因為海陸客語中介音所呈現的行為較似起首子音的次發音特徵，因此本文亦提出了一組制約解釋海陸介音在音節中的歸屬。 　　在音節連併方面，本文檢驗了之前文獻所提出的方法，發現無法全面解釋海陸音節連併的現象，因此，提出一組關於音段與聲調的連併之制約將海陸音節連併現象以優選理論呈現。 　　本文是第一篇嘗試以優選理論解釋海陸客語音韻現象的研究，希望能從不同於之前文獻的角度討論海陸客語音韻的問題。之前理論運作的缺陷與不足，在本文的分析下，均可以成功的以優選理論之制約層級來說明。 / This thesis aims to explore three issues in Hai-lu Hakka Phonology in terms of Optimality Theory (OT). The three issues are tone sandhi, pre-nuclear gliding and syllable contraction. 　　Hai-lu Shang Toned and Yin-ru Toned numerals preserve their base tones in any case. Thus, previous studies would need to add an additional condition for the special tone sandhi behaviors of Hai-lu numerals. This thesis offers a set of OT constraints to explain tone sandhi in Hai-lu. The OT constraints can successfully operate Hai-lu tone sandhi without additional conditions. 　　Pre-nuclear glides in Hai-lu behave like the secondary articulations of the onsets. This thesis suggests Duanmu's (1990) syllable structure for Hai-lu syllables. A set of constraints are proposed to explain the pre-nuclear gliding in Hai-lu syllables. 　　The approaches previous studies suggest for syllable contraction are not across-the-board in Hai-lu. Thus, a set of segmental and tonal constraints are proposed to explain Hai-lu syllable contraction. The OT constraints operate syllable contraction in Hai-lu without difficulties. 　　This thesis is a pioneering study which aims to examine Hai-lu phonology in terms of OT. With OT constraint rankings, this thesis explains the remaining problems from previous studies successfully.

Every auditory event provides an information-rich signal to the brain. The signal constitutes perceptual attributes of pitch, loudness, timbre, and also, conceptual attributes like location, emotions, meaning, etc. In the present work we examine the timbre perception of time-varying signals in particular. While stationary signal timbre, by-itself is complex perceptually, the time-varying signal timbre introduces an evolving pattern, adding to its multi-dimensionality. To characterize timbre, we conduct psycho-acoustic perception tests with normal-hearing human subjects. We focus on time-varying synthetic speech signals(can be extended to music) because listeners are perceptually consistent with speech. Also, we can parametrically control the timbre and pitch glides using linear time-varying models. In order to quantify the timbre change in time-varying signals, we define the JND(Just noticeable difference) of timbre using diphthongs, synthesized using time-varying formant frequency model. The diphthong JND is defined as a two dimensional contour on the plane of percentage change of formant frequencies of terminal vowels. Thus, we simplify the perceptual probing to a lower dimensional space, i.e, 2-D even for a diphthong, which is multi-parametric. We also study the impact of pitch glide on the timbre JND of the diphthong. It is observed that timbre JND is influenced by the occurrence of pitch glide. Focusing on the magnitude of perceptual timbre change, we design a MUSHRA-like listening test using the vowel continuum in the formant-frequency space. We provide explicit anchors for reference: 0% and 100%, thus quantifying the perceptual timbre change on a 1-D scale. We also propose an objective measure of timbre change and observe that there is good correlation between the objective measure and subjective human responses of percentage timbre change. Using the above experimental methodology, we studied the influence of pitch shift on timbre perception and observed that the perceptual timbre change increases with change in pitch. We used vowels and diphthongs with 5 different types of pitch glides-(i) Constant pitch,(ii) 3-semitone linearly-up,(iii) 3 semitone linearly-down, (iv)V–like pitch glide and (v) hat-like pitch glide. The present study shows that timbre change can be measured on a 1-D scale if the perturbation is along one-dimension. We observe that for bright vowels(/a/and/i/), linearly decreasing pitch glide(dull pitch glide)causes more timbre change than linearly increasing pitch glide(bright pitch glide).For dull vowels(/u/),it is vice-versa. To summarize, in congruent pitch glides cause more perceptual timbre change than congruent pitch glides.(Congruent pitch glide implies bright pitch glide in bright vowel or dull pitch glide in dull vowel and in congruent pitch glide implies bright pitch glide in dull vowel or dull pitch glide in bright vowel.) Experiments with quadratic pitch glides show that the decay portion of pitch glide affects timbre perception more than the attack portion in short duration signals with less or no sustained part. In case of time-varying timbre, bright diphthongs show patterns similar to bright vowels. Also, for bright diphthongs(/ai/), perceived timbre change is most with decreasing pitch glide(dull pitch glide). We also observed that listeners perceive more timbre change in constant pitch than in pitch glides, congruent with the timbre or pitch glides with quadratic changes. The main conclusion of this study is that pitch and timbre do interact and in congruent pitch glides cause more timbre change than congruent pitch glides. In the case of quadratic pitch glides, listener perception of vowels is influenced by the decay than the attack in pitch glide in short duration signals. In the case of time-varying timbre also, in congruent pitch glides cause the most timbre change, followed by constant pitch glide. For congruent pitch glides and quadratic pitch glides in time-varying timbre, the listeners perceive lesser timbre change than otherwise.