Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-201).

This study provides the first critical history of British developments in phonetic science from 1890 to the beginning of the Second World War. It draws on both published and unpublished documentary evidence, and on original digital analyses of contemporary images, experimental data, and sound recordings. Experimental phonetics had diverse origins embracing medicine, physics and philology. A survey of the nineteenth century background shows that by 1890 significant British contributions in all three fields could have furnished the makings of a native approach to phonetics as an experimental science, but they failed to come together for a variety of bureaucratic, professional and personal reasons. Experimental phonetics-an academic fashion as much as a scientific specialism-was instead imported from Germany and France, and it had little continuity with British antecedents. The study details the earliest British phonetics laboratories, their personnel, equipment, and research programmes, providing the first extensive account of the UCL laboratory, and bringing to light a forgotten 1930s laboratory in Newcastle. The major methods of empirical investigation of the period are scrutinised, rehabilitating long-neglected British origins. The early work of Daniel Jones is extensively re-evaluated, establishing his scientific credentials, and the career of Stephen Jones, the first academic in Britain to earn a salary as an experimental phonetician, receives detailed treatment. New light is thrown on many neglected figures, including W. A. Aikin, E. R. Edwards, John G. McKendrick, and Wilfred Perrett, while a detailed investigation of the work of Sir Richard Paget reveals the astonishing accuracy of his auditory analyses. The study concludes with an account of the career of Robert Curry, the first recognisably modern and professional speech scientist to emerge in Britain.

This thesis investigates laryngeal processes in Chipewyan and other Athapaskan languages. Athapaskan languages provide an interesting testing ground since they exhibit a three-way laryngeal distinction in stops (voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated and glottalised), as well as a two-way distinction (voiced vs. voiceless) in fricatives. Data from a previously undocumented dialect of Chipewyan is presented to bring new evidence to bear on the cross-linguistic picture within Athapaskan. This dialect shows significant diachronic changes. Acoustic analysis reveals that several of the stops traditionally classified as voiceless unaspirated are phonetically voiced. Furthermore, the results show a front-back asymmetry in voicing. Other findings include merger of the alveolar and palatal stop series, and merger of interdental stops with interdental fricatives. The acoustic findings are used to develop a featural specification of Chipewyan consonants adapted from Rice (1994). The phonological behaviour of these stops has interesting implications for the phonetics-phonology interface. Several morphophonemic processes are examined from a cross-linguistic and comparative historical perspective to test the tenets of feature specification, privative features, constraint definition and interaction. Firstly, Pro to-Athapaskan had a two-way laryngeal contrast stem-finally (maintained, e.g., in Hupa), which has been neutralized in many daughter languages (e.g., Koyukon). Languages such as Chipewyan have undergone a process of stem-final spirantisation. These related processes of laryngeal neutralisation and spirantisation will be examined in an Optimality Theory context using constraints developed by Steriade (1997). Secondly, Athapaskan languages exhibit a phonological process of continuant voicing whereby voiceless noun stem-initial continuants become voiced with the addition of the possessive prefix. This process, displayed by previously documented dialects of Chipewyan, is analysed in an Optimality Theory framework. The research dialect of Chipewyan does not exhibit the process due to a restructuring of the morphosyntactic system of possession marking. Finally, tone and tonal processes, found in most Athapaskan languages, are the synchronic residue of Proto-Athapaskan laryngeal behaviour. Two examples of tone assimilation are discussed: Navajo, where inherent high tone spreads rightwards in verbs, and Chipewyan, where inherent high tone spreads leftwards in nouns.

This dissertation is aimed at investigating the impact of postural changes within speakers on the acoustic speech signal to complement research on articulatory changes under the same conditions. The research is therefore relevant for forensic phonetics, where quantifying within-speaker variation is vital for the accuracy of speaker comparison. To this end, two acoustic studies were carried out to quantify the influence of five head positions and three body orientations on the acoustic speech signal. Results show that there is a consistent change in the third formant, a change which was most evident in the body orientation measurements, and to a lesser extent in the head position data. Analysis of the results with respect to compensation strategies indicates that speakers employ different strategies to compensate for these perturbations to their vocal tract. Some speakers did not exhibit large differences in their speech signal, while others appeared to compensate much less. Across all speakers, the effect was much stronger in what were deemed ‘less natural’, postures. That is, speakers were apparently less able to predict and compensate for the impact of prone body orientation on their speech than for that of the more natural supine orientation. In addition to the acoustic studies, a perception experiment assessed whether listeners could make use of acoustic cues to determine the posture of the speaker. Stimuli were chosen with, by design, stronger or weaker acoustic cues to posture, in order to elicit a possible difference in identification performance. Listeners were nevertheless not able to identify above chance whether a speaker was sitting or lying in prone body orientation even when hearing the set with stronger cues. Further combined articulatory and acoustic research will have to be carried out to disentangle which articulatory behaviours correlate with the acoustic changes presented in order to draw a more comprehensive picture of the effects of postural variation on speech.

This thesis investigates laryngeal processes in Chipewyan and other Athapaskan languages. Athapaskan languages provide an interesting testing ground since they exhibit a three-way laryngeal distinction in stops (voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated and glottalised), as well as a two-way distinction (voiced vs. voiceless) in fricatives. Data from a previously undocumented dialect of Chipewyan is presented to bring new evidence to bear on the cross-linguistic picture within Athapaskan. This dialect shows significant diachronic changes. Acoustic analysis reveals that several of the stops traditionally classified as voiceless unaspirated are phonetically voiced. Furthermore, the results show a front-back asymmetry in voicing. Other findings include merger of the alveolar and palatal stop series, and merger of interdental stops with interdental fricatives. The acoustic findings are used to develop a featural specification of Chipewyan consonants adapted from Rice (1994). The phonological behaviour of these stops has interesting implications for the phonetics-phonology interface. Several morphophonemic processes are examined from a cross-linguistic and comparative historical perspective to test the tenets of feature specification, privative features, constraint definition and interaction. Firstly, Pro to-Athapaskan had a two-way laryngeal contrast stem-finally (maintained, e.g., in Hupa), which has been neutralized in many daughter languages (e.g., Koyukon). Languages such as Chipewyan have undergone a process of stem-final spirantisation. These related processes of laryngeal neutralisation and spirantisation will be examined in an Optimality Theory context using constraints developed by Steriade (1997). Secondly, Athapaskan languages exhibit a phonological process of continuant voicing whereby voiceless noun stem-initial continuants become voiced with the addition of the possessive prefix. This process, displayed by previously documented dialects of Chipewyan, is analysed in an Optimality Theory framework. The research dialect of Chipewyan does not exhibit the process due to a restructuring of the morphosyntactic system of possession marking. Finally, tone and tonal processes, found in most Athapaskan languages, are the synchronic residue of Proto-Athapaskan laryngeal behaviour. Two examples of tone assimilation are discussed: Navajo, where inherent high tone spreads rightwards in verbs, and Chipewyan, where inherent high tone spreads leftwards in nouns. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Linguistics." Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-239).

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 40-45).

published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

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