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published_or_final_version / English Studies and Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Arts

This study set out to examine how correctly Mandarin speakers produced and perceived English vowels and to explore the relationship between the production and the perception of English vowels by Mandarin speakers. Fifteen native Mandarin speakers, who had lived in Canada for at least two years and received an IELTS score of 6.5 or above, participated in this study. Fifteen native speakers of Canadian English living in Vancouver at the time of the study also participated as a control group. Two experiments were conducted involving 10 English vowels: /i/, /ɪ/, /ɛ/, /æ/, /ʊ/, /u/, /ʊ/, /ɔ/, /o/, and /ʌ/. In Experiment 1, both the Mandarin speakers and the native English speakers were recorded producing the ten vowels in a /bVt/ syllable in a carrier sentence. The vowels in the recordings were then identified by four native English listeners. In Experiment 2, the Mandarin speakers did an identification test of the vowels produced by the English speakers in Experiment 1. The results showed that Mandarin speakers in this study were able to produce and perceive certain English vowels correctly, but not all of them. The results also indicated that the relationship between the production and perception of English vowels by Mandarin speakers cannot be interpreted in a straightforward way, and that that L2 experience, in terms of length of residence, age of arrival, years of learning, and age when ESL learning starts, might also play an important role in the production and perception of English vowels by Mandarin speakers. / Graduate

The goal of this thesis is to develop a parametric model of acquisition which incorporates the idea that phonological systems are underlyingly unspecified for certain feature values. I examine two variants of this model: one based on the theory of Radical Underspecification (Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1986), and one based on the theory of Contrastive Underspecification (Steriade 1987). I assume the principles and parameters framework, where the initial phonological system of the child is assumed to be characterized by the unmarked parameter settings of UG. The two types of parameters that are examined in detail are featural parameters and rule parameters. The unmarked settings of featural parameters are supplied by universal redundancy rules. In most cases, the unmarked settings of rule parameters are assumed to be OFF, or non-application. I provide analyses of the vocalic systems of Hungarian and Spanish, based on the parametric theories of Radical and Contrastive Underspecification, which demonstrate that certain phonological parameters in these languages must be reset to the marked option. The Hungarian analyses focus particularly on spreading processes, while those in Spanish focus on alternations that take place within verb conjugation classes. Given the differences between the initial child state and the adult phonological systems of Hungarian and Spanish, the underspecification acquisition models make certain predictions regarding acquisition in these languages. These predictions are then tested using data from children acquiring both Hungarian and Spanish. The early phonological systems of children acquiring Hungarian and Spanish are found to initially be smaller than predicted by either acquisition model. To account for these results, and still maintain a parametric model, I propose a theory of feature availability, which specifies the order in which features may become part of a child's phonological system. In conjuction with this theory of feature availability, the RU model is able to explain the development of children's early phonological inventories, as well as certain substitution patterns. The contrastive specifications required by the theory of CU cannot account for these aspects of the data. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (M.A.)--San Jose State University, 1994. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 23-24).

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

The purpose of this research was to test the hypothesis that speakers with small vowel diagrams. The vowels [I ae a u] were analysed for 20 male subjects by means of a sound spectrograph. From the measurements of vowel formants two speakers with large aoustic vowel diagrams Ball State UniversityMuncie, IN 47306