This thesis deals with aspects of Persian phonology and morpho-phonology which are less studied or controversial, and has two specific goals: (i) to examine the structure of the Persian vowel system with the goal of understanding the asymmetries in patterning of different vowels in the system; (ii) to examine some suffixation processes in Persian with the goal of understanding the seeming irregularities in morphophonemics. The more generals goals of this work are to contribute to the discussions of: (i) determining dimensions of contrast in a vowel system; (ii) interactions of vowels and consonants at a morpheme boundary. Although the main focus of this work is on the synchronic status of these issues in Persian from a theoretical viewpoint, many discussions in the thesis benefit from an historical and/or an experimental investigation. As such, the thesis contributes both to the field of theoretical and experimental phonology, and offers both synchronic and historical perspectives on many issues at hand.

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Se examino la produccion de vocales tonicas y atonas por parte de tres grupos de hablantes de espanol (dos grupos con diferencias en anos de experiencia y un grupo nativo). Los hablantes participaron en un experimento de produccion cuyos datos fueron sometidos a varios analisis. Se encontraron efectos robustos de los anos de practica con una segunda lengua, por el hecho de que los hablantes avanzados fueron capaces de reproducir vocales que no produjeron los intermedios. Para las vocales tonicas, la /e/ es la vocal mas difi­cil de aprender para los hablantes no-nativos, seguida por la /a/ y la /u/, mientras que la /o/ y la /i/ son mas faciles. Para las vocales atonas, la /e/ y la /o/ son las mas difi­ciles de aprender para los hablantes no-nativos, seguidas por la /a/ y la /u/, y finalmente por la /i/, la cual es la mas facil.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Sc. D.)—Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1980. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 264-270). / This electronic version was scanned from a copy of the thesis on file at the Speech Communication Group. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.

In the clinical management of voice clients, it is important to measure accurate pitch ranges in order to determine if a client has a normal range or is speaking at an optimum pitch. It is not clear from the literature which vowel should be used in determining these pitch ranges. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the phonational frequency ranges in adults with no vocal training when phonating the cardinal vowels of /i/, /u/, and /a/. The investigation sought to answer the following question: Does the phonational frequency range in vocally untrained adults vary significantly when phonating the cardinal vowels of /i/, /u/, and /a/?

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation presents a study of African American and Hispanic speakers in East Austin, Texas, an area that has been historically segregated and is now experiencing rapid gentrification. The current literature is lacking research on minority participation in sound change. This dissertation contributes to redressing the deficit in this area by describing data from sociolinguistic interviews with African American and Hispanic speakers; the following questions are considered: How do social variables influence a linguistic system? How do the social pressures of gentrification influence linguistic variables? To what extent do minority speakers participate in sound changes present in the majority group's variety of English? Specifically, it considers GOOSE and GOAT fronting and the relative positions of LOT and THOUGHT. It has previously been suggested that only Anglo speakers participate in changes affecting these vowels. With regard to GOOSE and GOAT, in many varieties of Southern English, the back vowels become fronted in Anglo speech while they remain backed in African American and Hispanic speech (e.g., Thomas, 2001a). However, the findings discussed here show that African American and Hispanic speakers may front these vowels to achieve particular stylistic purposes. With regard to LOT and THOUGHT, these vowel classes have merged, or are undergoing merger, in many regions of the United States (Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006). In Texas, Anglo and Hispanic speakers exhibit the LOT~THOUGHT merger while African American speakers reportedly do not and in general resist the merger (Bailey, Wikle, & Sand, 1991; Bernstein, 1993; Labov et al., 2006; Thomas, 2001a). The findings presented here suggest a trend for LOT~THOUGHT moving towards merger among African American speakers in Central Texas. This is unexpected among African American speakers in Texas and in the U.S. at large. The findings presented illustrate the importance of ethnically diverse samples in describing speech. In Texas where there is a large population of Hispanic residents, we cannot claim to have a thorough knowledge of the regional variety of English without investigating minority speakers. The analysis presented here is a step towards describing a more diverse data set of regional American English. / text

The purpose of this study was to examine non-English-speaking Brazilian adults' perception of American English vowels at various levels of English contact. Specifically, it addressed two two-vowel American English contrasts, /i/-/I/ and /u/-/[upsilon]/, that both occupy the vowel space of one Brazilian Portuguese category, /i/ and /u/, and one twovowel contrast, /e/-/[epsilon]/, that exists in both languages. For reliability purposes, the three contrasts were presented in two different orders to total six contrasts in all. Predictions, based on Flege, (1995) associated discrimination difficulties with this L1-L2 contrast pairing. However, previous discoveries of non-native speakers' sensitivity to subphonemic differences suggested the potential to overcome L1-related perceptual constraints (Wode, 1994). Five groups of ten participants each [aged 20-40] contributed data [N=50]. Three Austin, Texas-resident groups participated: (group A) native American English speakers, (group B) native Brazilian Portuguese speakers with high English contact, and (group C) native Brazilian Portuguese-speakers with medium English contact. Belo Horizonte, Brazil-resident groups numbered two, including native Brazilian Portuguese speakers with medium English contact (group D) and low English contact (group E.) Each participant took a same-different identification test in which the target vowels appeared within minimal and identical pairs. Within-group results for medium and low contact groups associated significantly greater difficulty with the /u/-/[upsilon]/ contrast. Between-group results found significant differences between high and low contact groups for /u/-/[upsilon]/, /[upsilon]/-/u/, and /I/-/i/; insignificant differences between high contact and native English groups appeared for the same contrasts. These overall trends suggested a degree of flexibility for non-native perception in three of four instances as well as a significant pair-wise order effect. These overall findings should not minimize the importance of individual differences. Discussion concluded with calls for greater focus on individual differences (also reflected in Bradlow et al., 1997) and greater awareness of individuals' potentials within language learning contexts.