The overall purpose of this study is to analyze the acquisition of English word-stress by Arabic speakers in light of advancements in Optimality Theory. It has been reported that Arab second language learners of English have difficulty in acquiring the various patterns of English word stress. According to OT, the reason for this difficulty is that although these speakers, like native speakers, have full command of the universal and violable constraints that are operative in determining where stress falls in the word, they fail to capture or induce the exact ordering of these constraints. The basic premise of OT is that each grammar is a unique way of ordering the set of universal and violable constraints that determine the actual output form of a certain linguistic feature, say word-stress in this case. In other words, whereas Arabic word-stress and English word-stress are both subject to the same set of universal and violable constraints, they differ in one respect: the ordering of these constraints. The sole task of the learner then is to capture the correct ordering that determines which syllable in each word carries main stress.This study consists of four chapters. In chapter one, we introduce the problem of the study and the basic background information for an OT analysis, the task we undertake for word stress in subsequent chapters. Chapter two reviews word-stress placement in three competing models: linear approach (Chomsky and Halle 1968), nonlinear approach (Liberman and Prince 1977; McCarthy 1979; Hayes 1980, 1982, 1991), and finally Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993; McCarthy and Prince 1993a, b). In chapter three, we introduce the set of constraints that are relevant for predicting the place of stress, not just in English and Arabic, but in all languages. Hence, these constraints are literally present in all languages, though their ranking is language-specific. Then, we develop a ranking of the set of constraints particular to Arabic and another one particular to English. In chapter four, we set out to compare the two constraint rankings in order to (1) predict stress errors in the interlanguage of native speakers of Arabic when learning English, and (2) demonstrate how, by making use of the notion of constraint demotion, those learners can make their English more native-like with respect to stress placement.This study has diverted from a standard OT analysis in at least two ways. First, we allow for some alignment constraint (namely MAIN-RIGHT) to be interpreted as a nongradient constraint. Second, we allow for constraint parameterization. NONFINAL is parameterized to account for Arabic word stress; and WSP is parameterized to account for English word stress.This study has shown that there are significant differences between Arabic and English as far as the ranking of the universal and violable constraints is concerned. Among the major differences are the following. (1) WSP is irrelevant for stress placement in Arabic. (2) Arabic requires that FOOT-BINARITY be interpreted under a moraic analysis, but English requires it to be interpreted under a syllabic analysis. (3) Arabic requires constructing metrical feet from left to right (i.e. ALL-FEET-LEFT >> ALL-FEET RIGHT), English require that it be the other way around (i.e. ALL-FEETRIGHT >> ALL-FEET-LEFT). (4) In. ploysyllabic words, whereas a final syllable that weighs two or more moras is parsed in English, only a final syllable that weighs three moras is parsed in Arabic. (5) Arabic requires that PARSEσ dominates FOOTBINARITY, but English requires the opposite ranking.

This essay intends to determine how easy or difficult it may be for actors to learn to speak with a different accent than their own for movie roles. It also aims to discover whether there are any situations in which it may be difficult for actors to maintain their accents. The essay should be seen as a case study, as it focuses on the movie Blood Diamond (2006) and Leonardo DiCaprio’s attempt to change his General American accent to a Rhodesian English one. Firstly, the characteristics of Rhodesian English are described in order to know which features differ from General American. Secondly, the study works in detail with phonetic transcriptions and focuses on the phonemes that differ between these two varieties of English. The essay also attempts to establish whether there are any circumstances in which DiCaprio is more likely to lose his Rhodesian accent, such as his character’s state of mind or the person to whom he speaks.

This magister degree project is a quantitative, real-time study concerning Swedes’ pronunciation of English, their choice of English accent and the degree of mixing of accents by individual speakers. The informants of the study are Swedish television journalists who speak English on television, in various interview situations. In order to determine which accent/s the journalists adopt, the classical RP/GA differences have been observed. For the purpose of the study a corpus of television clips was created, using The Swedish Media Database (Svensk Mediedatabas). The time span of the gathered material stretches from 1970 until 2009, covering four full decades. The speech of TV journalists is particularly interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view, as it can be argued that it is a form of performed speech where the concern for linguistic norm or context appropriateness is higher than in normal speech. The accent that the journalists adopt could therefore be particularly indicative of which English accent is considered most prestigious or most appropriate, among Swedish speakers. British English was the exclusive educational norm in Sweden until 1994 when American English was accepted as an alternative. Students have since been encouraged to choose one of these accents and to avoid mixing of accents. At the same time Swedish speakers are increasingly exposed to American English through media. The hypothesis underlying this study was therefore that we should see a growing tendency in favour of American English in the journalists’ speech and that the tendency to mix accents would be less frequent in earlier years and more common today. Results of the study show a very modest increase of American accent, which peaks in the 1990s and seems to abate by 2000. The data indicates a surprisingly stable situation in favour of British English over the four decades, with a general 30-40 percent mix of American English features. All the informants mix accents, typically up to 30 percent, already in the 1970s. The data cannot fully confirm an increasing American English influence on Swedes’ choice of English accent. However, the study indicates that mixing of accents is, and has been, a common and probably inevitable phenomenon.

Speaker accent influences the accuracy of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. Knowledge of accent based acoustic variations can therefore be used in the develop¬ment of more robust systems. This project investigates the differences between first language (L1) and second language (L2) English in South Africa with respect to vowels and diphthongs. The study is specifically aimed at L2 English speakers with a native African mother tongue, for instance speakers of isi-Zulu, isi-Xhosa, Tswana or South Sotho. The vowel systems of English and African languages, as described in the linguistic literature, are compared to predict the expected deviations of L2 South African English from L1. A number of vowels and diphthongs from L1 and L2 speakers are acoustically compared and the results are correlated with the linguistic predictions. The comparison is firstly made in formant space using the first three formants found using the Split Levinson algorithm. The L1 vowel centroids and diphthong trajectories in this three-dimensional space are then compared to their L2 counterparts using analysis of variance. The second analysis method is based on simple hidden Markov models (HMMs) using Mel-scaled cepstral features. Each HMM models a vowel or diphthong from one of the two speaker groups and analysis of variance is again used to compare the L1 and L2 HMMs. Significant differences are found in the vowel and diphthong qualities of the two language groups which supports the linguistically predicted effects such as vowel substitution, peripheralisation and changes in diphthong strength. The long-term goal of this project is to enable the adaptation of existing L1 English recognition systems to perform equally well on South African L2 English. / Dissertation (MEng (Computer Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

La discrimination lors de l'insertion professionnelle contribue à marquer des frontières entre les individus nourrissant par là-même les ruptures inter-communautaires en société. Ici, elle est envisagée dans une perspective sociolangagière permettant d'appréhender les liens entre discours et conflits sociaux. Par le réinvestissement de plusieurs méthodologies (observation participante, observation directe, locuteur masqué, questionnaire d'évaluation et entretien semi-directif), la recherche est posée comme permettant de travailler conjointement à : – une réflexion théorique sur l'intégration des pratiques sociolangagières comme potentiels critères de discrimination pour observer comment certains accents peuvent être perçus plus légitimes à certains emplois professionnels et comment ces ressentis peuvent être transposés à l'égard des communautés dont ces parlers apparaissent représentatifs et, – une réflexion méthodologique sur le discours comme vecteur de discriminations où il s'agit de travailler à la création d'un nouvel instrument pour aider la lutte contre ces ségrégations injustifiées, ce par repérage d'indices langagiers récurrents comme preuve(s) d'attitudes discriminatoires / Discrimination at the time of professional insertion contributes to establish boundaries between individuals thus fueling cross-communities divisions in society. Discrimination is considered here within a sociolingual perspective allowing to grasp the links between discourses and social conflicts. Using several methodologies – participative observation, direct observation, concealed speaker, assessment questionnaire and semi-directive interview – the research is assumed as a possibility to work simultaneously on: – a theoretical reflection on the integration of sociolingual practices as potential criterias of discrimination to observe how certain accents may be perceived as more legitimate for certain professional positions and how these sentiments may be replicated to the communities apparently represented by those speeches and, – a methodological reflection on discourse as a vector of discrimination where it is about working on the creation of a new instrument to help fighting those unjustified segregations by spotting recurrent language indices as evidence(s) of discriminatory attitudes

Blackfoot (Siksika), an Algonquian language spoken in Southern Alberta and in Northwestern Montana, is claimed to have a pitch-accent system (Frantz 1991). However, no complete analysis of the Blackfoot word accent system is available in the literature. This thesis examines Blackfoot nominal accent by means of metrical analysis (Halle and Vergnaud 1987) in Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993). All of the data in this thesis are elicited from native speakers of Blackfoot. Regardless of noun type, every word contains one and only one pitch peak. Bare nouns (mono-morphemic nouns) and relational nouns (dependent nouns) show that Blackfoot has a mixed predictable and lexical accent system. Accent is quantity-sensitive, i.e. a heavy syllable attracts accent, while in nouns which contain no heavy syllable or more than one heavy syllable, it is lexically specified. An interesting contrast is found in long vowels - they contrast a high-level pitch, a falling pitch, and a rising pitch. Derived nouns (compounds) demonstrate four kinds of accent patterns, depending on the status (free vs. bound) and the accentual property (accented vs. unaccented) of morphemes. The leftmost accent of the compound members is retained, but the accent shifts to the juncture of them if it is word-final. If compound members are unaccented, the accent is assigned to word-final position by default. Speaker variation also occurs. One speaker systematically changes vowel length depending on the type of accented syllable, while the other speaker shows a wide variety of accent patterns. This thesis concludes that all the accent patterns can be accounted for by a single ranking of constraints in an OT analysis, in spite of the fact that the accent system is both lexical and predictable. Addition of constraints is needed specifically for compounds! Speaker variation is accounted for by reranking the same set of constraints. Priority is given to constraints that refer to the predictable accent in the grammar of one speaker. The lexical information is more respected in the other speaker's grammar. In addition to the analysis of general pitch-accent patterns, four types of irregular patterns are examined. The conclusions reached in this thesis demonstrate that the accent system interacts with other phonological properties of Blackfoot. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

This paper examines the perceptions of Kenyans towards the way other Kenyans speak Swahili from a Folklinguistic perspective. The study involved two main tasks. In the first task, informants were provided with blank maps of the country and asked to identify areas where they thought there was a distinct way of speaking Swahili. In the second task, they were provided with the same map showing Kenyan’s eight provinces and asked to rank them in terms of correctness, attractiveness and closeness to the way they speak Swahili. The results show little or no difference between the rankings of correctness versus pleasantness of Swahili varieties. The study also shows that Kenyans do not identify with the normative variety modeled on the standardized or Kenyan coastal Swahili which is used in the schools or mass media. Similar to other studies in perceptual dialectology, the informants’ judgments were influenced by their background knowledge and stereotypes about different regions that have little or no relationship with linguistics factors per se. Unlike other studies in perceptual dialectology however, languages that are not the object of study have a strong influence on respondents’ perceptions. Beside the ethnic stereotypes that characterize Kenya’s multilingual discourse, Kenyans’ attitudes towards varieties of Swahili seem to be filtered through the lens of a competitive hegemonic language that has enjoyed historical advantage. As a result, the promotion of an idealized variety of Swahili in light of the dominance of English and the continued use of local languages is not likely to increase its acceptability as a national and official language.

No description available.

The study aims to investigate the differences between Taliesin Jaffe and Matthew Mercer’s portrayals of a standard Irish English accent in Critical Role in their respective performances of the character Mollymauk/Lucien. Using previous studies on Irish English pronunciation, the presence of each established feature was investigated to find how authentically the actors succeed to produce the accent. The main features investigated were the rhoticity, plosivization of /θ/ and /ð/, lenition of /t/ and /d/, yod-dropping, diphthongs, and some monophthongs. Using transcripts to locate the instances of said features, the audio of the footage was studied to discover whether the phonemes were produced in accordance with the proposed realizations within Irish English. Both actors were found to excel and struggle with different features, with plosivization of /θ/ and /ð/, lenition of /t/ and /d/, and aspects of yod-dropping proving especially difficult to consistently produce in accordance with supraregional Irish English. The study concluded that neither accent comes close to achieving an authentic Irish English accent and that both portrayals share many similarities with each other, as well as overlapping with the actors’ native General American accent, especially in cases where Irish English and General American shared potential realizations of phonemes.

Thesis. 1975. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 246-247. / Ph.D.